USA > Massachusetts > The maritime history of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 > Part 26
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There was no veneer or sham about the beauty of the Massachusetts clippers. They were all well and solidly built of the best oak, Southern pine, and hack- matack, copper fastened and sheathed with Taunton yellow metal. Scamping or skimping never occurred to a clipper-ship builder, and if it had, no Yankee workman would have stayed in his yard. In finish the clipper ships surpassed anything previously attempted in marine art. Those built in Newburyport, in partic- ular, were noted for the evenness of their seams and the perfection of their joiner-work. The topsides, planed and sandpapered smooth as a mackerel, were painted a dull black that brought out their lines like a black velvet dress on a beautiful woman. The pine decks were holystoned cream-white. Stanchions, fife- rails, and houses shone with mahogany, rosewood, and brass. Many had sumptuous staterooms, cabins, and bathrooms for passengers, that put the old-time stuffy Cunarders to shame. The Mastiff had a library costing twelve hundred dollars. Constant improvements were made in gear and rigging. Patent blocks, trusses, and steering gear saved time and labor. The Howes double-topsail rig (an improvement on Captain R. B.
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Forbes's invention) was generally adopted by the later clippers, spread to the ships of all nations, and is still in use. No detail was omitted that might increase speed, and no expense spared to make the Massachu- setts clippers invulnerable to the most critical nautical eye.
Boston Harbor never presented a more animated spectacle than during the clipper-ship era. One April day in 1854, wrote F. O. Dabney, no less than six large new clippers, undergoing the process of rigging, could be seen from his counting-room windows on Central Wharf. Across the harbor, the East Boston shore from Jeffries' Point to Chelsea Bridge was al- most a continuous line of vessels in various stages of construction. Twenty ships of eleven hundred tons upward were built there that year. Some idea of the inner harbor and the water-front may be gained from Mottram's engraving, and from the Bradlee photo- graph, both made at the end of the era, in 1857. In the center of the engraving is the clipper ship Night- ingale, a marked contrast in size and form to the old-fashioned ship at the left of the picture. At the extreme left is a typical fishing pinkie; and this side of the Nightingale, a coasting schooner. The photograph shows Mediterranean fruiters lined up against Central Wharf, a New York packet-schooner at the extreme right, and in the center, conspicuous among the tier of vessels at the end of India Wharf, the clipper ship Defender, built by Donald McKay.
The men who handled these great vessels were a class by themselves. The officers, mostly of New England stock and many from Cape Cod, had followed
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THE CLIPPER SHIP
the sea since boyhood, and were steeped in experience. No others could be trusted to drive these saucy, wild clippers against Cape Horn howlers, when the slightest misjudgment meant the loss of a spar, or loss of one hour- which was more important. They were devoted to the rigid traditions of the quarterdeck. The cap- tain gave all his orders through the first officer, except for putting the ship about; and lived in a more digni- fied seclusion than the colonel of a regiment in a fron- tier garrison. No one spoke to him unless spoken to; the weather side of the quarterdeck was his private walk; whole voyages passed without a scrap of con- versation between master and officers, except in line of duty. Men at the head of the profession like Captain Dumaresq were paid three thousand dollars for an outward passage to San Francisco, and five thousand if they made it under a hundred days.
Occasionally, clipper-ship commanders took their wives with them. Mrs. Cressy was the constant com- panion of her husband on the Flying Cloud. The wife of Captain Charles H. Brown gave birth to a son during a North Pacific gale, when the Black Prince was flying under close-reefed topsails. Immediately after, a heavy sea burst in the after cabin deadlight, shooting clear over the box in which the new-born babe was lying. But most remarkable of these brave women of the sea was Mrs. Captain Patten, of the Neptune's Car. In the midst of a Cape Horn gale Captain Patten came down with brain fever. The first mate was in irons for insubordination; the second mate was ignorant of navigation. But Mrs. Patten had made herself mistress of the art during a previous voyage. Without question, she took command. For fifty-two days this frail little Boston woman of nine- teen years navigated a great clipper of eighteen hun-
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dred tons, tending her husband the while; and took both safely into San Francisco.1
Yankee workmen built the clipper ships, but they were not manned by Americans. The Yankee mariner, with his neat clothes and perfect seamanship, had passed into history by 1850. Few Americans could then be found in the forecastles of merchantmen on deep waters. When did this change take place? Why did New Englanders abandon the sea?
In part, no doubt, it was a question of status. The seaman was not as free as other workmen. His per- sonal liberty was suspended until the end of the voyage. Discipline was more severe, brutality more common, and redress more difficult to obtain than in other call- ings. Laws forbidding such practices as flogging, and humane judges such as Peleg Sprague, of the District Court at Boston, could do little to alter the tradition of centuries. In one of his notable decisions,2 Judge Sprague remarked:
Seamen, in general, have little confidence in the justice of those whom circumstances have placed above them, and there is too much ground for this feeling. If a seaman is wronged by a subordinate officer, and makes a complaint to the master, it too often happens that he not only can obtain no hearing or redress, but brings upon himself further and greater ill treatment; and an appeal to an American consul against a master is oftentimes no more successful, pre-occupied, as that officer is likely to be, by the representations and influence of the master. Upon his return home, he finds those whom he has served, the owners of the ship, generally take part, at once,
1 Incredible as it may seem, Mrs. Patten's age is confirmed by the Boston marriage records, which give her age as sixteen when she married Captain Patten on April 1, 1853. She was Mary A. Brown, daughter of George Brown, of Boston.
2 Swain v. Howland (1858), I Sprague, 427.
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CAPTAIN PHILIP DUMARESQ Master of the Surprise and the Romance of the Seas
CAPTAIN JOSIAH PERKINS CRESSY Master of the Flying Cloud
THE CLIPPER SHIP
with the officer, in every controversy with the seamen, and not in- frequently exerting themselves to intercept that justice which the law would give him. And if to all this be added peculiar severity, even by the law of his country, . .. he may well be excused for feel- ing little confidence in the justice of superior powers. This feeling enters into his character, adds to his recklessness, weakens the ties that bind him to his country, and tends to make him a vagrant citizen of the world.
Our clipper ships were, in fact, manned by an interna- tional proletariat of the sea, vagrants with an attitude curiously similar to that of the casual workers in the West to-day.
Low wages, even more than low status, were re- sponsible for this condition. In Federalist days an able seaman received eighteen dollars a month on Pacific voyages, and even more in neutral trading. In comparison with shore wages, and in lack of other opportunities, this was sufficient to attract Yankee youngsters to sea, though not to keep them there. During the slack period that followed the War of 1812, twelve dollars became the standard wage. An increase of tonnage in the thirties required more seamen. In- stead of raising wages, to compete with the machine- shops and railroads and Western pioneering that were attracting young Yankees, the shipowners maintained or even depressed them, until ordinary and able seamen on California clippers received from eight to twelve dollars a month.1 In the New Orleans cotton trade, and other lines of commerce out of Boston, as high as eighteen dollars was paid for able seamen, and the Liverpool 'packet-rats' got even more for their short and stormy runs. But in a period of rising costs and wages, the seaman's wage remained stationary, or de- clined. He had "no Sunday off soundings," and his
1 Yet in 1856 Boston ship-carpenters and caulkers received $3 for a 62 hour day; longshoremen, $2 per tide; stevedores, 25 cents per hour.
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calling was the most dangerous in the world. It took strength, skill, and courage to furl topsails on a great clipper ship, with its masts and eighty-foot yards bend- ing like whalebone in a River Plate pampero, great blocks beating about like flails, and the No. O. Lowell duck sails slatting with enough force to crush a man's ribs.
Americans would not willingly accept such wages for such work. Coasting vessels, paying eighteen dol- lars a month, absorbed the Yankee boys with a crav- ing for the sea. The shipowners could have obtained American crews had they been willing to pay for them; but they were not. Like the factory owners, they preferred cheap foreign labor.
A law of 1817 required two-thirds of an American crew to be American citizens. But this law was dis- regarded, as soon as it became the shipowners' interest to do so; and by the clipper period it was a dead letter. Captain Clark once had a Chinese cook who shipped as "George Harrison of Charlestown, Mass." When applicants for foremast berths became fewer, the ship- owner had recourse to shipping agencies, which turned to the sailors' boarding-house keepers, making it their interest to rob and drug seamen in order to sign them on, and pocket their three months' advance wages. Thus began the system of crimping or shanghaiing. The percentage of foreigners and incompetents in- creased. Men of all nations,1 and of the most depraved
1 A sample crew is that of the ship Reindeer, Canton to Boston: 2 Frenchmen, I Portuguese, I Cape Verde Islander, I Azores man, I Italian, I Dutchman, I Mulatto, 2 Kanakas, I Welshman, I Swede, 2 Chinese, and 2 Americans. (Boston Atlas, July 22, 1851.) The Black Prince had even foreign officers. Captain Brown was a Portuguese by birth; the chief mate was Danish, the 2d British, the 3d German, and out of 24 able seamen there were but two Americans; one from Newbury- port and one from Boston.
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and criminal classes, some of them sailors, but many not, were hoisted, literally dead to the world, aboard the clippers. Habitual drunkards formed the only considerable native element in this human hash. "It is perfectly well known that sailors do get intoxicated," said Judge Sprague, when a pious captain discharged a seaman for a drunken frolic. "Masters hire them with this knowledge, ... owners get their services at a less price for these very habits; year after year they serve at a mere pittance because of them." Many a landsman, as well, imbibed too much liquor on the Boston water-front, and awoke in the forecastle of a clipper ship bound round the world.
Whenever a Yankee boy had the nerve to go to sea under these conditions, and the pluck to stick it out in such company, he was assured of quick promotion. Arthur H. Clark, the historian of the clipper-ship era, was the son of a Boston Mediterranean merchant and yachtsman. Instead of going to Harvard, he went to sea before the mast in the clipper ship Black Prince, returned around the globe, over two years later, as her third mate, and then shipped as second mate of the Northern Light. A few more voyages, and he became a shipmaster. Henry Jackson Sargent, Jr., of the Gloucester family that has produced such eminent writers and artists, shipped before the mast at the age of seventeen on the Flying Fish,1 the only ship except the Flying Cloud which made two California voyages under one hundred days. Within a few years he was not only the youngest, but one of the most ac- complished clipper-ship commanders. The Medford- built clipper Phantom, under his command but through no fault of his own, ran on the Prates Shoal in thick,
1 Flying Fish, 207' X 39' 6" × 22', 1506 tons; built by Donald McKay in 1851.
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heavy weather on July 12, 1862. All hands were saved in the boats, although not all escaped a plunder- ing by Chinese pirates. Obtaining another command in China, at the age of twenty-nine, Captain Sargent sailed from Shanghai, and was never heard from again. To this day, the Pacific holds the secret of his fate and that of his vessel.
If a mate found one or two boys such as these, be- side the twoscore drugged and drunken bums, loafers, and rare seamen of all nations and colors delivered him by the crimp, he thanked his stars for it, and gave them separate quarters. For this system did not even deliver sailors, except by accident. Of his crew in the Flying Cloud's race with the N. B. Palmer, Captain Cressy said: "They worked like one man, and that man a hero." But in every crew shipped under the shanghai method there were bound to be men fit only 'to keep the bread from moulding.' Resenting their involun- tary servitude, many did their best to 'soger'; to be 'yard-arm furlers' and 'buntline reefers' - in other words, malingerers. Others watched their chance to start a mutiny; and yet others, who tried to do their duty, seemed shirkers because of their ignorance of English. Hence the brutality for which Yankee mates and masters became notorious.1 There were clipper ships like the Northern Light, where no hand was ever raised against the men, but aboard most of them, after Congress forbade sailors to be 'triced up' and 'intro- duced to the gunner's daughter' or cat o' nine tails,
1 It is interesting to note that the practical English author of The Mate and his Duties (Liverpool, 1855) says: "It is acknowledged by all parties that they have much better discipline in American ships than we have ... human nature is not allowed to ooze over, being always in check by the fear of immediate chastisement." He deplores the presence of apprentices on English vessels, as they enable Jack to shirk certain duties as "boy's work."
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discipline was only kept by heavy and full portions of 'belaying-pin soup' and 'handspike hash.'
As the men were usually stripped of all they had by the crimps, they were forced to buy clothing on board from the slop-chest; and as the crimp had pocketed their three months' advance wages, they usually ended the voyage destitute or in debt. Then began another segment of the vicious circle, Jack pawning his body for food, shelter, and drink, and awakening with an aching head on board another ship, outward bound.
Various were the remedies proposed. A committee of the Boston Marine Society, consisting of Boston's most respected shipowners, petitioned Congress in 1852 to restore flogging - as if the 'cat' would at- tract Americans to sea! Captains John Codman and R. B. Forbes wanted an apprentice or school-ship system, which the same Marine Society had rejected many years before. Improvements were made in food and housing; the clipper ships had a deckhouse for their foremast hands, instead of the dark, stuffy fore- castle of older vessels; and comparatively good food, with hot tea and coffee, was served. But no one sug- gested the experiment of attracting Americans to sea by decent wages and a freeman's status. New Eng- landers have more maritime aptitude than other Americans; but they are not a maritime people like the British or Scandinavians or Greeks, content to serve a lifetime before the mast for a mere pittance. The days were long past when Massachusetts boys had to choose between farming at home and seafaring abroad. In 1850 the workshops of New England needed men, and the great West was calling.
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"The California passage is the longest and most tedious within the domains of Commerce; many are the vicissitudes that attend it," wrote Lieutenant Maury. "It tries the patience of the navigator, and taxes his energies to the very utmost. ... It is a great race-course, upon which some of the most beautiful trials of speed the world ever saw have come off."
Every passage from New York or Boston to San Francisco was a race against time, on which the build- er's and master's reputation depended; and there were some remarkable ship-to-ship contests over this fifteen- thousand-mile course. One of the best took place in 1854, between the Romance of the Seas,1 Captain Dumaresq, and the David Brown, Captain George Brewster. The Romance, sailing from Boston two days after her New York rival passed Sandy Hook, caught up with her off the coast of Brazil, and kept her in sight a good part of the passage to the Golden Gate, which both entered side-by-side on March 23, respectively ninety-six and ninety-eight days out. After discharging, they passed out in company, set skysails and royal studdingsails, and kept them set for forty-five days, when the Romance entered Hong Kong one hour in the lead.
As California afforded no outward lading in the early fifties, the clipper ships generally returned around the world, by way of China. There they came into competition with British vessels, and the result gave John Bull a worse shock than the yacht America's victory. So vastly superior was the speed of the American clippers, that British firms in Hong Kong
1 Romance of the Seas, 240' 8" X 34' 6" × 20', 1782 tons; built by Donald McKay in 1853 for G. B. Upton. The David Brown, 1715 tons, was built the same year by Roosevelt & Joyce, New York, for A. A. Low & Brother.
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paid them seventy-five cents per cubic foot freight on teas to London, as against twenty-eight cents to their own ships.
Crack British East-Indiamen humbly awaited a cargo in the treaty-ports for weeks on end, while one American clipper after another sailed proudly in, and secured a return freight almost before her topsails were furled. When the Yankee beauties arrived in the Thames, their decks were thronged with sight-seers, their records were written up in the leading papers, and naval draughtsmen took off their lines while in dry-dock.
By the time the British builders were learning the first rudiments of clipper designing, the Americans had made still further progress. As to a cathedral builder of the thirteenth century, so to Donald McKay came visions transcending human experience, with the power to transmute them into reality. The public believed he had reached perfection with the Flying Cloud; but in 1852 he created the Sovereign of the Seas.1 She had the longest and sharpest ends of any vessel yet built. Her widest point was twenty feet forward of amid- ships, and her figure-head showed a bronze mer-king, blowing a conch shell. No merchant shipowner, even in that era of adventure, dared order such a vessel. Her building was financed by Mckay's loyal friends. But so convincing was her appearance, that immedi- ately after launching she was sold for the record price of $150,000, almost all of which she earned in freight on her first round voyage.
Lauchlan Mckay, who, thirty-four years before had helped his brother Donald build their first boat
1 Sovereign of the Seas, 258' 2" X 44' 7" X 23' 6", 2421 tons. The Westward Ho!, 214' X 40' 8" × 23' 6", 1650 tons, was built by Donald Mckay the same year, for Sampson & Tappan, of Boston.
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in Nova Scotia, commanded this great vessel on her maiden voyage to San Francisco. Starting in the un- favorable month of August, the Sovereign of the Seas encountered southwest gales from the Falklands to Cape Horn. Topmasts bent like whips to the fearful snow squalls, yet nothing carried away, and the noble ship never wore nor missed stays once in the long beat to windward. Around the Horn she found no better weather, and in the course of a heavy gale, owing to the main topmast trestle-trees settling, her main top- mast, mizzen topgallantmast, and foretopsail yard went over the side. Luckily, the captain was an expert rigger, and had an unusually large crew. Within thirty hours he had the Sovereign under jury rig, doing twelve knots. And in twelve days' time, by working day and night, she was almost as well rigged as when she left Boston. In spite of these mishaps she "beat the clipper fleet" that sailed with her, and entered San Francisco one hundred and three days out of New York; the fastest passage ever made by a ship leaving the Atlantic coast in August.
On the homeward passage from Honolulu, with a cargo of oil and whalebone, a short crew, a foretopmast sprung in two places, and a tender maintopmast, Captain Mckay "passed through a part of the Great South Sea, which has been seldom traversed by trad- ers." In the forties and fifties south latitude, a long, rolling swell and the northwest tradewinds hurled the Sovereign of the Seas one quarter of the distance around the world - 5391 nautical miles - in twenty- two days. One sea day (March 17-18, 1853) was mem- orable above all others. Sun and moon appeared only in brief glimpses. Heavy rain squalls tore down the wind, whipping to a white froth the crests of enormous seas that went roaring southward - but not much
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CLIPPER SHIP SOVEREIGN OF THE SEAS
CLIPPER SHIP WESTWARD HO!
THE CLIPPER SHIP
faster than their Sovereign. When struck by a squall she would send spray masthead high, fly up a point or two, and heeling over try to take her helm and shoot along a deep valley between two towering rollers. Brought to her course again, she would righten with the poise of a thoroughbred, and leap forward as if taking a fresh start. On that day the Sovereign of the Seas made 4II nautical miles; 1 an average of 17.7 knots, and a day's run surpassed only thrice: by the Red Jacket, and by two other creations of Donald Mckay.
For the year 1853, Donald McKay made another sensation with the Great Republic. To appreciate her size, recall that any vessel over 130 feet long and 500 tons burthen was considered large before 1840; that the Stag-Hound, 1534 tons, was the first sailing ship built over two hundred feet long; that the Flying Cloud was 229 feet long and registered 1793 tons, and the Sovereign of the Seas, 258 feet and 2421 tons. The Great Republic was 334 feet, 6 inches long, and regis- tered 4556 tons. Fifty-three feet, six inches broad, and thirty-eight feet deep, she was as sharp and shapely a clipper ship as any ever built. No vessel, before or since, has had such enormous spars and sail area. Her main yard was 120 feet long; her fore skysail yard, 40 feet. In addition to her three square-rigged masts she carried a spanker-mast with gaff-topsail and gaff-topgallantsail. The leech and bolt-ropes of the topsails were eight-and-a-half-inch, and the fore and
1 According to the abstract of her log, printed in Maury's Sailing Directions, 6th ed., 757. Yet in Lieutenant Maury's letter of May 10, 1853, to the Secretary of the Navy (reprinted in R. B. Forbes, Ships of the Past, 27) he states that the greatest day's run of this passage was "362 knots or 419 statute miles." Captain Clark (p. 220) follows the log's record of 411 miles, which, on account of her easting made during the day, is equivalent to 424 nautical miles in twenty-four hours.
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main standing rigging, twelve-and-a-half-inch four- stranded Russia hemp.
The Great Republic's sails, which would have cov- ered over one and a half acres if laid out flat,1 were never set. She was towed to New York, where, on the eve of her maiden voyage, she caught fire, and had to be scuttled to prevent total loss. Salvaged, razeed to 3357 tons, and under greatly reduced rig, she made a voyage of ninety-two days to San Francisco. What wonders of speed might this ship of ships have per- formed, as Donald McKay built and rigged her!
The Great Republic had been destined for the Aus- tralian trade, whither British adventure and emigra- tion were now tending, following a discovery of gold. The Sovereign of the Seas, appearing in Liverpool in July, 1853, was immediately chartered by James Baines & Co.'s Australian Black Ball Line, which charged £7 a ton freight in her to Melbourne, and offered to return £2 of it if she did not beat every steamer on the route. Baines kept the money. The White Star Line, not to be outdone, chartered three great clipper ships - Mckay's Chariot of Fame, Jackson's Blue Jacket, and the Red Jacket, designed by Samuel H. Pook and built by George Thomas at Rockland, Maine. On her passage from New York to Liverpool the Red Jacket, Asa Eldridge master, broke the record for that route, with rain, hail, or snow falling throughout the entire trip; and made a day's run of 413 nautical miles. Her first Australian voyage was so remarkable that she was purchased by her British charterers for thirty thousand pounds sterling. James Baines & Co. then went one better, and con- tracted with Donald McKay for four great clipper ships over two thousand tons, which he completed
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