With her hull rusty after an ocean crossing,
the James Craig unloads timber in Adelaide.

History

The story of the barque James Craig began in 1873 in the United Kingdom when Glasgow ship owner Thomas Dunlop placed an order for an iron barque with Robert Bartram and George Haswell, shipbuilders of Sunderland. She was to be called the Clan Macleod, the second of two sister ships. The 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 when she was launched. Comtemporary reports state that the Clan Macleod was fitted "with every modern contrivance". The barque was constructed entirely of iron plates 1/2 an inch (12.7mm) thick, riveted onto iron frames and stringers. Her dimensions were length, 179.8 feet, beam, 31.3 feet. The depth of her hold was eighteen feet from her main deck which was sheathed with three and a half inch yellow pine. The 'tween deck was not sheathed, since she was not designed to carry passengers. the lower masts, bowsprit and yards were iron with the exception of the mizzen which was pine. The fore lower mast was sixty-three fee in length, with a diameter of fifteen inches at the centre. She carried three hatches, the main hatch measuring fourteen feet by nine feet, the fore hatch five feet six inches by five feet four inches and the quarter hatch seven feet by seven feet. No tween deck as fitted in her hold. The crew were accommodated in a house abaft the foremast and the officers in the poop 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.

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 life boats. She carried three anchors with a total length of cable of 240 fathoms. To preserve the iron in her hull the interior was coated with cement--which is there to this day--to the upper turn of the bilge, and painted above, while outside three coats of paint were applied. The Clan Macleod was launched from the Sunderland shipyard on 18 February 1874 and passed her final survey on 18 March. She was loaded with coal for her maiden voyage and sailed on 6 April with Captain William Alexander as Master and a complement of seventeen which included his wife and three apprentices.

Her maiden voyage proved eventful from the start. Running short of fresh water on the passage round Cape Horn, she had to make an unscheduled stop at Rio de Janeiro. Having discharged the coal in Callao, Peru, she proceeded to Portland, Oregon, and loaded wheat and flour for the United Kingdom. The Captain's wife gave birth to a son on 29 November and he was named William Macleod Alexander as a memento of his birthplace. The journey back across the Atlantic proved very protracted, occupying 171 days. The vessel finally came to anchor in the Humber on 10 July 1875, but before berthing she parted her anchor cable and grounded on a sandbank. Fortunately she came off without assistance and was later towed into dock.

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. Again, her voyage was not without incident for the mate, William Morris, aged twenty-four years, of Glasgow, was washed overboard and drowned during the passage. And on the return journey to the United Kingdom she again had to put into Rio de Janeiro, having suffered heavy damage in rounding Cape Horn. The rudder was loosened, her long boat and some spars washed away, her hatches were burst and the grain cargo was heating. It was necessary to discharge some of the cargo in order to reduced the risk of fire breaking out, and it was a month or so before she again got under way for her destination Liverpool. Her next voyage finally brought her to Australia and she arrived in Brisbane on 9 August 1879 with a general cargo from the United Kingdom.

The beginning of the end of the windjammer era.
A steamer lies at an adjacent berth to the James Craig.
She was later to serve as a coal hulk for steamships.

It was to be eleven years before the Clan Macleod would visit this part of the world again, and then only to New Zealand. In that time she served as one of the world's 'shopping baskets', sailing across almost every ocean and carrying almost every type of cargo. However, the ungainly steam ship was beginning to make 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 of the 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. At that time quite a number of sailing vessels were employed in the service between the American port and the antipodes, most of them being barques and barqentines of the same size or slightly larger than the Clan Macleod. Cargoes outward were mostly of a general variety including paper, crockery, glassware, machines, tobacco, etc. The return cargo from New Zealand was mostly wool, flax or kauri gum. Each voyage entailed a world circumnavigation, the barque proceeding outwards via the Cape of Good Hope and homewards via Cape Horn. The complement of the ship by this time had been reduced to twelve and thus the work on board was hard graft! There were many desertions during these voyages. Handling a windjammer with a short-handed crew is hard enough, but in the waters in which the Clan Macleod sailed gales and ice with heavy seas were the order of almost every day. Running across the southern oceans between the Cape of Good Hope and Australasia and the return journey round Cape Horn made life on board very tough indeed. A typical indication of the sort of passage can be seen in an extract from a report on a voyage in 1895.

...Rounded the Cape of Good Hope on July 3 in latitude 44^oS...with hard gales and heavy weather and passed a great deal of ice while making her easting. At 6 pm on July 7...passed close to an immense berg and at 5 pm on July 9, with thick foggy weather...passed three very large bergs, and the weather continuing thick...was compelled to heave to. Met a heavy gale on July 11...with hard squalls and heavy seas, and at 2.20 am sighted another large berg ahead, while after getting to the northward of it...passed three detached pieces, saw another and passed to the northwards of it...

Until now the trade in which the Clan Macleod was engaged was almost exclusively in the hands of sailing vessels. However, as steamers encroached on the service, the tall ships were withdrawn. At the end of September 1899 the barque commenced her twelfth and last voyage from New York to Wellington with 531 tons of cargo which included 80,000 cases of kerosene. During the return passage to New York it was announced that she had been sold on 15 August to a Mr J.J. Craig, ship owner, of Auckland, New Zealand. The barque returned from New York to her new owner via Newcastle, New South Wales, where there were no fewer than eighty-nine sailing vessels and steamers detained by a strike in the surrounding coal mines which had effectively paralysed the port. When the strike was settled, the Clan Macleod loaded coal for Auckland and arrived in her new home port on 23 February 1901. She now entered the trans-Tasman trade, carrying mostly timber to Australia and coal from Newcastle on the return passage.