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Type:	4 masted barque
Hull:	steel
Built:	1911, Hamburg, Germany
Homeport:	New York, NY, USA
Designer:	Blohm & Voss
Sparred Length:	377.5 ft (115.1 m)
Length on deck:	320 ft (98 m)
Beam:	45.6 ft (13.9 m)
Draft:	16 ft (5 m)
Rig Height:	170.5 ft (52.0 m)
Displacement:	3,100 tons
Sail Area:	44,132 sq ft (4,100 m²)
Other Names:	Arethusa, HMS Pekin

Peking is a four masted barque built for the Flying P-Line, the identical sister ship to the Passat, and was one of the last generation of windjammers used in the nitrate and grain trade around the often treacherous Cape Horn (photograph of the Peking under full sail taken before 1914 in the estuary of the Elbe river).

Eking out meager existence on routes difficult to serve by the steam ships which required vast amounts of coal to fire their hungry boilers, these tall ships and the sailors sailing them were the last of their breed. Sailed "in the traditional way with few labor saving devices or safety features", her sailors were a hard lot, working four hours on and four hours off 24 hours a day for the entire length of the voyage, sometime for more than a hundred days in a row.

Made famous by the sail training pioneer Irving Johnson, his footage filmed on board during a passage around Cape Horn in 1929 shocked experienced Cape Horn veterans and landsmen alike at the extreme conditions Peking experienced.

Today, the Peking is docked at the South Street Seaport in New York City, where she acts as a maritime museum.

She was in Valparaiso at the outbreak of World War I, and was awarded to Italy as war reparations. She was sold back to the original owners, the Laeisz brothers in 1923, and continued in the nitrate trade until traffic through the Panama Canal proved quicker and more economical.

In 1932, she was sold for £6,250 to Shaftesbury Homes. She was first towed to Greenhithe, renamed Arethusa II and moored alongside the existing Arethusa I. In July 1933, she was moved to her new permanent mooring off Upnor on the River Medway,where she worked as a children's home and training school. She was officially "opened" by HRH Prince George on 25 July 1933. During World War II she served in the Royal Navy as HMS Pekin.

She was retired in 1975 and sold to Jack Aron, for the South Street Seaport Museum, New York City in the United States, where she is still moored.

• Flying P-sisters in Europe:
  • Padua (ship) - still active as a sail training ship under Russian flag as Kruzenshtern
  • Pamir (ship) - lost in the Atlantic
  • Passat (ship) - museum ship and true sister ship to the Peking
  • Pommern (ship) - museum ship

• Other preserved barques
  • Balclutha
  • Falls of Clyde
  • Star of India

• Irving Johnson; Round the Horn in a Square Rigger (Milton Bradley, 1932) (reprinted as The Peking Battles Cape Horn (Sea History Press, 1977 ISBN 0-930248-02-3)
• Irving Johnson (film); Around Cape Horn (Mystic Seaport, 1985) (from original 16 mm footage shot by Irving Johnson, 1929)

• The History of Shaftesbury Homes and the Arethusa, giving details of the purchase of the Pekin/Peking
• South Street Seaport webpage
• Peking Museum at South Street Seaport: MondoMap

Coordinates: 40°42′19″N, 74°00′11″W