Displaying items by tag: Norwegian tall ships

14th August 2011

Norway's Oldest A-Class Tallship Sets Sail for Dublin

At nearly 100 years old, Norway's oldest tallship, the sail training three-masted steel barque Statsraad Lehmkuhl is to call to Dublin Port next week, writes Jehan Ashmore.

Built in 1914, the 321" long vessel is also the largest, compared to the Nordic state's other A-class tallships, the 216" Sørlandet (1927) and the 205" Christian Radich (1937) which took part in the Waterford Tall Ships Race.

STV Statsraad Lehmkuhl is scheduled to arrive in Dublin Bay on Thursday afternoon where she will enter through the port's East-Link lift toll-bridge and berth at Sir John Rogerson's Quay. She departed Bergen last Thursday and is currently heading for Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis.

She was originally christened Grossherzog Fridrich August when completed at the J.C. Tecklenborgwerft yard in Bremerhaven as a sail training ship for the German merchant navy.

In 1923 she changed hands and began a career with the Norwegian Shipowners Association on the initiative of the state Kritoffer Lehmkuhl. The vessel was renamed in his honour due to Lehmkuhl's dedication to the cause of cadetship programmes and his contribution in creating an independent Norwegian government in 1905.

She was transferred to the Bergen Schoolship Association in 1924. After many years serving the association the vessel was donated in 1978 to the Statsraad Lehmkuhl Foundation, an organisation also based in the country's second largest city.

Published in Tall Ships

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Competitions

The most significant events for the Half Ton Class has been the annual Half Ton Cup which was sailed under the IOR rules until 1993. More recently this has been replaced with the Half Ton Classics Cup. The venue of the event moved from continent to continent with over-representation on French or British ports. In later years the event is held biennially. Initially, it was proposed to hold events in Ireland, Britain and France by rotation. However, it was the Belgians who took the ball and ran with it. The Class is now managed from Belgium.