The envy of the world but it wasn’t all plain sailing

Historian Jack Curtis has been looking at a Sunderland tall ship which was the envy of the world. This week, he explains why the Torrens was a ship to beat all ships in the late 1800s.

Her design showed her to be heavily sparred and carried a main sky sail yard.

For many years, she was the only vessel with studding sail booms running in the Australia trade.

And that statement may hold the key to her dominance.

She set a new outward journey record very early in her career with a passage of 64 days for her 16,000-mile journey.

And over a 15-year period under Captain HR Angel, her average time was 74 days, which was well beyond the capability of any other clipper on the route.

Many other shipping lines tried unsuccessfully to beat her, even sailing with double crews, and the Harbinger was built specially for that purpose but failed in all of her attempts.

She was never driven like a Western packet, but what was the secret of her marvellous speed when light winds or doldrums brought most ships to a standstill?

The possible secret lies in her yardarms, where it was recently discovered by two friends in Sunderland Museum, that she was equipped with telescopic studding sail booms, which enabled her to capture even the lightest breeze and thereby make leeway.

But it is no easy task to operate a ship in this way.

And next week, Jack explains why most ships’ captains would not have gone anywhere near this type of sailing.