Name County of Peebles Route India—Great Britain Launched 5 July 1875 Length 81 m | Owner R. & J. Craig, Glasgow Yard number 252 In service 1875 Builder Barclay Curle | |
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County of Peebles was the world's first four-masted, iron-hulled full-rigged ship, built in 1875 by Barclay Curle Shipbuilders in Glasgow, Scotland for the shipping firm R & J Craig of Glasgow. Measuring 81.2m (266 feet 6 inches) long, with a beam of 11.8m (38 feet 7 inches), a draft of 7.1m (23 feet 4 inches) and measuring 1614 net tons, she was a state-of-the-art windjammer when she entered the jute trade between Great Britain (e.g. Dundee and Cardiff), Bombay, India, and East India e.g. Calcutta / Hooghly River. Her rig was in the 'Scottish style' i.e. 'Royal sails above double top-sails and single topgallant-sails'. County of Peebles represented an important development in sailing ship design, which allowed wind-powered ships to compete successfully on long haul routes with steam-powered ships in the last quarter of the 19th century.
R & J Craig ordered a further eleven similar four-masted 'full-rigged ships' for the thriving Indian jute trade, forming what was referred to as the Scottish East India Line. Following the pattern set by County of Peebles, the sister ships were also named after Scottish counties as follows: County of Caithness (launched in 1876), County of Inverness (1877), County of Cromarty (1878), County of Dumfries (1878), County of Kinross (1878), County of Selkirk (1878), County of Aberdeen (1879), County of Haddington (1879), County of Edinburgh (1885), County of Roxburgh (1886), and County of Linlithgow (1887).
In 1898, County of Peebles was sold to the Chilean Navy. Renamed Muñoz Gamero, she was used as a coal hulk at Punta Arenas on the Strait of Magellan. In the mid-1960s she was beached as a breakwater in Punta Arenas, where she lies today with cut-down masts.