USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 4 > Part 40
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THE FIRST CLIPPER SHIPS (1845-1849)
The New York shipbuilders were not idle, during this de- cade of the 'forties; on the contrary, they took the lead of their more conservative Boston colleagues by producing the' first ships, after the Ann McKim, that can properly be called clippers. John W. Griffeth, the head draughtsman of a New York shipbuilding firm, was the inventor of that type. The essence of his innovation was drawing out the ends of a ves- sel, making the bow long and fine-the well-known "clipper bow"-with concave water lines at the entrance, and the greatest breadth of beam almost amidships. This concave bow was the most conspicuous feature of the clipper ships,
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distinguishing them to the most inexpert observer from the full-bodied ships with their round, burly, bows; but modern scientific designers consider it to have been a mistake, and attribute the speed of the clippers to other factors. One of those was the attention paid to the "run," the flow of lines aft from the point of greatest beam :
. sloping aft
With graceful curve and slow degrees, That she might be docile to the helm, And that the currents of parted seas, Closing behind, with mighty force,
Might aid and not impede her course."
So Longfellow described, in his "Building of the Ship." Griffeths also had original ideas about the placing of masts; the relation of beam to length-which he reduced to the pro- portions of almost one to five; and the cut and design of sails : which probably had more to do with the phenomenal speed of the clippers than the beautiful tapering stem.
Griffeth's first ship-the first complete clipper after the Ann McKim-was the Rainbow, of 750 tons, launched at New York in 1845. She was built for the China trade and was so successful that a few others like her were built for the same purpose between 1846 and 1849-most of them in New York, and only the smallest ship, the Ariel, of 572 tons, in Massachusetts. Owners were skeptical of the new type, for it had slight cargo capacity in comparison with its registered tonnage, and it required a large crew to handle the many and large sails. There was such competition in almost every sea route that it was felt that clipper ships were suitable only where extra freight money could be earned for extra speed.
In 1848 occurred the event which created the demand: the discovery of gold in California. As soon as the news reached the Atlantic Coast, early in '49, the gold fever set in. Men of every calling and profession dropped what they were doing, raised what money they could, and clubbed together to pur- chase anything that would float (and some that would not float) to take them to California. There were 151 clearances from Boston alone for San Francisco in 1849, and at least
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CLIPPER SHIPS OF 1850
as many more from the other New England seaports. As almost all the 90,000 passengers who embarked for California in 1849 went to the gold washings, and as a considerable minority were successful, the prices for food, clothing, and every necessity of life rose to fabulous heights at San Fran- cisco in 1850. Between June 26 and July 28, 1850, there entered the Golden Gate seventeen sailing vessels from New York and sixteen from Boston. The average length of these thirty-three passages was 159 days. And then arrived from New York the clipper ship Sea Witch, just 97 days out. That settled it! Clipper ships were the thing for California.
CLIPPER SHIPS OF 1850
In response to this need, the yards of New York City and Massachusetts produced the first California clipper ships, the first built especially for that trade, before the end of the year. Two of the most famous of these, the Game-Cock and Sur- prise, were built by Samuel Hall, the pioneer master builder of East Boston, and were designed by a twenty-three-year-old Bostonian, Samuel Hartt Pook. As one looks back over the records of the clipper ship era, Pook must take a very high place as a naval architect. He was the first designer of ves- sels in Massachusetts to be independent of a shipyard. Hither- to, the functions of designer and master builder had always been combined in the same firm; and well combined they gen- erally were. Samuel Hall resented the reputation that Pook got from these vessels, and asserted in the Boston press that their merits were due to his changes in the young man's plans; but Pook's reputation is secure, what with these and the Witch- craft, Herald of the Morning, and Red Jacket.
The Game-Cock, 190 feet long and registering about 1400 tons, was owned by Daniel C. Bacon of Boston, grandfather of Senator Gaspar G. Bacon. Everything in her construction was sacrificed for speed : her ends were remarkably long and fine; her rig was as lofty as that of much larger ships, hoisting 8000 yards of sailcloth 18 inches wide; and her dead rise of 40 inches was the most excessive on any clipper over 1200 tons. While the Game-Cock was a bit of a disappoint- ment as to speed, compared with her contemporaries, and
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never made a good California voyage, she was remarkably fast to windward and has one of the best records: 17 days from Sandy Hook to the Equator. It is said that, on that run, when 15 days out she spoke a British ship bound north, and on the blackboard which was used to compare calculations of latitude and longitude Captain Clement T. Jaynes of the Game-Cock wrote, "15 days from New York." The "Limey" then displayed on his board, "That's a lie!" This was typical of the attitude-half indignant and half incredulous-with which John Bull received the new records that the Yankee clippers hung up. Indeed there are to this day British writers who doubt these records on the naïve ground that it would have been impossible for a ship of any other nation to beat the records of the best British ships! However, when the first
American clipper ship to reach British waters, the Oriental, of New York, arrived in London late in 1850 after a record run of 97 days from Hong Kong, the London Times came out with a fine generous editorial, admitting that the Americans had wrought a revolution in naval architecture and calling on British shipbuilders to take up the challenge. That they did right speedily; but American shipbuilders were progressing so fast that by the time the Britishers had caught up the Amer- icans had gone one better.
The early clipper ships had most of their trouble with their spars. Much experimentation was necessary before the right proportions could be found, and there was a great deal of breakage at sea during the best of times. On her first California voyage the Game-Cock had to put in with a sprung mainmast at Rio, where she was shortly joined by another Massachusetts clipper of 1850 the Witchcraft (187 feet long, 1500 tons), designed by young Pook, built by Paul Curtis at Chelsea, and owned by S. Rogers and W. D. Pickman of Salem. With the son of one of her owners as captain, she did not do well; but under Captain Benjamin Freeman, in 1854 she made a passage of 98 days from New York to San Francisco.
This same year, 1850, James M. Hood, a shipbuilder at Somerset on the Taunton River, put in an entry for the Cali- fornia stakes with his clipper ship Governor Morton, of size
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SURPRISE AND STAG HOUND
and proportion almost a sister ship to the Game-Cock. The Governor Morton was built under the supervision of her first commander, John A. Burgess of Somerset, and for twenty- five years she was the pride of Narragansett Bay. She was one of the most useful, though not the fastest, of the clipper ships. Her best passage to San Francisco was 104 days.
Another, and slightly smaller, clipper ship of 1850 was the John Bertram, built at East Boston by Ewell & Jackson, who proved close rivals to Hall and Mckay in the new class of ves- sel. She was the first ship of Glidden & Williams's Boston- San Francisco packet line; but as there was so little return freight from California in those days, she always returned to Boston via China, as the other California clippers did. In Dr. Howe's American Clipper Ships there is a fine description, by one of the mates, of the Bertram beating up Manila Bay against the wind, the crew at their stations from dawn to dark, forced to shave the narrow channel on either side.
Coming about in a square-rigger is a very different matter from putting a fore-and-aft-rigged vessel on the other tack- a most complicated manouver in a full-rigged ship carrying topgallants, royals, and even skysails. The fifteen yards have to be swung at exactly the right moment-a different moment for each mast-or the ship will be in stays. Anyone who has steamed into Manila will wonder that a square-rigger could beat in at all. Imagine then what a wonderful sight the nerv- ous evolutions of the lofty Bertram must have been and what nerve Captain Fred Lendholm must have had to attempt it. But the glass was falling, and he knew his crew ; and the single mishap which could have piled them up on the rocks did not occur.
SURPRISE AND STAG HOUND (1850)
The queen of the 1850 vintage, however, was the Surprise, designed by Pook, and built by Samuel Hall under the super- vision of her first commander, Captain Philip Dumaresq. Measuring 1261 tons, and 1831/2 feet long, she was neither as large nor as sharp as the Game-Cock, but much more ap- propriately named. The first surprise she afforded was at
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her launching, for Sam Hall made the bold experiment of letting her slip down the ways fully sparred, three skysail yards crossed, and gear rove off. The great event took place on October 5, 1850. It was the first of a series of free spec- tacles to which the lucky Bostonians of the clipper ship era were treated almost every month. Longfellow has recorded in his "Building of the Ship" the emotion of those clipper launchings :
"And at the word, Loud and sudden there was heard, All around them and below, The sound of hammers, blow on blow, Knocking away the shores and spurs.
And see! she stirs! She starts,-she moves,-she seems to feel The thrill of life along her keel, And, spurning with her foot the ground, With one exulting, joyous bound, She leaps into the ocean's arms."
Confounding the old shellbacks, who predicted that with all that top-hamper she would turn turtle, the Surprise started gently down the ways and, amid a roar of cheering and jan- gling of church bells, slid into the harbor, swayed like a fledg- ling on his first flight, and came to rest with an air of aristocratic contempt for the crape-hangers. Then came a banquet offered by her builder to the workingmen who built her, with their wives and sweethearts, and another dinner given by the owners to Samuel Hall, at which they presented him with a purse of $2,500 over and above the cost of the ship.
A. A. Low & Brother, of New York, could well afford the bonus, for the Surprise was one of the most successful of the clippers, clearing a profit of $50,000 over her prime cost on her first California voyage, and later, earning steady profits in the China tea trade under "Old Cap'n Charles" Ranlett and "Young Cap'n Charles," his son. What counted more in prestige, on her maiden voyage, under Captain Dumaresq, she clipped a day off the Sea Witch's record of 97 days, New York to San Francisco. It was a proud day for Boston when
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THE FLYING CLOUD
the news came through; but prouder days yet were in store for the "happy town beside the sea, whose roads lead every- where to all."
Donald McKay was yet to be heard from. He was near thirty years old, and an experienced shipbuilder. An old friend of John W. Griffeth of New York, he thoroughly be- lieved in the new principles of design; but on account of his preoccupation with the Train packet ships, he had had no op- portunity to get into the game until well on in 1850, when two of the first merchant-shipowner firms of Boston, George B. Upton and Sampson & Tappan, commissioned him to build what was the largest American merchant ship yet constructed, and an extreme clipper at that. This was the Stag Hound, the first American merchantman over 200 feet long and over 1500 tons burthen. She had a sail area of 9500 yards, not counting light sails. Everything in or about her, from the patent blocks to the carved figurehead of a staghound panting at the chase, was locally made; and the whole was so sym- metrical that the newspaper scribes exhausted their adjectives and similes in trying to describe her sharp bow, clean "as a sculptured Venus," her elliptical stern, and her sheer line, "perfect as the spring of a steel bow." Indeed, it was always a question whether a clipper ship was more beautiful doing her proper work with sails set, or riding at anchor, with rigging taut, yards square, sails taper-furled, and a general look of "rarin' to go," like a race-horse.
The Stag Hound holds the sailing-ship record from San Francisco to Honolulu-nine days; and the record from Bos- ton Light to the Equator-thirteen days. On her first voyage to 'Frisco she ran into a heavy gale, resulting in much damage to her spars, and detention at Rio. Nevertheless she com- pleted the run in 107 sailing days. Captain Josiah Richard- son wrote home from San Francisco, "The ship has yet to be built to beat the Stag Hound." Right; but she was building, and at the same yard !
THE FLYING CLOUD
This was a 1700-ton clipper ship ordered by Enoch Train & Co., and intended as a packet in their Liverpool-Boston line.
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While she was still on the stocks Moses H. Grinnell, of the New York firm of Grinnell, Minturn & Co., took a fancy to her, asked Mr. Train to name his price, and paid it on the nail -$90,000. She was to have been named after some English county ; but as her new owners intended her for the California trade, this was no longer appropriate. They asked Donald Mckay to name her himself; and he chose perhaps the most appropriate name ever given to a sailing ship, the Flying Cloud.
On June 3, 1851, began the first of the Flying Cloud's me- morable voyages from New York to San Francisco. Her master, Captain Josiah Perkins Cressy, of Marblehead, only thirty-seven years old but for fourteen years a master mariner, was a "driver." Three days out, the Flying Cloud lost main and mizzen topgallant masts and main topsail yard in a heavy gale ; but new spars were fitted within two days, during which she went driving on with all the sail that could be spread.
One extract from her log, which was afterwards printed by her owners in gold letters on white silk, will be better than pages of description for those who know something of the sea and the ways of ships :
"July 31. Fresh breezes, fine weather, all sail set. At 2 p.m. wind southeast. At 6 squally; in lower and topgallant studdingsails 7, in royal, at 2 a.m. in foretopmast studding- sail. Latter part, strong gales and high sea running. Ship very wet fore and aft. Distance run this day by observation 374 miles. During the squalls 18 knots of line was not suffi- cient to measure the rate of speed. Topgallantsails set."
That was her fastest day's run-by far the greatest day's run yet made on the ocean by sail or steam. In 26 consecutive days she reeled off almost 6000 miles. During four consecu- tive days she logged an average of 13.5 knots. And in the end, the Cloud came flying through the Golden Gate, 89 days out! -89 days, 21 hours, anchor to anchor, to be exact; a record for a coast-to-coast westerly voyage only once surpassed, and that by the same ship. For on her fourth voyage, in 1854, he made the same run in 89 days 8 hours, anchor to anchor. That record stands today, and it will doubtless stand for all time.
There is one thing about the extreme clipper ships that I
From a painting by Burnell Poole, Englewood, N. J.
DONALD MCKAY'S FAMOUS "FLYING CLOUD"
From an engraving in the Author's possession
BOSTON HARBOR IN 1856 SHOWING THE CLIPPER SHIP "NIGHTINGALE" AT ANCHOR, AND AN OLD- FASHIONED CLIPPER SHIP UNDER SAIL, AT THE LEFT
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THE FLYING CLOUD
would not believe if I had not been told it by several unim- peachable authorities. While their sails were set, they were never completely still on the water. In the flattest of flat calms and the most doleful of doldrums, they refused to lie "as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean," but always moved enough to give steerage way. Some old seamen thought they did it by the sails slatting against the spars; and although that would seem to be a mechanical impossibility, the sea is a strange element that has never yielded all her secrets.
One question on which there can be endless debate is the rela- tive part of ship and commander in making fast time. There can be no question, however, that master mariners like Philip Dumaresq, Asa Eldridge, Robert H. Waterman, Charles A. Ranlett, and Josiah P. Cressy had a great deal to do with the splendid records that various vessels made under their com- mand; for the same vessels in other and less competent hands never did so well. Captain Cressy's successor on the quarter- deck of the Flying Cloud never had a good chance, however, as her rig was reduced in 1856, and again in 1858. After go- ing under the British flag in 1862, she made only fair pas- sages, and ended her career rather ingloriously in the St. Johns-London lumber trade, in 1874.
The Flying Cloud's first voyage was all the more remark- able in that it was made without the use of Maury's Sailing Directions. No account of the Massachusetts clippers can be written, without a word of tribute to that great Virginian, Lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury, U.S.N., whose synthesis of the data on winds and currents, compiled from thousands of ships' logs, discovered system in the winds and currents of the great oceans. Maury dispelled the last of the sea myths, which for ages had been the delight of poets and the terror of sailors. It was he who discovered the steady westerlies of the "roaring forties" south latitude, and taught navigators how to use the elements to the best advantage. His tables did not get into general use before 1852; they then spread over the civilized world, and earned him all the honors that governments and learned societies can grant. What Boston thought of him, in the days when great sailing ships were still something more than a memory, may be judged from the fact that his name
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appears not only once, but twice, among the names of the famous men of all countries and ages, carved on the front of the Boston Public Library.
RACES OF THE FLYING CLOUD AND N. B. PALMER
"The California passage is the longest and most tedious within the domain of commerce," wrote Lieutenant Maury. "Many are the vicissitudes which attend it. . . . It tries the patience of the navigator and taxes his energies to the utmost. . It is a great race-course, upon which some of the most beautiful trials of speed the world ever saw have come off." One of these noted trials over the 15,000-mile race course was between the Flying Cloud and the N.B. Palmer, a slightly smaller New York clipper which that city counted upon to up- hold her reputation for shipbuilding. The N. B. Palmer was a fine ship without a doubt, and she was commanded by Cap- tain Charles P. Low; but in 1851 she left New York ten days before the Flying Cloud, and reached San Francisco a week behind. The two ships did not sight each other on that voy- age; but the next year they had another 15,000-mile race.
The Flying Cloud sailed from New York, May 14, 1852, and had light winds to the equator. On July 1, off the coast of Brazil, as she was running before a light westerly wind with skysails and royal studdingsails set, a clipper ship was reported ahead, almost becalmed. It was the N. B. Palmer, which had left New York ten days after the Flying Cloud! Captain Cressy's feelings at finding a rival clipper ahead of him with such a handicap, and one commanded by a Salem man, may well be imagined. Soon the two beautiful ships were becalmed, almost abreast.
As the glass predicts an approaching southerly breeze, both ships take in their studdingsails and sway up their halyards, doubtless to the favorite sweating-up chantey of :-
"Boney was a warrior, a-way, ay-yah! A warrior and a tarrier, John Fran-zo!
Boney fought the Roo-shi-ans, a-way, ay-yah!
Boney fought the Proo-shi-ans, John Fran-zo!"
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And so on, with improvised insults to the other ship, her "old man," officers, and men, until all's ataunto. In a few hours the breeze strikes home. Simultaneously the crews brace their yards up sharp on the starboard tack, to
"Do my Johnny Boker, come rock and roll me over ; Do my Johnny Boker, do! Do, my Johnny Boker; the mate is never sober ! Do my Johnny Boker, do!"
The sails fill, each gallant ship takes a bone in her teeth, and heels over as the wind freshens to a good whole-sail breeze. The Flying Cloud soon begins to draw away from her rival. By daylight, the next morning, the N. B. Palmer is hull-down to leeward; and by four p.m. is no longer in sight.
Captain Cressy had a fine crew on this voyage, who "worked like one man, and that man a hero." But Captain Low was not so fortunate; for by the time the clipper ships came out native Americans had begun to shun the forecastle, and these noble vessels, especially those sailing from New York, were manned perforce with the world's flotsam and jetsam, includ- ing some of the choicest toughs, bullies, and hoodlums in history. One member of the N. B. Palmer's crew shot at and wounded the first mate, and another knocked the second mate down with a handspike. Captain Low had these men tied up in the rigging and served four dozen lashes with the "cat"; but as this did not cure them, and as he got little assistance from his officers in preserving discipline, he decided to put in at Valparaiso to get rid of the mutineers. We have all been entertained by yarns of Yankee mates who struck men dead for a little cheekiness, and of captains who shot members of their crew off the yardarms for mere sport; but these are pure inventions. Considering what desperate characters-and des- perate chances-the clipper officers had to deal with, they erred on the side of humanity rather than hardness. At Val- pariso most of the N. B. Palmer's crew deserted, and securing another cost her a delay of eight days. So the Flying Cloud walked away with the race and entered the Golden Gate
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twenty-three days ahead of her rival-or five days ahead in actual sailing days.
Another notable race of the same year, 1851, was between the little 700-ton clipper ship Raven, built by Hood, of Somer- set; the 1600-ton Typhoon, built at Portsmouth, N. H .; and the celebrated Sea Witch, of New York. The last named sailed on August 1 from New York; the Typhoon, on the next day; and the Raven, on August 5 from Boston. None of the three sighted the others on the voyage; but they arrived at San Francisco in reverse order on successive days. The Raven won, with a 106-day passage; the Typhoon was next, with 108 days, and the Sea Witch, which in her youth had done 97 days, took 111 this voyage.
FLYING FISH, JOHN GILPIN, AND NORTHERN LIGHT
Donald McKay turned out another flyer that year, the Flying Fish for Sampson & Tappan of Boston. Her maiden voyage, from Boston to San Francisco in the winter of 1851-52, was a race with the New York clipper Sword Fish, which left New York five days later. The Bostonian led to the equator. At 50° S. the Sword Fish caught up. They raced around the Horn together, often in sight and sometimes side by side, and the Flying Fish led to latitude 50° S. in the Pacific; but from that point the Sword Fish drew steadily ahead, and made her destination in the splendid time of 90 days. The Flying Fish arrived four days later, and her sailing time was 100 days.
On her second California voyage in 1852-53, the Flying Fish had for a rival Samuel Hall's new clipper ship John Gilpin, Captain Justin Doane, 195 feet long and measuring 1089 tons. We shall let Captain Clark describe the race :
"The John Gilpin sailed out past Sandy Hook, October 29, 1852, followed by the Flying Fish on November 1, and before the green highlands of Neversink had disappeared below the horizon both ships were under a cloud of canvas. The Flying Fish fanned along through the doldrums and crossed the equa- tor 21 days from Sandy Hook, leading the John Gilpin by one day. From the line to 50° S., the John Gilpin made the run in
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23 days, passing the Flying Fish and getting a clear lead of two days. The Flying Fish did some fine sailing here; dash- ing through the Straits of Le Maire, she came up along- side the John Gilpin just off the Horn, and Nickels, ever fa- mous for his jovial good-cheer, invited Doane to come aboard and dine with him, "which invitation," the John Gilpin's log- book ruefully records, "I was reluctantly obliged to decline." This is perhaps the only instance of an invitation to dine out being received off Cape Horn. Few men have had the op- portunity to extend such unique hospitality and certainly none could do so more heartily and gracefully than the famous com- mander of the Flying Fish. His vessel made the run from 50° S. in the Atlantic to 50° S. in the Pacific in 7 days, leading her rival by two days. From this point to the equator, the Flying Fish was 19 and the John Gilpin 20 days. From here the John Gilpin showed remarkable speed, making the run to San Francisco in 15 days, a total of 93 days, closely followed by the Flying Fish, 92 days from Sandy Hook. .
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