Almost a year ago, on September 6, 2016, the barque Peking pushed off from South Street Seaport for one last time to begin her final trip home to the land of her birth, Hamburg Germany.
Eased out into the slack tide of the East River and assisted by a few tugs and many well wishers, she made her way slowly across New York Harbor and over to Caddell’s Drydock on the Kill van Kull, the waterway between Staten Island and Bayonne. Over the past ten months, she has undergone preparations for her journey across the Atlantic. On Friday, July 14, 2017, the great four-masted sailing ship was loaded whole into the heavy-lift vessel Combi-Lift III and secured for the voyage to Germany.
Built in Hamburg in 1911, Peking is one of the famous “Flying P Liners” of F. Laeisz Lines. Employed in the nitrate trade, Peking made voyages from Europe to the west coast of South America with general cargo and returned filled with guano for use in the making of fertilizer and explosives. Peking was made famous by the Irving Johnson film ‘Around Cape Horn’, which documented her 1929 passage around the southern tip of South America in hurricane conditions. Peking first arrived in New York in 1974.
“The gift of Peking to Hamburg, where they’ve got 30 million euros to restore her, is good for our Museum; it will allow us to focus our growing resources on a leaner fleet, the centerpiece of which will be the mighty three-masted ship Wavertree. It’s also good for Hamburg; they’ll have a restored ship they can be proud of. She was built in Hamburg and sailed from there. She belongs on the Hamburg waterfront. And it’s good for Peking; she’ll have the resources and the attention she deserves” said Captain Jonathan Boulware, Executive Director of the South Street Seaport Museum, in a statement released last fall.