Lot Essay
Rigged as a screw schooner, Calanthe was designed and built by A. Stephens & Sons at Glasgow for Mr. J. Arthur Hinckley of New York in 1898. Stoutly constructed of steel, she was registered at 351 tons gross (239 net) and measured 164 feet in length with a 24 foot beam. Powered by her builder's own 3-cylinder triple-expansion engine, she was a trim craft and rated 100A1 by Lloyd's surveyors. Sold to Thomas Jack of Larne (Northern Ireland) sometime before the Great War, she was hired by the Admiralty in November 1914, armed with 2-6pdrs. and put to work on routine duties. Laid up in May 1917 and finally released from war service in May 1919, she was returned to her owner who promptly sold her to the wealthy Anthony Drexel of Philadelphia then residing in Paris. In August 1939, by which time Calanthe was owned by David Forbes, she was hired for her second period of war service, on this occasion as an examination vessel, but was sunk during an air raid off the island of Milos, in the Aegean, on 24th April 1941.