Europa

Built in 1911 at the Stülcken yard in Hamburg as Senator Brockes and used at first as a merchant navy training ship.

She was later converted into a lightship and lay on the Elbe 4 station until 1914. From 1916 to 1918 she served as a pilot station, and from 1918 to 1936 lay on the Elbe 3 station. From October 1942 she was under naval command in the Baltic, and from July 1945 lay at the Elbe 2 station until she was decommissioned.

Between 1986 and 1994 she was lavishly converted and rigged as a barque, after which she sailed the coastal waters of England, France and Belgium.

Europa is a windjammer in charter service and regularly takes part in regattas, among them Sail Bremerhaven 1995, the 1996 Cutty Sark Tall Ships Race, Kieler Woche 1998 and the Hanse Sail in Rostock in 1998 and 1999. In 1998 she also sailed the second Hiorten regatta from Karlskrona to Rostock.

Since 2000 she has been operated by Smit Tall Ship B.V. of Amsterdam. She took part in the Tall Ships 2000 race and then sailed to South American waters and the Antarctic. In 2004–2005 she visited ports on the east coast of America and Canada before setting out on another Antarctic expedition.

In November 2012 she began a circumnavigation together with Tecla and Oosterschelde, rounding the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Leeuwin and Cape Horn, and taking part in sailing events and tall ship races in Australia.