
HMS Peking Sailing Boat Anchored in South Street Seaport 1984

by Gordon James
Title
HMS Peking Sailing Boat Anchored in South Street Seaport 1984
Artist
Gordon James
Medium
Photograph - Photograph
Description
History
Peking was made famous by the sail training pioneer Irving Johnson; his footage filmed on board during a passage around Cape Horn in 1929 shocked experienced Cape Horn veterans and landsmen alike at the extreme conditions Peking experienced. It made this trip around the cape to Chile 34 times.
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 Italy as war reparation she was sold back to her original owners Laeisz brothers in January 1923.
She remained in the nitrate trade until traffic through the Panama Canal proved quicker and more economical.
Arethusa
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 HRH Prince George on 25 July 1933. During World War II she served in the Royal Navy as HMS Pekin.
The ship is featured in many exterior shots of the 1964 Miss Marple film, Murder Ahoy! standing in as the Battledore, a charity-run training vessel for wayward boys.
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 the Peking as part of its long-term operational plans, and was planning to send the Peking 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 will provided. She was taken to Caddell Dry Dock, Staten Island, on September 7, 2016, to spend the winter. On July 17, 2017, she was docked, and two days later, she was transported, at a cost of some €1 million, in the hold of the semi-submersible heavy-lift ship Combi Dock III across the Atlantic, arriving on July 30, 2017 at Brunsbüttel.
A full history can be found here : https://peking-freunde.de/index.php/en/die-peking-2/geschichte
Uploaded
May 6th, 2014
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