Friday, February 26, 2010

more on the tall ship

Sunday, February 21st, I went up to Lonsdale Quay in North Vancouver to have a look at the Russian tall ship called the Kruzenshtern. I shot 97 photos but the ones here are just a selection of some of the best images. As you can see, the weather was awesome: clear blue skies and warm spring-like temperatures! It wasn't at all like a typical winter in this part of British Columbia, which is now dull, overcast and rainy, but still spring-like as far as temperatures are concerned.
There were a few diversions along the way, such as this figure sleeping in a boat called the SnoozyQ, and then there are the ever present seagulls keeping watch for any opportunity to grab a meal.

I took photos as I was getting closer to the Kruzenshtern. The ship, a barque, was originally built as S408 in Bremerhaven-Wesermuende, Germany by the shipbuilder F.Laeisz of Hamburg in 1926 for the route from Hamburg to Chile, Australia and back to Germany. Her original name was the Padua, the same name as the Italian city. The ship also appeared in three German films, "Die Meuterei auf der Elsinore" (1935), "Herz geht vor Anker"(1940) and "Grosse Freiheit Nr. 7"(1944). The last film was refused a showing by the Nazi censors and wasn't seen until 1946 when the western Allies allowed it to be shown.
The original colours of the hull were black above the waterline, a white stripe at the waterline and red below that, the same colours as the flag of the German Empire. Now the colours are black and white as you see them. The Padua was given to the USSR as part of war reparations in January 1946, refitted and renamed the Kruzenshtern, named after a Baltic German who had been in the Russian service (navy) from the late 18th into the 19th century. His German name was Adam Johann Ritter von Krusenstern with roots to the Swedish aristocratic family, Krusenstjerna, and known in Russian as Ivan Federovich Kruzenshtern. The ship's home ports are Kaliningrad (the former Koenigsberg, East Prussia) and Murmansk. With a Google search you can find out more about this beautiful ship, the only remaining Flying P-Liners in the world still in use, in this case, as a training ship. The history here is courtesy of Wikipedia, a great beginning for any research on the web.
I was surprised that there weren't the insanely large crowds of other venues around Vancouver and area connected with the winter games. The sun was to the south-southwest which created some challenges in getting decent photos. In the image below, I had to position the camera in such a way as to have the sun behind one of the large masts. You can see the long shadows of both the ship and the people on Lonsdale Quay.


Then I made sure there were people in the photos, so you could get an idea of the size of the ship and the height of the masts.

The Kruzenshtern was decorated with all sorts of small flags, including the Russian flag aft.






Among other diversions, I found this cross section of a ship before getting to the quay. Interesting how the guts of a ship could look like. I hope you've enjoyed these images and would honour us with some comments. - V.

2 comments:

Patric said...

Amazing Volker! Love it!

Volker said...

Of course, you've had the benefit of seeing the entire series of photos, something others haven't had the opportunity to do, but this is an amazing set of photos in this post. - V.