6 CLASSIC BOAT NOVEMBER 2017NO6 TEXEL
T
he view from Thira, on the Greek
island of Santorini, is one of the most
photographed in the world. And no
wonder. From 980ft up, you look out
over the spectacular seven-mile-wide
caldera, a ring of islands formed by a
volcanic eruption 3,600 years ago, which is said to have
provided the inspiration for the Atlantis story. The sea
here is up to 600ft deep and its rich blue contrasts
spectacularly with the whitewashed houses tumbling
down the hillside above. So timeless is the scene, it’s not
hard to imagine the Minoan ships depicted in the
island’s ancient frescoes paddling across the bay in a
ceremonial procession.
Yet, when I visited the island in July and looked south
past the Akrotiri peninsula, I saw something quite
different. There, silhouetted against the horizon, was a
gaff schooner, with dramatically raked masts and a
distinctive clipper bow – the kind of vessel you might
expect to see sailing off the east coast of America. As
the ship sailed across the caldera past Thira, past the
mock pirate ships and liners crammed with tourists, she
looked as if she came from a different species, like a sea
petrel gliding through a flock of pigeons. Even the
tourists seemed to notice the difference, and soon dozens
of mobile phones were pointing in her direction, though
few of their operators would have known they were
looking at a historic Dutch pilot schooner which was
used to carry spies during World War II, was once owned
by King Farouk I of Egypt, and is now owned by an
Italian count descended from three Venetian doges. All
of that would have passed them by, as they smiled for
pictures of themselves with a pretty black-and-white
boat in the background.
For No6 Texel does have a unique and interesting
history. Built at the Piet Smit shipyard in Rotterdam in
1917-21, she was designed to stay out in all weathers
and guide ships around Holland’s tricky North Sea coast.
Some 37 loodsschoeners (literally, ‘pilot schooners’)
were built between 1870 and 1920 and served the six
coastal districts under the command of the Nederlandse
Loodswezen, the Dutch pilot association. Originally built
of wood and later steel, their design is said to have been
inspired by Baltimore Clippers, and certainly their jauntyrig and salty lines bear an obvious resemblance to their
American cousins. At 92ft (28m) long, No6 was one of
the larger pilot schooners built, and for the first few
years of her life was posted along a 50-mile stretch of
coast between the port of Ijmuiden and the island of
Texel, just north of Amsterdam.
It was a tough existence for the crews of these ships,
who had to stay at sea for days on end, enduring a
combination of deep monotony mixed with extreme
danger when the weather got bad. The pilotage rules
stipulated that pilot ships had to stay at sea until a Force
8, by which time it was usually too dangerous to head
back into harbour and all they could do was to head out
to sea and wait for the gale to blow itself out.
Life became a little easier in the mid-1920s when five
pilot boats, including No6 Texel, were turned into
motorschoeners with the addition of engines. Fitted with
a two-cylinder Kromhout engine, in 1925 Texel was
posted further south in the Vlissingen & De Schelde
district, where she guided ships into the Hook of
Holland under the name M4 or No4. So far, so
workmanlike, and the names reflect the ship’s functional
role, despite her undoubtedly romantic appearance. All
that was to change in 1933, when Texel was bought by
American cotton millionaire George McFadden for
27,000 Guilders (about £200,000 in today’s money).
McFadden was still a young man, fresh out of college,
when he inherited the family fortune in 1931 and
immediately opted out of the cotton business to pursue
his passion for archaeology. He worked at several sites in
Greece and Cyprus throughout the 1930s and 40s,
funding fieldwork out of his own pocket and eventually
donating a grand house in Cyprus to the local
community. In 1934, he used some of his inheritance to
buy Texel and had her fitted out as a luxury yacht at the
Damen Schelde naval yard in Vlissingen, using 16th
century wooden panelling recovered from a local crypt.
In a clear break with her working boat past, the
schooner was painted white and renamed Samothrace,
after a small island in the Aegean where the Sanctuary of
the Great Gods was built in ancient times.
Even then, the schooner made a stunning sight sailing
among the Greek islands, as one eyewitness report from
1939 suggests: “As if conjured up by Thucydides’ story,Above, l-r: a
clinker dinghy
was built to hang
o stern davits;
brass binnacle
dates from the
1930s; rudder
angle indicator
atop the steering
boxFacing page:
Texel sails across
the Santorini
caldera, seen
from ThiraCB353 Texel.indd 6 26/09/2017 14: