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THE MARINE REVIEW VOL. 46 CLEVELAND MAY, 1914 NEW YORK No. 5 A Remarkable Fleet HE announcement that the Luck- enbach Steamship Co., of New York, is in the market for two more 10,000-ton ships to be built in American shipyards for service through the Panama canal, calls attention to a fleet of vessels whose like cannot be found elewhere under the Stars and Stripes. Its personnel has been re- cruited from the tonnage of no less than eight. nations--England, Germany, Spain, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Aus- tria and Hawaii. Newest and finest of the lot is the three-year-old steel steamship Damara, of 4,987 tons. The -Damara, a Britisher, was completing her maiden voyage, and had just started from San Francisco with a half-million-dollar cargo of bar- ley for Grimsby, England, when she went ashore in a fog near Fort Point, Cal. on Oct. 8, 1910. Eleven days later four tugs and numerous lighters and wrecking pumps were the means of her floating, with $300,000 damage done to ship and cargo. Edgar F. Luckenbach bought and repaired her, and she is again in service between Panama and north Pacific ports with Old Glory over her stern. Several of the Luckenbach fleet have made history: The iron steamer D. N. Luckenbach, 2,929 tons, was a Spanish prize captured off Key West April 23, 1898, by the flagship New York, of the Flying Squadron. She was then known as the Pedro, and was bound from Spain for Santiago with a full cargo of 'provisions for the Spanish forces in Cuba. Even then she had seen a good deal of the world, for she was origin- ally the British steamer Lilburn Tower, and was built at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1883, After the war she was renamed Hector, and plied in the coal trade for several years under the ownership of the Boston Towboat Co. before the Luckenbach Company bought her. The 2,564-ton iron F. J. Luckenbach The Picturesque Career of the Vessels of the Luchenbach Fleet By David A. Wasson was another prize. She was the Span- ish steamer Euskaro, and was captured in Cuban waters soon after the Pedro. She, too, had flown British colors first, having been built at Sunderland and named the Marie. Proof of the good stuff still in these battle-scarred veter- ans is a race which took place in August between the 3l-year-old D. N.. Lucken- bach and the F. J. Luckenbach, of 28 years. Both, loaded with phosphate rock, sailed from Port Tampa, Fla.; for' Baltimore 12 hours apart, the latter in the lead.. She kept it, but the DN. reached port in four days only seven hours behind. The Buena Ventura A third Spanish victim of United States warships, bought by the Lucken- bachs, foundered at sea a few years ago.. She was the steamer Buena Ven- tura, first prize of the war, taken in Florida straits only a few hours be- fore the Pedro. The Spaniard was tim- ber-laden, bound across to the Conti- nent, and her polite skipper, not know- ing of the existence of war, dipped his colors courteously to the gunboat Nash- ville when she fired a shot across his bow. The Buena Ventura's engines were finally removed and she was con- verted into a barge, being in tow when | lost. She was of iron, built at Sunder- land in 1871. The City of Washington, which is ending her days in Luckenbach service as another ignominious barge, was a Ward liner, and when the _ ill-fated Maine was blown up at Havana on Feb. 15, 1898, she was lying at anchor nearby. Flying debris smashed some of her boats and superstructure, but the crew rallied and received on_ board many of the survivors of the awful ca- tastrophe. The Washington was origin- ally a wooden steamer, built at Chester, Pa., in 1877. The big steel S. V. Luckenbach also played a part in the hostilities, though a less sanguinary one. At the outbreak of the war she was the Obdam, hailing from Rotterdam, and she was bought by the government for use as a trans- port, being renamed McPherson. This was not her first personality, however, for she had made her debut at Belfast, Ireland, in 1880, as the steamer British Queen. After Uncle Sam got through with her, she was sold at auction and re-entered private life as the freighter Brooklyn. Her purchase and _ rechrist- ening by the Luckenbach estate have been the only important episodes in her life of late, although recently a New York paper somewhat prematurely re- ported her as lost at sea with all on board, while on a passage from Sabine, Texas, to South Brooklyn. Another steamer of many aliases is the big iron Harry Luckenbach, of 2,798 tons. She was built at West Hartlepool, England, in 1881, and first known as the Surrey, under British colors. A change of ownership resulted in her being re- named Michigan, and as such she passed into Norwegian hands. After \getting into trouble on our shores she was bought, repaired here and Americanized under an old act of congress, as were - most of the Luckenbach steamers. One of the worst tragedies in ma- rine annals was that in which the J. L. Luckenbach figured. She was for- merly the North German Lloyd freighter Saale, though built at Glas- gow in 1886. This great 4,920-ton craft was in the midst of the terrible Hoboken water-front fire of 1900, which destroyed upwards of 100 lives and burned the steamers Saale, Main, Bremen and Phoenicia. The hull of . the Saale, then little more than a rusty and buckled shell, was bought by the Luckenbachs and rebuilt. The J. L. Luckenbach is one of the very few American steamers now in trade between this country and Brazil.