Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1894 — Large Sailing Ships. [ARTICLE]

Large Sailing Ships.

The largest sailing ship afloat is the French five-master La France, launched in 1890 on the Clyde, and owned by Messrs. Ant Dom Bordes et Fils, who possess a large fleet of sailing vessels. In 1891 she came from Iquique to Dunkirk in lOodays, with 6,000 tons of nitrate, yet she was stopped on the Tyne when proceeding to sea with 5,500 tons of coal and compelled to take out 500 tons on the ground that she was overladen. There is not a single flve-masted sailing ship under the British flag. The United States has two tivemasters, the Louis, of 830 tons, and the Governor Ames, of 1,778 tons, both fore and aft schooners, a rig peculiar to the American coast. Ships having five masts can be counted on the of one hand, but, strange to say, the steamship Coptic, of the Shaw, Savill & Albion Company, on her way to New Zealand, in December, 1890, passed the Governor Ames In 14 degrees south 34 degrees west, bound for California, and two days later, in 6 degrees south 31 degrees west, the French five-master La France, bound south. Passengers and crew of the Coptic might travel over many a weary league of sea and never again see two such object lessons in the growth of sailing ships in quick succession. The largest three-masted sailing ship is the Ditton, of 2,850 tons.—Chambers’ Journal.