This photo, taken aslant from one of the ship's boats while they were becalmed, may be the last picture taken of Coriolanus under full sail.
In 1929 when Matson sailed in her, the Coriolanus was an old vessel in the twilight of her years. Her gradual decline from immaculate clipper to decrepit packet, and beyond , is typical of many of her contemporaries in the last days of sail. She had been launched in 1876 as a full -rigged ship with main skysail from the yard of Arch . McMillan & Son on the River Clyde, Dumbarton, Scotland, for J. Patton Junr. & Co., London. A small ship of 1046 tons register, her length was 217.4 feet, breadth 35.2 feet, depth 20. 1 feet. Intended for the tea trade from China, she is considered to have been one of the finest and most beautiful iron clippers ever built, and at the Shipwright's Exhibition in London in 1877 her model won the Gold Medal-the highest award . On her maiden voyage in 1877 she set a record which still stands: 69 days from the ScilJy Isles to Calcutta, around the Cape of Good Hope. In the 1878-79 tea season she left Shanghai on June 28th and came home to London in 150 days. Thereafter she entered the India jute trade where she remained while under Patton ' s ownership. In 1886 Coriolanus was sold to John Stewart& Co., London , who operated her until 1891 when she was sold to German owners . In 1902 she was sold to Norwegians who cut her down to a bark, and except for a brief return to British ownership during 1903 and 1904 she remained under Norwegian registry and her original name until after World War I. In July 1921, flying either the Norwegian or the Panamanian flag and named Tiburon, she was seized in Boston with alcohol in her cargo and sold thereafter at a U.S . Marshal's Sale for $7 ,525 to Capt. Louis d'Oliviera, former master of the bark Charles G . Rice. He refitted her, named her for his wife Eugenia Emilia, and with American registry put her in the Cape Verde trade, in which he had sailed in the Rice, with himself as master. These were the Prohibition years in America and when d'Oliviera brought her back to New Bedford in 1922 24
she was seized again for rum running and carrying narcotics . In the spring of 1923 she was sold at a Marshal's Sale in New Bedford to J. 0 . Amarantes for $6,750. He is reported to have put the old bark in first class shape, and when she sailed for the island of Sao Vicente, Cape Verde Islands, on November 1, 1923 , she was to be sold on arrival to Solomao Benoliel of Lisbon . She was not seen again in New Bedford until June 28, 1926, when she flew the flag of Portugal with her home port at Praia and was named Lina. A rusting hulk, she lay at anchor off the Butler Flats Lighthouse all that summer, her captain unable to meet quarantine regulations for lack of funds . By the latter part of November her captain was in jail and her crew had deserted , and in February 1927 she was sold again at a Marshal's Sale, for $1,000-less than one dollar per ton. The new owner was Abilio Monteior de Macedo, the mayor of Praia and the owner when Norman Matson sailed in her. Senhor Macedo restored her original name, and it may have been on her first voyage for him in 1927, presumably with renewed gear and her bottom cleaned, that she showed her heritage with bursts of speed up to 16 knots by the log and, despite a three-day calm, made the passage to the Cape Verdes in 17 1/2 days, which events are mentioned by Matson and others. On November l, 1928, the Coriolanus left New Bedford with 160 passengers and a crew of 30, which included some musicians as a ship's band. During a gale she was knocked down , some cargo shifted, and the deck cargo had to be jettisoned to right her. The passage was completed without further incident and she was back in New Bedford in May 1929 , at which time Matson made his arrangements to sail in her. Two months later, on the afternoon of Friday, July 19, the wind came fair from the west and by dark Coriolanus had weighed achor and set sail for Praia with some eighty people SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986