The Princess Taiping docked in Humboldt Bay in October 2008.
Remember the Chinese junk that visited Eureka last fall? It’s now a wreck on the ocean floor.
From the San Francisco Chronicle:
The adventure came to a sad end Sunday morning in the ocean off Taiwan when the 54-foot Princess Taiping was run down and sunk by a large freighter. All 11 crew members on the Princess Taiping survived, but the large ship, identified by the Taiwan coast guard as the Liberian flag tanker Champion Express, did not stop or render assistance.
The Princess Taiping was only hours away from completing an epic 14,000-mile voyage. Nelson Liu, the captain of the junk and organizer of the voyage, said he felt “more than regret.
“We were less than 30 miles from the end of the voyage,” he said by phone from Taipei. “But I still feel lucky that everyone survived. It was a miracle. God or Buddha kept us alive. It must have some meaning.”
The Times-Standard version is more detailed.
Sunk Junk
sad loss, it was beautiful.
The Princess Taiping was beautiful and the crew was open and generous with their time, giving answers to the many questions I and others at the dock asked when she visited here last Fall. It was unlike any craft this Western small boat enthusiast had ever seen up close. Painted, it looked more like an ornament than a sea-going vessel. But she was that.
The Princess Taiping’s image has been preserved in thousands of pictures. I should know. I believe I took most of them right there on the dock and later, as she sailed toward the bar.
Thank God her crew survived.
This would be a good time for us to remember all the sailors, our local sailors included, who over the years were not so fortunate.
I’m with you. I’m really sorry I missed her visit. The Brazilian replica of Columbus’s Santa Maria at the Marina was mind-bogglingly small (maybe 60 feet long for 40 men and cattle, food and plunder!), and also wonderfully manned with old hands. It’s sad that our storied port may have more past than future. It’s an amazing past. Let’s do all we can to keep the gill-netters in salmon anyway.
Almost sounds like PT Boat 109. You know: the JFK movie, where his PT Boat got run over?
“Let’s do all we can to keep the gill-netters in salmon anyway”. You lost me.
Sorry, Red. Our fishing fleet mostly catches salmon by netting their gills at sea, but for the last two years the commercial fishing season here has been closed for lack of fish. Keeping our landscapes healthy and our cricks and rivers cold and late-flowing will help keep salmon around–but it may be in the ocean that our native salmon are wiped out, by starvation, overfishing, and global weirdness. We’ve got to do what we can.
Fred, I flashed on that too. I liked the line at the end of the T-S’s article, from Coast Guard spokesman Dan Dewell. “In my opinion, they made it. In the 15th century, they didn’t have the hazards they encountered here.” What an awesome adventure, thank God those brave souls all made it.
They had expressed an interest in taking a redwood seedling back with them and a friend found one that would travel well. A lot of dreams went down with her. What an adventure.
That is really f****d up. They ran the boat over and didn’t render assistance? Aren’t there maritime codes against that sort of behavior, like there are for hit-and-run automobile accidents?
Just wondering. What a tragic loss – thank goodness the crew survived.
In October, the crew of the Princess Taiping put up this sign:
How to Find Us
1) http://www.facebook.com
2) open an account
3) Search “sailing yacht Princess Taiping”
4) Choose “group”
OR
E-mail: princesstaipingreplica@gmail.com
AND
They also posted a phone number:
650-218-0451.
Someone could send a Redwood seedling to the crew on behalf of our community. I hope someone will.
I caught up with them just before they left San Francisco. Nice guys. I’m glad they made it, even if the junk didn’t.
http://bikesocial.blogspot.com/2009/04/junk-down.html
next time make sure new Taiping Princess or something like that navigate around and just near the southeast asian water and vessels. those stupids are naive and easy victory for our victory rather than some other barbarians. Viva China great power for 1000000 years ago
How drunk do you have to be to post a message like the one posted above at 12:11am?
Don’t know, I’ve never been that drunk.
Longwind, for the record, our salmon fleet DOES NOT use gillnets to catch fish in the ocean. They troll with hooks and lures to catch the fish one at a time.
The problems facing the salmon are from shifting ocean conditions and MOSTLY from in-river alterations to their spawning grounds. The troll fishery has shrunk to a point where there is no chance they are overfishing. That’s an easy claim often made to justify inriver destruction of habitat but it is simply not true. Many fisheries are overfished but not salmon.
In the past and still to a lesser extent, fishing fleets for albacore and even salmon would drift overnight offshore rather than run in to anchor. Their greatest fear was being run over by ships moving at high speed and paying no attention. I’m glad all of the Junk’s crew made it out safely. That’s something of a miracle in itself.