Navigational Track Chart for the German Nitrate Barque <i>Prompt</i>, 1906
date: label: date made
content: 1906
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 fertilizers and other products.
label: Description
content: This track chart measured daily progress for the German steel-hulled sailing barque <i>Prompt</i> on a nitrate voyage from Hamburg, Germany to Valparaiso, Chile in 1906. The three-masted <i>Prompt</i> was built by the German shipbuilders Blohm & Voss at Hamburg, Germany for the Flying P line of nitrate clippers in 1887, and measured 238 ft. 8 in. in length and 1,445 tons. <i>Prompt</i> set a record of 65 days from Isle of Wight to Valparaiso in 1892 and was sold to Finnish owners in 1908.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Maritime
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content: Transportation
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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: 1999.3004.01
label: catalog number
content: 1999.3004.01
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 1/4 in x 14 1/4 in; 28.575 cm x 36.195 cm