“Hesperus” and “Aurora,” the First Iron Ships of the Orient Line.
In 1873-4 Robert Steele & Co., the celebrated builders and designers of some of the fastest and most beautiful tea clippers, built two magnificent iron clippers for the Orient Line. These were the _Hesperus_ and _Aurora_, sister ships.
The _Aurora_ unfortunately was destroyed by fire on her first homeward passage, through spontaneous combustion of her wool cargo. This occurred on 9th August, 1875, in 40° N., 35° W., and she was finally abandoned in flames with fore and mainmasts gone.
The _Hesperus_, her sister ship, is I, believe, still afloat. Steele put some wonderful workmanship into the building of these ships, everything was of the best; deck fittings were all of picked teak, with enough brass to outshine a steam yacht. Besides being a very comfortable ship for passengers, _Hesperus_ soon proved herself a hard ship to keep with. But like most of the big passenger clippers of the seventies she did not race home, but made a comfortable passage _via_ the Cape. This ship, in fact, was never hard driven, or she would have had many more fine passages to her credit.
She was a stiff ship in spite of a tall sail plan, and she used to send up skysail yards in the tropics though she did not habitually carry them crossed.
Anderson, Anderson kept the _Hesperus_ in the Adelaide trade until 1890, when she was bought by Devitt & Moore for Lord Brassey’s training scheme.
In the year 1890 it was felt by the late Lord Brassey, Sir Thomas Devitt and others who were interested in our Mercantile Marine, that it was time some effort was made to train apprentices on the old system of the Blackwall frigates, whereby parents by paying a larger premium could be sure that their sons learnt more seafaring than how to wash out a pig pen or clean brasswork during their four years’ apprenticeship and also could rest assured that they would receive good food and treatment. This was all the more necessary because it had gradually come to be the custom in many sailing ships to use the apprentices merely as drudges to do all the dirty work aboard, the historic ship’s boy having been for many years extinct on deep water ships; at the same time very few captains gave their apprentices any instruction in navigation. The result of this was that parents were less inclined than ever to send their sons to sea.