"At All Times a Lady - Epitaph of the Harbinger: Schooner Days CCCVIII (308)

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OF making many ship models there is no end. Ninety-nine out of a hundred models are wide open to criticism, and for that reason The Telegram is very chary of giving their pictures houseroom. But one hundred models out of one hundred are praiseworthy, for they all are outlets for artistry. The man or boy who has made a model, however crude, however glaringly inaccurate, has put something of himself into creative work, and has got something back. So go on making models, but don't expect to get pictures of them printed because you have made them.

A model completed this year by Mr. P. W. Elkington, simon pure amateur with products in the Royal Ontario Museum and the Royal Naval College at Greenwich, is the hundredth which makes the other ninety-nine hope that they, too, might achieve perfection. Against Mr. Elkington's wish The Telegram here publishes two pictures of it as it sat on his dining table, mirrored in its polished surface, when it had been completed, ready for mounting.

Mr. Elkington is not a crab, but he does not court publicity. He gave a reluctant consent when the interest of so many Schooner Day readers was mentioned. The model has been since mounted on a surface properly representing the harbor in which the original ship, one of many which Mr. Elkington has known and loved, rode at anchor.

The gentleman who made the model, and who has long held office with the Gutta Percha and Rubber Company in this city, has been a student of clipper ships all his life and has made many voyages in these noble and vanished queens of the sea. As he says, quoting Masefield, "Earth will not see such ships as these again." In this beautiful model of the Harbinger, completed after years of close application, earth has a chance to see a beautiful reproduction of one of the best of them.

The three-masted full-rigged sailing-ship Harbinger was built on the Clyde in 1875, and was considered one of the finest productions of British shipyards; she also proved to be one of the speediest ships of her day. No expense was spared in her equipment, and it is doubtful if any other ship sailed the seas at the period more beautifully fitted.

All of her panelling was of the best teak, luxuriously carved, and whereever brass work was displayed, it bore the Harbinger's crest, the Rising Sun. All of her plate, napery, and pantryware was similarly adorned.

She was among the last of the sailing ships to preserve the traditions of the old East Indiamen, and things generally were run after the style of a man-of-war. For a space of nearly twenty-five years she carried first and second-class passengers between London and Australia, and in that time did not lose a single life, either among passengers or crew. Leaving the Thames in September and making her way South 'round the Cape of Good Hope, she would reach Melbourne in time for Christmas, a seventy-five days run of about 13,000 miles.

The last five thousand miles of the outward passage lay through that wild region known to sailors as "the Roaring Forties," and in the terrific seas of those latitudes the great ship earned a marvelous reputation for steadiness.

Generally she left Australia in March with a lading of wool tops for Bradford, took the windy but speedy route home by Cape Horn, and reached London in high summer, a round trip of nearly 30,000 miles, encircling the earth.

In addition to the many distinguished persons she from time to time carried as passengers; she had included in her complement some interesting individuals. The son of a British Peer once did a trip before the mast, "for the experience." Frank Bullen, the author of so many fine books of the sea, was for a time the Harbinger's second officer. Frank Wild, the famous Antarctic explorer and associate of Sir Ernest Shackleton, put in some time on the after-deck .....

This model was built from contemporary plans and records, some of which were afforded Mr. Elkington by the son of one of her captains, who himself made several voyages in the ship. Twice himself he visited the Harbinger in London to greet friends, and he has seen her at sea under full sail.

"Ships, however," says Mr. Elkington, "are something like women are said to be, in that a passing wile may produce a new complexion; besides successive captains had different ideas as to what best suited their lady-love. All of which led to altered appearance from time to time in the lesser ways; but the basic anatomy remained constant—the Harbinger was at all times a lady.

"In 1897, it then being no longer profitable to run this class of ship, she was sold to foreign interests, and was finally broken up at Antwerp in 1912. . . She rated as an iron-built ship of 1,585 tons register, 254 feet long and her main truck was 210 feet above the upper deck. Her lower masts and yard were of steel."

The model is 45 inches long, built of white-wood; there are thirty-three separate spars, and all the standing rigging is of wire laid-up by Mr. Elkington in three or four strands.

The hoist flags on the spencer-gaff gives the Harbinger's correct number at Lloyd's -Q-F-D-N. During most of her career she was owned by Messrs. Devitt and Moore, a prominent London shipping house, still existent, and their house-flag is displayed in correct design and coloring, at the truck.

Mr. Elkington has promised his friends that he will keep this model for himself.

THE HARBINGER AS SHE SAILED THE POLISHED TABLE TOP