Princess Taiping sinks
Sean Garmire/The Times-Standard
A replica of a Ming Dynasty Chinese sailing vessel that docked in Humboldt Bay last fall during its historic transpacific voyage was destroyed Saturday, less than 30 miles short of landfall at its final port in Taiwan.
According to information from the U.S. Coast Guard, the 11 crew members of the Princess Taiping -- which included six U.S. citizens -- clung to the splintered remains of their 54-foot sailing junk until their rescue by a Taiwanese Coast Guard helicopter.
In early October, the junk docked in Eureka, before making its way to San Francisco, San Diego and Honolulu.
Mike Anderson, spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard, said the ship was struck sometime in the early morning hours during the final leg of its voyage as it passed from Japan to Taiwan.
Shortly after it was struck, a distress call was broadcast from the Princess Taiping, and received at the Coast Guard Pacific Area Command Center in Alameda, Calif. Anderson said Coast Guard officials in California could tell the damaged ship was the Princess Taiping, but could not see where the ship was sinking, and immediately contacted emergency response teams in Japan and Taiwan.
The ship's beacon transmitted a signal 25 nautical miles -- about 29 miles -- east of Taiwan, and rescuers in Taipei launched a helicopter and rescue boat to investigate.
Crew members have since told family members by e-mail and phone that they had established radio contact with a freighter which was moving parallel with the junk in the dark and did not appear to be on a collision course.
Suddenly, the freighter veered into them, splintering the ship's hand-carved hull in two, then continued without stopping, said crew member Elizabeth Zeiger in an e-mail to her mother, Jane Zeiger, who lives in Southern California.
”We literally watched the entire ship get demolished,” Zeiger said in the e-mail. “It seemed like we were going to get sucked under it, but after it finally passed we were still alive!”
She said Taiwan authorities told the crew the freighter was the Champion Express.
Patty Durham of Honolulu, wife of crew member Jack Durham, a retired attorney, said her husband said the freighter flew a Liberian flag.
According to Anderson, Taiwanese officials are conducting an investigation into the incident.
The ship and its crew had been at sea 9 months since their departure from northern Taiwan in June 2008. If it had succeeded, it would have been the only documented case of a sailing junk -- an English derivative of the Javanese word jong, meaning large ship -- that had made a round-trip Pacific Ocean crossing.
The ship took a Chinese master ship builder 12 months to construct. It was built completely from wood, and held together with square nails. With no built-in motor, the vessel relied on the wind to push it thousands of miles across the sea. Before its departure, the ship was given a stamp of authenticity by the National Maritime Museum in the U.K. and the Hong Kong Maritime Museum.
”In my opinion, they made it,” said Coast Guard spokesman Dan Dewell. “In the 15th century, they didn't have the hazards they encountered here.”
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