Here is an animation from a Mariner’s Mirror podcast about perhaps the greatest windjammer of the early twentieth century, the Preussen. One of the Flying P-Liners, built for the F. Laeisz shipping company in 1902, she was the only five-masted full-rigged steel ship ever built at that time. She remains one of only two five-masted full-rigged ships ever built. The second such ship, the Star Clipper’s  Royal Clipper, launched in 2000, was inspired by the Preussen.

The animation is designed to go alongside an episode of the Mariner’s Mirror Podcast in which Dr Sam Willis speaks with Frank Scott, a retired naval aviator and qualified square rig ship-master, who commanded various square riggers ranging from 80 to 800 gross tonnes. In his long sail training career he served in fourteen square riggers, under seven different national flags.