The 25.32m long and 5.95m wide No 5 Elbe has a side height of 3.66m and displaces 138 tons.

She is a two-masted gaff-schooner with a sail area of 492m 2and is the original boat in a series of 11 built for the Hamburg Senate between 1855 and 1906 for pilot service on the Elbe.

As was common in the late 19th Century, she was built of oak at the H C Stulcken Shipyard in Steinwerder in Hamburg between 1881 and 1883 as a sharp hulled vessel and copperplated below the water line. The schooners had a legendary reputation in the Elbe Estuary because of their extreme sea-worthiness and superb sailing characteristics.

She served for nearly 40 years on the Elbe before being retired from pilot service in the 1920s and laid up in Cuxhaven. Bought by an American in 1929, she was renamed Wander Bird and converted but not motorised and sailed around Cape Horn at Christmas 1937 with her new owner, his wife and two small children.

She served as a house boat in San Francisco for nearly 30 years and was lovingly restored again before being bought by the Hamburg Maritime Historic Foundation for $800,000. Many 19th Century details remain, including her historic interior.

Renamed No 5 Elbe, she will be overhauled and get a place in the planned Sandtorkai Museum Harbour.

MJ Information No: 17704