The “Flying Cloud"

The
Clipper Ship Era

An Epitome of Famous American and British
Clipper Ships, Their Owners, Builders,
Commanders, and Crews
1843-1869
By
Arthur H. Clark
Late Commander of Ship “Verena,� Barque “Agnes,�
Steamships “Manchu,� “Suwo Nada,� “Venus,�
and “Indiana.� (1863-1877)
Author of “The History of Yachting�

With 39 Illustrations
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1911
Copyright, 1910
BY
ARTHUR H. CLARK
Published, November, 1910
Reprinted, January, 1911; March, 1911
The Knickerbocker Press, New York

To
THE MEMORY OF
A FRIEND OF MY BOYHOOD
DONALD McKAY
BUILDER OF SHIPS

PREFACE

THE Clipper Ship Era began in 1843 as a result of the growing demand for a more rapid delivery of tea from China; continued under the stimulating influence of the discovery of gold in California and Australia in 1849 and 1851, and ended with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. These memorable years form one of the most important and interesting periods of maritime history. They stand between the centuries during which man navigated the sea with sail and oar—a slave to unknown winds and currents, helpless alike in calm and in storm—and the successful introduction of steam navigation, by which man has obtained mastery upon the ocean.

After countless generations of evolution, this era witnessed the highest development of the wooden sailing ship in construction, speed, and beauty. Nearly all the clipper ships made records which were not equalled by the steamships of their day; and more than a quarter of a century elapsed, devoted to discovery and invention in perfecting the marine engine and boiler, before the best clipper ship records for speed were broken by steam vessels. During this era, too, important discoveries were made in regard to the laws governing the winds and currents of the ocean; and this knowledge, together with improvements in model and rig, enabled sailing ships to reduce by forty days the average time formerly required for the outward and homeward voyage from England and America to Australia.

In pursuing this narrative we shall see the stately, frigate-built Indiaman, with her batteries of guns and the hammocks stowed in nettings, disappear, and her place taken by the swift China, California, and Australian clippers, which in their turn, after a long and gallant contest, at last vanish before the advancing power of steam.

Many of the clipper ships mentioned in this book, both American and British, were well known to me; some of the most celebrated of the American clippers were built near my early home in Boston, and as a boy I saw a number of them constructed and launched; later, I sailed as an officer in one of the most famous of them, and as a young sea-captain knew many of the men who commanded them. I do not, however, depend upon memory, nearly all the facts herein stated being from the most reliable records that can be obtained. So far as I am aware, no account of these vessels has ever been written, beyond a few magazine and newspaper articles, necessarily incomplete and often far from accurate; while most of the men who knew these famous ships have now passed away. It seems proper, therefore, that some account of this remarkable era should be recorded by one who has a personal knowledge of the most exciting portion of it, and of many of the men and ships that made it what it was.

Of late years there has been a confusing mixture of the terms knot and mile as applied to the speed of vessels. As most persons are aware, there are three kinds of mile: the geographical, statute, and sea mile or knot. The geographical mile is based on a measure upon the surface of the globe, and is a mathematical calculation which should be used by experts only. The statute mile, instituted by the Romans, is a measure of 5280 feet. The sea mile or knot is one sixtieth of a degree of latitude; and while this measurement varies slightly in different latitudes, owing to the elliptical shape of the globe, for practical purposes the knot may be taken as 6080 feet.

The word knot is now frequently used to express long distances at sea. This is an error, as the term knot should be used only to denote an hourly rate of speed; for instance, to say that a vessel is making nine knots means that she is going through the water at the rate of nine knots an hour, but it would be incorrect to say that she made thirty-six knots in four hours; here the term miles should be used, meaning sea miles or knots. The term knot is simply a unit of speed, and is derived from the knots marked on the old-fashioned log line and graduated to a twenty-eight-second log glass which was usually kept in the binnacle. In this book the word mile means a sea mile and not a geographical or statute mile.

I wish to make my grateful acknowledgment to the Hydrographic Office at Washington, the British Museum, Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, the American Bureau of Shipping, the Boston Athenæum, and the Astor Library, for much of the data contained in this book.

A. H. C.

New York, 1910.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Clipper Ship Era

CHAPTER I
AMERICAN SHIPPING TO THE CLOSE OF THE WAR OF 1812

THE deeds that have made the Clipper Ship Era a glorious memory were wrought by the ship-builders and master mariners of the United States and Great Britain, for the flag of no other nation was represented in this spirited contest upon the sea. In order, therefore, to form an intelligent idea of this era, it is necessary to review the condition of the merchant marine of the two countries for a considerable period preceding it, as well as the events that led directly to its development.

From the earliest colonial days, ship-building has been a favorite industry in America. The first vessel built within the present limits of the United States was the Virginia, a pinnace of thirty tons, constructed in 1607 by the Popham colonists who had arrived during the summer at Stage Island, near the mouth of the Kennebec River, on board the ships Gift of God and Mary and John. When these vessels returned to England, leaving forty-five persons to establish a fishing station, and a severe winter followed, the colonists became disheartened and built the Virginia, which carried them home in safety and which subsequently made several voyages across the Atlantic.

The Onrust, of sixteen tons, was built at Manhattan in 1613-14, by Adrian Block and his companions, to replace the Tiger, which had been damaged by fire beyond repair. After exploring the coasts of New England and Delaware Bay, she sailed for Holland with a cargo of furs. The Blessing of the Bay, a barque of thirty tons, was built by order of Governor John Winthrop at Medford, near Boston, and was launched amid solemn rejoicings by the Puritans on July 4, 1631. This little vessel was intended to give the New England colonists a means of communication with their neighbors at New Amsterdam less difficult than that through the wilderness. So we see that ship-building was begun in America under the pressure of necessity, and it was fostered by the conditions of life in the new country.

In the year 1668, the ship-building in New England, small as it may now seem, had become sufficiently important to attract the attention of Sir Josiah Child, sometime Chairman of the Court of Directors of the East India Company, who in his Discourse on Trade protests with patriotic alarm: “Of all the American plantations, His Majesty has none so apt for building of shipping as New England, nor any comparably so qualified for the breeding of seamen, not only by reason of the natural industry of that people, but principally by reason of their cod and mackerel fisheries, and, in my poor opinion, there is nothing more prejudicial, and in prospect more dangerous, to any mother kingdom, than the increase in shipping in her colonies, plantations, and provinces.�

The apprehension of the worthy Sir Josiah was well founded, for at that period most of the spars and much of the timber which went into the construction of the East Indiamen and the fighting ships of his royal master, King Charles II., had grown in American soil, and of 1332 vessels registered as built in New England between 1674 and 1714, no less than 239 were built for or sold to merchants abroad. Not that they were better than foreign built vessels, but on account of the plentiful supply of timber they could be built more cheaply in America than in Great Britain and on the Continent.

The industry was in a promising and healthy condition, and so continued, until in 1720 the London shipwrights informed the Lords of Trade that the New England shipyards had drawn away so many men “that there were not enough left to carry on the work.� They therefore prayed that colonial built ships be excluded from all trade except with Great Britain and her colonies, and that the colonists be forbidden to build ships above a certain size. The Lords of Trade, though fine crusty old protectionists, were unable to see their way to granting any such prayer as this, and so ship-building continued to flourish in America. In the year 1769, the colonists along the whole Atlantic coast launched 389 vessels, of which 113 were square-riggers. It should not, however, be imagined that these vessels were formidable in size. The whole 389 had an aggregate register of 20,001 tons, an average of slightly over 50 tons each. Of these vessels 137, of 8013 tons, were built in Massachusetts; 45, of 2452 tons in New Hampshire; 50, of 1542 tons, in Connecticut; 19, of 955 tons, in New York; 22, of 1469 tons, in Pennsylvania. It is probable that few of them exceeded 100 tons register, and that none was over 200 tons register.

With the advent of the Revolutionary War, the rivalry on the sea between the older and the younger country took a more serious turn. Centuries before clipper ships were ever thought of, England had claimed, through her repeated and victorious naval wars against Spain, Holland, France, and lesser nations, the proud title of Mistress of the Seas, but in the Revolutionary War with her American colonies and the War of 1812 with the United States, her battleships and fleets of merchantmen were sorely harassed by the swift, light-built, and heavily-armed American frigates and privateers. While it cannot be said that the naval power of England upon the ocean was seriously impaired, yet the speed of the American vessels and the skill and gallantry with which they were fought and handled, made it apparent that the young giant of the West might some day claim the sceptre of the sea as his own.

During the latter half of the eighteenth century, however, the leading nation in the modelling and construction of ships was France, and during this period the finest frigates owned in the British Navy were those captured from the French. The frigate was indeed invented in England, the first being the Constant Warwick, launched in 1647, by Peter Pett, who caused the fact of his being the inventor of the frigate to be engraved upon his tomb; but in the improvement of the type, England had long been outstripped by her neighbor across the channel. William James,[1] the well known historian of the British Navy, makes mention of the French forty-gun frigate Hebe which was captured by the British frigate Rainbow in 1782, and records that “this prize did prove a most valuable acquisition to the service, there being few British frigates even of the present day (1847) which, in size and exterior form, are not copied from the Hebe.� As late as 1821 the Arrow, for many years the fastest yacht owned in England, was modelled from the lines of a French lugger, recently wrecked upon the Dorset coast, which proved to be a well known smuggler that had for years eluded the vigilance of H. M. excise cutters, always escaping capture, although often sighted, through her superior speed.

The United States no less than Great Britain was indebted to France for improvements in the models of her ships at this period. During the Revolutionary War, when a treaty was entered into between France and the United States in 1778, a number of French frigates and luggers appeared in American waters. The luggers, rating from one hundred and fifty to two hundred tons and some even higher, belonged to the type used by the privateersmen of Brittany, a scourge upon every sea where the merchant flag of an enemy was to be found. They were the fastest craft afloat in their day. When the French frigates and luggers were dry docked in American ports for cleaning or repairs, their lines were carefully taken off by enterprising young shipwrights and were diligently studied. It was from these vessels that the first American frigates and privateers originated, and among the latter were the famous Baltimore vessels which probably during the War of 1812 first became known as “Baltimore clippers.�

Congress ordered four frigates and three sloops of war to be built in 1778, and almost countless privateers suddenly sprang into existence at ports along the Atlantic seaboard, most of them copied from models of the French vessels. One of the frigates, the Alliance, named to commemorate the alliance between France and the United States, was built at Salisbury, Massachusetts, by William and John Hackett. Her length was 151 feet, breadth 36 feet, and depth of hold 12 feet 6 inches, and she drew when ready for sea 14 feet 8 inches aft and 9 feet forward. She was a favorite with the whole navy by reason of her speed and beauty, and on her first voyage she had the honor of conveying Lafayette to France. At the close of the war she was sold by the Government and became a merchantman famous in the China and India trade. Several of the privateers were built and fitted out at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Newburyport, Massachusetts. Those in which Nathaniel Tracy was interested captured no less than 120 vessels, amounting to 23,360 tons, which with their cargoes were condemned and sold for 3,950,000 specie dollars; and with these prizes were taken 2220 prisoners of war. Many other instances of this nature might, of course, be mentioned, but the important point is the fact that in the latter part of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth, as well, the fastest vessels owned or built in the United States and Great Britain were from French models.[2]

The characteristics of the French model were a beautifully rounded bow, by no means sharp along the water-line, easy sectional lines developing into a full, powerful forebody and midship section, and great dead rise at half floor. The greatest breadth was well forward of amidships and at the water-line, with a slight, gracefully rounded tumble home to the plank-sheer. The after-body was finely moulded, clean, sharp, and long, with a powerful transom and quarters. The time-honored cod’s head and mackerel’s tail: the figureheads and ornamentation of the quarters and stern, were veritable works of art. By comparing the models of the British frigates of that day to be seen in the Naval Museum at Greenwich, and the lines of the American frigates and Baltimore clippers of the same period, with the models still preserved in the Louvre, it is easy to trace a family likeness among them all, the parent being of French origin. The grandparent also might easily be identified, in the Italian galleys of Genoa and Venice, though this is of no importance to our present purpose.

That the American vessels showed a marked superiority in point of speed over British men-of-war and merchant ships during these two wars is the more remarkable from the fact that frigates had been built in England for a century and a half, as we have seen, and, while it is true that two vessels for the British Government were built at Portsmouth previous to the Revolutionary War—the Faulkland, fifty-four guns, in 1690, and the America, fifty guns, in 1740—still, at the outbreak of the Revolution, the shipwrights of America scarcely knew what a frigate was, and much less had thought of building one. It had been the policy of Great Britain to keep her American colonies as much as possible in ignorance concerning naval affairs, doubtless from fear of their growing ambition. They were therefore led to copy the models of French vessels, not only from choice, on account of their excellence, but from necessity as well. Thus it came about that the frigates of Great Britain and the United States were developed from the same source.

A sailing ship is an exceedingly complex, sensitive, and capricious creation—quite as much so as most human beings. Her coquetry and exasperating deviltry have been the delight and despair of seamen’s hearts, at least since the days when the wise, though much-married, Solomon declared that among the things that were too wonderful for him and which he knew not, was “the way of a ship in the midst of the sea.â€� While scientific research has increased since Solomon’s time, it has not kept pace with the elusive character of the ship, for no man is able to tell exactly what a ship will or will not do under given conditions. Some men, of course, know more than others, yet no one has ever lived who could predict with accuracy the result of elements in design, construction, and rig. History abounds in instances of ships built for speed that have turned out dismal failures, and it has occasionally happened that ships built with no especial expectation of speed have proven fliers. It would seem, after ages of experience and evolution, that man should be able at last to build a sailing ship superior in every respect to every other sailing ship, but this is exactly what he cannot and never has been able to accomplish. A true sailor loves a fine ship and all her foibles; he revels in the hope that if he takes care of her and treats her fairly, she will not fail him in the hour of danger, and he is rarely disappointed.

While all this is true in the abstract, yet it is not difficult to account for the performance of ships in retrospect, and in this particular matter, the superior speed of American frigates during the two wars with the mother country, it is quite easy to do so.

In the first place, British men-of-war and merchantmen were at that time built with massive oak frames, knees, and planking, the timber of which had lain at dockyards seasoning in salt water for many years, and was as hard and almost as heavy as iron, while they were fastened with weighty through-and-through copper bolts; so that the ships themselves became rigid, dead structures—sluggish in moderate winds, and in gales and a seaway, wallowing brutes—whereas the American frigates and privateers were built of material barely seasoned in the sun and wind, and were put together as lightly as possible consistent with the strength needed to carry their batteries and to hold on to their canvas in heavy weather. Also, the British ships were heavy aloft—spars, rigging, and blocks—yet their masts and yards were not so long as those of the American ships, nor did they spread as much sail, although their canvas was heavier and had the picturesque “belly to hold the wind,â€� by which, when close-hauled, the wind held the vessel.

Then the British men-of-war were commanded by naval officers who were brave, gallant gentlemen, no doubt, but whose experience at sea was limited to the routine of naval rules formulated by other gentlemen sitting around a table at Whitehall. The infraction of one of these regulations might cost the offender his epaulets and perhaps his life. In this respect the captains of the American Navy enjoyed a great advantage, for at this early period the United States authorities had their attention fully occupied in preserving the government, and had no time to devote to the manufacture of red tape with which to bind the hands and tongues of intelligent seamen. We think, and rightly, too, of Paul Jones, Murray, Barry, Stewart, Dale, Hull, Bainbridge, and others, as heroes of the navy, yet it is well for us sometimes to remember that all of these splendid seamen were brought up and most of them had commanded ships in the merchant marine. They were thus accustomed to self-reliance, and were filled with resource and expedient; they had passed through the rough school of adversity, and their brains and nerves were seasoned by salted winds, the ocean’s brine mingling with their blood.

What wonder then that the American frigates, so built and so commanded, proved superior in point of speed to the British men-of-war? Less wonder still that the American privateers, whose men in the forecastle had in many instances commanded ships, should sweep the seas, until the despairing merchants and ship-owners of Great Britain, a nation whose flag had for a thousand years “braved the battle and the breeze� and which boasted proudly and justly that her home was upon the sea, compelled their government to acknowledge as political equals a people who had proved themselves superior upon the ocean.

So in the struggle for a national existence and rights as a nation, the foundations of the maritime power of the United States were laid. The ship-builders and the seamen of the Revolution and the War of 1812 were the forefathers of the men who built and commanded the American clipper ships.

After the Revolutionary War the merchants of Salem, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia vied with each other in sending their ships upon distant and hazardous voyages. Notwithstanding the natural difficulties of navigating, what to their captains were unknown seas, and the unnatural obstacles invented by man in the form of obstructive laws, the merchant marine of the United States steadily increased not only in bulk, but what was of far more importance, in the high standard of the men and ships engaged in it.

Salem took the lead, with her great merchant, Elias Hasket Derby, who sent his barque Light Horse to St. Petersburg in 1784, and soon after sent the Grand Turk first to the Cape of Good Hope and then to China. In 1789, the Atlantic, commanded by his son, Elias Hasket Derby, Jr., was the first ship to hoist the Stars and Stripes at Calcutta and Bombay, and she was soon followed by the Peggy, another of the Derby ships, which brought the first cargo of Bombay cotton into Massachusetts Bay. Mr. Derby owned a fleet of forty vessels, and upon his death in 1799 left an estate valued at more than $1,000,000, the largest fortune at that time in America, as well as a name honored for integrity throughout the mercantile world. William Gray, another famous Salem merchant, owned in 1807 fifteen ships, seven barques, thirteen brigs, and one schooner, his fleet representing one quarter of the total tonnage of Salem at that time. Then there were Joseph Peabody, Benjamin Pickman, and Jacob Crowninshield, all ship-owners who contributed to the fame of this beautiful New England seaport.

Many of the merchants had been sea-captains in their youth, and it was the captains who really made Salem famous. These men, from the training of the New England schoolroom and meeting-house, went out into the world and gathered there the fruits of centuries of civilization, which they brought home to soften the narrow self-righteousness of their fellow-citizens. In later years these captains carried missionaries to India, China, and Africa, unconscious that they were themselves the real missionaries, whose influence had wrought so desirable a change in New England thought and character. When Nathaniel Hawthorne served in the Custom House at Salem, the friends in whom he most delighted were sea-captains, for it was through their eyes that he looked out upon the great world, and gathered the knowledge of human nature that enabled him to portray in such grim reality the hidden springs of human thought and action. These captains were the sons of gentlemen, and were as a class the best educated men of their time in the United States, for they could do more important and difficult things, and do them well, than the men of any other profession. The old East India Museum at Salem is a monument to their taste and refinement. Nowhere else, perhaps, can be found another little museum as unique and beautiful, of treasures brought home one by one from distant lands and seas by the hands that gave them.

Boston, too, had her ships and seamen. From that port were sent out in 1788 the Columbia, a ship of two hundred and thirteen tons, and the sloop Washington, of ninety tons, commanded by Captains John Kendrick and Robert Gray, who took them round Cape Horn to the northwest coast of America, and then after trading for cargoes of furs, went across to China. The Columbia returned to Boston by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and was the first vessel to carry the United States ensign round the globe. Subsequently she discovered the majestic river that bears her name, and so won the great Northwest for the flag under which she sailed. The Massachusetts, of six hundred tons, the largest merchant vessel built in America up to her time, was launched at Quincy in 1789 and was owned in Boston. She sailed for Canton and was sold there to the Danish East India Company for $65,000.

Ezra Western was the most famous of the old time Boston ship-owners. He began business in 1764, and owned his own shipyard, sail-loft, and extensive rope-walk at Duxbury, Massachusetts, where his vessels were built and equipped. In 1798 his son Ezra became a partner, and this firm continued until the death of the father in 1822. The son Ezra then went on in his own name until 1842, when his sons Gersham, Alden, and Ezra, were taken into the firm, and they continued it until 1858, in all some ninety-three years, the last place of business being Nos. 37 and 38, Commercial Wharf. From the year 1800 to 1846 the Westerns owned twenty-one ships, ranging in tonnage from the Hope, of 880 tons, to the Minerva, of 250 tons; one barque, the Pallas, of 209 tons; thirty brigs, from the Two Friends, of 240 tons, to the Federal Eagle, of 120 tons; thirty-five schooners, from the St. Michael, of 132 tons, to the Star, of 20 tons; and ten sloops, from the Union, of 63 tons, to the Linnet, of 50 tons. The brig Smyrna, one of the Western fleet, built in 1825, of 160 tons, was the first American vessel to bear the flag of the United States into the Black Sea after it was opened to commerce. She arrived at Odessa July 17, 1830. The Westerns were easily the largest ship-owners of their time in the United States, and not only built but loaded their own vessels. Their house-flag was red, white, and blue horizontal stripes.

In the year 1791, Stephen Girard, who was born near Bordeaux in 1750 and had risen from cabin-boy to be captain of his own vessel, built four beautiful ships at Philadelphia for the China and India trade—the Helvetia, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire. These vessels, long the pride of Philadelphia, greatly enriched their owner.

The sloop Enterprise, of eighty tons, built at Albany and commanded by Captain Stewart Dean, was sent from New York to China in 1785. This was the first vessel to make the direct voyage from the United States to Canton. She returned during the following year with her crew of seven men and two boys all in excellent condition. When she warped alongside the wharf at New York, Captain Dean and his crew were in full uniform, and the scene, which was witnessed by an admiring throng, was enlivened by “martial music and the boatswain’s whistle.�

Thomas Cheesman was one of the first ship-builders in New York, and he was succeeded in business, before the end of the eighteenth century, by his son Forman, born in 1763. The latter built the forty-four-gun frigate President, launched in the year 1800 at Corlear’s Hook—by far the largest vessel built in New York up to that time. Previous to this, however, he had built the Briganza and the Draper, each of three hundred tons, and the Ontario, of five hundred tons. Thomas Vail, William Vincent, and Samuel Ackley also built several vessels prior to the year 1800. The ships Eugene, Severn, Manhattan, Sampson, Echo, Hercules, Resource, York, and Oliver Ellsworth were launched from their yards. In 1804 the Oliver Ellsworth, built by Vail & Vincent and commanded by Captain Bennett, made the passage from New York to Liverpool in fourteen days, notwithstanding that she carried away her foretopmast, which was replaced at sea.

All of these shipyards were below Grand Street, on the East River. Samuel Ackley’s yard was at the foot of Pelham Street, and here the Manhattan, of six hundred tons, was built for the China and East India trade. She was regarded as a monster of the deep, and when she sailed upon her first voyage in 1796, it took nearly all the deep water seamen in the port to man her. Henry Eckford opened a shipyard at the foot of Clinton Street in 1802. From this yard he launched, in 1803, John Jacob Astor’s famous ship Beaver, of four hundred and twenty-seven tons. It was on board this ship that Captain Augustus De Peyster made his first voyage as a boy before the mast. Subsequently he commanded her, and upon retiring from the sea in 1845 he became the Governor of the Sailors’ Snug Harbor at Staten Island. The Beaver once made the homeward run from Canton to Bermuda in seventy-five days. Christian Bergh began ship-building in 1804 with the ship North America, of four hundred tons, built for the Atlantic trade, and the brig Gipsey, of three hundred tons, a very sharp vessel for those days. She was dismasted off the Cape of Good Hope upon her first voyage to Batavia, and afterwards foundered in a heavy squall, all hands being lost. The Trident, of three hundred and fifty tons, was built by Adam and Noah Brown in 1805, and the Triton, of three hundred and fifty tons, by Charles Brown during the same year, both for the China and India trade. John Floyd began ship-building in 1807, and launched the Carmelite, a ship of four hundred tons, during that year, but was soon appointed naval constructor at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Until 1794 ships had been built from skeleton models composed of pieces that showed the frames, keel, stem, and stern post, but were of little use in giving an accurate idea of the form of a vessel, while it required much time and labor to transfer the lines of the model to the mould loft. In this year, however, Orlando Merrill, a young ship-builder of Newburyport, at that time thirty-one years old, invented the water-line model, which was composed of lifts joined together, originally by dowels and later by screws. These could be taken apart and the sheer, body, and half-breadth plans easily transferred to paper, from which the working plans were laid down in the mould loft. This ingenious though simple invention, for which, by the way, Mr. Merrill never received any pecuniary reward, revolutionized the science of ship-building. The original model made by him in 1794 was presented to the New York Historical Society in 1853. Mr. Merrill died in 1855 at the age of ninety-two.

CHAPTER II
BRITISH SHIPPING AFTER 1815—THE EAST INDIA COMPANY

GREAT BRITAIN and the United States signed a treaty of peace and good-will at Ghent in 1814. During the following year the wars of England and France ended on the field of Waterloo. And so at last the battle flags were furled. The long-continued wars of England had, through neglect, reduced her merchant marine to a low standard of efficiency, and both men and ships were in a deplorable condition. There was no government supervision over British merchant shipping except taxation, the only check, and that but partially effective, being the Underwriters at Lloyd’s. Unscrupulous ship-owners might and often did send rotten, unseaworthy vessels to sea, poorly provisioned, short of gear and stores, with captains, mates, and crews picked up from low taverns along the docks. These vessels were fully covered by insurance at high rates of premium, with the hope, frequently realized, that they would never be heard from again.

The “skippers,� “maties,� and “jackies� alike belonged to the lowest stratum of British social classification, which, according to the chronicles of those days, was pretty low. They were coarse, vulgar, ignorant men, full of lurid oaths; their persons emitted an unpleasant odor of cheap rum and stale tobacco; they had a jargon of their own and were so illiterate as to be unable to speak or write their own language with any degree of correctness. In a certain sense the captains were good sailors, but their knowledge and ambition were limited to dead reckoning, the tar bucket and marlinspike, a wife in every port, and plenty of rum and tobacco with no desire or ability to master the higher branches of navigation and seamanship. Mariners that a landsman delights to refer to as “real old salts,� of the Captain Cuttle and Jack Bunsby species, are amusing enough, perhaps, in the hands of a skilful novelist, but not at all the class of men that one would willingly select to assist in carrying forward the commerce of a great maritime nation.

Then the stupid and obsolete Tonnage Laws encouraged and almost compelled an undesirable type of vessels, narrow, deep, flat-sided, and full-bottomed—bad vessels in a seaway, slow, and often requiring a considerable quantity of ballast, even when loaded, to keep them from rolling over.

It is, of course, always hazardous to deal in generalities, but I think that this may be accepted as a fair description of the merchant marine of Great Britain up to 1834, when the Underwriters at Lloyd’s and the better class of ship-owners founded Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, to provide for the proper survey and classification of the merchant ships of Great Britain. This first important step in a much needed reform was followed in 1837 by the appointment of a committee by Parliament to investigate the general condition of shipping engaged in foreign trade. The committee reported as follows:

“The American ships frequenting the ports of England are stated by several witnesses to be superior to those of a similar class amongst the ships of Great Britain, the commanders and officers being generally considered to be more competent as seamen and navigators, and more uniformly persons of education, than the commanders and officers of British ships of a similar size and class trading from England to America, while the seamen of the United States are considered to be more carefully selected, and more efficient. American ships sailing from Liverpool to New York have a preference over English vessels sailing to the same port, both as to freight and the rate of insurance; and, the higher wages being given, their whole equipment is maintained in a higher state of perfection, so that fewer losses occur; and as the American shipping having increased of late years in the proportion to 12¾% per annum, while the British shipping have increased within the same period only 1½% per annum, the constantly increasing demand for seamen by the rapidly growing maritime commerce of the whole world, the numbers cut off by shipwrecks, and the temptations offered by the superior wages of American vessels, cause a large number of British seamen every year to leave the service of their own country, and to embark in that of the United States; and these comprising chiefly the most skilful and competent of our mariners, produce the double effect of improving the efficiency of the American crews, and in the same ratio diminishing the efficiency of the British merchant service.�

In 1843 a circular was issued from the Foreign Office to all British consuls requesting information on the conduct and character of British shipmasters, especially with regard to the “incompetence of British shipmasters to manage their vessels and crews, whether arising from deficiency of knowledge in practical navigation and seamanship, or of moral character, particularly want of sobriety.� The consular reports revealed a startling condition of affairs, requiring immediate attention, and led to the establishment in 1847, of the Marine Department of the Board of Trade, with authority to supervise maritime affairs. From such unpromising material the formation was begun of the greatest merchant marine that has ever existed.

Meanwhile, one of the most important branches of British commerce, the East India trade, had been following an independent career, for the ships of the East India Company, although engaged in commercial pursuits, were under the direct patronage of the government, and cannot be regarded as forming part of the merchant marine of Great Britain. Yet as this Company had an important bearing upon the mercantile affairs of the nation, I propose to review as briefly as possible some of its remarkable exploits.

“The United Company of Merchant Venturers of England trading to the East Indies� was familiarly known as the “John Company,� and among those endowed with a larger bump of reverence, as the “Honorable John Company�; but by whatever name it may be called, this was the most gigantic commercial monopoly the world has ever known, since the days when the merchants of Tyre claimed the exclusive right to send their ships across certain waters known by common consent as Tyrian Seas.

The East India Company was founded in the year 1600, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The subscribed capital of £72,000 was expended on the first voyage in five vessels with their cargoes. This fleet consisted of the Dragon, of 600 tons, her commander receiving the title of Admiral of the squadron; the Hector, 300 tons, with a Vice-Admiral in command; two vessels of 200 tons each; and the Guest, a store ship of 130 tons. Four hundred and eighty men were employed in the expedition, including twenty merchants as supercargoes. The vessels were all heavily armed and were provided with small arms and an abundance of ammunition. They cost, with their equipment, £45,000, and their cargoes £27,000.

Friendly relations were formed with the King of Achin, in Sumatra, and a station, known in those days and long afterward as a “factory,� was established at Bantam, in Java. The fleet returned to England richly laden with silks and spices in 1603. In 1609 the Trades Increase, of 1209 tons, the largest ship launched in England up to that time, was built, but she was wrecked and became a total loss on her first voyage. Sir Henry Middleton, her commander, died soon after. This was an unfortunate expedition and resulted in heavy losses to the Company, but in 1611 the Globe cleared 218%, and in the following year the Globe, Thomas, and Hector turned over profits amounting to 340% upon the capital invested. Other successful voyages followed, so that in 1617 the stock of the Company reached a premium of 203%.

The East India Company had its troubles, to be sure, which were many and great, yet it increased in power, wealth, and strength, until at the close of the eighteenth century it had become possessed of a large portion of the continent of India, maintaining its own armies, forts, palaces, Courts of Directors, Boards of Council, Governors, and Typeans.[3] Eventually, this Company became the ruler of more than one hundred million human beings, not naked savages, but civilized men and women, many of whose ancestors had been learned scholars and merchant princes long prior to the invasion of Britain by the Roman, Dane, and Saxon.

It is not, however, with the political affairs of this Company that I wish to deal, but rather with the ships and the men who navigated them. The princely emoluments known as “indulgences� in which the captains and officers of these ships participated, naturally attracted the attention of parents and guardians, so that younger sons, otherwise destined for a life of ill-requited repose in the church, the Army, or the Navy, found lucrative service with the East India Company. These perquisites, which were handed out by the Honorable Court of

East Indiamen, 1720

Directors, were no doubt intended to be of pleasing variety and magnitude. The Company adhered strictly to promotion by seniority as vacancies occurred, from ship to ship when necessary. Captains were appointed to their ships before launching, in order that they might superintend their equipment and get them ready for sea. Midshipmen were appointed by the Court of Directors, and no youth of less than thirteen or over eighteen years was eligible. Second mates were required to be at least twenty-two, chief mates twenty-three, and commanders twenty-five years of age.

Captains were entitled to fifty-six and one half tons of space on board the ships commanded by them, which they might use at their discretion, either to collect the freight or to carry cargo on their own account, credit being furnished by the company for the latter purpose at the usual interest. The rate of freight ranged from £35 to £40 per ton, though in 1796 the Admiral Gardner, a ship of 813 tons, commanded by John Woolmore, Esq., was chartered for “six voyages certain� from London to India and return, at £50 for every ton of cargo carried. Even at the lowest rate of £35 per ton, the voyage out and home of about eighteen months yielded a captain some £3955, and if he carried goods on his own account, as was usually the case, he realized a much larger sum. Captains were also allowed primage, which was a percentage upon the total gross freight earned by the ship, and the passage money for passengers carried, except the Company’s troops, less the cost of living. Considering that the passage money to or from India or China was for a subaltern £95, and for a general officer £234, to say nothing of directors and governors and their families, and that these ships usually carried from twenty to thirty passengers, we may conclude that this also was a considerable source of revenue.

Then captains were permitted to own the dunnage used for the protection of homeward cargoes, which they supplied in the form of stone and chinaware, canes, bamboos, rattans, sapan-wood, horns, nankins, etc. All of these goods might in those days be bought at very low prices in India and China, and under the monopoly of the East India Company, they sold at very high prices in London. Most of this “dunnage,� however, came to the captains in the form of presents, known in the fragrant language of the Far East as “cumshaws,� from admiring Indian and Chinese merchants.

Naturally all of the cargoes were well dunnaged, so much so, indeed, as finally to attract the attention of the benevolent Court of Directors, who deemed it expedient to restrain the zeal of their captains in this direction by issuing an order that “as dunnage has been brought home in the Company’s ships far beyond what is necessary for the protection of the cargo and stores, occupying tonnage to the exclusion of goods, or cumbering the ship, the court have resolved that unless what is brought home of those articles appears absolutely and bona fide necessary for and used as dunnage, the exceeding of such requisite quantity shall be charged against the tonnage of the commanders and officers.â€� This dunnage business had been progressing favorably for about two centuries when this mandate was issued, and had enriched many a deserving mariner. It was estimated that an Indiaman’s captain received in one way or another from £6000 to £10,000 per annum, and there is a record of one ship that made what was known as a double voyage—that is, from London to India, China, and return—a twenty-two months’ cruise—whose commander made profits amounting to the tidy sum of £30,000.

The mates and petty officers were also well provided for, having forty and one half tons of space allotted among them to do with as they pleased, and all hands were supplied with wines, spirits, and beer in quantities which if stated might seem like an attempt to impose upon the reader’s credulity.

A more showy if less substantial honor was conferred by the distinctive dress of the company’s servants. The captains were arrayed in a picturesque uniform consisting of a blue coat with black velvet lapels, cuffs and collar, bright gold embroidery, and yellow gilt buttons engraved with the Company’s crest, waistcoat and breeches of deep buff, black stock, or neck-cloth, cocked hat and side-arms. The chief, second, third, and fourth officers wore uniforms of a similar though less gorgeous character, and all were particularly requested “not on any account to appear in boots, black breeches, and stockings� and “to appear in full dress when attending the Court of Directors.�

The charter of the East India Company provided that its ships should fly the long coach-whip pennant of the Royal Navy. During the last quarter of the eighteenth and first part of the nineteenth centuries, the ships were built, rigged, equipped, armed, manned, and handled like the frigates of the Royal Navy, though they were beautifully and luxuriously fitted for passengers, many of whom were personages of high social and official rank. They differed, however, from the frigates in one important particular. Whereas, the navy constructors, as we have seen, profited by the models of the French frigates, the builders of the Indiamen kept to the full-bodied, kettle-bottomed model, in order that these ships might carry large cargoes. They were of quite as bad a type as the ships of the more humble merchant marine. I have before me the particulars of one of the East India Company’s ships that carried four hundred and nineteen tons of general cargo, and required eighty tons of iron kentledge to keep her on her legs. They were nevertheless grand, stately-looking ships, and were well cared for.

The crews were divided into the usual two watches, but the officers had three watches, four hours on and eight hours off. The watches were divided into messes of eight men each, who had a space allotted to them between the guns in the between-decks. Here their hammocks were slung and their chests, mess-kits, copper pots, kettles, and tin pannikins were stowed, clean and bright, under the inspection of the commander and the surgeon, who were assisted in their duties by wearing white gloves with which to test the appearance of cleanliness. The crews slept in hammocks which were stowed in nettings at seven bells in the morning watch, to the pipe of the boatswain’s whistle. The decks were washed and holystoned in the morning watch, and at eight bells all hands breakfasted. On Wednesdays and Saturdays, the between-decks were turned out, washed, and holystoned. On Sunday mornings the crew was mustered and inspected by the chief officer, and then assembled for Divine service, which was read by the commander, as the Court of Directors required the captains “to keep up the worship of Almighty God, under a penalty of two guineas for every omission not satisfactorily accounted for in the log-book.�

The crews were drilled at the guns and with cutlass, musket, and boarding-pikes, and other small arms, Courts-martial were held on board and the rawhide cat-o’-nine-tails was freely used by the boatswain upon the naked backs and shoulders of triced-up seamen—one, two, three dozen, perhaps, with a bucket of salt water to rinse off the blood. This was not so brutal a form of punishment as may perhaps appear to landsmen, and was probably the best method of enforcing proper discipline among the reckless men who for the most part formed the crews of ships at that period.

These vessels carried large crews, whose work was easy and who were well looked after and provided for. They had plenty of the best food and quite as much rum as was good for them. In the dog-watches they were allowed and even encouraged to enjoy themselves in the manner known on board ship as “skylarking.� Saturdays they had to themselves to wash and mend their clothes, and in the dog-watches of that day they were given an extra allowance of grog, with which to drink long life and happiness to sweethearts and wives, with music, dance, and song. Seamen who had served eight years in the Company’s ships were entitled to liberal pensions, as were also the wives and children of those who had been killed in the service of the Company, or who had been so maimed or wounded as to be unable to perform further service. There can be no question that the directors of the East India Company took good care of those who served them faithfully.

The East Indiamen were always fine, strong ships, built of oak, elm, and teak, copper-fastened throughout, their cost being £40 per ton ready for sea; but they were very slow, and their passages were reckoned not by days but by months. Every evening, no matter how fine the weather, royals and all light sails were taken in and stowed, and the royal yards sent on deck. If the weather looked at all as if it might become threatening during the night, the topgallantsails and mainsail were stowed and a single reef put in the topsails. Safety and comfort were the watchwords, with no desire or effort for speed. No one ever knew how fast these vessels really could sail, as they never had any one on board who tried to get the best speed out of them, but without doubt their passages might have been considerably shortened with even a moderate amount of vigilance and energy. All we know is, how slow they were. Yet these ships were fought through many a desperate battle upon the sea, with foreign men of war, privateers, and other foes, and the skill and valor of their captains, officers, and

An East Indiaman, 1788

crews shed a new lustre upon the ensign under which they sailed. Indeed, the maritime records of the East India Company read more like a naval history than the annals of ships engaged in commercial pursuits.

In some respects these Indiamen were remarkable ships, and they should, like men, be judged by the standards of the times in which they existed. They were owned by a company which for more than two centuries held a monopoly of the British China and East India trade without the spur of competition urging them to perfect their vessels and to exact vigorous service from the officers and crews who sailed them. Under such a system there could be no marked progress in naval science. It would, of course, be an exaggeration to say that there had been no improvement in British shipping from the reign of Queen Elizabeth to the Victorian era, but it was so gradual as to be perceptible only when measured by centuries. Thus we speak of the ships of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, and upon examination are surprised to find how few and slight were the improvements made during these three hundred years in the design and construction of hulls or in spars, rigging, and sails. The only striking improvement was a modification of the really beautiful ornamentation which embellished and at the same time lumbered up the lofty hulls of the earlier ships.

Some of the Indiamen were built in Wigram’s famous yard at Blackwall on the Thames, which was in existence for more than two centuries. Indeed, some of the first ships owned by the East India Company, the Dragon, Susannah, and Merchants’ Hope were launched there. During the reigns of Elizabeth, James, Charles I., Charles II., and the Georges, this yard turned out many of the ships owned in the Royal Navy, and through all these years it had in time of need been a faithful standby of the British Government. Some of the ships of the Company were, however, built in other yards and in their own building establishment at Bombay.

During the years 1819 and 1820 the Company sent to their different stations in Bengal, Madras, Bombay, China, Ceylon, and Penang, twenty-three of their own ships aggregating 26,200 tons, besides twenty-one chartered vessels measuring 10,948 tons. Among the Company’s ships were the Canning, Duke of York, Kellie Castle, Lady Melville, Thomas Coutts, and Waterloo, built by Wigram, and all from 1325 to 1350 tons, each mounting 20 guns with a crew of 130 men. The Buckinghamshire, Earl of Balcarras, Herefordshire, Thomas Granville, Minerva, and Charles Grant, all from 923 to 1417 tons, 26 guns, and 130 men with the exception of the Minerva and Thomas Granville which mounted the same number of guns but had 115 and 107 men, respectively, were built by the Company at Bombay. The Asia, Dorsetshire, Duneira, Marquis of Wellington, Prince Regent, Princess Amelia, and Windsor, which were all over 1000 tons and mounted 26 guns with crews of from 115 to 130 each, were built in the Barnard yard, also on the Thames. The London, Lowther Castle, Marquis of Camden, and Perseverance, all from 1329 to 1408 tons, 26 guns, and 130 men each, were built in the Pitcher yard at Northfleet in Kent. The Earl of Balcarras, of 1417 tons, built in 1815 at Bombay, was the largest ship owned by the Company. She was built of India teak, copper-fastened throughout, and mounted batteries on two decks. Her crew of 133 men was made up as follows: Commander, 6 mates, 2 surgeons, 6 midshipmen, purser, gunner, carpenter, master-at-arms, armour, butcher, baker, poulterer, caulker, cooper, 2 stewards, 2 cooks, 8 boatswains, gunner’s, carpenter’s, caulker’s, and cooper’s mates, 6 quartermasters, sailmaker, 7 servants for the commander and officers, and 78 seamen before the mast.

These facts illustrate not only the manner in which the ships of the East India Company were officered and manned, but also the extravagant scale upon which the affairs of the Company were administered. Of course, a gross monopoly like this, legalized though it was by Acts of Parliament, could not continue indefinitely among a free and intelligent people. For many years mutterings of discontent, gathering in force and volume, had been heard from all parts of Great Britain, indicating the disapproval of the people concerning the methods of the Company. At last, in 1832, these mutterings burst into a storm of indignation from the people through their representatives in Parliament, which swept the frigates of the Honorable John Company off the face of the deep; for in that year commerce to the Orient was thrown open to all British ships, and knowing their utter inability to compete successfully with free and intelligent personal energy, the East India Company condemned or sold their entire fleet. Sixteen ships were broken up for their massive copper fastenings and other valuable material, while forty-six were sold, and no finer tribute can be offered to the excellent construction of these vessels than the figures which they realized at what may justly be called a forced sale.

Naturally these ships were not all sold at the some moment, as some of them were on their way to China and India when the crash came; in fact, it required about three years to close them all out; still, it was well known that the Court of Directors had decreed that they must all be sold, and this gave bargain hunters a chance to practise their wiles. At first two or three of the ships were put up at public auction; the bids were few and meagre, indicating an assumed and perhaps preconcerted apathy. Negotiations of a less public nature ensued, which resulted as follows: The Buckinghamshire, of 1369 tons, then eighteen years old, was sold to Thacker & Mangels for £10,550. The Canning, 1326 tons, seventeen years old, sold for breaking up to Joseph Somes at £5750. The Minerva, 976 tons, eighteen years old, ready for sea, to Henry Templer, at £11,800; this ship, after thirty-seven years of service in the India trade was wrecked off the Cape of Good Hope in 1850. The Earl of Balcarras, 1417 tons, nineteen years old, to Thomas A. Shuter for £15,700; this ship after fifty-two years’ service, became a receiving hulk on the west coast of Africa. The Bombay, 1246 tons, twenty-two years old, sold to Duncan Dunbar for £11,000, was wrecked after fifty-nine years of service. The Lowther Castle, 1408 tons, nineteen years old, went to Joseph Somes for £13,950. The Waterloo, 1325 tons, eighteen years old, was sold for breaking up at £7200. The Thames, 1360 tons, thirteen years old, went to James Chrystall at £10,700. The remaining ships of the fleet brought equally good prices. Thus ended the maritime exploits of the “United Company of Merchant Venturers of England trading to the East Indies�; although its influence upon the merchant marine of Great Britain continued for many years.

With the opening of the China and India trade to all British ships, there came the long-wished for competition—one of the hinges upon which commerce swings—and a number of British ship-owners, hardly known before, now came into prominence. Among them were Green, Wigram, Dunbar, and Somes, of London, and the Smiths, of Newcastle. So strongly was the example of the East India Company impressed upon their minds that they still continued to construct frigate-built ships, though with some slight effort toward economy and speed. Many of the former captains, officers, and seamen of the East India Company sailed for the private firms, and so the personnel of the British merchant marine was much benefited. The private ships, of course, were not permitted to fly the naval pennant, but in other respects the service remained pretty nearly the same. Much of the wasteful extravagance was naturally eliminated, and the “indulgencesâ€� were substantially reduced, but the time-honored practice of “making snug for the nightâ€� was too ancient and comfortable a custom to be very speedily abolished.

Joseph Somes, one of the promoters of Lloyd’s Register, bought a number of the Company’s old ships, as we have seen, and in addition he built the Maria Somes, Princess Royal, Sir George Seymour, and Castle Eden. Thomas and William Smith, of Newcastle, were an old ship-building firm, who had in 1808, at their yard in St. Peter’s, constructed the frigate Bucephalus, 970 tons, 52 guns, for the Royal Navy, while in later years they built many merchant vessels. The finest of their new ships were the Marlborough and the Blenheim, of 1350 tons each, built under special government survey and granted certificates as frigates equipped for naval service. This firm also built the Gloriana, 1057 tons, Hotspur, 1142 tons, and St. Lawrence, 1049 tons, all of the frigate type, though employed as merchantmen.

Duncan Dunbar owned a number of fine ships and eventually became the largest ship-owner of his time in Great Britain. Many of his vessels were built in India. The Marion, 684 tons, built in Calcutta in 1834, was in active service until 1877, when she was wrecked on the Newfoundland coast. The David Malcolm was built in 1839, and the Cressy, 720 tons, and the Hyderabad, 804 tons, in 1843, at Sunderland.

Robert Wigram and Richard Green, at one time partners, built and owned their own ships, known as the “Blackwall frigates.� In 1834-35, they brought out the Malabar, Monarch, and Windsor Castle, and subsequently the Carnatic, Prince of Wales, Agamemnon, Alfred, and others, from 1200 to 1400 tons each. As late as 1849 the Alfred, of

The “Marlborough� and “Blenheim�

only 1291 tons, commanded by Captain Henning, carried a crew of eighty men, which included five mates, three boatswains, two carpenters, four quartermasters, a number of stewards and cooks, with sixty men before the mast.

These were the last of the frigate-built ships; for when the Navigation Laws were repealed in 1849, and the carrying trade of Great Britain and her colonies was thrown open to all nations, the British merchants and ship-builders found it necessary to construct a very different type of vessel in order to compete in the ocean carrying trade.

Farewell, then, to the gallant old Indiaman, with her hammock nettings, bunt jiggers, rolling tackles, jeers, gammon lashings, bentinck shrouds, and cat harpings, dear to sailors’ hearts; and good-bye to her sailors, too, sons of the men who fought in the victorious fleets of Nelson, fellows who drank gunpowder in their rum before stripping to battle with the enemy, who could stand triced up by the thumbs and take their four-and-twenty of rawhide on the naked back without wetting an eyelash. And farewell to the merry dance and song, the extra dram of grog in the dog-watch, and jovial toasts to sweethearts and wives, as the sun sinks beneath the blue wave and the cool evening trade wind fills the sails.

CHAPTER III
THE NORTH ATLANTIC PACKET SHIPS, 1815-1850

WHILE progress in ship-building in the United States had been constant up to the War of 1812, American ship-owners and builders had been much hampered by the interference of both Great Britain and France, but in 1815, when the smoke of battle had cleared away and the rights of American ships and seamen had been established upon the sea, ship-building was taken up with renewed energy.

The famous New York-Liverpool packets came out in 1816. The pioneer, Black Ball Line, established by Isaac Wright, Francis and Jeremiah Thompson, Benjamin Marshall, and others, led the van for years. The original ships belonging to this line were the Amity, Courier, Pacific, and James Monroe, of about 400 tons; they were followed by the New York, Eagle, Orbit, Nestor, James Cropper, William Thompson, Albion, Canada, Britannia, and Columbia, vessels of from 300 to 500 tons register. For the first ten years the passages of the fleet averaged 23 days outward and 40 days to the westward. The fastest outward passage was made by the Canada in 15 days, 18 hours, and her total averages—19 days outward and 36 days homeward—were the best of that period.

These ships were all flush deck, with a caboose or galley and the housed-over long-boat between the fore-and main-masts. The long-boat, which was, of course, securely lashed, carried the live stock,—pens for sheep and pigs in the bottom, ducks and geese on a deck laid across the gunwales, and on top of all, hens and chickens. The cow-house was lashed over the main hatch, and there were also other small hatch-houses and a companion aft leading to the comfortable, well-appointed cabins, which were lighted by deck skylights, candles, and whale-oil lamps. The steerage passengers lived in the between-decks amidships, and the crew’s forecastle was in the fore-peak. The stores, spare sails, gear, etc., were kept in the lazarette abaft the cabins, with a small hatch leading to the main-deck. The hulls were painted black from the water-line up, with bright scraped bends, which were varnished, and the inner side of the bulwarks, rails, hatch-houses, and boats were painted green. It was said that some of the early Black Ball captains had commanded privateers during the War of 1812. At all events, these little ships, with their full-bodied, able hulls, and their stout spars, sails, and rigging, were driven outward and homeward across the Atlantic, through the fogs and ice of summer and the snow, sleet, and gales of winter, for all the speed that was in them. They were in their day the only regular means of communication between the United States and Europe. Their captains were the finest men whose services money could secure, and to their care were entrusted the lives of eminent men and women, government despatches, the mails and specie. Rain or shine, blow high, blow low, one of the Black Ball liners sailed from New York for Liverpool on the first and sixteenth of each month, and for many years these were the European mail days throughout the United States.

In 1821, Thomas Cope of Philadelphia started his line of packets between that port and Liverpool with the ships Lancaster, of 290 tons, and Tuscarora, of 379 tons, which were soon followed by larger vessels, among them some of the finest ships on the Atlantic.

The Red Star Line of Liverpool packets from New York was also established in 1821 with the Panther, Meteor, Hercules, and second Manhattan, and soon after, the Swallow Tail Line of Grinnell, Minturn & Co., came into existence with the Napoleon, Silas Richards, George, and York. Grinnell, Minturn & Co.’s London Line was established in 1823 with the Brighton, Columbia, Cortes, and Corinthian, of less than 500 tons each, and during this year John Griswold’s London Line was also started with the Sovereign, President, Cambria, Hudson, and the second Ontario.

The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 gave a great impetus to commerce, causing New York to become the eastern gateway of the United States, and from that date to 1850 may be counted the glorious years of the Atlantic packet ships.

The Dramatic Line to Liverpool was started in 1836 with the Siddons, Shakespeare, Garrick, and Roscius, under the management of E. K. Collins. These vessels did not much exceed 700 tons, and when, in 1837, Isaac Webb & Co. built the Sheridan,

The “England�

of 895 tons for this line, she was regarded as too large for a Liverpool packet, and after a few voyages was placed in the China trade.

The first Havre line of packets was founded by Francis Depaw in 1822 with the Stephania, Montana, Henry IV., Helen Mar, Louis Philippe, and Silvia de Grasse. A second line was formed in 1827 with the Baltimore, Charles Carroll, Erie, France, Oneida, Mercury, Utica, Rhone, William Tell, and in 1832 a third line, with the Formosa, Galia, Albany, Duchesse d’Orléans, Isaac Bell, Queen Mab, and Don Quixote.

In 1831 the New Orleans Line from New York was formed with the Nashville, Huntsville, Louisville, Creole, and Natchez. These were the first packet ships built with full poop-decks, then quite a new feature in ship-building. Gradually the flush deck gave place to house-and poop-deck cabins, then to the topgallant, forecastle, and house from the foremast to the main hatch. The fashion of painting also changed, and most if not all the packets carried painted ports, while the inside green was replaced by white or light shades of other colors.

After the Black Ball Line passed into the hands of Captain Charles H. Marshall in 1836, the Columbus, Oxford, Cambridge, New York, England, Yorkshire, Fidelia, Isaac Wright, Isaac Webb, the third Manhattan, Montezuma, Alexander Marshall, Great Western, and Harvest Queen were gradually added to the fleet. To meet the competition of the Black Ball Line, the Swallow Tail Line built the Washington, Independence, Pennsylvania, Roscoe, Patrick Henry, Ashburton, Hottinger, Queen of the West, Liverpool, New World, and Cornelius Grinnell.

The packet ships slowly increased in tonnage, but did not much exceed 1000 tons until 1846 when the New World, of 1404 tons, was built by Donald McKay, followed by the Guy Mannering, of 1419 tons, and the Albert Gallatin, of 1435 tons, built by William H. Webb in 1849, these three vessels being the largest merchant ships afloat at that period.

The Black Ball ships carried a large painted black ball below the close-reef band in their foretopsails, while the Dramatic Line, not to be outdone, carried a black X which extended diagonally, almost from clew to earring, across their foretopsails. All packet ships carried a white light at the bowsprit cap from sunset to sunrise, but side-lights did not come into use until some years later. These ships also carried a flare-up which was kept in the companion ready for immediate use.

Throughout the various changes of management the Black Ball liners carried a crimson swallowtail flag with a black ball in the centre; the Dramatic liners, blue above white with a white L in blue and a black L in white for the Liverpool ships, and a red swallowtail with white ball and black L in the centre for the New Orleans ships; the Union Line to Havre, a white field with black U in the centre; John Griswold’s London Line, red swallowtail with black X in centre; the Swallowtail Line, red before white, swallowtail for the London ships, and blue before white, swallowtail for the Liverpool ships; Robert Kermit’s Liverpool Line, blue swallowtail with red star in the centre; Spofford & Tillotson’s Liverpool Line, yellow field, blue cross with white S. T. in the centre. These flags disappeared from the sea many years ago.

The packet captain, no matter what his age might be, was usually spoken of as “the old man,� a title frequently embellished by the crew with vigorous epithets, which seemed to them appropriate, but which must now, I fear, be left to the imagination of the reader. Few if any Americans sailed regularly before the mast on board of these vessels, the crews being largely composed of the most abandoned scoundrels out of British and continental jails. I shall have something further to say concerning these interesting beings in connection with their exploits on board of the California clipper ships.

Among the famous New York packet captains, and there were many of them, were Charles H. Marshall, of the South America, James Cropper, and Britannia; N. B. Palmer, of the Siddons, Garrick, Huntsville, and Hibernia, and his brother, Alexander, later of the Garrick; F. A. De Peyster, of the Columbus and Ontario; John Collins, an uncle of E. K. Collins, of the Shakespeare; John Eldridge, of the Liverpool, and his brother Asa, of the Roscius, and Oliver, another brother, who was mate with Captain John; Ezra Nye, of the Independence and Henry Clay; William Skiddy, an older brother of Francis Skiddy, of the New World; Benjamin Trask, of the Virginia, Jamestown, and Saratoga; Joseph Delano, of the Columbia and Patrick Henry; John Britton, of the Constitution, later United States consul at Southampton; Ira Bursley, of the Hottinger; Philip Woodhouse, of the Queen of the West; James A. Wooton, of the Havre; William H. Allen, of the Virginia, Waterloo, West Point, and Constellation; E. E. Morgan, of the Hudson and Victoria; John Johnston, of the Rhone and Isaac Bell; and of a later period, Robert C. Cutting, of the Adelaide; and Samuel Samuels, of the Dreadnought.

It required an unusual combination of qualities to command these Western Ocean packet ships successfully. Above all things it was necessary that the captains should be thorough seamen and navigators; also that they should be men of robust health and great physical endurance, as their duties often kept them on deck for days and nights together in storm, cold, and fog. Then there were frequently desperate characters among the crew and steerage passengers, who required to be handled with moral courage and physical force, while the cabin passengers were usually gentlemen and gentlewomen of good breeding, accustomed to courtesy and politeness, which they expected to find in the captains with whom they sailed. These requirements evolved a remarkable type of men, hearty, bluff, and jovial, without coarseness, who would never be mistaken for anything but gentlemen.

The packet mates, having no social duties on shipboard to distract their attention, were able to devote their time and energies to improving the morals and manners of the crew, and it was on board the Black Ball liners that “belaying pin soup� and “handspike hash,� so stimulating to honest toil, were first introduced for the benefit of mutinous or slothful mariners.

Plenty of sail was carried by the packet ships

The “Montezuma�

of this period—square lower, topmast and topgallant studding sails, skysails set on sliding gunter masts which were struck in the winter time, with three reefs in the topsails and single reefs in the topgallantsails. The racing was fast and furious. In 1837 a match was made between the Black Ball liner Columbus, 597 tons, Captain De Peyster, and the Sheridan, Captain Russell, of the Dramatic Line, then on her first voyage, for a stake of $10,000 a side, from New York to Liverpool, play or pay. The Sheridan, though only 895 tons, carried a crew of forty picked men before the mast, with regular pay of $25 a month, and the promise of a bonus of $50 each, provided their ship won the race. The ships sailed together from New York on Thursday, February 2, 1837, and the Columbus won the race in sixteen days, followed two days later by the Sheridan. This is the first ocean match across the Atlantic of which any record has been preserved, though, of course, there had been many informal races long before.

The Isaac Bell, commanded by Captain John Johnston, made three voyages from Havre to New York in less than eighteen days each, one being in the month of January, which is about the hardest month in the twelve for a ship bound to the westward. The Independence, 734 tons, built by Smith & Dimon in 1834, for a number of years when commanded by Captain Ezra Nye, took the President’s message to England, her sailing day being fixed for the 6th of March for that purpose. She more than once made the passage from New York to Liverpool in fourteen days. In November, 1846, the Yorkshire, Captain Bailey, made the passage from Liverpool to New York in sixteen days. This is believed to be the fastest passage ever made from Liverpool to the westward by a packet ship. The Montezuma, 1070 tons, and the Patrick Henry, 997 tons, the Southampton, 1273 tons, built by Westervelt & Mackay, in 1849, also the St. Andrew, Captain William C. Thompson, of Robert Kermit’s Line, all made the passage from New York to Liverpool in fifteen days.

It should, however, be remembered that these packet ships, running regularly across the Atlantic for many years, necessarily at times encountered favorable conditions of wind and weather; whereas, a single ship making the passage occasionally, as did the clipper ships in later years, might not find so favorable a slant in a lifetime. None of the packet ships that made these remarkable passages could average more than twelve knots for twenty-four hours, and the utmost limit of their speed under the most favorable conditions was not more than fourteen knots, if as much. Most of these ships, however, made the passage from New York to Liverpool at one time or another in sixteen days, and there were few that did not at least once make the run in seventeen days. The secret of the speed of these ships was that they were commanded by men who kept them moving night and day, in all sorts of weather, and never let up on their ships or crews from the time they cast off from the wharf at New York until they ran their lines ashore on the pier-head at Liverpool. While it is true that the New York packet ships were by no means clippers, still, their models and rig were admirably adapted to the work which they had to perform. It was a splendid service and a fine prelude to the clipper ship era.

Of the earlier New York ship-builders, Henry Eckford, who came from Scotland in 1796, when twenty years of age, died in New York in 1832; Christian Bergh, who was born in Wettenburgh, Rhinebeck precinct, in 1763, died in New York in 1843; and Isaac Webb, born in Stamford, Connecticut, in 1794, the son of Wilsey Webb, died in New York in 1840. To the memories of these men, the founders of modern ship-building in the United States, the highest praise is due for their integrity, perseverance, and mechanical skill.

Of the next generation of builders, Stephen Smith, who like Isaac Webb was born in Stamford, formed with John Dimon the firm of Smith & Dimon, and prior to 1843 they had built among other vessels the packet ships Roscoe and Independence, the ship Mary Howland, the North River steamboats Rochester, James Kent, and Oregon, and the Greek frigate Liberator. Their building yard was at the foot of Fourth Street, East River. David Brown and Jacob Bell formed the firm of Brown & Bell, and had a yard at the foot of Stanton Street, a part of which had formerly been the Henry Eckford yard. Prior to 1843, this firm had built the ships Orbit and William Tell in 1821, the Canada, Calhoun, Savannah, Pacific, Washington, Great Britain, John Jay, Britannia, George Canning, Caledonia, Hibernia, and Congress from 1821 to 1831; the Victoria, Europe, Francis Depaw, Silvia de Grasse, Vicksburg, Emerald, Switzerland, Shakespeare, Garrick, Sheridan, Siddons, Roscius, and Cornelia from 1831 to 1841; and the Liverpool, Queen of the West, and Henry Clay in the period from 1841 to 1843, inclusive. Besides these, they built fifteen other ships, seven steamers, eight barques and brigs, thirty-nine steamboats, six ferry-and tow-boats, nineteen sloops and schooners, seven pilot boats, and four yachts.

Upon the death of Isaac Webb in 1840, his son William H. Webb, then only twenty-four years of age, continued the firm of Webb & Allen which built during the next ten years the packet ships Montezuma, Yorkshire, Havre, Fidelia, second Columbia, Sir Robert Peel, Splendid, Bavaria, Isaac Wright, Ivanhoe, Yorktown, London, Guy Mannering, Albert Gallatin, Isaac Webb, and Vanguard. Their yard extended from the foot of Fifth to Seventh Street, East River.

Jacob A. Westervelt, born at Hackensack, New Jersey, in 1800, was the son of a ship-builder. He went to sea before the mast and upon his return served his apprenticeship with Christian Bergh, subsequently becoming a partner in the firm and retiring with an ample fortune in 1837. Mr. Westervelt then made an extensive trip through Europe, and after returning built two ships at Williamsburg. He formed the firm of Westervelt & Mackay and built a number of London and Havre packet ships, among which were the Ocean Queen, West Point, Toronto, Devonshire, and American Eagle. The front door of Mr. Westervelt’s house in East Broadway was ornamented with a beautiful carved stone cap representing the stern of a packet ship. In later

The “Yorkshire�

years, he took his sons Daniel and Aaron into partnership, the firm being known as Westervelt & Co. Jacob A. Westervelt was Mayor of New York in 1854.

George Steers, destined to become famous as the designer of the Adriatic, the Niagara, and the yacht America, was born in Washington, D. C., in the year 1819, and in 1843, after having built a number of fast sail-and row-boats for racing, entered into partnership with William Hathorne, the firm being known as Hathorne & Steers. Up to this time Mr. Steers, though he had shown unusual ability as a mechanic, cannot be said to have done anything predicting his future triumphs. Other firms that were building good vessels at this time were Thomas and William Collier; Perin, Patterson & Stack; Laurence & Folkes, and John Englis, some of whom we shall hear of again.

The merchants of Boston after the War of 1812, built or bought most of their vessels at Medford, Newburyport, Salem, Scituate, and Duxbury, within the State, and at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and other ports where timber was more plentiful. It was not until 1834, when the East Boston Timber Company was incorporated by James Paige, Francis Oliver, and Gideon Barstow, that ship building began to flourish about Boston. Stephen White was the moving spirit in this transaction, as in 1833 he had bought on behalf of himself and associates, eighty thousand feet of land in East Boston, between Border and Liverpool streets, at three cents per foot, for the establishment of a timber yard and dock. Mr. White also purchased Grand Island, in the Niagara River, which was covered with valuable timber. Sawmills were erected on the island, and a supply of the finest quality of ship timber was created, and brought by the Erie Canal to tide-water, thence by coasting vessels to East Boston. This attracted ship-builders from other towns, and eventually made Boston a famous ship-building centre. Stephen White owned the first ship built in East Boston, the Niagara, of 460 tons, appropriately named after the river from which the timber used in her construction had come. She was built in 1834, by Brown, Bates & Delano in their yard at the foot of Central Square, and was launched amid an uproar of guns, fire crackers, shouts, and music, with a bottle of good Medford rum trickling down her port bow.

The first Boston ferry-boats, the East Boston, Essex, and Maverick, were built at East Boston in 1834-35, but nothing further was done in ship-building there until 1839, when Samuel Hall a well-known builder, of Marshfield and Duxbury, removed to East Boston and established a yard at the west end of Maverick Street. Mr. Hall not only contributed to the reputation and welfare of East Boston by building a large number of splendid vessels and providing employment for a great number of men, but he was also active in all municipal affairs. In appreciation of his successful efforts for the introduction of Cochituate water into East Boston in 1851, his fellow-citizens presented him with a thousand-dollar service of plate, consisting of eleven pieces, with the usual inscription, with which most of us are more or less familiar.

The Briggs Brothers, of South Boston, came from an old and celebrated ship-building family of Scituate, their great-grandfather having been a ship-builder of note in colonial times, while their grandfather, James Briggs, was the builder of the famous Columbia, in 1773. After his death the yard was continued by his sons, Henry and Cushing, who built some of the finest ships sailing out of Boston, besides many of the New Bedford and Nantucket whalers, during the first half of the last century. The brothers E. & H. O. Briggs, who established their yard at South Boston in 1848, were the sons of Cushing Briggs, and they possessed the skill in design and thorough knowledge of construction for which the family had long been famous among the merchants and underwriters of Boston.

At Medford, on the Mystic, Thatcher Magoun established his shipyard in 1802, and there built the brig Mt. Etna, of 187 tons, in 1803, followed by other merchant vessels as well as privateers for the War of 1812. The Avon, the most famous of these privateers, was launched in twenty-six days after her keel was laid. In 1822, Mr. Magoun built the Amethyst, Emerald, Sapphire, and Topaz, ships of about 350 tons, for the Boston and Liverpool Packet Company, which ran for a few years between Boston, Charleston, S. C., and Liverpool, and home direct to Boston. One of the novel features of this line was the arrangement as to agents, their office being at the end of India Wharf, but in Liverpool each ship had a separate agent, as it was imagined that four agents would attract so many times the more business. It is evident that the promoters of this line had something to learn concerning Liverpool ship-brokers and their system of working freights, for the enterprise was not successful.

Another Liverpool Line was started in Boston in 1828, and the ships Boston, Lowell, Liverpool, Plymouth, and Trenton of this line were built by Mr. Magoun. He also built between 1822 and 1829, the ships Lucilla, 369 tons, owned by Daniel P. Parker; Brookline, 376 tons, and Courser, 300 tons, owned by Henry Oxnard; and the Margaret Forbes, 398 tons, owned by Bryant & Sturgis, all sailing out of Boston. Other Medford ship-builders were Sprague & James, Isaac Taylor, Hayden & Cudworth, J. O. Curtis, Waterman & Elwell, Samuel Lapham, and Paul Curtis. Their ships were known all over the world as fine, well-built vessels. In 1845 one quarter of all the shipwrights in Massachusetts were employed in Medford, and 9660 tons of shipping were launched from its building yards.

The leading ship-builder at Newburyport was John Currier, Jr., who from 1831 to 1843 built the ships Brenda, Republic, Oberlin, St. Clair, Leonore, and Columbus for the Black Ball Line, and in 1836 the Talbot, Flavio, Navigator, Huntress, Strabo, and Virginia, ranging from 339 to 365 tons, as well as several barques, brigs, and schooners. The firms of George W. Jackman and Currier & Townsend had not been formed at this date.

Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was also noted for her ships and seamen, the principal builders in 1840 being George Raynes, Fernald & Pettigrew, and Toby & Littlefield, while the Shackfords and Salters had been sea-captains for generations. Mr. Raynes was born at York, Maine, in 1799 and in 1835 removed to Portsmouth where he established a shipyard upon the famous Boyd estate, with its fine old trees, lawns, and gardens of vegetables, fruits, and flowers sloping to the clear blue water’s edge. The family residence, erected by Colonel George Boyd in 1767, was an excellent example of colonial architecture. In later days it became known as the Raynes mansion, and for many years was one of the show places of Portsmouth. The original beauty of the grounds was preserved so far as possible, and this was perhaps the most beautiful and picturesque shipyard of modern times.

The most famous clipper-ship builder of his time, Donald McKay, was born at Shelburne, Nova Scotia, in 1810, and was a descendant of that sturdy Highland chieftain, Donald McKay, who died at Tain, County Ross, Scotland, in 1395. At about the age of sixteen, Donald went to New York, where he worked and learnt his trade in the shipyards of Isaac Webb, Brown & Bell, and perhaps others. By his energy and mechanical talents, he soon became a master shipwright, and turned his face toward the Eastern country again. In 1840 he finished the ship Delia Walker, of 427 tons, for John Currier at Newburyport. This vessel was owned by Dennis Condry, who, when visiting his ship from time to time, was impressed by Mr. McKay’s superior mechanical ability and energetic manner of handling his men. In 1841, Mr. McKay became a partner in the firm of Currier & McKay, and the barque Mary Broughton, 323 tons, was built by them during this year, followed in 1842 by the ships Courier, 380 tons, and Ashburton, 449 tons. The firm then dissolved, the models and moulds being equally divided—with a saw.

The little ship Courier was the first vessel designed by Mr. McKay. She was owned by W. Wolfe & A. Foster, Jr., of New York, who employed her in the Rio coffee trade. She proved a wonder for speed, and outsailed everything, big and little, that she fell in with at sea. No one at that time believed that such a vessel could be built outside of New York or Baltimore. She not only made a great deal of money for her owners, but at once brought her designer prominently before the maritime public.

In 1843 the firm of McKay & Pickett was formed, and the New York packet ships St. George, 845 tons, in 1843, and John R. Skiddy, 930 tons, in 1844, were built by them at Newburyport. In this year Enoch Train, a well-known ship-owner and merchant of Boston, engaged in the South American trade and who had already sent the ships Cairo, St. Patrick, and Dorchester to England, decided to put on a regular line of packets between Liverpool and Boston. While crossing the Atlantic on board one of the early Cunarders, for the purpose of establishing his European agencies, it happened that he found himself a fellow-passenger with Dennis Condry, owner of the Delia Walker, the gentleman who had been so much impressed during his visits to Newburyport, by the energy and skill of Donald McKay. Mr. Train and Mr. Condry soon became acquainted and naturally talked a good deal about shipping. Mr. Train was in doubt as to whom he should entrust the building of his ships; he did not like to construct them in New York, yet he felt unwilling to risk failure through employing local talent, however able, for Boston builders were inexperienced in building this class of vessel, while the construction of packet ships had been developed to a high degree of perfection in New York. His doubts were freely expressed, but Mr. Condry had a strong conviction on this subject, and so convincing were his arguments in favor of his young ship-builder friend, that Mr. Train, before landing at Liverpool, had promised that he would see Mr. McKay upon his return to the United States.

The meeting at Newburyport of these two really great men, Enoch Train and Donald McKay, should be memorable in the maritime annals of the United States. It was the swift contact of flint and steel, for within an hour a contract had been signed for building the Joshua Bates, the pioneer ship of Train’s famous Liverpool Line, and Mr. Train was returning to his home in Boston. He visited Newburyport frequently while his ship was building, and whether Mr. McKay, during the four years that had elapsed, had further developed the qualities which Dennis Condry had so admired, as seems probable, or whether Mr. Train’s perceptive faculties were keener than those of his fellow-passenger, it is a fact that on the day when the Joshua Bates was launched and floated safely on the Merrimac River, Mr. Train grasped Donald McKay by the hand and said to him: “You must come to Boston; we need you; if you wish financial assistance to establish a shipyard, let me know the amount and you shall have it.�

So the young ship-builder had on that day launched his last ship at Newburyport. He soon closed the pleasant relations which had existed with his partner, and at the age of thirty-four opened his great shipyard at the foot of Border Street, East Boston. There he built in rapid succession, between 1845 and 1850, the packet ships Washington Irving, Anglo-Saxon, Ocean Monarch, Anglo-American, and Daniel Webster for Train’s Liverpool Line. These ships carried a black T in their foretopsail below the close reef band, and flew the Enoch Train signal, a red field with white diamond. The ships New World and Cornelius Grinnell were built here for Grinnell, Minturn & Co.’s Swallowtail Line; the A. Z., L. Z., and Antarctic for Zerega & Co., New York; the Jenny Lind for Fairbank & Wheeler, Boston; the Parliament, Plymouth Rock, Reindeer, and barque Helicon for George B. Upton, Boston; the Moses Wheeler for Wheeler & King, Boston; and the barque Sultana for Edward Lamb & Co., Boston. These vessels were much admired in New York, London, Liverpool, and other seaports, and established the reputation of Donald McKay as a ship-builder equal to the best.

CHAPTER IV
OPIUM CLIPPERS AND EARLY CLIPPER SHIPS, 1832-1848

THE origin of the word clipper is not quite clear, though it seems to be derived from the verb clip, which in former times meant, among other things, to run or fly swiftly. Dryden uses it to describe the flight of a falcon[4]:

“Some falcon stoops at what her eye designed,
And, with her eagerness the quarry missed,
Straight flies at check, and clips it down the wind.�

The word survived in the New England slang expression “to clip it,� and “going at a good clip,� or “a fast clip,� are familiar expressions there to this day. It therefore seems reasonable to suppose that when vessels of a new model were built, which were intended, in the language of the times, to clip over the waves rather than plough through them, the improved type of craft became known as clippers because of their speed. It is probable that the swift privateers built at Baltimore during the War of 1812 became known as “Baltimore clippers,� and while the first application of the term in a nautical sense is by no means certain, it seems to have had an American origin.

The first clipper constructed in Great Britain was the schooner Scottish Maid, one hundred and fifty tons, built in 1839 by Alexander Hall & Co., of Aberdeen, to compete with the paddle steamers between Aberdeen and London. She proved a very fast vessel, and saw half a century of service before she was wrecked on the coast of England. Three schooners of the same model and tonnage, the Fairy, Rapid, and Monarch, were built by this firm in 1842. These four were the first Aberdeen clippers. The earliest competition between American and British clippers was in the China seas. As early as 1831 three small English schooners, the Jamesina, Lord Amherst, and Sylph, were engaged in the opium trade, which proved exceedingly lucrative. In 1833 the Jamesina sold opium from India to the value of £330,000 at Foo Chow, Amoy, Ningpo, and other ports in China. This business increased and attracted the attention of the American merchants in China. In 1841, the Angola, a schooner of 90 tons, built by Brown & Bell, of New York, for Russell & Co., China, was despatched to Hong-kong. She was followed in 1842 by the schooners Zephyr, 150 tons, built by Samuel Hall at East Boston; Mazeppa, 175 tons, built by Brown & Bell, and Ariel, 100 tons, built by Sprague & James, Medford, and in 1843 by the brig Antelope, 370 tons, built by Samuel Hall at East Boston. These vessels, owned by John M. Forbes and Russell & Co., soon controlled the opium-trade and became known as opium clippers. It was necessary that they should be swift in order to contend with the strong tides and currents on the China coast, and to beat against the monsoons in the China Sea. The Antelope, under the command of Captain Philip Dumaresq, still has the reputation of having been the only square-rigged vessel which could beat through the Formosa Channel against the northeast monsoon. Moreover, these vessels required speed to escape from the heavily manned piratical craft which infested the China seas, and which were formidable vessels, especially in light winds and calms, when they were propelled by long sweeps.

In 1846, Alexander Hall & Co. built the clipper schooner Torrington for Jardine, Matheson & Co., to compete with the American opium clippers in China. This schooner, the first British clipper in the China seas, was followed by the Wanderer, Gazelle, Rose, the brig Lanark, and others, until almost every British and American firm in China owned one or more of these smart vessels. The competition among them was keen, and the American clippers had decidedly the best of it. The last of these famous little vessels were the sister schooners Minna and Brenda, of 300 tons each, built in 1851 by George Raynes at Portsmouth, for John M. Forbes, of Boston, and others, and the schooner Wild Dayrell, 253 tons, built in 1855 by the well-known yacht builders J. White, of Cowes, Isle of Wight, for Dent & Co., China. These opium clippers, all beautifully modelled and equipped with long raking masts and plenty of canvas, like yachts rather than merchant vessels, were heavily armed and carried large crews. They all made a great deal of money for their owners until they were superseded by steamers.

From the earliest times in maritime history it had been the custom to build large vessels of a model suitable for carrying heavy cargoes—“ships of burdenâ€� they were called,—while the vessels designed for speed,—the galley of the Mediterranean, caravel of Portugal and Spain, lugger of France, cutter of England, yacht of Holland, schooner and sloop of America, had been comparatively small. To the latter class belonged the earlier British and American clippers of the nineteenth century. The Baltimore clippers, as we have said, were modelled after the French luggers which visited American ports during the Revolutionary War. They gained a world-wide reputation for speed as privateers during the War of 1812, and later also as African slavers, many of them sailing under the flags of Portugal and Spain. These vessels were brigs, brigantines, fore-and-aft or topsail schooners, and rarely exceeded two hundred tons register.

So far as history records, no one had ever attempted to reproduce the lines of a small, swift vessel in a large one, until in 1832 Isaac McKim, a wealthy merchant of Baltimore, commissioned Kennard and Williamson, of Fell’s Point, Baltimore, to build a ship embodying as far as possible the lines of the famous Baltimore clipper brigs and schooners. This ship was the Ann McKim, named in honor of the owner’s wife, of 493 tons register, a large vessel for those days. She measured: Length 143 feet, breadth 31 feet, depth 14 feet, and drew 17 feet aft and 11 feet forward. She possessed many of the striking features of the Baltimore clippers of that period; namely, great dead-rise at her midship section, long, easy convex water-lines, low freeboard, and raking stem, stern-post and masts, and was really an enlarged clipper schooner rigged as a ship.

The Ann McKim was a remarkably handsome vessel, built as the pet ship of her owner without much regard to cost. Her frames were of live oak, she was copper-fastened throughout and her bottom was sheathed with red copper imported for this purpose. The flush deck was fitted with Spanish mahogany hatch combings, rails, companions, and skylights. She mounted twelve brass guns, and was equipped with brass capstan heads, bells, etc., and carried three skysail yards and royal studding-sails. She proved to be very fast, though of small carrying capacity, and the latter quality together with her elaborate and expensive fittings caused the older merchants to regard her unfavorably; so that for some years they still adhered to their full-bodied ships. The Ann McKim sailed in the China trade for a number of years, and upon the death of Mr. McKim in 1837, she was purchased by Howland & Aspinwall, of New York, and was commanded by Captain Perry. Eventually she was sold at Valparaiso in 1847, and ended her days under the Chilian flag.

Although the Ann McKim was the first clipper ship ever constructed, it cannot be said that she founded the clipper ship era, or even that she directly influenced ship builders, since no other ship was built like her; but she may have suggested the clipper design in vessels of ship rig, and owing to the fact that she fell into the hands of Howland & Aspinwall, she without doubt hastened the opening of that era, as the first really extreme clipper ship, the Rainbow, was owned by that firm.

It is difficult at this distance of time to determine exactly what influence the Ann McKim exercised upon the science of ship-building, though from the fact that no ship had ever been built like her, it is probable that she was an object of considerable interest in the maritime world, and it is certain that during the years following her appearance a more determined effort was made in the United States to improve the model and sailing qualities of ships. Among the most notable of these attempts were the Courier, already mentioned, built by Donald McKay in 1842, and the Akbar, a ship of six hundred and fifty tons, built by Samuel Hall at East Boston in 1839, for John M. Forbes, and others, who employed her in the China trade. On her first voyage the Akbar made the passage from New York to Canton in one hundred and nine days, beating up the China Sea against the northeast monsoon. On this voyage she was commanded by Captain James Watkins, in after years commodore of the Pacific Mail Steamship Co. Later she was commanded by Captain Philip Dumaresq, who made a number of rapid passages in her to and from China. Then came the Helena, of 650 tons, built by William H. Webb in 1841. This ship was owned by N. L. and G. Griswold, and also sailed in the China trade under the command of Captain Benjamin, who made some fine passages. The Paul Jones, of 620 tons, built by Waterman & Elwell at Medford in 1842, was owned by John M. Forbes and Russell & Co., of China. She was commanded by Captain N. B. Palmer and on her first voyage in 1843 she sailed from Boston for Hong-kong, January 15th, crossed the equator 26 days out, was 54 days to the Cape of Good Hope, 88 days to Java Head, and arrived at Hong-kong 111 days from Boston. In 1848, this ship made the run from Java Head to New York in 76 days.

In 1844, A. A. Low & Brother, of New York, contracted with Brown & Bell to build the Houqua, of 706 tons, constructed for Captain N. B. Palmer. She made a number of very fast passages. On her first voyage she made the passage from New York to Java Head in 72 days, thence to Hong-kong in 12 days, total 84 days. Her best records from China were as follows: From Hong-kong, December 9, 1844, passed Java Head 15 days out, was 70 days to the Equator in the Atlantic, thence 20 days to New York, total 90 days—distance by log, 14,272 miles. December 9, 1845, sailed from Hong-kong, passed Java Head 16 days out, arrived at New York, March 10, 1846, 91 days’ passage. Under the command of Captain McKanzie, in 1850, she made the passage from Shanghai to New York in 88 days, the shortest passage up to that time. This ship was named in honor of Houqua, the well-known Canton merchant who was beloved and respected by American and English residents in China, no less for his integrity than for his great kindness and his business ability.

In 1844 also William H. Webb built the Montauk, 540 tons, for A. A. Low & Brother, and the Panama, 670 tons, for N. L. & G. Griswold, both vessels for the China trade, and Samuel Hall, of East Boston, built the barque Coquette, 420 tons, commanded by Captain Oliver Eldridge. The Coquette sailed from Boston, June 29, 1844, was 76 days to Java Head, and 99 days to Canton. She was owned by Russell & Co., of China, and made several fast passages between Calcutta and ports in China. Young James H. Perkins made a voyage to China as a passenger on board this vessel, and his famous schooner yacht Coquette, which defeated the sloop Maria in a match off Sandy Hook in 1846, was named for the clipper barque.

These were among the first clipper ships built in the United States, and while by no means extreme clippers, they were sharper and finer models than any vessels which had been constructed up to that time, and clearly indicated the dawn of a new epoch in naval architecture.

I have now brought this narrative to the opening of the clipper ship era, and have endeavored to sketch the development of the merchant marine of Great Britain and the United States from the common starting point—where the ship-builders of both countries derived their best knowledge of ship models and construction from the French—as they advanced along diverging lines under different climatic, social, and political conditions, until we now find them at points widely distant from each other—Great Britain with her stately, frigate-built Indiaman, embodying the glories of the past; the United States with her wild packet ship scending into a long, sweeping head sea, and flinging a rainbow of flying spray across her weather-bow, in which was imaged the promise of a glorious future.

In 1841, John W. Griffeths, of New York, proposed several improvements in marine architecture, which were embodied in the model of a clipper ship exhibited at the American Institute, in February of that year. Later he delivered a series of lectures on the science of ship-building, which were the first discourses upon this subject in the United States. Mr. Griffeths advocated carrying the stem forward in a curved line, thereby lengthening the bow above water; he also introduced long, hollow water-lines and a general drawing out and sharpening of the forward body, bringing the greatest breadth further aft. Another improvement which he proposed was to fine out the after body by rounding up the ends of the main transom, thus relieving the quarters and making the stern much lighter and handsomer above the water-line.

This proposed departure from old methods naturally met with much opposition, but in 1843 the firm of Howland & Aspinwall commissioned Smith & Dimon, of New York, in whose employ Mr. Griffeths had spent several years as draughtsman, to embody these experimental ideas in a ship of 750 tons named the Rainbow. This vessel, the first extreme clipper ship ever built, was therefore, the direct result of Mr. Griffeths’s efforts for improvement. Her bow with its concave water-lines and the greatest breadth at a point considerably further aft than had hitherto been regarded as practicable, was a radical departure, differing not merely in degree but in kind from any ship that preceded her. One critical observer declared that her bow had been turned “outside in,� and that her whole form was contrary to the laws of nature. The Rainbow was designed and built with great care and was not launched until January, 1845.

Mr. Griffeths relates a good story about the masting of this vessel. It appears that Mr. Aspinwall, who had an excellent idea of what a ship ought to be, had come to the conclusion that the masting of vessels was a question of no small moment in ship-building, and determined that his new ship should have the benefit of foreign aid in placing the masts. Accordingly, he informed the builders that he would obtain assistance from abroad, for their benefit as well as his own. The builders naturally paid little attention to this information. The port-captain, who was appointed to superintend the construction, was directed by Mr. Aspinwall to select the best authorities in Europe on masting ships. The European experts were written to in reference to this important matter, and after they had duly considered the principal dimensions of the vessel, the trade in which she was to be employed, etc., a spar draft and elaborate calculations were prepared and forwarded to New York.

In the meantime, the construction of the Rainbow had progressed steadily. The clamps being ready, the deck beams were placed according to the original drawings, the framing of the decks completed, hatches and mast partners framed, channels and mast-steps secured; the masts and yards were also made and the ship planked and caulked by the time the important despatches arrived. They were examined by the port-captain, Mr. Aspinwall was informed that they were all right, and the port-captain was requested to give the information to the builders, which, of course, was done. The ship, however, was finished without the slightest alteration from the original plans. Mr. Aspinwall, who never doubted that his pet project had been carefully carried out, attributed much of the success of this vessel to the placing of her masts by foreign rules.

The sharp model of the Rainbow gave rise to a great deal of discussion while she was on the stocks in course of construction. It was generally admitted by the recognized shipping authorities of South Street, that she was a handsome vessel, but whether she could be made to sail was a question on which there were varieties of opinion. She proved an excellent ship in every way and exceedingly fast. Her second voyage to China out and home, was made in six months and fourteen days, including two weeks in port discharging and loading cargo. She went out to China against the northeast monsoon in ninety-two and home in eighty-eight days, bringing the news of her own arrival at Canton. Captain John Land, her able and enthusiastic commander, declared that she was the fastest ship in the world, and this was undeniably true; finding no one to differ from him, he further gave it as his opinion that no ship could be built to outsail the Rainbow, and it is also true that very few vessels have ever broken her record. She was lost on her fifth voyage while bound from New York for Valparaiso in 1848 under command of Captain Hayes, and it was supposed that she foundered off Cape Horn.

The Ariel, 572 tons, was built by John Currier at Newburyport in 1846, for Minot & Hooper, of Boston. This ship became celebrated in the China trade and was bought by N. L. & G. Griswold, and has a record of 90 days from Canton to New York.

In 1846, Howland & Aspinwall, for whom Captain Robert H. Waterman had been making some remarkably fast voyages in the old packet ship Natchez, had a clipper ship built especially for him, entrusting the design and construction to Smith & Dimon, the builders of the Rainbow, though all the details of spars, sails, and rigging were carried out under the supervision of Captain Waterman. This ship was the famous Sea Witch, of 890 tons, length 170 feet, breadth 33 feet 11 inches, and depth 19 feet. She carried a cloud of canvas; three standing skysail yards, royal studding sails, large square lower studding sails with swinging booms, ringtail, and water sails.

When loaded the Sea Witch lay low on the water; her hull was painted black and her masts had a considerable rake; her figurehead was an aggressive-looking dragon, beautifully carved and gilded. She had the reputation at that time of being the handsomest ship sailing out of New York, and her officers and crew were picked men, several of whom had sailed with Captain Waterman on his voyages in the Natchez. She sailed on her first voyage, bound for China, December 23, 1846, went to sea in a strong northwest gale, and made a remarkable fine run southward, arriving off the harbor of Rio Janeiro in twenty-five days, where she exchanged signals with the shore and sent letters and New York newspapers by a vessel inward bound. She made the passage from New York to Hong-kong in 104 days, and arrived at New York from Canton July 25, 1847, in 81 days, making the run from Anjer Point to Sandy Hook in 62 days. On her second voyage she arrived at New York from Hong-kong, November 7, 1847, in 105 days, and arrived from Canton at New York, March 16, 1848, in 77 days. On this passage she made the run from St. Helena to Sandy Hook in 32 days. Her next voyage was from New York to Valparaiso, where she arrived July 5, 1848, in 69 days, thence to Hong-kong, where she arrived December 7, 1848, in 52 days. She arrived at New York March 25, 1849, 79 days from Canton. She next sailed from New York for Canton via Valparaiso and arrived at Canton July 23, 1849, 118 sailing days from New York. She arrived at New York March 7, 1850, from Canton in 85 days, making the run from Java Head in 73 days.

This is a most remarkable series of passages, especially considering the seasons of the year during which most of her China voyages were made. Her best twenty-four hours’ run was 358 miles, a speed far in excess of any ocean steamship of that period. The Sea Witch during the first three years of her career, was without doubt the swiftest ship that sailed the seas, and she continued to distinguish herself later on, in her passages from New York to San Francisco under the command of Captain George Fraser.

In 1847, A. A. Low & Bro. brought out the Samuel Russell, of 940 tons, built by Brown & Bell and commanded by Captain N. B. Palmer, formerly of the Houqua. Her first voyage from New York to Hong-kong was made by the eastern passages in 114 days. On a voyage from Canton in 1851 she sailed 6780 miles in 30 days, an average of 226 miles per day, her greatest twenty-four hours’ run being 328 miles. This ship was named for the eminent New York merchant, founder of the house of Russell & Co., of China, with whom the brothers Low began their career as merchants and ship-owners. She was a beautiful vessel, heavily sparred, with plenty of light canvas for moderate weather, and every inch a clipper.

The Architect, 520 tons, was also built in 1847, at Baltimore, for Nye, Parkin & Co., American merchants in China, and was commanded by Captain George Potter.

The Memnon, 1068 tons, owned by Warren Delano, was built by Smith & Dimon in 1848, and on her first voyage to China was commanded by Captain Oliver Eldridge.

These were the most celebrated of the clipper ships built in the United States prior to the discovery of gold in California in 1848, though there were, of course, many other fine vessels engaged in the China trade, which had for years brought home cargoes of tea, silk, and spices. During the twelve months from June 30, 1845 to July 1, 1846, forty-one vessels arrived at New York from China, and probably as many more at other Atlantic ports, chiefly Boston and Salem. Besides these vessels there were the South American, African, and East India fleets, as well as the lines of splendid packet ships sailing from New York, Boston, and Philadelphia to European ports. In 1847, the ships owned in the United States and engaged in foreign commerce registered 1,241,313 tons.

The American clippers were decidedly the fastest ships built up to that time, yet much of their speed was due to the skill and energy of their commanders. The manner in which American vessels were handled at this period will be seen by extracts from the log-book of the ship Great Britain, 524 tons, Captain Philip Dumaresq, on her homeward voyage from China in 1849-50. She left Java Head December 22, 1849, and by January 14, 1850, had passed seven vessels bound the same way. The log from this date reads in part as follows:

“Squally, under double reefed topsails, passed a ship laying-to under a close reefed main topsail.... January 24th, a southwest gale, close reefed topsails, split courses; before doing this we were going seven and one half knots close-hauled, within six points of the wind under double-reefed topsails and courses; January 25th, split all three topsails and had to heave-to; five vessels in sight, one a Dutch frigate, all hove-to; January 27th, seven vessels in sight and we outsail all of them; January 29th passed the Cape of Good Hope and anchored in Table Bay, parted both chains and split nearly all the sails; hove-to outside, blowing a gale offshore; January 30th, at 6 A.M. bore up for St. Helena; February 1st, fresh trades, passed a ship under double reefs, we with our royals and studdingsails set; February 8th, anchored at St. Helena with a stream anchor backed by remainder of one of the chains; February 10th, having procured anchors and water, left St. Helena; February 21st, crossed the line in longitude 31; March 12th, under double-reefed topsails, passed several vessels laying-to; March 17th, took pilot off Sandy Hook, 84 days from Java Head, including detentions.�

Probably few if any of the vessels which Captain Dumaresq passed hove-to or under short canvas were sailing under the American flag. It is worthy of note that the Great Britain was at that time twenty-six years old, having been built by Brown & Bell for the New York and Liverpool packet service in 1824, and of course, was by no means a clipper.

CHAPTER V
TWO EARLY CLIPPER SHIP COMMANDERS

CAPTAIN ROBERT H. WATERMAN, the first commander of the Sea Witch, had been known for some years among the shipping community of New York as an exceptionally skilful seaman and navigator, but he first began to attract public attention about 1844 by some remarkably fast voyages in the ship Natchez. Captain Waterman was born in the city of New York, March 4, 1808, and at the age of twelve shipped on board of a vessel bound for China. After working through the grades of ordinary and able seaman, and third, second, and chief mate on board of various vessels, he sailed for a number of voyages as mate with Captain Charles H. Marshall in the Black Ball packet ship Britannia between New York and Liverpool. At that time he was counted one of the smartest mates sailing out of New York, and was noted for keeping the Britannia in fine shape, as well as for his ability in maintaining proper order and discipline among the steerage passengers and crew, who were always a source of anxiety and trouble to packet-ship captains. When his vessel was bound to the westward in 1831, one of the sailors fell overboard from aloft during a heavy gale, and Mr. Waterman saved the man’s life at the risk of his own. The cabin passengers of the Britannia presented him with a substantial testimonial in appreciation of his humane and gallant conduct. At this time he was twenty-three years old. Two years later he was promoted to captain, and in this capacity he made five voyages round the globe.

In 1843 he took command of the Natchez. This ship, as we have seen in Chapter III., was one of the full-pooped New Orleans packets, and was built by Isaac Webb in 1831. Captain Waterman took her around Cape Horn to the west coast of South America, thence across the Pacific to Canton, where he loaded a cargo of tea for New York, and made the passage home in 94 days and the voyage round the globe in 9 months and 26 days. In 1844 Captain Waterman sailed again in the Natchez from New York for Valparaiso and made the passage in 71 days, thence to Callao in 8 days, and to Hong-kong in 54 days. She again loaded tea for New York and sailed from Canton January 15, 1845, passed Java Head on the 26th, and 39 days out was off the Cape of Good Hope, crossed the equator 61 days out, arriving in New York April 3d, 78 days from Canton, a total distance of 13,955 miles. Her run from the equator to New York in 17 days, and indeed, this whole passage, was most remarkable, as the Natchez during her packet days had established the reputation of being an uncommonly slow ship. Captain Waterman received a grand ovation in New York upon this record passage from China, and it was suggested that he had brought the old hooker home by some route unknown to other navigators. In 1845-46 Captain Waterman made one more voyage to China in the Natchez, from New York direct to Hong-kong in 104 days, and returned to New York in 83 days.

A series of voyages such as these, by a ship of the type and character of the Natchez, would probably have established the reputation of any one commanding her, and when we consider that “Bob� Waterman, for so he was known, was at this time a young captain of an unusually attractive personality, it is not difficult to understand the pride and admiration with which he was regarded by his friends, of whom he had many, both in New York and in the various foreign ports to which he had sailed. The owners of the Natchez, Howland & Aspinwall, were so favorably impressed not only by his ability as a seaman and navigator, but by his loyalty to their interests, that, as we have seen, they built the clipper ship Sea Witch for him in 1846. While she was building, Captain Waterman married Cordelia, a daughter of David Sterling, of Bridgeport, and Mrs. Waterman was present as a bride when the ship was launched.

In 1849, Captain Waterman resigned from the Sea Witch to take the Pacific Mail steamship Northerner from New York to San Francisco. During the three years that he had commanded the Sea Witch, she had made a large amount of money for her owners, and Captain Waterman had added to his reputation,—so much so, indeed, that certain good people began to say unpleasant things of him. It was alleged that Captain Waterman carried sail too hard, that he exceeded the bounds of prudence in this respect, and kept padlocks on the topsail sheets and rackings on the topsail halliards fore and aft; also that he maintained a standard of discipline far more severe than was necessary.

It is probable that Captain Waterman did carry sail rather hard—most American captains who wanted to get anywhere in those days usually did—and as to the padlocks and rackings, more than one captain used these precautions to prevent villainous or cowardly sailors from letting go sheets and halliards by the run, when according to their ideas the ship had too much canvas on her. The fact, however, remains that in the eighteen years during which Captain Waterman commanded various ships, he never lost a spar or carried away rigging of any importance, and never called on underwriters for one dollar of loss or damage. The record shows that six of the men before the mast sailed with him upon all his voyages in the Natchez and the Sea Witch, a rare occurrence at that period, or at any other time of which we have knowledge, and creditable alike to the sailors, the ships, and their commander.

The truth is that Captain Waterman was a humane, conscientious, high-minded man, who never spared himself nor any one else when a duty was to be performed. There are, and always have been, lazy, incompetent, mutinous sailors, a type of men that Captain Waterman detested. They found no comfort in sailing with him, and were glad when the voyage was ended, so that they might scramble ashore and relate their woes to the sympathetic legal “gents� who were usually to be found hanging about Pier 9, East River, when the Sea Witch was reported coming up the bay. We shall hear more of Captain Waterman and his crew on board of the Challenge in a later chapter.

The celebrated clipper-ship captain, Nathaniel Brown Palmer, the first commander of the Paul Jones, Houqua, Samuel Russell, and Oriental, was born in the pretty town of Stonington, on Long Island Sound in 1799, and came from distinguished colonial ancestry. His grandfather’s only brother fell mortally wounded at the battle of Groton Heights in 1771, while his father was an eminent lawyer and a man of marked ability.

At the age of fourteen or just as the War of 1812 was fairly under way, Nathaniel shipped on board of a coasting vessel which ran to ports between Maine and New York, and continued in this service until he was eighteen, when he was appointed second mate of the brig Hersilia, bound down somewhere about Cape Horn on a sealing voyage.

These sealing expeditions were also at that period more or less voyages of discovery. For years there had been rumors of a mythical island called Auroras, embellished with romance and mystery by the whalers of Nantucket, New Bedford, and New London, and described as lying away to the eastward of the Horn, concerning which no forecastle yarn was too extravagant for belief. Whaling captains by the score had spent days and weeks in unprofitable search for it. On this voyage Captain J. P. Sheffield, of the Hersilia, landed at one of the Falkland Islands, where he left his second mate and one sailor to kill bullocks for provisions, and then sailed away in search of the fabled island.

Young Nat Palmer proceeded to capture and slay bullocks, and when, after a few days, a ship hove in sight, he piloted her into a safe anchorage, and supplied her with fresh meat. This vessel proved to be the Espirito Santo, from Buenos Ayres, and the captain informed Nat that he was bound to a place where there were thousands of seals, and where a cargo could be secured with little effort, but he declined to disclose its position. The mind of the young sailor naturally turned to the magic isle of Auroras, where, according to the saga preserved beside the camp-fires of corner grocery stores in New England whaling towns, silver, gold, and precious gems lay scattered along the beach in glittering profusion, the treasure of some huge galleon, wrecked and broken up centuries ago, when Spain was powerful upon the sea.

There must have been something about the whale fishery highly inspiring to the imagination, though to see one of the greasy old Nantucket or New Bedford blubber hunters wallowing about in the South Pacific, one would hardly have suspected it, yet among the spinners of good, tough tarry sea yarns, some of the authors of narratives relating to the pursuit and capture of the whale are easily entitled to wear champion belts as masters of pure fiction. Whaling is one of the least hazardous, the most commonplace, and, taken altogether about the laziest occupation that human beings have ever been engaged in upon the sea. Sailors aboard the clippers fifty years ago used to refer to whale ships as “butcher shops adrift,â€� and on account of the slovenly condition of their hulls, spars, sails, and rigging, a “spouterâ€� was generally regarded among seamen as one of the biggest jokes afloat. As a matter of fact the whale is about as stupid and inoffensive a creature as exists, and when occasionally he does some harm—smashing up a boat, for instance—it is usually in a flurry of fright, with no malice or intent to kill. If a whale possessed the instinct of self-defence he could never be captured with a harpoon, but he has evidently been created as he is for the benefit of mankind, and incidentally as a temptation to scribes, from the days of the indigestible Jonah even to the piscatory romancers of our own times.

Well, the captain of the Espirito Santo, after filling his water-casks, laying in a stock of provisions, and giving his crew a run ashore sheeted home his topsails, hove up anchor, and departed. Young Nat took such a lively interest in the welfare of this craft that he carefully watched her progress until the last shred of her canvas faded upon the horizon. He judged by the sun, for he had no compass, that her course was about south.

Three days after the departure of the Espirito Santo, the Hersilia appeared. Captain Sheffield had found nothing and seen nothing, except the cold, gray sky, and the long, ceaseless heaving of the Southern Ocean’s mighty breast, a few stray, hungry, screeching albatross, and once in a while, for a moment, a whale, with smooth, glistening back, spouting jets of feathery spray high in the keen, misty air, then sounding among the caverns of the deep. He had returned, like so many other credulous mariners, empty-handed, but he found his young second mate in a white heat of enthusiasm as he reported to his commander what he had learned, and finally, with the hopefulness of youth, declared his belief that “we can follow that Espirito Santo, and find her, too.� And they did, for in a few days she was discovered lying at anchor in a bay off the South Shetlands, islands at that time unknown in North America, though soon to become famous as the home of seals. The officers and crew of the Espirito Santo greeted them with surprise, while their admiration took the substantial form of assisting to load the Hersilia with ten thousand of the finest sealskins, with which she returned to Stonington.

This exploit spread like wildfire through New England whaling ports, and secured Captain Palmer at the age of twenty, command of the Stonington sloop Hero, “but little rising forty tons,� on board of which he sailed again for the Antarctic seas, as tender to the Hersilia, in 1819. Upon this voyage, after calling at the Falkland Islands for water and provisions, they again steered for the South Shetlands, and the Hersilia and Hero returned to Stonington with full cargoes of sealskins.

In 1821, Captain Palmer again sailed in the Hero upon an expedition to the South Shetlands, composed of six vessels commanded by Captain William Fenning of the brig Alabama Packet. By this time, however, the seals had been nearly exterminated, and Captain Palmer sailed farther south in search of new sealing-grounds, until he sighted land not laid down on any chart. He cruised along the coast for some days and satisfied himself that it was not an island, and after anchoring in several bays without finding any seals, although the high cliffs and rocks were covered by multitudes of penguin, he steered away to the northward with light winds and fog.

One night the Hero lay becalmed in a dense fog, the cold, penetrating mist drenching her sails and dripping from the main boom along her narrow deck. At midnight Captain Palmer relieved his mate and took the deck for the middle watch. When the man at the helm struck one bell, the captain was somewhat startled to hear the sound repeated twice at short intervals, for he knew, or thought he knew, that the only living things within many leagues were whales, albatross, penguin, and the like, nor did he recall ever hearing that these harmless creatures carried bells with them. The men of the watch on deck were really alarmed, for in those days superstition had not by any means departed from the ocean. The crew had heard of the fierce Kraken of northern seas, and suddenly remembered all about the doomed and unforgiven Vanderdecken, to say nothing of mythical local celebrities, renowned in all the barrooms of coast towns between Cornfield Point and Siasconset Head, nor were their fears assuaged when at two bells the same thing happened again, and so on through the watch.

Captain Palmer, however, concluded that, strange as it seemed, he must be in company with other vessels, and so at four o’clock he left the mate in charge of the deck with orders to call him if the fog lifted, and turned in for his morning watch below. At seven bells the mate reported that the fog had cleared a little and a light breeze was springing up, and by the time Captain Palmer got on deck two large men-of-war were in sight not more than a mile distant—a frigate on the port bow and a sloop of war on the starboard quarter, both showing Russian colors. Soon the United States ensign was run up at the main peak of the Hero and floated gaily in the morning breeze. The three vessels were now hove to, and a twelve-oared launch was seen approaching from the frigate, her crew and officer in the stern sheets in uniform. As she swept round the stern of the Hero the crew tossed oars and the coxswain shot her alongside. She really looked almost as large as the little sloop; at all events the Russian officer stepped from her gunwale to the deck of the Hero. The officer spoke English fluently, and presented the compliments of Commander Bellingshausen, who invited the captain of the American sloop to come on board his ship.

Captain Palmer was all his life a man of purpose rather than of ceremony, though by no means deficient in dignity and self-respect. He accepted the invitation, and giving an order or two to his mate, stepped into the launch just as he stood, in sea boots, sealskin-coat, and sou’wester. They were soon alongside the frigate, and Captain Palmer was ushered into the commander’s spacious and luxurious cabin. The scene was impressive; the venerable, white-haired commander surrounded by his officers in uniform, and the stalwart young American captain standing with respectful dignity, his rough weather-worn sea-dress contrasting with his fresh, intelligent, handsome face. Commander Bellingshausen smiled pleasantly, and taking his guest by the hand, said kindly, “You are welcome, young man; be seated.�

After questioning Captain Palmer about himself, his vessel, and the land he had discovered, and incidentally remarking that he himself had been two years upon a voyage of discovery, the commander asked to see Captain Palmer’s chart and log-book. These were sent for on board the Hero while an elaborate luncheon was being served, and were afterwards carefully examined. The commander then rose from his seat and placing his hand in a parental manner upon the young captain’s head, delivered quite an oration: “I name the land you have discovered ‘Palmer Land’ in your honor; but what will my august master say, and what will he think of my cruising for two years in search of land that has been discovered by a boy, in a sloop but little larger than the launch of my frigate?� Captain Palmer was unable to offer any information on this point, but he thanked his host for the honor conferred upon him, and for his kindness and hospitality, remaining somewhat non-committal in his opinion as to the old gentleman’s qualifications as an explorer.

It may be mentioned that upon all charts this portion of the Antarctic Continent is laid down as “Palmer Land,� also that some twenty years elapsed before it was rediscovered by the British explorer, Sir James Ross, in command of the famous Erebus and Terror expedition.

Captain Palmer next took command of the schooner Cadet, owned by Borrows & Spooner, of New York, on board of which he made a number of voyages to the Spanish Main. In 1826 he took the brig Tampico to Carthagena, and upon his return he married a daughter of Major Paul Babcock and sister of Captain David S. Babcock, afterwards famous as commander of the clipper ships Sword-Fish and Young America, and subsequently President of the Pacific Mail Steamship Co. Captain Palmer then took the brig Francis on several voyages to Europe, and in 1829 was in command of the brig Anawan, exploring new sealing-grounds among the islands about Cape Horn. In 1833 he took command of the New Orleans packet ship Huntsville, and then of the Hibernia, Garrick, and Siddons. In 1842 and the years following, as we have seen, he commanded the clippers Paul Jones, Houqua, Samuel Russell, and Oriental, and in 1850 retired from the sea.

At this time he was well known, not only among his neighbors and friends at Stonington, but in the great seaports of Europe and China as “Captain Nat,� and many of those who talked about what he had said and what he had done were apparently unaware that he possessed any other name. It is pleasant to reflect that the neighboring seaport of Bristol has perpetuated the title in one who is respected and beloved, not more for his genius than for his modesty and reserve.

It was, of course, impossible for a man of Captain Palmer’s earnest temperament and varied activities to lead a life of pleasure and idleness, so one of the first things that he did upon his retirement was to take the auxiliary steamship United States from New York to Bremen where she was sold. When some of his friends rallied him, asking whether he considered this giving up the sea, Captain Palmer replied, “Well, I really don’t know how you can call a trip like this going to sea.�

For many years Captain Palmer was the confidential adviser of A. A. Low & Brother in all matters relating to their ships, which occupied a considerable portion of his time, and while he was a seaman par excellence, he also possessed other accomplishments. He had much knowledge of the design and construction of ships, and many of his suggestions were embodied in the Houqua, Samuel Russell, Oriental, and other ships subsequently owned by the Lows. He was also a fine all-round sportsman, being a skilful yachtsman, excellent shot, and truthful fisherman. Altogether, he owned some fifteen yachts, and he was one of the earliest members of the New York Yacht Club, joining on June 7, 1845. The beautiful schooner Juliet, of seventy tons, designed by himself, was the last yacht owned by him. On board of her he sailed, summer after summer, upon the pleasant waters of the New England coast that he had known from boyhood and loved so well.

Captain Palmer stood fully six feet, and was a man of great physical strength and endurance. He was an active member of the Currituck Club, and at the age of seventy-six, on his annual cruise to the Thimble Islands for duck shooting, few of the party of much younger men held so steady a gun, or could endure the fatigue and exposure for which he seemed to care nothing. Though rugged in appearance, his roughness was all on the outside; his heart was filled with kindness and sympathy for the joys and sorrows of others. His brother, Captain Alexander Palmer, a seaman only less famous than himself, once said: “My home is here in Stonington, but Nat’s home is the world.� Captain Palmer was deeply though not vainly religious, and was long a warden of Calvary Episcopal Church at Stonington.

In 1876 he accompanied his nephew, Nathaniel B. Palmer, his brother Alexander’s eldest son, who was in feeble health, to Santa Barbara, but as the invalid derived no benefit there, they went for the sea voyage to China on board the clipper ship Mary Whitridge. At Hong-kong, Captain Palmer received an ovation, for, while few of his old friends there were still alive, those who were left had good memories. On the return voyage to San Francisco on the steamship City of Pekin, Captain Palmer’s nephew died when the vessel was but one day out. This was a terrible blow to Captain Palmer, from which he never recovered. On arriving at San Francisco he was confined to his bed, and although he received every care, he died there on June 21, 1877, in his seventy-eighth year. At the close of a glorious summer day, the remains of the devoted uncle and nephew were laid at rest in the churchyard at Stonington, by the hands of those who had known and loved them well.

Captain Palmer was a fine type of the American merchant seaman of that period, and I have thought it worth while to trace the leading events of his life, because he always seemed to me to be the father of American clipper-ship captains. Probably no one ever brought up so many young men who afterward became successful shipmasters, while his character and example were an inspiration to many who never sailed with him. It is indicative of the broad and far-reaching sympathies of Captain Palmer’s life, that not only a part of the Antarctic Continent bears his name—an enduring monument to his memory—but that A. A. Low & Brother named one of their finest clipper ships, the N. B. Palmer, and the famous schooner-yacht Palmer, owned for many years by Rutherfurd Stuyvesant, was also named for him. Few men in private life have had part of a continent, a clipper ship, and yacht named for them.

CHAPTER VI
THE REPEAL OF THE BRITISH NAVIGATION LAWS—THE “ORIENTALâ€�

THE repeal of the British Navigation Laws in 1849, after violent opposition in Parliament and the House of Lords, and from almost every British ship builder and ship-owner, gave a new impetus to the building of clipper ships, as the British merchant marine was then for the first time brought into direct competition with the vessels of other nationalities, especially those of the United States.

During the years that had elapsed since the closing up of the East India Company in 1832, some effort had been made to improve the model and construction of British merchant ships, and as we have seen, clipper schooners had been built for the Aberdeen service and for the opium trade in China, but no attempt had been made in Great Britain to build clipper ships. British ship-owners still felt secure under the Navigation Laws, in the possession of their carrying trade with the Far East, and paid little attention to the improvements in naval architecture which had been effected in the United States.

This was not from ignorance of what had been accomplished there, for the fast American packet ships had long been seen lying in the London and Liverpool docks. In 1848, Lord William Lennox, in an article entitled A Fortnight in Cheshire, mentions seeing them. He says: “Here (Liverpool) are some splendid American liners. I went on board the Henry Clay of New York, and received the greatest attention from her commander, Captain Ezra Nye. Nothing can exceed the beauty of this ship; she is quite a model for a frigate. Her accommodations are superior to any sailing vessel I ever saw.� There were also the Independence, Yorkshire, Montezuma, Margaret Evans, New World, and scores of other fast American packet ships which had been sailing in and out of Liverpool and London for years. The arrivals and departures of these vessels created no deep impression upon the minds of British ship-owners, because they were not at that time competing with sailing vessels for the North Atlantic trade to the United States.

The same lack of enterprise was apparent in the men who handled their vessels, as we may see from the following amusing description in De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, published in 1835[5]:

“The European sailor navigates with prudence; he only sets sail when the weather is favorable; if an unfortunate accident befalls him, he puts into port; at night he furls a portion of his canvas; and when the whitening billows intimate the vicinity of land, he checks his way and takes an observation of the sun. But the American neglects these precautions and braves these dangers. He weighs anchor in the midst of tempestuous gales; by night and day he spreads his sheets to the winds; he repairs as he goes along such damage as his vessel may have sustained from the storm; and when he at last approaches the term of his voyage, he darts onward to the shore as if he already descried a port. The Americans are often shipwrecked, but no trader crosses the seas so rapidly. And as they perform the same distance in shorter time, they can perform it at a cheaper rate.

“The European touches several times at different ports in the course of a long voyage; he loses a good deal of precious time in making harbor, or in waiting for a favorable wind to leave it; and pays daily dues to be allowed to remain there. The American starts from Boston to purchase tea in China; he arrives at Canton, stays there a few days, and then returns. In less than two years he has sailed as far as the entire circumference of the globe, and he has seen land but once. It is true that during a voyage of eight or ten months he has drunk brackish water, and lived upon salt meat; that he has been in a continual contest with the sea, with disease, and with a tedious existence; but, upon his return, he can sell a pound of tea for a half-penny less than the English merchant, and his purpose is accomplished.

“I cannot better explain my meaning than by saying that the Americans affect a sort of heroism in their manner of trading. But the European merchant will always find it very difficult to imitate his American competitor, who, in adopting the system I have just described, follows not only a calculation of his gain, but an impulse of his nature.�

At that time there were several American ships that could have transported De Tocqueville from Boston to Canton and back in considerably less than two years, and doubtless their captains would have supplied him with something much better than brackish water to drink, besides convincing him that what he regarded as recklessness was in reality fine seamanship, and that he had been in no greater danger of shipwreck than on board a vessel of any other nationality, besides being a great deal more comfortable.

Some time before 1849, British sea-captains must have seen the American clipper ships in the ports of China; or perhaps an Indiaman in the lone southern ocean may have been lying almost becalmed on the long heaving swell, lurching and slatting the wind out of her baggy hemp sails, while her officers and crew watched an American clipper as she swept past, under a cloud of canvas, curling the foam along her keen, slender bow. But when these mariners returned home and related what they had seen, their yarns were doubtless greeted with a jolly, good-humored smile of British incredulity. With the Navigation Laws to protect them, British ship-owners cared little about American ships and their exploits.

These Navigation Laws, first enacted in 1651 by the Parliament of Cromwell, and affirmed by Charles II. soon after his restoration to the throne, were intended to check the increasing power of Holland upon the sea, but they had quite the contrary effect. With a few slight changes, however, they were passed along from generation to generation, until Adam Smith exposed the fallacy of Protection in his Wealth of Nations, which appeared in 1776. From that time on, British statesmen, few in number at first, adopted his teachings, and under the pressure of popular clamor some concessions were made, especially in the way of reciprocity treaties, but it was nearly three quarters of a century before these barbaric old laws, a legacy from the thieving barons, were finally swept away.

It may be well briefly to enumerate these laws as they stood previous to their repeal, for it is seldom that one comes across so much ingenious stupidity in so compact a form; also mainly because through their repeal the ships of Great Britain eventually became the greatest ocean carriers of the world.

(I.) Certain enumerated articles of European produce could only be imported to the United Kingdom for consumption, in British ships or in ships of the country of which the goods were the produce, or in ships of that country from which they were usually imported.

(II.) No produce of Asia, Africa, or America could be imported for consumption in the United Kingdom from Europe in any ships; and such produce could only be imported from any other place in British ships or in ships of the country of which they were the produce.

(III.) No goods could be carried coastwise from one part of the United Kingdom to another in any but British ships.

(IV.) No goods could be exported from the United Kingdom to any of the British possessions in Asia, Africa, or America (with some exceptions in regard to India) in any but British ships.

(V.) No goods could be carried from one British possession in Asia, Africa, or America to another, nor from one part of such possession to another part of the same, in any but British ships.

(VI.) No goods could be imported into any British possessions in Asia, Africa, or America, in any but British ships, or ships of the country of which the goods were the produce; provided also, in such case, that such ships brought the goods from that country.

(VII.) No foreign ships were allowed to trade with any of the British possessions unless they had been specially authorized to do so by orders in Council.

(VIII.) Powers were given to the sovereign in Council to impose differential duties on the ships of any country which did the same with reference to British ships; and also to place restrictions on importations from any foreign countries which placed restrictions on British importations into such countries.

Furthermore, by an act passed in 1786, British subjects were prohibited from owning foreign-built vessels. This act was regarded as one of the Navigation Laws, and was repealed with them.

One of the objects of the repeal of the Navigation Laws was to enable British ship-owners to become the ocean carriers of the world, and to remove every restraint as to where they should build or buy their ships. This step was a natural sequence to the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, and the glorious dawn of Free Trade, by which every British subject was permitted to purchase whatever he required in the best and cheapest market, and so was able to work at a moderate wage, and to have continuous employment. Thus Great Britain, with few natural advantages, became the great workshop of the world and controlled every market upon the globe in which her manufactures were not excluded by the barrier of Protection. Even from these countries she reaped a decided benefit, for they were so hampered by Protection, which increased the expense of living, created high rates of wages for labor but with uncertain employment, and brought about increased cost of production, whether of ships or merchandise, that it became impossible for them to compete in the open markets of the world, and these avenues of trade were left open for Great Britain to exploit at her pleasure.

Such was the belief of the great leader, Richard Cobden, and his brilliant colleagues. They were convinced that if British merchants were to carry on the commerce of Great Britain they must do so untrammelled as to where they bought or built their ships; they realized the fact that cheaper and better wooden sailing vessels—then the ocean cargo carriers of the world—were being built in the United States than could be constructed in Great Britain. (Indeed, as we shall presently see, the finest, largest, and fastest ships owned or chartered in Great Britain between the years 1850 and 1857, came from the shipyards of the United States.) They fully recognized the importance of the home ship-building industry, and did everything possible to encourage it, but they also perceived that ship-owning is of vastly more importance to a nation than ship-building, and that fleets of ships are not commerce but only the instruments with which commerce performs its work; likewise, that the nation owning the best and cheapest ships, no matter where or by whom built, must and will, other things being equal, do not only most of its own carrying trade, but also a considerable portion of that of other nations. These men were not willing any longer to sacrifice the carrying trade of their country in order that a few comparatively unimportant ship-builders, grown incompetent through long years of monopoly, might continue to thrive at the expense of the nation.

No people excel the English in courage and resource in times of national trouble, and they had long before this fought battles for freedom—freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of the slave, freedom to worship God,—and now the final contest for freedom, the freedom of trade, had been bravely fought and won. The result, of course, was not immediate, as it required several years to recover from the evil effects of two centuries of Protection. The fruits of victories for freedom rarely ripen quickly, and in this instance the records show that the increase of British shipping for the year before the repeal of the Navigation Laws had been 393,955 tons, while during the year following there had been a decrease of 180,576 tons; also that foreign vessels arriving from foreign ports increased from 75,278 tons to 364,587 tons in these years. It was therefore natural that there should be a feeling of despondency throughout Great Britain among those who had opposed the repeal, for they thought that their fears were being realized, and that the over-sea carrying trade, which they had regarded as their own, was being taken from them. In this hour of gloom the stout-hearted ship-owners of London and Liverpool resolved that England should again become Mistress of the Sea, and so competition, the stimulus needed to rouse their latent abilities, was the instrument of their salvation.

The first American ship to carry a cargo of tea from China to England after the repeal of the Navigation Laws was the clipper Oriental, of 1003 tons, built for A. A. Low & Brother in 1849, by Jacob Bell, who continued in the ship-building business after the firm of Brown & Bell was dissolved in 1848. This ship’s length was 185 feet, breadth 36 feet, depth 21 feet. She sailed from New York on her first voyage, commanded by Captain N. B. Palmer, September 14, 1849, and arrived at Hong-kong by the Eastern passages in 109 days. She discharged, took on board a full cargo of tea for New York, sailed January 30, 1850, and arrived April 21st, 81 days’ passage. This was Captain Palmer’s last command, though he lived many years, as we have seen, to enjoy the fruits of his toil upon the sea.

The Oriental sailed on her second voyage from New York for China, May 19, 1850, under the command of Captain Theodore Palmer, a younger brother of Captain Nat, and was 25 days to the equator; she passed the meridian of the Cape of Good Hope 45 days out, Java Head 71 days out, and arrived at Hong-kong, August 8th, 81 days from New York. She was at once chartered through Russell & Co. to load a cargo of tea for London at £6 per ton of 40 cubic feet, while British ships were waiting for cargoes for London at £3:10 per ton of 50 cubic feet. She sailed August 28th, and beat down the China Sea against a strong southwest monsoon in 21 days to Anjer, arrived off the Lizard in 91 days, and was moored in the West India Docks, London, 97 days from Hong-kong—a passage from China never before equalled in point of speed, especially against the southwest monsoon, and rarely surpassed since. She delivered 1600 tons of tea, and her freight from Hong-kong amounted to £9600, or some $48,000. Her first cost ready for sea was $70,000. From the date of her first sailing from New York, September 14, 1849, to arrival at London, December 3, 1850, the Oriental had sailed a distance of 67,000 miles, and had during that time been at sea 367 days, an average in all weathers of 183 miles per day.

Throngs of people visited the West India Docks to look at the Oriental. They certainly saw a beautiful ship; every line of her long, black hull indicated power and speed; her tall raking masts and skysail-yards towered above the spars of the shipping in the docks; her white cotton sails were neatly furled under bunt, quarter, and yardarm gaskets; while her topmast, topgallant, and royal studdingsail booms and long, heavy, lower studdingsail booms swung in along her rails, gave an idea of the enormous spread of canvas held in reserve for light and moderate leading winds; her blocks, standing and running rigging were neatly fitted to stand great stress and strain, but with no unnecessary top-hamper, or weight aloft. On deck everything was for use; the spare spars, scraped bright and varnished, were neatly lashed along the waterways; the inner side of the bulwarks, the rails and the deck-houses were painted pure white; the hatch combings, skylights, pin-rails, and companions were of Spanish mahogany; the narrow planks of her clear pine deck, with the gratings and ladders, were scrubbed and holystoned to the whiteness of cream; the brass capstan heads, bells, belaying pins, gangway stanchions, and brasswork about the wheel, binnacle, and skylights were of glittering brightness. Throughout she was a triumph of the shipwright’s and seaman’s toil and skill.

No ship like the Oriental had even been seen in England, and the ship-owners of London were constrained to admit that they had nothing to compare with her in speed, beauty of model, rig, or construction. It is not too much to say that the arrival of this vessel in London with her cargo of tea in this crisis in 1850, aroused almost as much apprehension and excitement in Great Britain as was created by the memorable Tea Party held in Boston harbor in 1773. The Admiralty obtained permission to take off her lines in dry dock; the Illustrated London News published her portrait, not a very good one by the way; and the Times honored her arrival by a leader, which ended with these brave, wise words:

“The rapid increase of population in the United States, augmented by an annual immigration of nearly three hundred thousand from these isles, is a fact that forces itself on the notice and interest of the most unobservant and uncurious. All these promise to develop the resources of the United States to such an extent as to compel us to a competition as difficult as it is unavoidable. We must run a race with our gigantic and unshackled rival. We must set our long-practised skill, our steady industry, and our dogged determination, against his youth, ingenuity, and ardor. It is a father who runs a race with his son. A fell necessity constrains us and we must not be beat. Let our ship-builders and employers take warning in time. There will always be an abundant supply of vessels, good enough and fast enough for short voyages. The coal-trade can take care of itself, for it will always be a refuge for the destitute. But we want fast vessels for the long voyages, which otherwise will fall into American hands. It is fortunate that the Navigation Laws have been repealed in time to destroy these false and unreasonable expectations, which might have lulled the ardor of British competition. We now all start together with a fair field and no favor. The American captain can call at London, and the British captain can pursue his voyage to New York. Who can complain? Not we. We trust that our countrymen will not be beaten; but if they should be, we shall know that they deserve it.�

CHAPTER VII
THE RUSH FOR CALIFORNIA—A SAILING DAY

THE world has seldom witnessed so gigantic a migration of human beings, by land and sea, from every quarter of the globe, as that which poured into California in 1848 and the years following. San Francisco, from a drowsy, Mexican trading station, composed of a cluster of some fifty mud huts, adobe dwellings, and hide houses, situated upon a magnificent bay with lofty mountains in the distance, occasionally enlivened by the visit of a New Bedford or Nantucket whale ship in need of wood and water, or a Boston hide droger which took away tallow, hides, and horns, suddenly became one of the great seaports of the world.

From April 1, 1847, to the same date in 1848, two ships, one barque and one brig arrived at San Francisco from Atlantic ports, and in the course of this year nine American whalers called in there. In 1849, 775 vessels cleared from Atlantic ports for San Francisco; 242 ships, 218 barques, 170 brigs, 132 schooners, and 12 steamers. New York sent 214 vessels, Boston 151, New Bedford 42, Baltimore 38, New Orleans 32, Philadelphia 31, Salem 23, Bath 19, Bangor 13, New London 17, Providence 11, Eastport 10, and Nantucket 8. Almost every seaport along the Atlantic coast, sent one or more vessels, and they all carried passengers. The schooner Eureka sailed from Cleveland, Ohio, for San Francisco via the River St. Lawrence, September 28, 1849, and carried fifty-three passengers, among whom were two families from Cleveland. Many of these vessels never reached California; some of them put into ports of refuge disabled and in distress; while others were never heard from. Most of the ships that did arrive at San Francisco made long, weary voyages, their passengers and crews suffering sore hardships and privations.

In the year 1849, 91,405 passengers landed at San Francisco from various ports of the world, of almost every nationality under the sun and representing some of the best and some of the worst types of men and women. The officers and crews, with hardly an exception, hurried to the mines, leaving their ships to take care of themselves; in some instances the crews did not even wait long enough to stow the sails and be paid off, so keen were they to join the wild race for gold. Many of these vessels never left the harbor; over one hundred were turned into store ships, while others were converted into hotels, hospitals, and prisons, or gradually perished by decay.

The first vessel, and one of the few of the California fleet of 1849, which escaped from San Francisco, was the ship South Carolina. This vessel sailed from New York, January 24, 1849, and returned via Valparaiso with a cargo of copper to Boston, where she arrived February 20, 1850, after a voyage out and home of some thirteen months.

A letter from San Francisco to the New York Herald, dated February 28, 1850, states that wages for seamen were then from $125 to $200 per month. There used to be a humorous yarn spun among seamen to the effect that during the “flush times,� as those glorious days of the gold fever were called, sailors required a captain to produce a recommendation from his last crew before they would ship with him or sign articles. However this may be, it is a fact that as late as 1854, it was so difficult to induce crews to leave San Francisco that captains were frequently obliged to ship men out of jail, whether they were sailors or not, in order to get their ships to sea.

The gold mines exerted an irresistible attraction, and for a time the town was almost deserted, except for those passing through on their way to and from the mines. By degrees, however, it became apparent to some that more gold-dust was to be collected at San Francisco in business than by digging among the mountains, and with admirable energy they set about transforming this lawless camp into a prosperous trading city.

Prior to 1848, California had been for all practical purposes almost uninhabited, and now was utterly unable to provide for the needs of her vastly increased population. The newcomers produced plenty of gold, but nothing else, and they frequently found themselves on the brink of starvation. They were too busy with pick and shovel to contribute anything in the form of manufactures or supplies, so that the most ordinary articles of every-day use, to say nothing of comforts and luxuries, had to be brought from places thousands of miles distant. This precarious means of supply, together with the enormous and reckless purchasing power developed by the rapid production of gold from the mines, naturally created a speculative and artificial standard of values, and goods of every description sold for fabulous amounts: Beef, pork, and flour brought from $40 to $60 per barrel; tea, coffee, and sugar, $4 a pound; spirits, $10 to $40 a quart; playing-cards, $5 a pack; cowhide boots, $45 a pair; picks and shovels from $5 to $15 each; wooden and tin bowls from $2.50 to $7.50 each; laudanum, $1 a drop, and so on. These were by no means high prices for stevedores and laborers receiving from $20 to $30 a day, and miners who were making anywhere from $100 to $1000 a day washing dirt at the mines.

An idea of the amount of gold produced may be gained from the fact that the Pacific Mail Company, whose first steamship, the California, arrived at San Francisco via the Straits of Magellan, February 28, 1849, had by the end of 1852 shipped gold from that city to the value of $121,766,425.

The speculators and shippers of merchandise in the Eastern States were as deeply interested in the output of the mines of California as the gold diggers themselves. No one could predict how long this state of affairs would continue; with them speed meant everything; a week or even a day’s delay might result in heavy losses, or what was to them the same thing, failure to reap large profits. They could not send their goods across the continent, and the Pacific Mail Company had all that it could attend to in conveying passengers and the mails across the Isthmus; so that the only means of transportation from the Atlantic States to San Francisco was round Cape Horn. Under these circumstances one can easily understand how the rates of freight advanced to extravagant figures, and created a demand under which the California clippers came into existence.

In these days of thrifty transportation by sea, when coal shovels have superseded watch-tackles, and ship-owners are expected to look cheerful with steamship rates at $14.00 a ton from New York to San Francisco, and $12.00 a ton from New York to Melbourne or Hong-kong, the rates of freight that the clipper ships earned from New York to San Francisco seem almost incredible. In 1850 the Samuel Russell received $1.50 per cubic foot, or $60 per ton of 40 cubic feet. She registered 940 tons, and being a very sharp ship would probably carry not more than 1200 tons of California cargo. But even so, her freight would amount to $72,000, or a little more than her first cost ready for sea. The other clippers at first received the same rate, but by degrees, as they increased in tonnage and in number, the rates of freight declined to $50 per ton, and then to $40 where they remained for a considerable time.

The California clipper period covers the years 1850-1860, during the first four of which nearly all of these famous ships, numbering one hundred and sixty, were built. (See Appendix I.) Most of them were launched at or near New York and Boston, though some were built elsewhere, Richmond,

Jacob A. Westervelt Jacob Bell

Clipper-Ship Builders

Baltimore, Mystic, Medford, Newburyport, Portsmouth, Portland, Rockland, Bath, and other ports contributing to the fleet. These splendid ships—the swiftest sailing vessels that the world has even seen or is likely ever to see—sailed their great ocean matches for the stake of commercial supremacy and the championship of the seas, over courses encircling the globe, and their records, made more than half a century ago, still stand unsurpassed.

After carrying their cargoes to California at the enormous rates we have given, these ships would return round Cape Horn in ballast for another cargo at the same rate, as they could well afford to do, or would cross the Pacific in ballast and load tea for London or New York. Many of them more than cleared their original cost in less than one year, during a voyage round the globe, after deducting all expenses.

The central points about which the great ship-owning interests collected were New York and Boston. Here, too, were the most famous shipyards. All along the harbor front at East Boston and the water-front of the East River from Pike Street to the foot of Tenth Street, New York, were to be seen splendid clipper ships in every stage of construction; and beside the ship-building yards, there were rigging-lofts, sail-lofts, the shops of boat-builders, block-and pump-makers, painters, carvers, and gilders, iron, brass, and copper workers, mast-and spar-makers, and ship stores of all kinds, where everything required on shipboard, from a palm and needle, a marlinspike or a ball of spun yarn, to anchors and chains, was to be found. The ship-yards were great thriving hives of industry, where hundreds of sledge-hammers, top mauls, and caulking mallets, swung by the arms of skilful American mechanics, rung out a mighty chorus, and the fresh odor of rough-hewn timber, seething Carolina pitch, and Stockholm tar filled the air with healthful fragrance. They were unique and interesting localities, the like of which have never existed elsewhere—now long passed away and all but forgotten.

The principal shipping merchants in New York were William T. Coleman & Co., Wells & Emanuel, Sutton & Co., John I. Earl, and James Smith & Son, all of whom managed San Francisco lines and usually had one or more clippers on the berth, loading night and day for California. The old Piers 8, 9, and 10, along the East River, were scenes of great activity, and throngs of people visited them to see: these ships. At all the seaports along the Atlantic coast, almost every one knew something and most persons knew a good deal about ships. They were: a matter of great importance to the community, for as late as 1860, nearly all the large fortunes in the United States had been made in shipping.

The captains and officers of the California clippers were as a class men of integrity, energy, and skill, nearly all of them being of the best Pilgrim and Puritan stock of New England, and trained to the sea from boyhood. Many of them were the sons of merchants and professional men, well known and respected in the communities in which they lived. Their ships carried large crews, besides being fitted with every appliance for saving labor: fly-wheel

William H. Webb Samuel Hall

Clipper-Ship Builders

pumps, gypsy winches, gun-metal roller bushes in the sheaves of the brace, reef tackle and halliard blocks, geared capstans, and plenty of the best stores and provisions, with spare spars, sails, blocks, and rigging in abundance. The owners fitted out their vessels with rational economy and looked to their captains, whom they rewarded liberally, to see that nothing was wasted and that the ships performed their voyages quickly and well.

There was no allowance of food, as on British ships, on board the American clippers; a barrel of beef, pork, bread, or flour was supposed to last about so many days, according to the ship’s company; a little more or less did not matter. The water was in charge of the carpenter, and was usually carried in an iron tank which rested on the keelson abaft the mainmast and came up to the main deck. This tank was in the form of a cylinder, and held from three to four thousand gallons; some of the larger ships carried their water in two of these tanks. Each morning at sea, water equal to one gallon for every person on board was pumped out of the tank and placed in a scuttlebutt on deck; the carpenter then made a report of the number of gallons remaining in the tank to the chief officer, who entered it in the log-book. During the day the crew took the water they needed from the scuttle-butt, the cook and steward what they required for the galley and aft; and while there was no stint, woe to the man who wasted fresh water at sea in those days, for if he managed to escape the just wrath of the officers, his shipmates were pretty sure to take care of him. The salt beef and pork were kept in a harness cask abaft the mainmast, and when a fresh barrel of provisions was to be opened, the harness cask was scrubbed and scalded out with boiling water, and so was always sweet and clean. The cooks and stewards were almost invariably negroes, and it is to be regretted that there are not more like them at the present time—especially the cooks. “Plenty of work, plenty to eat, and good pay,â€� is what sailormen used to say of American clippers, the sort of ships on board of which good seamen liked to sail.

The forecastle on board the old type of vessels was in the forepeak, below the main deck, a damp, ill-ventilated hole, but in the California clippers it was in a large house on deck between the fore-and main-masts, divided fore and aft amidships by a bulkhead, so that each watch had a separate forecastle, well ventilated and with plenty of light. There was nothing to prevent a crew from being comfortable enough; it depended entirely upon themselves. Indeed, there were no ships afloat at that period where the crews were so well paid and cared for as on board the American clippers. Seamen who knew their duties and were willing to perform them fared far better than on board the ships of any other nationality.

Perhaps, the most marked difference between American merchant ships and those of other nations was in regard to the use of wine and spirits. On board British ships grog was served out regularly to the men before the mast, and the captain and officers were allowed wine money. Nothing of this sort was permitted on American vessels. Robert Minturn, of the firm of Grinnell, Minturn & Co., in his evidence before a parliamentary committee in 1848, stated that teetotalism not only was encouraged by American ship-owners, but actually earned a bonus from underwriters, who offered a return of ten per cent of the insurance premium upon voyages performed without the consumption of spirits. On board the packet ships and other vessels which carried passengers, there was always wine on the captain’s table, but the captain and officers rarely made use of it. The sailors were allowed plenty of hot coffee, night or day, in heavy weather, but grog was unknown on board American merchant ships.

In those days, after a New York clipper had finished loading, it was the custom for her to drop down the East River and anchor off Battery Park, then a fashionable resort, where she would remain for a few hours to take her crew on board and usually to ship from five to ten tons of gunpowder, a part of her cargo that was stowed in the main hatch, to be easily handled in case of fire. Tow-boats were not as plentiful in New York harbor as at present, and unless the wind was ahead or calm, the clippers seldom made use of them, for with a leading breeze these ships would sail to and from Sandy Hook much faster than they could be towed. One of the clippers getting under way off Battery Park was a beautiful sight, and an event in which a large part of the community was interested.

The people who gathered at Battery Park to see a clipper ship get under way, came partly to hear the sailors sing their sea songs, or chanties, which were an important part of sea life in those days, giving a zest and cheeriness on shipboard, which nothing else could supply. It used to be said that a good chanty man was worth four men in a watch, and this was true, for when a crew knocked off chantying, there was something wrong—the ship seemed lifeless. These songs originated early in the nineteenth century, with the negro stevedores at Mobile and New Orleans, who sung them while screwing cotton bales into the holds of the American packet ships; this was where the packet sailors learned them. The words had a certain uncouth, fantastic meaning, evidently the product of undeveloped intelligence, but there was a wild, inspiring ring in the melodies, and, after a number of years, they became unconsciously influenced by the pungent, briny odor and surging roar and rhythm of the ocean, and howling gales at sea. Landsmen have tried in vain to imitate them; the result being no more like genuine sea songs than skimmed milk is like Jamaica rum.

There were a great many Whitehall boats kept at the lower end of the Park, and the Battery boatmen were fine oarsmen, Bill Decker, Tom Daw, Steve Roberts, and Andy Fay being famous scullers. There were some smart four-and six-oared crews among them which used to swoop down and pick up the valuable prizes offered by the Boston city fathers for competition each Fourth of July on the Charles River, but the convivial life which the gay Battery boatmen led did not improve their rowing, and in 1856 they were defeated by the famous Neptune crew, of St. John, N. B., in a match rowed on the Charles River for the stake of $5000, and later were quite eclipsed by the even more famous Ward crew of Newburgh.

The time when these men really had to work, was on the sailing day of a California clipper. A busy scene it was, as they put the crew and their dunnage on board, one or two lots at a time, accompanied by a boarding-house runner, the sailormen being in various stages of exalted inebriation. The helpless in body and mind are hauled over the side in bowlines and stowed away in their berths to regain the use of their limbs and senses. These men have been drugged and robbed of their three months’ advance wages and most of their clothing. In a few hours they will come to, and find themselves at sea on board of a ship whose name they never heard, with no idea to what part of the globe they are bound. A receipt is given for each man by the mate, who considers himself fortunate if he can muster two thirds of his crew able to stand up and heave on a capstan bar or pull on a rope. The probable condition of the crew is so well known and expected that a gang of longshoremen is on board to lend a hand in getting the ship under way. The more provident of the seamen bring well-stocked sea chests; the less thoughtful find moderate-sized canvas bags quite large enough to hold their possessions; one mariner carries his outfit for the Cape Horn voyage tied up in a nice bandanna handkerchief, the parting gift of a Cherry Street damsel—who keeps the change. Jack is in a jovial, tipsy humor, and appears to be well satisfied with his investment.

This is an anxious day for the mate, for, while he receives his instructions from the captain in a general way, yet every detail of getting the ship to sea is in his hands; and though he seems careless and unconcerned, his nerves are on edge and every sense alert; his eyes are all over the ship. He is sizing up each man in his crew and getting his gauge; when he strikes a chord of sympathy, he strikes hard, and when his keen instinct detects a note of discord, he strikes still harder, lifting his men along with a curse here, a joke there, and ever tightening his firm but not unkindly grasp of authority. The mate is not hunting for trouble—all that he wants is for his men to do their work and show him enough respect so that it will not become his unpleasant duty to hammer them into shape. He knows that this is his day, and that it is the decisive day of the voyage, for before the ship passes out by Sandy Hook his moral victory will be lost or won, with no appeal to Admiralty Boards or Courts of Justice. He knows, too, that a score of other mates and their captains are looking on with keen interest to see how he handles his crew, and their opinion is of far greater value to him than the decrees of Senates; so he intends to lay himself out and give them something worth looking at.

There is a crisp northeasterly breeze, and the blue waters of the bay dance and frolic in the sweet June sunshine. The crew are all on board, with the captain and pilot in consultation on the quarter-deck; it is nearly high water, and the tide will soon run ebb. The mate takes charge of the topgallant forecastle, with the third mate and the boatswain

Clipper-Ship Captains

Robert H. Waterman N. B. Palmer

to assist him, while the second mate, with the fourth mate and boatswain’s mate work the main deck and stand by to look after the chain as it comes in over the windlass.

As the crew muster on the forecastle they appear to be a motley gang, mostly British and Scandinavian, with a sprinkling of Spaniards, Portuguese, and Italians, and one or two Americans. Some wear thick, coarse, red, blue, or gray flannel shirts, others blue dungaree jumpers, or cotton shirts of various colors; their trousers are in a variety of drabs, blues, grays, and browns, supported by leather belts or braces; they wear stiff or soft felt hats or woollen caps of many colors. But no clothes that were ever invented could disguise these men; their bronzed, weather-beaten faces and sun-baked, tattooed arms, with every swing of their bodies, betray them as sailormen, and good ones too, above the average even in those days. They would no more submit to being put into uniforms or to the cut-and-dried discipline of a man-of-war, than they would think of eating their food at a table with knives and forks.

They are all pretty full of alcohol, but the sailor instinct is so strong in them that they do their work as well, some of them perhaps better, than if they were sober. There is no romance about them or about any part of their lives; they are simply common, every-day sailors, and will never be anything else, unless they happen to encounter some inspired writer of fiction; then it is difficult to say what may become of them. Some of them have much good in their natures, others are saturated with evil, and all need to be handled with tact and judgment, for too much severity, or on the other hand any want of firmness, may lead to trouble, which means the free use of knives, belaying pins, and knuckle-dusters.

Now the flood-tide begins to slacken, and as the ship swings to the wind, the order is passed along from aft to man the windlass and heave short. We hear the mate sing out in a pleasant, cheery voice: “Now, then, boys, heave away on the windlass breaks; strike a light, it’s duller than an old graveyard.� And the chantyman, in an advanced stage of hilarious intoxication, gay as a skylark, sails into song:

“In eighteen hundred and forty-six,
I found myself in the hell of a fix,
A-working on the railway, the railway, the railway.
Oh, poor Paddy works on the railway.

“In eighteen hundred and forty-seven,
When Dan O’Connolly went to heaven,
He worked upon the railway, the railway, the railway.
Poor Paddy works on the railway, the railway.

“In eighteen hundred and forty-eight,
I found myself bound for the Golden Gate,
A-working on the railway, the railway.
Oh, poor Paddy works on the railway, the railway.

“In eighteen hundred and forty-nine,
I passed my time in the Black Ball Line,
A-working on the railway, the railway,
I weary on the railway,
Poor Paddy works on the railway, the railway.�

And so on to the end of the century, or till the mate sings out, “Vast heaving,� lifts his hand, and reports to the captain: “The anchor’s apeak, sir.� “Very good, sir, loose sails fore and aft.� “Aye, aye, sir.� “Aloft there some of you and loose sails. One hand stop in the tops and crosstrees to overhaul the gear.� “Aye, aye, sir. Royals and sky-sails?� “Yes, royals and skysails; leave the staysails fast.� “Lay out there, four or five of you, and loose the head sails.� “Here, you fellow in the green-spotted shirt, lay down out of that; there’s men enough up there now to eat those sails.� “Mr. Sampson, take some of your men aft and look after the main and mizzen; put a hand at the wheel; as he goes along let him clear the ensign halliards; while you’re waiting lay that accommodation ladder in on deck; leave the spanker fast.� “On the foretopsail yard, there, if you cut that gasket, I’ll split your damned skull; cast it adrift, you lubber.� “Boatswain, get your watch tackles along to the topsail sheets.� “Aye, aye, sir.� “Here, some of you gentlemen’s sons in disguise, get that fish-davit out; hook on the pendant; overhaul the tackle down ready for hooking on.� “Mainskysail yard there, don’t make those gaskets up, my boy; fetch them in along the yard, and make fast to the tye.�

By this time the sails are loose and the gaskets made up; courses, topsails, topgallantsails, royals, and skysails flutter in their gear, and the clipper feels the breath of life. “Sheet home the topsails.� “Aye, aye, sir.� “Boatswain, look out for those clew-lines at the main; ease down handsomely as the sheets come home.� “Foretop there, overhaul your buntlines, look alive!� “Belay your port maintopsail sheet; clap a watch tackle on the starboard sheet and rouse her home.� “Maintop there, lay down on the main-yard and light the foot of that sail over the stay.� “That’s well, belay starboard.� “Well the mizzentopsail sheets, belay.� “Now then, my bullies, lead out your topsail halliards fore and aft and masthead her.� “Aye, aye, sir.� By this time the mate has put some ginger into the crew and longshoremen, and they walk away with the three topsail halliards:

“Away, way, way, yar,
We’ll kill Paddy Doyle for his boots.�

“Now then, long pulls, my sons.� “Here, you chantyman, haul off your boots, jump on that main-deck capstan and strike a light; the best in your locker.� “Aye, aye, sir.� And the three topsail-yards go aloft with a ringing chanty that can be heard up in Beaver Street:

“Then up aloft that yard must go,
Whiskey for my Johnny.
Oh, whiskey is the life of man,
Whiskey, Johnny.
I thought I heard the old man say,
Whiskey for my Johnny.
We are bound away this very day,
Whiskey, Johnny.
A dollar a day is a white man’s pay,
Whiskey for my Johnny.

Oh, whiskey killed my sister Sue,
Whiskey, Johnny,
And whiskey killed the old man, too,
Whiskey for my Johnny.
Whiskey’s gone, what shall I do?
Whiskey, Johnny,
Oh, whiskey’s gone, and I’ll go too,
Whiskey for my Johnny.�

“Belay your maintopsail halliards.� “Aye, aye, sir.� And so the canvas is set fore and aft, topsails, topgallantsails, royals, and skysails, flat as boards, the inner and outer jibs are run up and the sheets hauled to windward; the main-and after-yards are braced sharp to the wind, the foretopsail is laid to the mast, and the clipper looks like some great seabird ready for flight. The anchor is hove up to:

“I wish I was in Slewer’s Hall,
Lowlands, lowlands, hurra, my boys,
A-drinking luck to the old Black Ball,
My dollar and a half a day.�

And while some of the hands bring the anchor to the rail with cat and fish tackle, and:

“A Yankee sloop came down the river,
Hah, hah, rolling John,
Oh, what do you think that sloop had in her?
Hah, hah, rolling John,
Monkey’s hide and bullock’s liver,
Hah, hah, rolling John.�

the rest of the crew fill away the foreyard, draw away the head sheets, and check in the after yards. As the ship pays off, and gathers way in the slack water, the longshoremen and runners tumble over the side into the Whitehall boats, the crowd at Battery Park gives three parting cheers, the ensign is dipped, and the clipper is on her way to Cape Horn.

CHAPTER VIII
THE CLIPPER SHIP CREWS

THE history of men before the mast on board American merchant ships is not a history of American sailors, for strictly speaking there have never been any American merchant sailors as a class; that is, no American merchant ship of considerable tonnage was ever manned by native-born Americans in the sense that French, British, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Spanish, or Danish ships are manned by men born in the country under whose flag they sail. Neither have Americans ever followed the sea all their lives before the mast, as do men of the nations named. Some of the small Salem ships and perhaps a few of the Nantucket whalers of a century ago may possibly have carried entirely American crews, but if so, the men did not remain long in the forecastle.

The ship George, 328 tons, built at Salem in 1812 and owned by Joseph Peabody, is a case in point. She was known as the “Salem frigate,� and made many successful voyages to Calcutta. Of this ship’s sailors, during her long and prosperous career, forty-five became captains, twenty chief mates, and six second mates. One of her Salem crew, Thomas M. Saunders, served as boy, ordinary seaman, able seaman, third, second, and chief mate on board of her, and finally, after twelve East India voyages, became her captain. This ship was a fair sample of many American vessels of that period, but probably no ship of similar or greater tonnage in the merchant service of any other nation can show such a brilliant record for her men before the mast.

The demand for crews for the California clippers brought together a miscellaneous lot of men, some good and some bad, some accustomed to deep-water voyages to India and China, and some only to European ports, while others were not sailors at all, and only shipped as such for the sake of getting to California. The majority were of course from the general merchant service of the time.