R. Tucker Thompson
R. Tucker Thompson
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| History | |
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| Name: | R. Tucker Thompson |
| Builder: | Northland, NZ |
| Launched: | 12 October 1985 |
| Homeport: | Opua, New Zealand |
| Status: | in active service |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Schooner |
| Displacement: | 44 t (43 long tons) |
| Length: | |
| Beam: | 16 ft (4.9 m) |
| Height: | 72 ft (22 m) |
| Draught: | 8 ft 6 in (2.59 m) |
| Propulsion: | 3,000 sq ft (300 m2) sails |
| Sail plan: | Gaff-rigged tops’l schooner |
R. Tucker Thompson is a gaff-rigged topsail schooner based in Opua, Bay of Islands, New Zealand. She is operated as a non-for profit charitable trust and owned by the R. Tucker Thompson Sail Training Trust. The mission of the trust is “Learning for Life through the Sea”. The ship is used for tourism day sails in the Bay of Islands from October through April and for sail training activities between May and September. Youth sail training is particularly focused at youth from the Tai Tokerau Northland region of New Zealand. She is a member of the Australian Sail Training Association (AUSTA), and participated in the American Sail Training Association (ASTA) West Coast Tall Ships Challenge events in 2002 and 2005.
The ship was designed by Pete Culler, a naval architect in the United States, as a working fishing boat with a large engine and a small sailing rig. Tucker Thompson changed her design to build her in steel and extended her by more than two metres, making the hull longer and deeper to accommodate the tall rigging. Her design is based on a halibut schooner and a replica of vessels that plied their trade on the Pacific West Coast of the USA in the early 19th century.
The schooner was constructed with a welded steel hull and decking, with topsides and deck overlay made from kwila. As built, the vessel is 25.9 metres (85 ft) in length overall, with a beam of 4.9 metres (16 ft), and a draught of 2.6 metres (8 ft 6 in). The rigging arrangement is described as a gaff-rigged square-topsail schooner with three-quarter course. The ship's mast height is 19.8 metres (65 ft), and she has a sail area of 307 square metres (3,300 sq ft). Auxiliary propulsion is provided by a 120-horsepower (89 kW) Ford diesel engine, capable of driving R. Tucker Thompson at 5 knots (9.3 km/h; 5.8 mph).
R. Tucker Thompson was started by Robert Tucker Thompson and his son Tod. Tucker Thompson was born in California and always called Tucker. He and his family immigrated to New Zealand in January 1971. After a few years he moved to Whangarei Heads. In 1977, he started work on the ship with his son, Tod. Tucker became ill in 1978, and died later that year at the age of 49. By this point, the plating was almost complete, but the hull lay there for some years before Tod decided to work on it again. In a chance meeting, while working in Whangarei on the Bounty replica, Tod met Russell Harris and the pair went into partnership to complete the ship.
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Wikipedia