Peking (ship)

Not to be confused with the iron steamship SS City of Peking built in 1874.

Peking

Peking
History
German Empire
Name	Peking
Namesake	City of Beijing
Owner	F. Laeisz
Route	Europe–Chile
Builder	Blohm & Voss, Steinwerder, Hamburg
Yard number	205
Launched	25 February 1911
Completed	May 1911
Out of service	1920
Notes	Interned at Valparaiso 1914–1920, then to Italy as war reparations
Kingdom of Italy
In service	1920
Out of service	1923
Weimar Republic
Name	Peking
Operator	F. Laeisz
Route	Europe–Chile
Acquired	1923
Out of service	1932
United Kingdom
Name	Arethusa
Owner	Shaftesbury Homes
In service	1932–1940, 1945–1975
Out of service	1975
Homeport	Upnor, Medway
United Kingdom
Name	HMS Pekin
Operator	Royal Navy
Commissioned	1940
Decommissioned	1945
United States
Name	Peking
Owner	South Street Seaport Museum
Acquired	1975
Out of service	2017
Homeport	New York City
Status	Museum ship
Germany
Name	Peking
Owner	German Port Museum
Acquired	2017
In service	2020
Homeport	Hamburg
Status	Museum ship
General characteristics
Class and type	Flying P-Liner
Displacement	3,100 long tons (3,150 t)
Length	377 ft 6 in (115.06 m) sparred length 320 ft (98 m) length on deck
Beam	45 ft 7 in (13.89 m)
Height	170 ft 6 in (51.97 m)
Draft	16 ft (4.9 m)
Sail plan	44,132 sq ft (4,100.0 m2) sail area

Peking is a steel-hulled four-masted barque. A so-called Flying P-Liner of the German company F. Laeisz, it was one of the last generation of cargo-carrying iron-hulled sailing ships used in the nitrate trade and wheat trade around Cape Horn.

History

Nitrate trade

Peking was launched in February 1911 and left Hamburg for her maiden voyage to Valparaiso in May of the same year. After the outbreak of World War I she was interned at Valparaiso and remained in Chile for the duration of the war. Awarded to the Kingdom of Italy as war reparations, she was sold back to her original owners, the Laeisz brothers, in January 1923. She remained in the nitrate trade until traffic through the Panama Canal proved quicker and more economical.

Arethusa II

In 1932, she was sold for £6,250 to Shaftesbury Homes. She was first towed to Greenhithe, renamed Arethusa II and moored alongside the existing Arethusa I. In July 1933, she was moved to a new permanent mooring off Upnor on the River Medway, where she served as a children's home and training school. She was officially "opened" by Prince George on 25 July 1933. During World War II she served in the Royal Navy as HMS Pekin.

Museum ship in New York

Arethusa II was retired in 1974 and sold to Jack Aron as Peking, for the South Street Seaport Museum in New York City, where she remained for the next four decades. However, the Seaport NYC did not see Peking as part of its long-term operational plans, and was planning to send the vessel to the scrap yard. A 2012 offer to return the ship to Hamburg, where she was originally built, as a gift from the city of New York, was contingent upon raising an endowment in Germany to ensure the preservation of the vessel.

Return to Germany

In November 2015 the Maritim Foundation purchased the ship for US$100. Peking is intended to become part of the German Port Museum (Deutsches Hafenmuseum) at Schuppen 52 in Hamburg for which €120 million of federal funds would be provided. She was taken to Caddell Drydock, Staten Island, on 7 September 2016, to spend the winter. On 14 July 2017 she was loaded on the deck of the semi-submersible heavy-lift ship Combi Dock III for transport across the Atlantic, at a cost of some €1 million, arriving at Brunsbüttel on 30 July 2017.

Refurbishment in Germany

On 2 August 2017 she was transferred to Peters Werft, located at Wewelsfleth, for a three-year refurbishment at a cost of €38 million. The restoration included review of rigging, double floor steel plates, dismounting and remount of all masts, docking in dry dock, renewal of the steel structure, removal of the cement that filled the lower three and a half metres (11 ft) of the hull, painting, woodwork and overall refurbishment. The ship twice spent about two years in dry dock. Peking was refloated on 7 September 2018 with a primer-painted hull. Teak was reinstalled on deck. The ship was transferred on 7 September 2020 to the German Port Museum.

In popular culture

• "Around the Wild Cape Horn" from Ralph McTell's album Somewhere Down the Road is about Peking.
• Tom Lewis's song "Peking" on the album Mixed Cargo is about Peking.
• The ship was the setting for the 1965 Margaret Rutherford film Murder Ahoy as "HMS Battledore".
• The ship is mentioned in Eltons John biography as place of after gig party where Elton met John Lennon

See also

• Padua – still active as a sail training ship under Russian flag as Kruzenshtern. Unique among them in having been motorised.
• Pamir – lost 1957 in the Atlantic
• Passat – museum ship in Germany, and sister ship to Peking
• Pommern – museum ship in Finland
• Other preserved barques
  • Falls of Clyde
  • Glenlee – museum ship in Glasgow
  • Balclutha
  • Star of India
  • Moshulu
  • James Craig
  • Elissa
  • Sigyn – the last wooden barque in original configuration

Bibliography

• Johnson, Irving. Round the Horn in a Square Rigger (Milton Bradley, 1932) (reprinted as The Peking Battles Cape Horn (Sea History Press, 1977 ISBN 0-930248-02-3)
• Johnson, Irving. Around Cape Horn (film) (Mystic Seaport, 1985) (from original 16 mm footage shot by Irving Johnson, 1929)

External links

• The History of Shaftesbury Homes and the Arethusa, giving details of the purchase of the Pekin/Peking
• Around Cape Horn in the Peking, by Captain Irving Johnson, 1929