Adorable Story #136: The Curse of the Creole
The Haunted Grace of Creole, the World’s Largest Wooden Schooner
Veteran yachting photographer Gilles Martin‑Raget once said that Creole is “a boat outside all the norms of size, aesthetics and history.”
And indeed, at 63.03 metres, this three‑masted schooner is not merely the world’s largest wooden sailing yacht, she is also one of the loveliest.
More than size and aesthetics, it was her history that truly defines her: for Creole’s story, threaded through with suicide, jealousy and murder, strays far beyond the norms of any seafaring tale.
Table of Contents: A Champagne Bottle That Wouldn’t Break / From Nobility to the Navy / Niarchos Restores a Legend / Maurizio Gucci / Today
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A Champagne Bottle That Wouldn’t Break
When Vira — as she was first christened — rolled out of Camper & Nicholsons’ Gosport yard in 1927, the Champagne bottle used to name her took three attempts to smash.
It was not a good omen.
The celebrated designer Charles E. Nicholson had created a masterpiece: a beautiful, elongated schooner fitted with two generators, electric refrigeration, and central heating throughout her apartment-sized suites.
Her magnificent rig, though, terrified her American owner, Alexander Smith Cochran, an immensely wealthy carpet manufacturer and philanthropist.
After she was christened, he ordered the masts shortened by three metres.
The alteration requested by Cochran upset her balance though and further ballast adjustments were required, which made her dangerously tender.
Before he could correct it once more, Cochran fell ill with tuberculosis and died in 1929, aged 55.
He had hardly sailed her.
Yachtsmen began to murmur that Creole had claimed her first master.
From Nobility to the Navy
After Cochran’s death, Vira passed to Maurice Pope, an English nobleman who renamed her Creole, apparently after a particularly delicious dessert created by his personal chef.
A few years later, she was sold to financier Sir Connop Guthrie, a British gentleman with a taste for grandeur and who had just been made a baronet.
Creole became familiar across the Channel coast and the Mediterranean, admired for her black hull, dramatic rig, and uncanny grace.
Guthrie was a dedicated sailor who restored Creole’s rig and keel and raced her successfully until the outbreak of WWII in 1939, when the Royal Navy requisitioned her.
Creole had her rig removed and her deckworks changed to accept armament, and became the mine-hunter HMS Magic Circle, serving as a patrol and training vessel.
She endured the war’s hardships well, though stripped of luxury and charm.
Guthrie died, aged 63, in 1945, the year that Magic Circle was returned to his family.
Following the death of Sir Connop she languished in a sorry state until spotted by Stavros Niarchos, the legendary Greek shipping tycoon.
Niarchos Restores a Legend
Stavros Niarchos spotted the derelict schooner in 1947.
As HMS Magic Circle during the war, she had been de‑masted and heavily modified for minesweeping service. Her deckhouses were cut down, her interior gutted, and her hull plating weakened by naval add‑ons.
