‘It was like the bottom of Niagara Falls’

These are the words of the inimitable Capt Irving Johnson as the windjammer Peking
rounded Cape Horn in 100kt winds in 1929. Sailors cling to wildly
bucking and swaying yards as green water roars along the deck, hundreds
of feet below.

It’s a long film, but it’s 30 minutes of astounding black and white footage of the dying days of the age of sail. Peking, now a museum ship in New York, was one of the last windjammers in the nitrate and wheat trade.

(UPDATE: This video has now been removed by its author. However, these two videos, The Cape Horn Road, narrated by Alan Villiers himself, offer another glimpse of a way of life that was about to disappear forever)

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ufNzunuXMCc%26amp%3Bhl%3Den%26amp%3Bfs%3D1%26amp%3B