City Sailingvideo
Legendary square-rigger Peking as she battles a hurricane while rounding Cape Horn.
November 30, 2025 · 34 min · 11K views · North Sea
What this video covers
The four-masted steel barque Peking, carrying 5,300 tons of cargo plus 3,000 tons of ship, rounds Cape Horn east-to-west — the hard way — on a voyage documented by a crew member with a movie camera in the late 1920s.0:19 The narrator sailed aboard as a young man and filmed conditions that the Honorable Company of Master Mariners later said no surviving vessel had ever been photographed enduring: waves 80 feet high, water running horizontally at over 100 mph, and seas burying the rails 20–30 feet under. A three-ton anchor broke free in a North Sea storm on Friday, 13 December 1929 — the same storm that wrecked 68 ships off Belgium, Holland, and Germany — and had to be re-secured by hand.1:05 Off the Horn, a main lower topsail blew out despite wire reinforcing along its edges.27:23 Safety nets rigged above the six-foot bulwarks strained sailors out of the wash.20:53 The ship spent a week becalmed in fog near the Horn before storms arrived, then had to drive 200 miles west past the Horn before turning north to avoid Chile's lee shore.21:25 After 93 days, Peking arrived in Chile with dry cargo intact.34:20 The Flying P-Line's operating principle: cargo is king; the seamen must look after themselves.32:04
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