County of Peebles (ship)

County of Peebles was the world's first four-masted, iron-hulled full-rigged ship. She was built in 1875, by Barclay Curle Shipbuilders in Glasgow, Scotland, for the shipping firm R & J Craig of Glasgow.[3] Measuring 81.2 metres (266 ft 5 in) long, with a beam of 11.8 metres (38 ft 9 in), a draught of 7.1 metres (23 ft 4 in) and a cargo capacity of 1,614 net register tons (NRT), she was a state-of-the-art windjammer when she entered the jute trade between the ports of Dundee and Cardiff in Great Britain and Bombay and Calcutta / Hooghly River in East India. Her rig was in the 'Scottish style', with royal sails above double top-sails and single topgallants.

County of Peebles
History
United Kingdom
Name: County of Peebles
Owner: R. & J. Craig, Glasgow
Route: India—Great Britain
Builder: Barclay Curle & Co., Glasgow[1]
Yard number: 252[1]
Launched: 5 July 1875[1]
In service: 1875
Out of service: 1898
Fate: Sold to Chile, 1898[1]
Chile
Name: Muñoz Gamero
Acquired: 1898
Fate: Beached as a breakwater, 1960s
General characteristics [1]
Type: Windjammer
Tonnage:
Length: 266 ft 6 in (81.23 m)
Beam: 38 ft 7 in (11.76 m)
Depth: 23 ft 4 in (7.11 m)
Sail plan: Full-rigged ship
Muñoz Gamero and the Cavenga[2] in Punta Arenas as breakwater

County of Peebles represented an important development in sailing ship design, which allowed wind-powered ships to compete successfully on long haul routes with steamships in the last quarter of the 19th century.[4] With her success R & J Craig ordered a further eleven similar four-masted 'full-rigged ships' for the thriving Indian jute trade, forming what was referred to as the Scottish East India Line. Following the pattern set by County of Peebles, the sister ships were also named after Scottish counties as follows: County of Caithness (launched in 1876), County of Inverness (1877), County of Cromarty (1878), County of Dumfries (1878), County of Kinross (1878), County of Selkirk (1878), County of Aberdeen (1879), County of Haddington (1879), County of Edinburgh (1885), County of Roxburgh (1886), and County of Linlithgow (1887).

In 1898, County of Peebles was sold to the Chilean Navy. Renamed Muñoz Gamero, she was used as a coal hulk at Punta Arenas on the Strait of Magellan. In the mid-1960s she was beached as a breakwater in Punta Arenas, where she lies as of 2017, with cut-down masts.[5]

References
  1. "County of Peebles". Clydebuilt Ships Database. 2012. Archived from the original on 21 August 2009. Retrieved 29 July 2012.CS1 maint: unfit url (link)
  3. "Shipping news". Otago Witness. Dunedin, New Zealand. 2 February 1878. p. 11.
  4. Cumming, Bill (2009). Gone....A Chronicle of the Seafarers & Fabulous Clipper Ships of R & J Craig of Glasgow. Glasgow: Brown, Son and Ferguson Ltd. ISBN 978-1-84927-013-7.
  5. "Punta Arenas, Google Maps". maps.google.com. 2012. Retrieved 29 July 2012.

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