which_chick | Today I learned... (Reply)

The last great commercial sailing (with sails) fleet of the world was run out of Finland, operated by a man named Gustaf Erikson. The ships employed in this fleet were used, at the ends of their lives, to haul the grain harvest from Australia to England in The Grain Races, which were reported in the newspapers and somewhat enthusiastically followed by the public.

This post is not about the great wooden tea clippers like the Thermopylae and the Cutty Sark. The tea clippers stopped doing the tea run in the 1880's. This is not that. This is later than that. This is probably later than you think.

The run from Australia to England, with the ships loaded with grain, went around FUCKING CAPE HORN. This is, in case you're not up to speed on sailing things, not a fun place to operate a sailing ship. It's, like, literally the worst place to operate a sailing ship. It ain't a great place to operate a diesel-powered modern ship, either. It's just a shitty place to operate a boat of any kind.

Now, you may not understand how... recently this happened. I didn't. I really didn't.

The last time that square-rigged, entirely sail-powered ships hauled grain out of Port Victoria, Australia bound for ports in England was nineteen fucking forty-nine.

And because it was that goddamn recent in our history, there is footage, actual real life footage, of these large, steel-bodied, square-rigged ships hauling cargo for profit, plus lots of pictures, plus narration of the video and of the experiences by the guys (very old guys) who actually fucking did it.

Mind. Blown.

Here's a wonderful video. It's worth a watch.

Bet you didn't know that people were sailing very... classic-looking (despite being made of metal) tallships around the seas AFTER WORLD WAR 2. I sure as hell didn't.

Did you know there are people out there currently making fairly serious efforts towards hauling cargo and whatnot in large sailing vessels for, y'know, eco-friendly profit? There are.

This is the sort of thing that happens when I watch a fucking pirate television show. You know how I got here? I got here because I was "What the fuck is a t'gallant?" and, well, google. Sail plans. How a square rigged ship tacks. (Because in the show it talks about how if the pursuit ship "misses his tack" and I've badly-sailed a dinghy in my time and it's kinda hard to fuck up a tack on a dinghy because you can just SHOVE the boom over if you have to and so I figured I needed more information about how square rigged ships tack.)

It happens this way. Along the way I also spent some time with the HMS Pinafore (I am the monarch of the sea!) and learning about the tea clippers and the assorted problems encountered in finding people who can usefully drive/operate square rigged multiple-mast sailing ships because that's just not a skillset that is super common on the ground these days.

I am additionally engaged in reading Two Years Before The Mast because reasons. And Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. (Wow, so much transitory-is-the-way-of-things! Bet he didn't expect his book would last this long. Kind of ironic, really.)

This shit all so that I can better understand my PIRATE TELEVISION SHOW. Adulting, I may not be doing it correctly...