Gorch Fock (2)

Built at the Blohm & Voss yard in Hamburg as a training ship in 1958, launched on 23 August and commissioned on 17 December 1958.

She was designed on the same drafts as Eagle, ex-Horst Wessel (1936), Sagres II, ex-Albert Leo Schlageter (1937), and the smaller Mircea (1938) and Gorch Fock (1933).

In response to the loss of the Pamir in 1957 she was given additional safety features such as watertight bulkheads and superstructures and the ability to recover from a 90-degree knockdown.

The German Navy uses her for training voyages around the world and as an ambassador for peaceful coexistence and international understanding. She usually makes two or three voyages a year in the North Sea and the Atlantic and often winters at Kiel.

In 1964 she visited the World's Fair in New York, and in 1985 spent half a year in a general overhaul at Kiel. In 1987–88 her 80th to 83rd training tours took her around the world in 336 days and to Australia's bicentennial celebrations in Sydney. In 1996–97 she made her longest training voyage to date, 343 days calling at eighteen ports in sixteen countries by way of the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, the South China Sea, Mauritius, Cape Town, Brazil, the West Indies and the Azores.

She is a regular competitor in international sail training events and races, often near the top, and has sailed the transatlantic Tall Ships Races in 1964, 1976, 1980, 1992 and 2000.

In 2001 she underwent a nine-month major refit with a new interior suitable for mixed crews, new steering gear and a bow thruster, improved fire protection, wastewater treatment and new electrical systems. Despite regular yard overhauls, a major repair became necessary in 2015 which — through mismanagement, cost explosion and allegations of corruption and breach of trust against the yard, followed by its insolvency — was not completed until the summer of 2021.

She is named after the maritime writer Johann Kinau, who wrote under the pen name Gorch Fock.