Hugh Lander
Operations Manager

Only comparatively recently have attempts been made to recover what little remains of our maritime past and preserve it for future generations. Of all the barques which visited our shores, only two relatively small ships remained in a condition which permitted restoration. The Rona, now the Polly Woodside, built in Belfast in 1885, has been restored in Melbourne to a static, museum piece. James Craig, the last but one iron barque on these shores, has been restored in Sydney. The last, Santiago, is beyond repair in Adelaide.

The James Craig story has several beginnings. Many would say that it began in Sunderland, England when, on the 18th February 1874, she slid down the ways at Bartram & Haswell’s yard under the ownership of Thomas Dunlop, a Glasgow shipowner. She was to be called the Clan Macleod and would receive her final survey on the 18th March in that year.

Others would say “No. James Craig’s story began when she assumed that name, on the 14th December, 1905”. Still others will tell you that the real story began in 1972 when a band of volunteers from the Lady Hopetoun and Port Jackson Marine Steam Museum, now known as Sydney Heritage Fleet, set out to rescue the ship and begin the long rehabilitation to her former glory. That marvellous effort is now reaching its conclusion at Wharf 7, Pyrmont, her new, permanent, home outside the offices of the Sydney Maritime Museum.

Whatever the starting point James Craig would almost certainly still be an abandoned wreck were it not for the chance spotting of a letter in the international shipping magazine, Sea Breezes, by people in both Sydney and San Francisco. Both parties were scouring the world for a restorable square-rigger. The letter drew attention to the remains of a once proud barque, James Craig, nee Clan Macleod, quietly rusting to oblivion in Recherche Bay.

The story perhaps therefore, began in San Francisco where Karl Kortum, director of the superb San Francisco Maritime Museum - which has Balclutha - was looking for remaining windjammers that could be retrieved and restored for his museum. The letter in Sea Breezes, brought James Craig to his notice.

Alarmed that one of the remaining square rigged ships on the Australian coastline might be lost to the Americans, the small but enthusiastic band of people from our museum began moves to recover the barque. Their goal was to restore her for use as a floating museum.

And so the long process began and the rest is history, as they say.

Clan Macleod was built at Yard No75 under the critical eye of a representative of Lloyd's Register of Shipping who meticulously surveyed her throughout her construction, finally granting her the classification ‘Lloyd's 100 A1’. Contemporary reports state that the Clan Macleod was “fitted with every modern contrivance". Her Official Number was 68086, her signal flags, MRVJ.

The barque was constructed of iron plates 1/2 an inch (12.5mm) thick, riveted onto iron frames and stringers. She was 179.8 feet (54.8m) from stem to stern with a beam of 31.3 feet (9.5m). The depth of her hold was 18 feet (5.5m) from her main deck which was laid with three and a half inch yellow pine. The 'tween deck was not planked, since she was not designed to carry passengers.

The crew was accommodated in a house abaft the foremast and the officers lived below the quarter deck. She had the usual carvings and scroll work on either side of the bow and a three-quarter-length figurehead of a woman beneath the bowsprit.

The lower main and fore masts, bowsprit and lower yards were of wrought iron. The mizzen was of pine. The main lower mast was sixty-five and a half feet (20m) in height, with a diameter of twenty-two inches (559mm) at the deck. All three masts were stepped on the keel. The fore and main yards were sixty-three feet (19.2m) in length with a diameter of 15 inches (380mm) at the centre. She carried three hatches, the main hatch measuring fourteen feet (4.3m) by nine feet (2.7m), the fore hatch five feet six inches (1.7m) by five feet four inches (1.6m) and the quarter hatch seven feet (2.1m) by seven feet (2.1m).

Her topmasts were of timber, and standing and running rigging of iron and hemp. She was equipped with two sets of sails, one long boat and two lifeboats. She carried three anchors, with a total length of cable of 240 fathoms (440m). To preserve the iron in her hull the interior was coated with cement to the upper turn of the bilge, and painted above, while outside three coats of paint were applied.

The author, Alan Villiers, who sailed in the ship, wrote of her “…. the (James) Craig was a lively, lovely and highly responsive thoroughbred of a ship …. She tacked like a yacht and ran like a greyhound ….”

Her maiden voyage, carrying a load of coal and bound for Callao, Peru, began on the 6th of April, 1874 with Captain William Alexander as Master and a complement of seventeen which included his wife and three apprentices.

By the time Clan Macleod had begun her peregrinations the ungainly steam ship was making inroads into the windjammer trade and, in 1883, Thomas Dunlop took delivery of the Clan Davidson, the company's first steamer. This sounded the death knell for the line’s sailing ships, and the Clan Macleod was sold in early 1883 to another Glasgow ship owner, Sir Roderick Cameron, who placed her in the New York to New Zealand trade.

The Clan Macleod made her first passage into Australian waters in January 1877 on her third voyage. However, she did not make into any port but ran the easting down below Tasmania to her destination at Dunedin in New Zealand. Her fifth voyage finally brought her to Australia and she arrived in Brisbane on 9th August, 1879 with a general cargo from the United Kingdom. Her first visit to Sydney, did not take place until 21st August, 1902. She was, however, in Australian waters at the declaration of Federation on her way to Newcastle.

In 1900, she was sold to the New Zealand shipping company, J. J. Craig, operating out of Auckland where she arrived under her new ownership on 25th February, 1901. She then entered the trans-Tasman trade bringing timber to Australia and usually returning with coal from Newcastle, NSW.

On 14th December 1905, the Clan Macleod was renamed James Craig. Before her new life as a trans-Tasman workhorse her hull had been black. After her purchase by J. J. Craig she was at first repainted white but uniformity was established when, as with others in the fleet, the barque was given 'ports' which notably enhanced her lines. She continued in the trans-Tasman trade and became a familiar sight with frequent comments on her delightful appearance, since her owners and crews kept her in first class condition. But even the most attractive and well-kept sailing ships could not withstand the encroachment of the steamers and, on 19th June 1911, James Craig was sold to the British New Guinea Development Company and registered in Sydney.

Altogether, the barque had made thirty-five round voyages on the trans-Tasman run, giving sterling, almost incident-free, service.

But the end was drawing near and, on 30th July 1911, James Craig was converted into a storage hulk for copra in Port Moresby. The topgallant masts, and the yards (with the exception of the main yard) and jib boom were removed and the graceful windjammer commenced her new role.

Had it not been for World War I, it is possible that James Craig would have ended her life in this inglorious way. As it was, the need for ships was such after the war that cargo and passenger vessels which had been laid up were brought back into service to replace tonnage sunk by the Germans. James Craig was one of many windjammers to be refitted, re-rigged and recommissioned.

On 19th August 1918 Henry Jones & Company purchased her. She was brought down to Sydney, arriving ignominiously behind a tug on 30th August 1918, after an eventful passage in which she suffered damage during a storm and had to put into Gladstone for repairs.

In January, 1922 she was towed to Recherche Bay to await cargo. But the cargo never came, and James Craig lay, for all intents and purposes, abandoned. In November 1925 ownership of the vessel was transferred to the nearby Catamaran Coal Mining Company, a Henry Jones subsidiary, and on 4th June she was, for the second time, stripped down as a hulk, this time for coal. It was to be a long time before she went to sea again.

After a working life of 50 years, during which time she rounded treacherous Cape Horn 23 times, she ended her days a forgotten and abandoned wreck in this far-off wilderness in the early 1930s.

For the next forty years the once proud 3-masted barque lay in the sheltered waters of Recherche Bay. Her bow was high out of the water and fairly close in to the beach. Her stern lay in about five metres of water. The sea surged constantly through a large hole blown in her stern by fishermen intent on protecting their nets by stopping her from occasionally slipping her moorings and roaming about the bay. Fortuitously she had made herself a comfortable bed and was lying evenly on the bottom with no undue strain on any part of her hull. It was because of this that the underwater areas of the ship, when she was raised, proved to be in almost perfect condition.

Above water, however, it was not the same story. The wind and weather had eroded many of her 100 year old plates into a lacework of rusty holes, while vandals had blown others in a dozen more places.

A deliberately set fire had removed the last vestiges of timber, including her superb pine decks. Fishermen and boat owners who had used her as a sort of artificial island had added their bit to the desecration by painting graffiti along the battered and rusty, but still dignified, hull.

Then, on a March morning in 1972, James Craig awoke from her long sleep to the tapping of surveyors' hammers and the tickle of skin divers scraping at her thick coat of barnacles.

The size and condition of each underwater hole was recorded so that permanent patches could be fabricated and fitted upon the worker’s return. In the meantime it was important to try to float the ship so that the one big question - the condition of the bottom - could be resolved. Temporary patches of plywood and plastic were screwed or bolted in place and the pumps started to suck out the water so that a close examination of the bottom could be made. It was intended, if she floated, to move the ship further up the beach to make repair work easier at a later date.

Despite several visits, a lot of hard work and some serious fundraising it was not until May 1973 that the ship was finally afloat and ready for tow to Hobart behind the tug Sirius Cove. Following the tow James Craig had a chequered life for the next few years. It was to be some years, during which she sank once at her berth, before her restoration could begin. Finally all was in readiness for the long, and potentially risky, tow to Sydney.

Triumphantly she once again entered Sydney Harbour, behind the tug Gresham, on Australia Day, 1981 and she was berthed at Birkenhead Point and later moved to Rozelle Bay. Eventually the purpose-built Sea Heritage Pontoon Dock was constructed and, in October 1985, James Craig was placed on it at Cockatoo Island and she was moved to Darling Harbour where work continued.

Original plans were to restore the vessel up to the status of a static museum display. It soon became evident however that her importance to maritime heritage made it imperative that she be fully conserved so that she could sail again.

There are no known builder’s plans for Clan Macleod but detailed research, and the fact that one barque was mostly like any other, has meant that we have a very clear picture of what she was like in the 19th Century. Of course one needs to keep firmly in mind that she would never again be the same ship as the one that was launched. Modifications and replacements would have been made regularly from her very first day at sea.

There where several happy coincidences however, which made our task easier. The first was that from 1866 to 1952, a then-young lady named Alice Austen, who lived on Staten Island, overlooking the Verrazano Narrows, began taking photographs of ships as they entered and left port. Four of the 7000 odd shots that she took were of Clan Macleod, in New York Harbour in the summer of 1890. They were of such clarity and detail that we were able to scale off much of the rigging from them and a decision was taken to restore to the ship to her state at that time.

The other coincidence was that around the middle of the 19th Century a distressing number of ships were either totally lost or had their rigging torn away. Lloyds commissioned a detailed study of the rigging of the lost ships and compared them with several recently launched ships, of which Clan Macleod was one. In this way we were able to learn the rigging setup for our ship in far greater detail than might otherwise have been the case.

We were also greatly assisted in our cause during the 1980s by the recollections of several, by then old, men who had sailed in her, albeit in her second incarnation as James Craig.

Great use has been made of Computer Aided Design software both by our own project team and by our marine architect. To determine structural stability the marine architect determined that, because the ship had originally been “over-built”, a 40% wastage through rust attrition was permissible.

All 424 wrought iron plates were needle gunned to remove loose and flaking rust and then thickness tested with drill holes in at least 4 places. If they failed this test they were replaced with steel plates.

The bulk of the rivets on the ship were replaced, although many of the 1” diameter by 6” long keel rivets remained as did some of the ¾” shell plating and structural rivets. In a leap backwards our metalworkers had to be trained in the art of hot riveting. In one amazing technological breakthrough, when the replacement steel fore lower and main lower masts were being manufactured, we sent a girl down the inside to hold the dolly against the rivets. Over 50,000 rivets were used.

Two lifeboats, one 20’ the other 24’, constructed authentically to the Lloyds design of the lat 19th Century, were built, as a work-for-the-dole scheme alongside the ship.

The Waterways Authority with whom we have closely worked at all stages of the restoration and who, in turn, have been most helpful to us, insist that if we take 100 people to sea we have to bring the same number home. This understandable requirement has meant the inclusion of many items of 21st Century equipment which were never available to the skippers of old. Such items include a chart recording depth sounder, radar, HF and VHF radio, GPS navsat systems, engines, generators, emergency bilge pumps, fire detection and fire fighting equipment, life rafts, EPIRBs and the like.

Some traditionalists within our group have been mightily upset by such heresies but, because we need to make money in order for her to survive, pragmatism has prevailed over sentiment. We think that this is a fair compromise and we have not attempted to be coy about these new “gadgets”.

A full suit of 21 sails with a total area of over 1100 square metres and made from the modern fabric, Duradon, has been sewn in Perth by a traditional sail-maker.

A feature of the ship is the captain and officer's quarters, which has been fitted out with wood panelling, carvings, period furniture and the like, - even a coal-burning fireplace - as it would have been in its heyday.

James Craig will be one of only four operational, 19th Century barques anywhere in the world. The Star of India in San Diego and Elissa in Galveston are in the US. The fourth, Belem, is in France. James Craig is unique in that she will be the only operational 19th Century barque in the Southern Hemisphere. She is also the second oldest of the four, after Star of India, and will celebrate her 127th birthday next February.

Perhaps a realist, certainly a yacht owner, would say that a restoration is never completed and that will be the case for James Craig. But by the end of this year the first phase will be completed and she will once again regularly go to sea with roughly 100 paying passengers. Her other roles will be as a museum display vessel and for hosting functions.

Already she has been to sea on many occasions for sail training exercises and has flown all of her 21 sails. Crew work has improved markedly in this time and a real spirit of togetherness has developed. A feature of the crewing of the ship is that, from the Master down, every member is an unpaid volunteer.

All restoration work has been undertaken using donated funds, services and equipment. Although the restoration process is nearly complete funds are still required to ensure that never again does this marvellous ship fall into disrepair. Donations to the ship will go towards setting up a Foundation, income from which will go to her maintenance. All donations to Sydney Heritage Fleet are tax-deductible.

Readers wanting more information can visit our very extensive website at www.seaheritage.asn.au/jamescraig . If you do you will notice that every day we put up a new, topical, photograph and a diary entry detailing progress for the day. I am proud to say that we have received accolades for this site from around the world.