V7 N2 Summer 1979 Schooner 'Tango' (ex Bark 'Molly Dollar', ex 'Hans') off Columbia City

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QUARTERDECK

REVIEW SUMMER 1979

VOL. 7

16TH & EXCHANGE STREET, ASTORIA, OREGON 97103

N0.2

,.

SCHOONER TANGO (ex BARK MARY DOLLAR, ex HANS) OFF COLUMBIA CITY, MAY, 1942 On the morning of May 2, 1942, the six-masted schoon er Tango towed past Astoria and out over the bar, where she set sail for Cape Town, South Africa, by way of Cape Horn. Her steel hull was deeply laden with a cargo of 3,000,000 board feet of lumber, taken on at St. Helens in the preceeding weeks. This was the last cargo to leave the Columbia River in a merchant sailing vessel. For the Tango, it was the first time under canvas in twenty-eight years . The Tango was built for German owners in 1904 as the four-masted bark Hans, by William Hamilton & Co. Of Port Glasgow, Scotland. Designed for the nitrate trade (coal from European ports to the west coast of South Amer ica; nitrates back), she and her almost -exact sister, the Kurt, were, at 3100 gross tons, among the largest sailing

vessels afloat. They were also among the most beautiful. The Hans served successfully under the house flag of G.J.H. Siemers & Co. of Hamburg until 1914, when, at the outbreak of World War I, she and ten other German sailing vessels were interned at the neutral port of Santa Rosalia, Mexico. For the next seven years she swung to her anchor in that sunbaked roadstead. In 1921, having been turned over to the Allies as war reparation, the Hans was purchased by The Robert Dollar Co., of San Francisco, who renamed her Mary Dollar and planned to use her in the lumber trade to the Orient. Towed to San Francisco Bay, the bark was laid up at Sausalito to await employment. It never came. She spent the next fourteen years in layup, gradually deteriorating. (continued inside)


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V7 N2 Summer 1979 Schooner 'Tango' (ex Bark 'Molly Dollar', ex 'Hans') off Columbia City by maritimemuseum - Issuu