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Displaying items by tag: Stratsraad Lehmkuhl

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

The Dragon was designed by Johan Anker in 1929 as an entry for a competition run by the Royal Yacht Club of Gothenburg, to find a small keel-boat that could be used for simple weekend cruising among the islands and fjords of the Scandinavian seaboard. The original design had two berths and was ideally suited for cruising in his home waters of Norway. The boat quickly attracted owners and within ten years it had spread all over Europe.

The Dragon's long keel and elegant metre-boat lines remain unchanged, but today Dragons are constructed using the latest technology to make the boat durable and easy to maintain. GRP is the most popular material, but both new and old wooden boats regularly win major competitions while looking as beautiful as any craft afloat. Exotic materials are banned throughout the boat, and strict rules are applied to all areas of construction to avoid sacrificing value for a fractional increase in speed.

The key to the Dragon's enduring appeal lies in the careful development of its rig. Its well-balanced sail plan makes boat handling easy for lightweights, while a controlled process of development has produced one of the most flexible and controllable rigs of any racing boat.