Windjammers

The pinnacle of commercial sailing, windjammers, square-rigged ships of iron and steel, traversed the world’s oceans. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, thousands of skilled captains harnessed wind and sea to haul bulk cargo between continents. With a howling wind, the fastest among them could reach 20 knots, matching their steam-powered rivals. By the 1920s, many of the world’s great sailing lines abandoned sail in favour of more predictable steamers. In the Åland Islands, a Swedish-speaking archipelago in the Finnish Baltic, Gustaf Erickson, maintained a small fleet of windjammers into the 1940s. Their destination was the grain ports of South Australia’s Gulfs. Young South Australians joined them, eager to experience last hurrah of the Age of Sail. This collection is a sample from the exhibition Windjammers at the South Australian maritime Museum.