Schooner
Black Swan
A Danish lightship of 1919 that went on to circumnavigate the world under sail.
Technical data
- Rig
- Schooner
- Home port
- St. Johns
- Built
- 1919
- Shipyard
- Rasmus Møller, Fåborg, DK
- Hull material
- Wood
- Length
- 27.25 m
- Beam
- 5.55 m
- Sail area
- 313 m²
- Sailing area
- Caribbean
Built in 1919 at the R. Møller yard in Fåborg as the motor lightship No. IV, named Rana.
Sold in 1979 and converted by 1981 into a schooner for sailing with guests and for social and educational work. Long voyages followed: the Faroe Islands (1981), the North Atlantic (1981–82), the Caribbean and North America (1984–85), Spain and Portugal (1985–86), the Amazon delta and the Caribbean (1986–87), the Caribbean (1987–88), a circumnavigation of Scotland (1988), South America (1989–91), a circumnavigation of the world (1991–94), the Caribbean (1995–96), the northern Baltic (1999), the North Atlantic to Greenland (2000–03) and in 2004 the Baltic, Finland, Lithuania and a circumnavigation of Denmark.
She was offered for sale in 2005 and in 2006 sold to Antigua, converted into a tourist attraction and renamed Black Swan, berthed at Redcliffe Quay Pier in St John's. In 2012 she was seen at St John's with a reduced rig of a single mast; her ownership is unclear.