The four-masted barque Andorinha in full sail off the Australian coast

The four-masted steel barque Andorinha was built for Roberts Brothers of Liverpool by William Pickersgill & Sons at Sunderland in 1892. Registered at 3,440 tons gross (3,264 net), she measured 347 feet in length with a 46 foot beam and was especially 'lofty', with three skysail yards. Driven hard by all her early masters, the first being Captain Campbell, she soon acquired a reputation amongst seamen as a man-killer once it became known that she invariably lost a man, sometimes two, washed overboard on every voyage. Her excellent speed meant that she made the classic run from Cape Town to Newcastle (New South Wales) in 24 days in 1900 and she turned in many excellent voyages for her original owners before they sold her to S. Goldberg & Sons of Swansea in 1903. Sold again in 1909, this time to A.D. Bordes et Fils of Bordeaux for their notable fleet of so-called 'nitrate clippers', her new owners renamed her Hélène and she entered their employ as their largest vessel. Miraculously surviving the Great War, she was outward bound from Baltimore to Nantes with a cargo of steel on the night of 22nd February 1919 when she collided with the Norwegian steamer Gansfjord off the Virginia coast, and sank very rapidly with the loss of 17 lives.