This Colombian stamp shows the cruiser Cartagena (later renamed Almirante Lezo). She was built in 1892 for Morocco as the El Baschir, and was sold to Colombia in 1902, when she was renamed Carta gena. She was a vessel of 1,200 tons displacement, 2,500 i.h.p. and 18 knots speed. An interesting story of the ship is told in the book "Epitaph for Europe," by Paul Tabori, who relates an encounter he had with the Cartagena's captain. In 1919, shortly after the vessel had been sold out of the Colombian Navy, she was under the ownership of an American millionaire, who had her ammunition stores and forecastle converted into cargo holds. She had neither winches nor cranes and her cargo was "handladen" dynamite and T.N.T. consigned from New York to Cuba and Central America. The officers and crew were a scratch lot.
During the voyage there were two attempts to scuttle the ship by opening the seacocks, and at the Cuban port of call the vessel had to be unloaded by convicts as no dockers would undertake the dangerous job. After weathering a cyclone about 100 miles from Colon the ship was in such a state that she was about to be given up for lost when an American passenger vessel took her in tow. The result was a spate of lawsuits for salvage money. At the end of the voyage Capt. Heinzelmann, a Swiss, had to hand over some of his engineroom staff to the police for causing serious trouble on the voyage. It is not stated what eventually became of the ship.
SG225 Sea Breezes