Clipper Ships and the Golden Age of Sail Read online

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  1 THE ORIGINS OF CLIPPER SHIPS

  Baltimore clippers

  Britain lags behind

  Gold rush

  Time for tea

  Beauty at any cost

  End of an era

  2 A HELL SHIP VOYAGE WITH ‘BULLY’ WATERMAN

  Fame and fortune

  A challenge for the Challenge

  Rotten crew

  Crisis at Cape Horn

  The reckoning in San Francisco

  The aftermath

  3 MARCO POLO, THE FASTEST SHIP IN THE WORLD

  A stranding with a twist

  Under new ownership

  Up through the hawse-pipe

  Troubles on the record passage

  Commander of the Lightning

  The Schomberg’s only voyage

  Dangerous gamble

  Decline and fall

  4 MARY PATTEN’S BATTLE WITH CAPE HORN

  The Rapid’s turnaround

  An unusual honeymoon

  Captain and mate

  Mary’s dilemma

  Keeler’s second chance

  The frustrating final leg

  End of the fairytale

  5 MUTINY ABOARD THE ‘WILD BOAT OF THE ATLANTIC’

  The Dreadnought’s recipe for success

  Liverpool packet rats

  The provocation

  Crisis point

  Rudderless in mid-ocean

  Wrecked near Cape Horn

  6 THE GREAT CHINA TEA RACE OF 1866

  Out to sea

  The captains and their ships

  The challenges of sailing China clippers

  Manoeuvring for position

  On the home stretch

  7 THE SIR LANCELOT DEFIES THE ODDS

  Dismasted in the Bay of Biscay

  The race line-up

  ‘Go ahead’ Robinson

  The Sir Lancelot catches up

  A new rival

  Against the Thermopylae

  Robinson’s final record

  8 THE CUTTY SARK’S LONGEST VOYAGE

  Cruel mate

  Search for a new skipper

  Tramp of the ocean

  Hazing and hardship

  Drunk in command

  Wool clipper

  EPILOGUE

  Twilight

  APPENDIX

  Principal records set by British and American clipper ships

  CREDITS

  INTRODUCTION

  From a very early age I was utterly obsessed with ships and the sea. Bearing in mind that I come from a particularly landlocked part of Cumbria, no one in my family could really account for it. They looked on with bemused interest as I spent my days up in trees pretending it was the rigging of a ship or floating pieces of wood down the river that ran by our house in order to recreate some race or naval battle. At first my nautical obsession was very general, although I always favoured sail over power, but at the age of 12 my interest was put sharply into focus when I received a book entitled Clipper Ships by David R MacGregor. I read the book with my usual interest until I reached the following passage. A recollection by Frederick Paton, who had served as midshipman aboard the tea clipper Flying Spur; after grumbling a good deal about how his captain did not drive her hard enough, he proceeded thus:

  ‘One morning Flying Spur was snoring through the NE, trades under all sail to royal staysails, with her lower yards just touching the backstays. At 11.20 am a sail was sighted on the horizon ahead. This proved to be the Glasgow clipper, Lochleven Castle, 80 days out from Rangoon to Liverpool. At 1 pm the Flying Spur was up with her, and as we went foaming by, the Lochleven Castle’s main topgallant sail went to ribbons with a clap of thunder, and her mainsail split from top to bottom; at the same moment our cook with all his pots and pans was washed from the galley to the break of the poop. An hour and a half later the Lochleven Castle was out of sight astern.’

  I was hooked; there is so much drama, excitement and beauty in that one paragraph, that one jubilant morning when two ships were pushed to their absolute limit for the sheer sport of the race that I simply wanted to know more. I was delighted to discover that over the span of 20 years these beautiful ships were raced across the oceans and their adventures were more compelling than any fiction.

  Before starting this book, it is important to clear up exactly what a clipper was; there are many out there that think that any vessel setting square sails is a clipper. This is not so. Clippers were commercial vessels built with speed as the foremost consideration and cargo carrying secondary. This meant that her hull must be very sharp. Clippers in their purest form were only built between 1845 and 1875. After that date, they made way for the lordly tall ships, ‘windjammers’, as they were somewhat scornfully labelled by those obsessed with the relentless progress associated with the turn of the steamship’s screw. Some of these old timers still work as sail training vessels or are preserved as museum ships in the various corners of the globe which they eventually washed up in. These vessels have their own grandeur, but none of the grace of the clipper ships, which were little more than yachts of large tonnage. As an example, the tea clipper, Leander was launched in 1868 and was so sharp that her hold could not be filled before her load line was underwater. This was not practical, but her lines were irresistible and somehow that was more important.

  Lying in the River Min in 1869, the tea clippers Ariel, Thermopylae and Serica await their tea cargoes.

  As I grew older I took to the sea myself and it was here that I fully realised what we had lost. Picture, if you will, a perfectly proportioned clipper, all graceful overhangs and shining brass; bigger sister to the gleamingly preserved classic yachts that still gather off St Tropez and La Spezia every summer. Her master and crew could handle the vessel with an easy skill that we can barely conceive now. If a clipper was beautiful at rest, under sail she came alive, flying before a gale, skimming before the trade winds or ghosting through calms. Contrast this with a modern cargo vessel, plodding across the world, punching against the seas, a trail of oil and smoke in her wake, a slave to her motor and a relentless schedule. I can’t help but feel that something vital has been lost in this quest for efficiency.

  Now the clipper ships have long passed on and the world is just a fraction less beautiful and exciting as a result. All that this book seeks to do, both through the pictures and text, is to celebrate the skill and tenacity of the men who handled these ships, enjoy the remarkable beauty of the vessels themselves and cherish the rarity of what they symbolise; something we humans have created that is in harmony with nature rather than at odds with it.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE ORIGINS OF CLIPPER SHIPS

  The philanthropist William Morris once said that there could be no true beauty without purpose. His words seem to encapsulate something that lay at the very heart of the clipper ship era. The 20 years between 1850 and 1870 saw the launch of several hundred ships designed to carry small amounts of cargo at very high speeds. Although all these vessels had a practical purpose, they were also utterly beautiful; white sails curved like petals, their gleaming hulls low and sleek. The sight of such a vessel racing along at 15 knots and more, coppered hull gleaming in the light and smothered in white spray as she leant purposefully into the waves, could inspire even the least romantic sailor to bouts of poetic musing. Their feats were celebrated and eulogised long after they were gone. Now their magic is fading and their exploits and daring masters are almost forgotten. This book is an endeavour to evoke the memory of these beautiful vessels and the mighty characters who commanded them.

  The clipper ship era began in earnes
t in 1845, when the brand-new ship Rainbow lay on the stocks of Smith and Dimon’s New York shipyard. Designed by the young naval architect John W Griffiths, she displayed some innovative features that left many observers bewildered. ‘Why, she looks as if she’s been turned inside out!’ was the general comment as they observed her very sharp, concave bow lines. The Rainbow represented the polar opposite of accepted ship design, which favoured a bluff, barrel-shaped bow in order to give a ship buoyancy as she pounded into a head sea. Meanwhile, others stared in horror at her tall spars and narrow hull, stating that she would roll over before she had left New York Harbour.

  A group of opium clippers lying off Lintin, Hong Kong. The opium clippers were the predecessors of the true clipper ships and were used to smuggle opium into China from India. This was a high risk, high stakes trade and the ships had to be fast to avoid pirates and the Chinese authorities.

  Despite these dire predictions, the new vessel raced out to China and back in a little over six months. Any ships she encountered on her voyage were rapidly overhauled and sunk below the horizon. She was the first of a new breed, a line of clipper ships whose voyages and exploits were to prove the very zenith of the commercial sailing ship. The leisurely vessels that had been gradually evolving since the era of Columbus and before were swept aside by this radical new design that could not only consistently sail 300 nautical miles and more a day, but was also capable of sailing efficiently to windward.

  Baltimore clippers

  Prior to the 1840s, rapid sailing ships were generally small fry – privateer brigs, slavers and opium smugglers. Many of these vessels originated in Baltimore and it was here that the term ‘clipper’ was first coined. Some believe it was because they ran at a fair ‘clip’; others think it was because they ‘clipped’ a few days off the usual passage time. The Baltimore clippers were generally schooner-rigged with tall, heavily raked spars, and they presented a very dashing sight at sea, one that often wrought fear into the hearts of honest traders.

  Yet their design was evolutionary rather than revolutionary. It wasn’t until the arrival of the Rainbow that a larger, more radical vessel was launched featuring sharp, hollow bow lines and a narrow hull. The main driving force behind this desire to innovate was American merchants who had seen the financial benefits of getting goods back from China quickly. The ship that brought back the first crop of tea from China commanded the best price and merchants started to develop faster vessels such as the Houqua, built in 1844. From here, it only took a small leap of imagination from John Griffiths to produce the first full-blown clipper ship, the Rainbow.

  The Sylph was one of the most successful of these early opium clippers and is seen here in the China Sea. She was built in 1831 for an Indian Parsee. She carried a crew of 70 and was heavily armed.

  The Shenandoah, a modern day replica of a Baltimore clipper.

  By 1850 it was evident that American clippers were seriously outclassing their leisurely British rivals and the superiority of American design was further underlined when the yacht America visited the UK and put the cream of the British fleet to the sword in the 100 Guineas Cup, inaugurating the America’s Cup in the process. Here she is seen on her sea trials in New York Harbour.

  The East Indiaman Malabar. The design of such vessels was the culmination of centuries of evolutionary design which was blown away by the clipper ship revolution. Vessels such as the Malabar would rarely be able to sail at over nine knots and were very poor at sailing to windward.

  The Oriental arriving triumphant in London Docks loaded with tea. Her 97-day passage was far faster than any British ship had managed before.

  Britain lags behind

  Meanwhile in Britain, old-fashioned attitudes and a lack of competition stymied the development of fast ships. The Navigation Act was partly to blame as it meant that only British-owned ships could trade with Britain and the British East India Company almost completely controlled trade with the Far East and India. Only their ships could carry goods back home to Britain. With no competition, complacency was rife and vessels tended to come home in very leisurely times, with stale goods to sell at top prices.

  In 1849, the Navigation Act was repealed in favour of free trade. Suddenly the faster American vessels could sail to London and they duly demonstrated how far advanced they were compared with their British rivals. Things reached a head in 1850 when the Yankee clipper Oriental turned up in London after a 97-day passage from Canton.

  She commanded huge prices for the tea cargo she had brought to the market many months before her more leisurely rivals. British ship owners wrung their hands in despair. The superiority of the Americans was further emphasised when the schooner America humiliated the entire Royal Yacht Squadron during her epoch-making race around the Isle of Wight in 1851.

  The American clipper Oriental caused despair in England after racing from China to London in record time.

  This painting of San Francisco in 1849 shows the gold rush town already crowded with ships.

  Gold rush

  Yet by this time, undercutting the British tea ships had become small beer to the Americans; they had much bigger matters on their mind. In 1849 gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in northern California. For the next couple of years hysteria reigned as a general stampede ensued to get to San Francisco and the gold fields beyond.

  In 1834, Richard Dana paid a visit to San Francisco in the American ship Alert. He described a tranquil and very beautiful wooded bay with only one other ship riding at anchor. There were almost no houses. By 1850 gold had changed all that. The bay was now dominated by a great rambling shanty town of rough tents and adobe houses, with a main street lined with casinos and brothels. Every day new ships would anchor in the bay, their pumps working frantically to keep them afloat after the gruelling trip around Cape Horn. Entire crews, even captains, simply abandoned their ships as gold fever took hold, leaving the bay littered with derelict vessels.

  Never before had a need for speed been so urgent. The easiest way to get goods to California was generally on a clipper ship sailing around Cape Horn. The overland route through the US was simply unfeasible at the time as there were no railroads. Travelling via Panama was also riddled with hazards and delays. Both these routes were untenable for shipping large quantities of goods. As San Francisco grew, demand for basic commodities also grew and the gold-rich prospectors were prepared to pay ludicrous prices for basics such as sugar, tea and clothes.

  A ship built in New York and loaded with general cargo and passengers could clear the entire cost of being built in a single trip, and the shipyards of the US east coast were a frenzy of activity. Speed was the most important attribute, and designers were building more and more extreme vessels to cut the time of the voyage. Records tumbled almost daily: in 1850 the Sea Witch arrived in San Francisco, having made the passage in 97 days. From here on, it was just a question of time when a vessel would do the trip in under 90 days. Magnificent races occurred, with clippers arriving in ‘Frisco’ simultaneously after leaving New York on the same tide.

  After racing out to San Francisco, these majestic vessels would generally cross to China, where they would ship tea to either New York or London. Here, they often put the British tea ships to the sword. Yet by 1851, the British were beginning to fight back. Led by the clever designs of Aberdeen shipbuilder Alexander Hall, the British were developing their own clippers. These were generally much smaller than their American rivals and longer-lasting, built in hardwood as opposed to the light, flexible American softwoods, which tended to distort and become waterlogged after a few hard-driving voyages. The British clippers were not designed for rounding Cape Horn and were therefore generally daintier and often faster in light airs. By 1853, these smaller clippers were beginning to reassert British dominance on the tea trade.

  This image of one of the early paddle steamers shows how unsuitable they were for operating in heavy seas. Clipper ships were far more capable of riding out a storm in safety.

 
A prospector panning for gold.

  A selection of cards, used to advertise the sailing of a clipper from New York.

  The Flying Cloud running before a freshening breeze. This American clipper, built in 1851 by Donald McKay, was to prove one of the fastest of them all. On her maiden voyage she raced from New York to San Francisco in 89 days, a record which she equalled a couple of years later.

  The Robin Hood was built in Aberdeen by Alexander Hall and was one of the improved British clippers that could rival the US clippers. She sailed in the China tea trade.

  A contemporary painting of the Australian gold fields.

  The hysteria surrounding the gold rush was also dying down, and the demand for huge and very extreme clippers was coming to an end in the US. Yet the discovery of gold in Australia prompted a second gold rush and a number of extreme American clippers were launched for this trade.

  These included three vessels built by Donald McKay of Boston: the Lightning, the James Baines and the Champion of the Seas. McKay was probably the leading American designer of the clipper ship era, and these vessels were bought by Liverpool ship owner James Baines and sent out to Australia. Their passages were rarely bettered and they excelled in the strong winds of the Southern Ocean. Skippers stated they could run at 22 knots and the Champion of the Seas claimed a record 24-hour run of 465 nautical miles. This is phenomenal running and many have disputed the veracity of these claims.

  A map showing the principal trade routes followed by sailing ships in the 19th century.