The Hamburg Maritime Foundation has completed restoration of the historic Flying P-Liner In the days of the great sailing ships, passengers and crew were exposed to countless life-threatening dangers. Until well into the 20th century, the South American voyages were a particular challenge for sailors, as they had to sail around Cape Horn even in extreme weather conditions. This was always […]

The Hamburg Maritime Foundation has completed the restoration of the historic Flying P-Liner

In the days of the great sailing ships, passengers and crew were exposed to countless life-threatening dangers. South American voyages were a particular challenge for sailors right into the 20th century, as they had to sail around Cape Horn even in extreme weather conditions. This was always a dangerous adventure. The Flying P-Liners, or P-Liners for short, of the Hamburg shipping company F. Laeisz specialized in this route. They achieved fantastically short travel times and were famous for their robustness and speed, regardless of the weather. Only four Flying P-Liners have survived to this day: The Pommern and the Passat serve as museum ships in Finland and Travemünde respectively and the Padua is now in service as the Russian sail training ship “Krusenstern” . The fourth surviving former P-Liner, the Peking, will now become the tourist highlight of Hamburg’s port museum.

The Hamburg Maritime Foundation has successfully completed the restoration of the ship at the Peters shipyard. Until 2016, the Peking was still attracting attention as a museum ship in New York. The four-masted barque was built by Blohm+Voss in Hamburg in 1911. All of the shipping company’s cargo ships, which all have a “P” as the first letter in their name, were used in the saltpetre trade. Outgoing goods were loaded for export to Chile, for example Steinway grand pianos for emigrant families living there, and the ships sailed back fully loaded with sacks of guano, an important raw material for fertilizer and explosives in Europe. The saltpetre trade also provided an economic boom in South America until the First World War.

Cape Horn was circumnavigated twice on each voyage, with the Peking making 34 circumnavigations of Cape Horn alone. She made her last voyage under sail in 1932, was decommissioned and converted into a stationary boarding ship. In 1974, the ship was acquired by New York’s South Street Seaport Museum. From then on, the Peking served as a museum ship and tourist attraction. When the South Street Seaport Museum ran into financial difficulties in the years from 2000, it was put up for sale for a lot of money. The newly established Hamburg Maritime Foundation had already shown interest in the famous four-master at that time, but abandoned the project due to the considerable restoration costs. For years, no one was interested in taking over the ship, so the South Street Seaport Museum even offered it as a gift in the end. After the German parliament provided the money for the transfer and restoration in 2015, the Peking was reclaimed in 2017. The ship is to be exhibited at the Hamburg Port Museum from 2020. Over the past three years, the hull and rigging of the historic cargo ship have been expertly restored at the Peters shipyard in Wewelsfleth. The ship, with its imposing yellow masts over 50 meters high, now shines again in the shipping company’s colors of black (hull above the waterline), white (waterline) and red (underwater hull). The Peking is scheduled to return to its home port of Hamburg in August 2020, where it will initially moor in the Hansa Port.

The retrieval and restoration was made possible by funding of around 38 million euros from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media following a decision by the German Bundestag in November 2015. Members of the Bundestag from Hamburg in particular successfully campaigned for this. The Hamburg Maritime Foundation, which operates its own fleet of historic ships, has extensive experience in restoration and has also brought this major project to a successful conclusion. The Peking will be further refurbished as a testimony to transnational maritime trade and the reconstruction of the interior will be continued. The four-master will be looked after by a crew of four employees. With additional support from volunteers and the “Freunde der Viermastbark Peking e.V.” (Friends of the Four-Masted Barque Peking), she will be professionally maintained and cared for.

The ship will be given a permanent berth in Hamburg’s new district when the German Harbour Museum opens on Grasbrook. There, she will be used to tell the story of the diverse interrelationships between Germany and Chile during the saltpetre trade, with all its economic, social and cultural ramifications. It will thus become an important place for the topic of globalization at the port hub. “It is impressive what a radiantly beautiful ship the Hamburg Maritime Foundation and Peters Werft have turned the Peking into over the last three years,” enthuses Dr. Carsten Brosda, Hamburg’s Senator for Culture and Media. Joachim Kaiser, member of the foundation’s board, admits that he initially had reservations about the project, “because we were well aware of the ship’s desolate condition. I, in particular, repeatedly warned against a takeover because a multi-million risk was looming, even though the hull had long since been given away. The promise of funding and the trust placed in us then motivated us to take on this major task.”

Johannes Kahrs, the initiator of the recovery campaign, confesses: “I fell in love with the Peking when I was 18 years old in New York harbor. When I heard that she was to be scrapped, I was deeply saddened at first. But then I had the idea of combining the retrieval and restoration of the four-masted barque with the establishment of a German port museum. This was thankfully accepted by the budget committee. Now the Peking is getting closer and closer to completion and I am not only still in love, but also proud as punch that we were able to save the ship.” Mark Dethlefs, Managing Director of Peters Werft, adds: “Every refit or repair order at Peters Werft has special challenges that we have to solve in cooperation with our customer. When the four-masted barque Peking was brought from New York to Wewelsfleth in the summer of 2017, it was in a really dilapidated condition. The special requirements of this order became obvious. However, in the course of the extensive refurbishment of the PEKING, in which for once the task was not to make her seaworthy but to turn her into a pure museum ship, the beauty of this historic cargo ship gradually became clear.” Unlike many other museum ships that are also worth seeing and have to contribute to their upkeep with catering or hotel operations on board, the Peking has been restored to its original condition. This means that Hamburg now has one more attraction and visitors to the city will soon be able to get a very vivid impression of seafaring and port handling in the period after 1900.

Further information on the PEKING: www.stiftung-hamburg-maritim.de/schiffe/peking.html

Further information on the German Port Museum: www.shmh.de/de/deutsches-hafenmuseum#peking