Moshulu
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Moshulu is a four-masted steel barque built by William Hamilton on the River Clyde in 1904, and currently a floating restaurant docked in Penn's Landing, Philadelphia.
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[edit] History
Originally named Kurt, Moshulu was, along with Hans, the last four-masted steel barque to be built on the Clyde. Built for the nitrate trade at a cost of £36,000, she was launched in 1904.
Between 1904 and 1914, under German ownership, Kurt shipped coal from Wales to South America, nitrate from Chile to Germany, coal from Australia to Chile, and coke and patent fuel from Germany to Mexico.
On the outbreak of war in 1914, Kurt was sailed to Oregon, then laid up in Astoria until being seized when the United States entered the war in 1917. She was renamed Moshulu by Edith Wilson.
Between 1917 and 1920, Moshulu was owned by the US Shipping Board and carried wool and chrome between North America, Manila and Australia.
From 1920 to 1935, Moshulu was in various private hands.
In 1935, Moshulu was bought for $12,000 by Gustav Erikson. She carried nitrates from Chile and grain from Australia. In 1939 Eric Newby sailed on her to Australia and back and wrote "The Last Grain Race", an unsentimental account of life as a seaman's apprentice.
The ship was seized by the Germans in 1940 when she returned to Kristiansand, Norway. She was demasted and used as a grain store in Stockholm from 1948 to 1961.
In 1961, the Finnish government bought the ship for 3,200 tons of Russian rye; she was towed to Naantali, a municipality of Turku, and used for warehousing.
In 1970, the ship was bought by the American Specialty Restaurants Corporation, rigged out in Holland and towed to New York.
[edit] The last grain race
Moshulu is famous through the books of Eric Newby. At the age of 19, he apprenticed aboard the Moshulu. He joined the ship in Belfast in 1938, sailing to Port Lincoln in Australia. They took grain on board in Port Victoria and sailed back in the Spring of 1939 to Ireland, beating a number of other sailing ships. This last grain race was documented in Newby's books The Last Grain Race (1956) and Learning the Ropes: An Apprentice in the Last of the Windjammers (1999); the latter being a book of photographs he took while aboard.
[edit] Moshulu today
The Moshulu has been used in the movies Rocky and The Godfather Part II, as well as in the end scene of the movie "Blow Out". The ship is now a fine dining restaurant at Penn's Landing, Philadelphia.
[edit] See also
Four other Clyde-built tall ships are still afloat:
- Balclutha (San Francisco)
- Falls of Clyde (Hawaii)
- Glenlee (Glasgow)
- Pommern (Finland)
[edit] References
- History of the ship from the restaurant web site
- Newby, Eric, The Last Grain Race, Picador, 2004. ISBN 0-330-31885-3
- Newby, Eric, Learning the Ropes - An Apprentice in the Last of the Windjammers, John Murray, 1999. ISBN 0-7195-5636-8
