The schooner Wander Bird, known for its speed and seaworthiness, spent 40 years as a pilot vessel before American journalist Warwick Tompkins purchased it in the 1920s. Tompkins used the boat for several years for transatlantic passages before he moved to the Bay Area. In the 1930s, the Tompkins family sailed the Wander Bird around Cape Horn -- going the "wrong way" from east to west. He wrote a book about the passage titled, "50 degrees (degrees) South to 50 degrees (degrees) North." He later chartered the boat for trips to the South Sea islands.

“Commodore Tompkins” and his sister grew up on Wander Bird. Below are two videos from that era. In the first one there is an interview with Commodore and in the second you can se Commodore as a young kid climbing the rig without a harness and his sister shooting at sharks with a pistol with live ammo. Times were different then!

                            Click here for a link to the original version of this movie.

The schooner is now a museum ship in Hamburg, Germany, and renamed “ELBE No 5”, which was her original name as she was built as a pilot schooner in Germany 1883. She is owned and operated by Stiftung Hamburg Maritime.