The Kaiulani (meaning Star of Heaven), one of the last fine old square-rigged sailing ships, has spread her canvas and plows again old familiar sea lanes in answer to the needs of war.

She flies the flag of Panama, and recently sailed with a full load in her creaking holds from the Pacific northwest with an old salt at the wheel, Captain W. G. Wigsten. Her return to sea shows the general trend toward utilization of every possible bottom under the present ship shortage. World war number one brought sail and wood back to the seas, and the present war promises to do the same thing.

The steel and iron three-mast bark Kaiulani was built in the famed Sewall years at Bath, Maine, in 1899, for King Kalakua of Hawaii. She was to ply between the South Seas and the ports of the world as one of a fleet of commercial vessels designed to carry out King Kalakua’s dream of a South Seas confederation of monarchies. But the king died far short of his dream, and the Kaiulani crisscrossed the Pacific in the Hawaiian sugar trade for ten years as one of the famous fleet of windjammers—thirty in all—bravely competing with the inroads of steam.

She was sold to the Alaska Packers in 1907, rechristened the Star of Finland, and made annual treks into the north with men and supplies for the Alaska salmon fishing season. Then with her holds packed with the catch the tall ship would make for home.

She joined the Hollywood "navy" in 1936 and starred in the deep sea drama "Souls at Sea", doubling for the emigrant packet ship William Brown of the 1840s.

Her brief and spirited movie career done, the tall windjammer returned to her base in San Francisco Bay and was promptly chained to a mudhook. But for the war, her romantic history might have ended there.

The Star of Finland kept good company in the balmy days of the fleet. There were the Star of Lapland and Star of Shetland, her Bath-built sisters. The former was noted as the largest square-rigger under the American flag, and the Shetland was dubbed with the doubtful honor of having made the longest Cape Horn passage on record—from Philadelphia to Seattle in 293 days.

President Page, of our companies, made a trip around the Cape of Good Hope to Yokohama in 160 days on the Arthur Sewall, another sister ship, after his graduation from Yale in 1900.

Captain Harry Johnson, one for the veteran commanders of the Star of Finland, said this about sailing her again: "There are not many square-riggers (sailors) left, but give me one for a bos’n and a crew of husky willing lads, and we’ll have the canvas set and drawing in no time."

That was the problem her present commander, Captain Wigsten, faced when he was asked to take her over. But he answered that problem as Captain Johnson suggested. He found an old salt for a bos’n and thirty willing husky lads, and they are now poking the spike jib book of the Kaiulani through the rolling, unmarked lands of the sea.

[04-01-03-004-0053 Fireman’s Fund Archives]