Joseph Conrad (ship)

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Joseph Conrad at Mystic
Career
Name: Joseph Conrad
Namesake: Joseph Conrad
Builder: Burmeister & Wain, Copenhagen, Denmark
Launched: 1882, as Georg Stage
Acquired: 1934
Homeport: Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut
Status: Museum and training ship
General characteristics
Type: Sailing ship
Displacement: 213 long tons (216 t)
Length: 118 ft (36 m) sparred
100 ft 8 in (30.68 m) on deck
Beam: 25 ft 3 in (7.70 m)
Draft: 12 ft (3.7 m)
Sail plan: Full rigged ship

Joseph Conrad is an iron-hulled sailing ship, originally launched as the Georg Stage in 1882 and used to train sailors in Denmark. After sailing around the world as a private yacht in 1934 it served as a training in the United States, and is now a museum ship at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut.

Service history

File:Joseph Conrad 2008.jpg
Joseph Conrad in 2008

Australian sailor and author Alan Villiers saved Georg Stage from the scrappers and renamed the ship in honor of famed sea author Joseph Conrad. Villiers planned a circumnavigation with a crew of mostly boys. Conrad sailed from Ipswich on October 22, 1934, crossed the Atlantic Ocean to New York City, then down to Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, and across the Indian Ocean and through the East Indies. After stops in Sydney, New Zealand, and Tahiti, Conrad rounded Cape Horn and returned to New York on October 16, 1936, having travelled a total of some 57,000 miles.

Villiers was bankrupted as a result of the expedition (although he did get three books out of the episode - Cruise of the "Conrad", Stormalong, and Joey Goes to Sea), and sold the ship to George Huntington Hartford, founder of The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, who added an engine and used her as a yacht. In 1939 Hartford transferred the vessel to the Maritime Commission, who used her for training until 1945. After being laid up for two years, the ship was transferred to Mystic Seaport.

In addition to her role as a museum, she is also a static training vessel.

External links

Coordinates: 41°21′45″N 71°57′55″W / 41.3625°N 71.96528°W / 41.3625; -71.96528

fr:Joseph Conrad (voilier)