Yesterday morning at about 8:30am, the barque Peking pushed off from her pier at the South Street Seaport for one last time to begin her final trip home to the land of her birth, Hamburg, Germany.
Peking eased out into the slack tide of the East River and was assisted by two Henry Marine tugs. Many well-wishers including Museum staffers and volunteers watched her departure from the upper level of Pier 15.
She made her way through Buttermilk Channel and crossed the harbor arriving at Caddell’s Drydock on the Kill van Kull, about an hour later.
There, she will undergo preparations for her journey across the Atlantic scheduled for sometime in the Spring on 2017.
“The gift of Peking to Hamburg, where they’ve got 30 million euros to restore her, is good for our Museum; it will allow us to focus our growing resources on a leaner fleet, the centerpiece of which will be the mighty three-masted ship Wavertree, which will shortly return from a massive restoration project. It’s also good for Hamburg; they’ll have a restored ship they can be proud of. She was built in Hamburg and sailed from there. She belongs on the Hamburg waterfront. And it’s good for Peking; she’ll have the resources and the attention she deserves” said Captain Jonathan Boulware, Executive Director of the South Street Seaport Museum.