
Elinor off St. Croix, US Virgin Islands (Source: here)
This note tells the story of the life and final fate of S/V Elinor, a fine wooden sailing ship that sadly no longer graces our oceans.
I draw on my personal experience onboard Elinor as well as information I have been able to glean from other sources.
The final fate of Elinor echoes the fate of so many other wooden sailing ships.
Elinor was a three-masted wooden schooner with gross tonnage of 71 tonnes, length of 36.0m, beam of 6.0m, and draft of 2.0m. The ship was built at Otto Hansen's shipyard, Stubbekøbing, Denmark in 1906.
According to Skibsbevarings Fonden, an organisation committed to preserving old wooden ships, Elinor was commissioned by Marius Petersen of Marstal for inter-coastal shipping and given the name Alta.
In 1914, Elinor was converted to a two-master and sold to Norway. In 1916, Elinor was involved in seal and whale hunting. Then Elinor was re-converted to a three-master, sold again in 1928, renamed Agnete, and used for rock fishing.
Following yet another ownership change in 1937, the ship was given its final name, Elinor.
At some point in the years that followed Elinor was converted to a motor vessel. In 1967, Elinor was sold to a group of investors, who re-converted the ship back to a three-masted sailing schooner. Elinor sailed in Danish waters and the Mediterranean for several years before eventually ending up in the United States.

It is quite possible that this painting by Denis Lord depicts Elinor during she ship's time in the United States (thank you to Brendan Scholey for supplying a copy of the painting).
During its time in the United States, Elinor actively participated in the tall ship circuit for a period. There are a few mentions of the ship in the New York Times from this period.
One article by Richard F. Shepard from 18 May, 1986 reads:
"Among the many class B ships sailing across the Atlantic to join the OpSail ceremonies will be the Zenobe Gramme, a ketch from Belgium; the Belle Blonde, a brigantine from Canada; the Elinor, a three-masted, foreyard schooner from Denmark...".
He continues:
"As host ship, the Coast Guard's Eagle will lead the first fleet of the parade, flanked by the Spirit of Massachusetts, a Gloucester schooner, and the Pride of Baltimore, a topsail schooner. The Eagle will be followed by the Danish full-rigged ship Danmark, flanked by the Ernestina from Massachusetts and the Elinor from Denmark."
Clifford D. May, also of the New York Times, mentions on 30 June 1986 that:
"Otto Nehlsen, manager of the Riverside Yacht Club in Greenwich, Conn., said the club's members were looking forward to having ‘an old-fashioned cookout on the lawn’ with the 18 crew members of the 118-foot, three-masted Danish schooner Elinor and the six crew members of the St. Patrick, an Irish Galway hooker, built in 1906.”
At some point, Elinor ended up in the US Virgin Islands. There is a description of Elinor during its last successful spell as a functioning ship, sailing tourists on sunset cruises out of St. Croix, US Virgin Islands on page 98 in “Adventure Guide to the Virgin Islands” by Harry S. Pariser (see here).

Elinor off St. John, US Virgin Islands in the late 1980s (Source: unknown)
During this period, Elinor also featured in a popular Birds Eye Fish Fingers TV commercial. Here is a YouTube video of the commercial.
Elinor features prominently in this Fish Fingers advert (Source: Youtube)
It was shortly after the Fish Fingers advert that I had my own brief encounter with Elinor. I stayed and worked onboard Elinor in the US Virgin Islands and British Virgin Islands from late 1989 to early 1990.
I was part of a small team of wooden shipwrights, who had been dispatched by an insurance company to repair damage to Elinor sustained during Hurricane Hugo in September 1989. Elinor was dockside in Christiansted Harbour, St. Croix, when the hurricane struck. The wind pushed the ship onto the dock, which damaged the stanchions and top planking on the starboard side. Our job as shipwrights was to restore Elinor to her former glory.
My shipwright colleagues replacing stanchions in Christiansted, St. Croix, USVI (Source: own photos)
During the repairs, we sailed Elinor from St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands to Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. In Tortola, Elinor was hauled out for repairs at the West End Slipway, a boatyard that no longer exists. Among other jobs, we changed part of the false keel and caulked the flanks.
Elinor en route to and arriving in Soper's Hole, BVI (Source: own photos)
During my time on board, Elinor was crewed by a mixture of troubled youths and idealistic volunteers. There was almost no money. I really liked the crew, but my experiences with the captain and the first mate during this time were such that I decided not to remain onboard Elinor after the insurance job was over.
Some of the crew and volunteers on Elinor, Christiansted, USVI (Source: own photos)
Instead, I found gainful employment repairing a Baltic Schooner called Grietje, which was moored in Soper's Hole, Tortola.
Working with my brother Morten on Grietje in Soper's Hole after leaving Elinor (Source: own photos)
My last connection to the ship is this picture showing my brother infront of Elinor at anchor off the Baths in the British Virgin Islands in 1990.

Morten and Elinor circa 1990 (Source: own photo)
I never saw Elinor again.
Still, if you have ever worked and sailed on a ship you will know that you form an attachment. It is unavoidable.
Which is why I set out to discover what happened to Elinor.
It turned out that Elinor was impounded by the United States Coast Guard a few years after my time onboard. There were many rumours about why Elinor was confiscated, including stories that the ship had been involved in smuggling drugs to the United States from Venezuela.
I do not know if there is any substance to these rumours.
However, what seems certain is that several attempts were made to get Elinor released from US custody. Briefly, Elinor even became a minor political issue. During the 1993-1994 session of the Danish parliament, Pernille Frahm, a member of the SF political party asked the relevant minister what the government was doing to prevent the sale of Elinor (see here). Pernille Frahm's question appears to have been motivated by the news that Elinor had been put up for auction in the United States on 12 April, 1994.
At the time, Elinor was one of just four remaining three-masted schooners in Denmark.
But no action was taken.
A final throw-away line about Elinor’s final fate appears on page 15 in the November 2003 publication of “Passagerfart”, a newsletter produced by an organisation representing smaller commercial vessels in Denmark. Referring to the challenges of maintaining wooden ships in tropical waters, the text reads:
“The worst example is the Schooner Elinor, which was sold at auction in the USA and now rests at the bottom of the sea in Fort Lauderdale" (See here).
The photographs below are the last ever taken of Elinor.

Elinor's last resting place in Fort Lauderdale, US (Source: unknown)

There is no chance of saving a ship once it gets this bad (Source: unknown)
The End
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