Lancing, A Ship for the Record by OlafT. Engvig
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he fo ur-mas ted, full-rigged ship Lancing had the abili ty to reach great speeds, but she was never pu t to the rest before she flew Norwegian co lors. D espite the glamour in making record runs, in truth, m any windjammer captains, even if they knew they had a speedy ship, understood that their job was to delive r th e ship and its cargo safely, in due time, whil e mini m izing damages along the way. A few of Lancings captains were particularly skilled at getting the maximum drive out of her (and her crew) withour injury to either. These men we re the virtuosos within their trade that succeeded in maki ng record-breaking passages, time and time aga in . Speed records at sea were typically bro ken when conditions were ideal- if the wind blew a gale fro m just the right direction, for example. But that rarely happened , and if it did blow very hard , the sea got ugly. To measure a ship's capacity for speed , therefore, it is imperative to co nsider perfo rmances on different routes aro und the wo rld and consistency over years. Lancing has no t been acknowledged beyo nd Scandinavia as one of th e wo rld's greatest sailing ships because, perhaps, the documentation of her acco mplishments were primarily derailed in No rwegian. She was documented in English for the years she flew the Union Jack, bur her British captains never seemed to get her up to speed. Lancing was built in 1865 of iron by Robert Napier & Sons, G lasgow, as the steamer Pereire for the French America Line, just fo ur yea rs after the company was established . She was rigged as a th ree-mas ted barque. H er engine was relatively sm all, compared to the ship 's m assive size. Pereire was buil t with an easy-dri ven hull, and, like many first-generation steamships, had a block coefficient much lower than her successors. Pereire was 356 feet long by 43 .8 fee t on the beam, and drew 27 .3 feet of water. With a length-to-beam ratio of 8. 5: 1, she was like an eno rmous Viking lo ng ship. H er displacement was 5,2 17 tons and she m easured 3,01 8 gross tons. In sea trials, her 1,250-horsepower engine demo nstrated that Pereire could make 15 kno ts. H er first crossing fro m Le H avre ro New York in 1866 was acco mplished in nine days and 4 30
ho urs. W ith that, she got lots of publicity. The Emperor Napoleon III even came o n board fo r a look around. With an average cruising speed of thirteen kn ots, she was co nsidered the fas test steamship crossing the Atlantic-even better than Cunard's China that had achieved a record run between New York and G reat Britain. In 1871 the French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi sailed to New York aboard the Pereire to select a locati o n and co me up with a design fo r an internatio nal monument of liberty, an idea that was gaining momentum in France to create a gift for the centennial of the signing of the D eclaration of Independence. As the shi p entered New York harbo r, Bartholdi was on deck looking toward the great city. It was
Pereire
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at that moment that he got a vision of the locatio n of where to place a m assive statue of a great goddess, with a torch in one hand, w ho would welcome immigrants and inspire them in their new home, the land of freedom. Bartholdi made a sketch of a great statue with Lower Manhattan in the background, and this first draft, made from the deck of Pereire, closely resembles the statue that later was erected on Liberty Island. Pereire was the Queen M ary of her day, where the rich and famous from the old world would travel in ultimate comfort, while all the emigrants she later carried would travel one-way. Among her m any notable passengers was science fiction writer Jules Verne, who later used Pereire in the introduction of his famous novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, published in France in 1870. In 1880, when Pereire had been actively working for fifteen years, she caught fire. Sh e was purposely hit with a torpedo to extinguish the flames and subsequently sank. She was raised and repaired, and, in the process, was fitted with two funnels. She continued her passenger service until 1887, mainly as an emigrant ship, when she was wrecked
Lancing
(above) The steamship Pereire with two fonnels as an emigrant ship to America, late in her steaming life. (right) The ship, here after her conversion to a fo ll-rigged ship, at her homeport in Kristiana, N orway, 19 07. Only once in her lifetime did Lanci ng, ex-Pereire, sail to Kristiania (now Oslo). She visited to San Francisco seven times and was six times in New York. She sailed all over the world, but rarely home.
SfEA HISTORY 124, AUTUMN 2008