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FOREST FRIEND Built with two sister ships at Gray's Harbor, WA. 1919. |
The barkentine rig –– that strange marriage of square and fore-and-aft sails, came to the bloom on the west coast.
Such a combination of differently cut canvas obviously prompts the question: Why the two rigs? Why not keep either to the square of the schooner rig? The answer lay in the use to which such vessels were put or, more correctly, the pattern of trade routes such vessels would traverse most inexpensively.
With lumber being king and the new countries "down under" clamoring for building materials, the Barkentine rig was ideally suited for the long runs in the Trades to "fetch" up the Antipodes. Vessels of this rig could run the large schooners out of sight in the Trades or on voyages such as to South Africa or the Islands.
Three later-day examples of this rig were the beautiful, large barkentines FOREST FRIEND, FOREST PRIDE, and FOREST DREAM, built in 1919 at Grays Harbor, WA.
The vessels measured 249 feet by 44 feet by 19 feet and had 1,650,000 board feet capacity.
Their maiden voyages took them to Sydney, Australia with lumber, the usual pattern being then to load coal at Newcastle for Honolulu, Callao, Mauritius, Antwerp, the Caribbean, San Antonio, France, Cadiz, Queenstown, Noumea, Iquique, Pimental, and Stromstad were other ports of call.
These big barkentines were not clippers, but on occasion showed their heels and demonstrated that as late as the 1920s profits were to be made in sail. In April, 1925, after temporary layup in Lake Union, FOREST PRIDE loaded 1,560,000 feet of lumber at Williapa Harbor for Adelaide, Australia at $15 per thousand (1,000 board feet,) returning to Seattle in December in forty days from Callao.
In 1926, she went outward to Adelaide in ninety-eight days, returning in eighty-two days during which passage she logged 2,222 miles in nine days, or an average of almost 247 miles per day. That was good sailing in that day and age!
All three vessels operated under tow along the West Coast for a while, sometimes in tow of the steamship FOREST KING.
In the late 1920s, FOREST DREAM was sold at auction in Australia after a charterer had gone bankrupt. A group of officers from the Swedish training ship C.B. PEDERSEN purchased the vessel and operated her between Europe and the West Coast of South America, carrying guano and then logwood between the Caribbean and Central American ports and France. She finally was destroyed by fire at Stromstad, Sweden, in 1933.
The PRIDE, after arriving in Seattle in September of 1927, was laid up in Lake Union never to feel the press of wind-filled canvas again. Later, as a barge, she assisted in raising the ill-fated ISLANDER. There is a post of that adventure on this site..
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FOREST PRIDE |
FOREST PRIDE took lumber from Bellingham to Noumea, New Caledonia in the excellent time of forty-two days, then crossing to Newcastle to load coal for South America. On the run from Australia to the West Coast she logged seven hundred miles during a forty-eight hour stretch.
In the spring of 1929, the FRIEND was libeled by a shipyard at Vancouver, B.C., that had not been paid for repairs. She was laid up there until 1938 when the Island Tug and Bargo Co., purchased the ship for conversion to a hog fuel barge.
Thus came to an end the rather short-lived careers of three graceful but sturdy sail carriers, plodding onward in an age which had outrun their kind. It is a wonder they lasted as long as they did.
They were not only three ships, they were a culmination of hundreds of years of evolution and development, from the full-rigged ship and the topsail schooner, the end result being a combination of the advantages of the schooner and the square-rigger. By using a square-rigged fore mast, the barkentine had the advantage of spreading a larger sail area before the wind, as compared to the fore-and-aft schooner. The rig came into great popularity as a substitute for either large 3 or 4 masted schooners or ships about 1880.
Pacific Coast builders gave a good deal of attention to this rig. While more expensive to build than the schooner rig, the barkentine was far less costly than a ship or a bark and
required fewer hands.
The "forest" barkentines were fine examples of the rig. They were a credit to their builders and beautiful manifestations of the shipwrights' art during sail's last stand.
Words by Mr. Gordon "Chips" Jones for The Sea Chest membership journal
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