Good, if rather bittersweet, news for those of us around New York harbor. The windjammer Peking, a fixture of New York’s South Street Seaport for over 40 years, will be returning to its original home port in Hamburg, Germany for restoration and display. The steel-hulled four-masted barque built in 1911 will be the centerpiece of a new Hamburg harbor museum for which the German government has allocated 120 million euros. A reported 30 million euros are allocated to transport and restore the Peking.
Peking was one of the last generation of the great windjammers — iron and steel ships built as bulk carriers to sail the long windy passages around Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope where steamships could not economically operate. Peking was one of the Flying-P Line, owned and operated by the German shipping company F. Laeisz of Hamburg. They continued building steel sailing ships into the mid-1920s. Peking carried wheat and nitrates around Cape Horn between 1911 and 1932, when she was converted to a children’s home and training school. In 1975, the ship was acquired by New York’s South Street Seaport Museum and brought to New York.
Great news. The schooner 
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