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STAVANGER


she will be exhibited alongside the legendary Fram, also designed by Colin Archer and used by both Nansen and Amundsen in their polar expeditions (north and south), and Gjøa, the first ship to cross the Northwest Passage. It was a controversial decision – the museum plans to display the boat with a section of hull planking removed to give better visibility of her construction to the visiting public. Which effectively means she will never go to sea again. For many, to take a perfectly sound boat out of service and turn her into a static display like this was nothing short of sacrilegious. Far better, they argued, to maintain her in sailing condition, and use her to study how an authentic redningskøyte performs at sea. The argument was intensified in 1997 when another Colin Archer rescue boat sank. Christiania was sailing from Norway to Denmark in a Force 9 gale when she ‘fell off’ a wave and went down in 500m of water. Incredibly, she was eventually raised and restored and, three years later, was sailing once more. But the incident underlined how vulnerable these vessels are and how easily they could be lost – along with the maritime legacy they represent. And, once they are lost, no amount of replicas, however well built, can replace them. Stavanger’s skipper is Johan Petersen,whose family have owned Christiania for over 30 years. He was on board, along with his brother and some friends, when she sank on that terrible night. He also project-managed her restoration, gaining invaluable knowledge about how these boats were built. The NSSR asked him to


oversee Stavanger’s preservation, as well as becoming her de facto skipper. He fully supports the decision to take the vessel out of the water. “During the restoration of Christiania, it became apparent to me that it is important that there are detailed sources of how they were really built and how problems were solved,” he says. “Many questions arise about how to do this and that and, even though the general layout is well known, the details are often difficult to find. Later, when I got directly involved with Stavanger, it made sense to me that exactly this ship should be preserved and ‘frozen’ in time as her source value is so great.”


HER FINAL VOYAGE But before Stavanger is ‘frozen in time’, there is time for one last, symbolic voyage: 1,000 miles from the Lofoten Islands, 120 miles north of the Arctic Circle, down the west coast of Norway and up the Oslofjord to her final resting place. On the way, she will visit most of the stations where the original rescue boats were once based. It is a voyage to raise awareness of Stavanger and of the work of the NSSR, both past and present. It is a voyage that offers a chance for people to visit an original redningskøyte, and to imagine what life must have been like for the crews who lived on these boats. And it is a voyage to say thank you to the hundreds of volunteers who raise the money which enables the society to carry on with its valuable work – and to say thank you for the 6,200 lives the NSSR has saved since its inception 121 years ago.


CLASSIC BOAT MAY 2012 33


Above left: Stavanger near Rørvik Above: In the Vikna archipelago Left: Breakfast in Stavanger’s cabin Left below: Sailing in traditional oilskins


PHOTOS BY NIC COMPTON


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