Navigational Track Chart for the German Nitrate Ship <i>Pitlochry</i>, 1908
date: label: date made
content: 1908
notes: label: Description
content: By the mid-1870s, the Pacific guano trade had mined all the available bird guano from the South American and remote Pacific Ocean islands. Fortunately for international agricultural interests, nitrate and phosphate mines had recently been discovered inland in Peru and Chile to fill the gap, and big sailing ships from Europe and the United States exchanged the avian excrement for chemicals that could be mined and blended for synthetic fertilizers and other products.
label: Description
content: The German four-masted steel barque <i>Pitlochry</i> was built in Scotland in 1894 for the Flying P Line of nitrate clippers and was one of the fastest in the fleet. It measured 319 ft. 5 in. in length and 3,111 tons (gross) and set a speed record in 1902 on a nitrate voyage to Valparaiso. In 1905 it was partly dismasted on a trip around Cape Horn.
label: Description
content: This track chart measured daily progress for <i>Pitlochry</i> from Hamburg, Germany to "The West Coast" (South America) on a 1908 nitrate voyage that took only 72 days. In 1913 <i>Pitlochry</i> sank in the English Channel after a collision with a British steamship.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Maritime
label: See more items in
content: Transportation
label: See more items in
content: Measuring & Mapping
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Capt. J. Ferrell Colton
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1999.3004.04
label: catalog number
content: 1999.3004.04
label: nonaccession number
content: 1999.3004
objectType: label: Object Name
content: chart
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 11 3/8 in x 14 3/8 in; 28.8925 cm x 36.5125 cm