Qualla: Alexander von Humboldt https://qualla.com/alexander-von-humboldt-ship en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 20 Aug 2026 16:39:13 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/q/m/alexander-von-humboldt-ship-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Alexander von Humboldt https://qualla.com/alexander-von-humboldt-ship Alexander von Humboldt: Introduction https://qualla.com/alexander-von-humboldt-ship/ Photo credit Żeglarz, Public domain. For eighty years the ship never went anywhere on purpose. She was launched at Bremen in 1906 as a spare part: a reserve lightvessel, kept ready to take over the station of any floating lighthouse that had to go into the yard for maintenance. Her working life consisted of being towed to a set of coordinates, anchored, and left to shine. She had the hull of a sailing ship, which was normal for the type, but where the mainmast should have stood there was a lamp instead. Then in 1988, at the age of eighty-two, she was fitted with three masts and a suit of sails dyed dark green, handed to a foundation that taught teenagers to sail, and sent out to do the thing her shape had always implied. She would go on to log more than 300,000 nautical miles and round Cape Horn in her centenary year.

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Image: Żeglarz | Public domain

]]> Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/q/m/alexander-von-humboldt-ship-wp/u1qm-alexander-von-humboldt-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Alexander von Humboldt: The Ship That Stood Still https://qualla.com/alexander-von-humboldt-ship/ Photo credit Żeglarz, Public domain. She went down the ways at AG Weser in Bremen on 10 September 1906 as yard number 155, the first of her class. Even her name is uncertain. Two are documented - Reserve Fehmarnbelt, after the station she first covered, and Reserve Sonderburg, after a home port at Sonderburg in what...

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Image: Żeglarz | Public domain

]]> Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/q/m/alexander-von-humboldt-ship-wp/u1qm-alexander-von-humboldt-the-ship-that-stood-still.mp3 0:06 2 full Alexander von Humboldt: Green Sails https://qualla.com/alexander-von-humboldt-ship/ Photo credit Żeglarz, Public domain. The German Sail Training Foundation, newly established, bought her and handed the drawings to Zygmunt Choren, the Polish naval architect responsible for a good share of the world's modern tall ships. He turned the lightvessel into a three-masted barque: 62.55 metres overall, 8.02...

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Image: Żeglarz | Public domain

]]> Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/q/m/alexander-von-humboldt-ship-wp/u1qm-alexander-von-humboldt-green-sails.mp3 0:06 3 full Alexander von Humboldt: Fourteen Times Around the Equator https://qualla.com/alexander-von-humboldt-ship/ Photo credit Żeglarz, Public domain. Alex, as her crews called her, spent twenty years as the foundation's flagship and covered more than 300,000 nautical miles - the equivalent of fourteen laps of the equator. Summers meant the North Sea and the Baltic, autumn and winter the run down to the Canaries, and each year ...

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]]> Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/q/m/alexander-von-humboldt-ship-wp/u1qm-alexander-von-humboldt-fourteen-times-around-the-equator.mp3 0:06 4 full Alexander von Humboldt: Masts Down at the Schlachte https://qualla.com/alexander-von-humboldt-ship/ Photo credit Żeglarz, Public domain. In October 2011 a purpose-built successor, Alexander von Humboldt II, took over the training work, and the old ship was sold. She went to the Bahamas in early 2012 for a Caribbean charter business that never materialised, and came back to Europe in early 2013. Her hull was repair...

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]]> Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/q/m/alexander-von-humboldt-ship-wp/u1qm-alexander-von-humboldt-masts-down-at-the-schlachte.mp3 0:06 5 full