My wife and I are currently sailing as passengers on the cruise ship Royal Clipper, the second of only two five-masted full-rigged steel ships ever built. The first such ship was the mighty windjammer, Preussen, of 1902. The Royal Clipper, launched in 2000, was inspired by the Preussen. An updated repost.

Here is an animation from a Mariner’s Mirror podcast about the Preussen, perhaps the greatest windjammer of the early twentieth century. One of the Flying P-Liners, built for the F. Laeisz shipping company in 1902, she was then the only five-masted full-rigged steel commercial sailing ship ever built. 

The animation is designed to accompany 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.

Animation of the German ship Preussen (1902) the only five-masted merchant sailing ship ever built