No, here Peking gets escorted up the East River a mere 14 months ago, almost like a human nonagenarian, for a 97-year-old she was when my partner Elizabeth caught this portentous shot. Portentious, maybe? Even the tug name–McAllister Responder–sounds like an anonymous institutional care-giver, as in “Hi Peking. I’m on-call as your responder today. I hope you’re having a lovely day.” No offense meant to Responder (ex-Empire State, ex-Exxon Empire State); it’s just that here the name adds to the pathos of this scene. But despite the leaden water, the monochromatic palette imposed by the threatening, dark sky, a few spears of hope zapped through, for at this point, some thought she might receive more than a make-over; she might be fully rebuilt with new structure as well as cosmetics, we hoped.
Alas, 14 months later, to this passerby, Peking still languishes in a form of ship purgatory.
Recently Joe sent me these fotos, taken at sea by his uncle Frank sometime in 1929-30. It’s Peking mid-Atlantic: a vital cog in an economic machine, working sail that sprinted the seas less-trafficked today between Northern Europe and Southwestern South America, a “fast” one-way passage taking over two months. Northbound to European industries, she carried nitrates, a vital raw material in producing fertilizer and explosives.
A few years after these fotos, Peking came off the high seas into the confines of the River Medway to Shaftesbury Homes–aka the National Refuges for Destitute Children– and re-named Arethusa, appropriate maybe, since the original Arethusa was a shape-shifting nereid who transformed herself into a stream to avoid the advances of a suitor more powerful than she. By the way, Shaftesbury Homes still exists, still performs a variation on its function to provide a practical education for young people otherwise destined to a purgatorial life of poverty.
Here, 80 years ago, she still breathed vigor, flexed steel sinews, a titan of merchant sail as expeditious as steam power. On that day 14 months ago, I put my ear to her deck, and for a few seconds I thought I heard raspy breaths, felt a flutter that could have become a pulse, but
I now suspect I was mistaken. Can I, might the armies of willing hands perform CPR on Peking and coax some vitality back? Might transfusions help?
A hero of mine, Joseph Conrad wrote these lines in “The End of the Tether,” Chapter 6: “A laid-up steamer was a dead thing and no mistake; a sailing ship seems always ready to spring to life with the breath of the incorruptible heaven; but a steamer, thought Captain W, with her fires out, without the warm whiffs from below meeting you on her decks, without the hiss of steam, the clangs of iron in her breast–lies there as cold and still and pulseless as a corpse.”
Conrad might just have been wrong about sailing ships: the last lines on Peking need still be written, and I cringe to think what these words may tell. For now, we keep watch.
The artistic Bowsprite infuses the lines and colors of Peking with new energy here, as she starts a series on the moribund barque.
And if you try some Spanish, here’s naveganteglenan‘s post from Spain on Peking.
Many thanks to Joe for sharing these black-white family fotos.
7 comments
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March 15, 2009 at 1:19 pm
naveganteglenan
Hi tugster. Some months ago I wanted to visit the Peking. I couldn’t. Next time I’ll take for sure your comments about her with me 🙂
March 15, 2009 at 1:51 pm
tugster
hello naveganteglenan– if ever you come to NY, contact me. I’d love to show you around.
March 15, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Mage Bailey
And do remember the Star Of India. The poor Euterpe was rotting at the quay, dismasted because of WWII, and ready for the bone yard when finally rescued from her purgatory. Today she sails again several times a year. Don’t give up.
March 16, 2009 at 8:28 am
Buck
Beautiful photos of the ship at work. As Mage says, don’t lose hope yet!
March 16, 2009 at 11:38 am
Michael
Those old photos are tremendous. I can not remember the last time I actually said “wow” out loud reading a blog.
Wonderful! And I see you and Bowsprite are tag-teaming on Peking…very nice!
April 13, 2009 at 10:15 am
Dustin
Check out this video of the Peking http://mauiboatandyachtclub.com/video.htm
December 15, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Phil Mitchell 78, fokesall starboard.
Ex Are [Are refers to Arethusa, the name Peking carried while it served from 1932 til 1970s as a private boys school moored in the Medway River] boy, What a wonder to perceive, Peking under full sail. Ever again one wonders? Is the keel still full of concrete? She dose have a small engine and prop and the the steering gear still worked when i was on board in 69. Now at 55 i’d love to step aboard and reclaim my life and take back that which was stolen from me by that (navy cake bully that tipped me out of my hammock in the dead of night ) and climb the formast one more time and from the depth of my soul, shouting out, ” I survived “