At midnight she was first spotted as a distant shape on the moonlit horizon. By dawn her dimensions had grown to majestic size. Passengers and crew of the British liner crowded the rail to stare at the tall ship they were overtaking She seemed an apparition from another age. A graceful, white-hulled bark, her four masts crowded with wind-taut sails, she belonged on an earlier ocean, on sea-lanes as yet unsullied by the smoke and soot of steamers.
The captain of the liner rang his engine-room telegraph and signaled for more power. He would give his passengers something to remember; he would close in swiftly on this old windjammer, dramatically cross her bows and then proceed on course for Rio de Janeiro. But on board the big steel bark in the South Atlantic that October morning in 1934, Captain Sven Eriksson had other ideas. To him, the Herzogin Cecilie, the 32 year-old ship under his command, was no weather-beaten anachronism; outbound from Belfast, Ireland, for Port Lincoln, South Australia, to take on a load of grain, she was to her master a useful deepwater cargo carrier, still capable of turning a profit while she did her share of the world's work. And no awkward liner with smoke-belching funnels and racketing engines was going to show Eriksson her stern - not with a fresh, fair wind piping up the Herzogin Cecilie moving steadily toward her top speed.
The Herzogin Cecilie was German built but had been under Finnish registry since the end of World War 1. She was manned by seamen from many nations, with a core of mariners from Aland Island, midway between Finland and Sweden - tough young men in their teens and early 20s, bred to the sea and the hard-muscled life on hard-driven ships. Eriksson ordered his crews aloft to shake out more sail.
As the steamer drew closer, the Herzogin Cecilie's royals, topmost sails of all, were sheeted home; the mighty windjammer was now wearing her full suit of 35 sails, an incredible 45,000 square feet of heavy canvas. Furious work on powerful deck-mounted winches braced the yards so that this vast expanse of sail picked up maximum drive from the rapidly freshening wind. Now it was blowing at 35 to 40 knots, close to gale force. The Herzogin Cecilie's bow wave arced in the sunlight as she moved faster and faster - 16 knots, then 17, almost 18. Her lee rail was awash. Green seas hissed past her quarter. It took two crewmen straining at her massve wheel to hold her on course.
For several moments, steamer and sailer ran side by side. Then slowly, steadily, the great sailing ship picked up speed on the steamer. And then she began to move away. As the liner slid inexorably astern, her captain blew three long blasts on his steam whistle in a graceful acknowledgement of defeat; he then dipped his red British ensign in salute to the victor. Aboard the Herzogin Cecilie Captain Eriksson dipped his blue and white Finnish colors in return.
