The Old Merchant Marine
by Ralph D. Paine

Chapter IX. The Stately Clipper and Her Glory

The American clipper ship was the result of an evolution whichcan be traced back to the swift privateers which were builtduring the War of 1812. In this type of vessel the shipyards ofChesapeake Bay excelled and their handiwork was known as the“Baltimore clipper,” the name suggested by the old English verbwhich Dryden uses to describe the flight of the falcon that“clips it down the wind.” The essential difference between theclipper ship and other kinds of merchant craft was that speed andnot capacity became the chief consideration. This was a radicaldeparture for large vessels, which in all maritime history hadbeen designed with an eye to the number of tons they were able tocarry. More finely molded lines had hitherto been found only inthe much smaller French lugger, the Mediterranean galley, theAmerican schooner.

To borrow the lines of these fleet and graceful models and applythem to the design of a deepwater ship was a bold conception. Itwas first attempted by Isaac McKim, a Baltimore merchant, whoordered his builders in 1832 to reproduce as closely as possiblethe superior sailing qualities of the renowned clipper brigs andschooners of their own port. The result was the Ann McKim, ofnearly five hundred tons, the first Yankee clipper ship, anddistinguished as such by her long, easy water-lines, lowfree-board, and raking stem. She was built and finished withoutregard to cost, copper-sheathed, the decks gleaming withbrasswork and mahogany fittings. But though she was a very fastand handsome ship and the pride of her owner, the Ann McKim couldstow so little cargo that shipping men regarded her asunprofitable and swore by their full-bodied vessels a few yearslonger.

That the Ann McKim, however, influenced the ideas of the mostprogressive builders is very probable, for she was later owned bythe New York firm of Howland and Aspinwall, who placed an orderfor the first extremely sharp clipper ship of the era. Thisvessel, the Rainbow, was designed by John W. Griffeths, a marinearchitect, who was a pioneer in that he studied shipbuilding as ascience instead of working by rule-of-thumb. The Rainbow, whichcreated a sensation while on the stocks because of her concave orhollowed lines forward, which defied all tradition and practice,was launched in 1845. She was a more radical innovation than theAnn McKim but a successful one, for on her second voyage to Chinathe Rainbow went out against the northeast monsoon in ninety-twodays and came home in eighty-eight, a record which few ships wereable to better. Her commander, Captain John Land, declared her tobe the fastest ship in the world and there were none to disputehim.

Even the Rainbow however, was eclipsed when not long afterwardHowland and Aspinwall, now converted to the clipper, ordered theSea Witch to be built for Captain Bob Waterman. Among all thesplendid skippers of the time he was the most dashing figure.About his briny memory cluster a hundred yarns, some of themtrue, others legendary. It has been argued that the speed of theclippers was due more to the men who commanded them than to theirhulls and rigging, and to support the theory the career ofCaptain Bob Waterman is quoted. He was first known to fame in theold Natchez, which was not a clipper at all and was even rated asslow while carrying cotton from New Orleans to New York. ButCaptain Bob took this full-pooped old packet ship around the Hornand employed her in the China tea trade. The voyages which hemade in her were all fast, and he crowned them with the amazingrun of seventy-eight days from Canton to New York, just one daybehind the swiftest clipper passage ever sailed and which hehimself performed in the Sea Witch. Incredulous mariners simplycould not explain this feat of the Natchez and suggested that BobWaterman must have brought the old hooker home by some new routeof his own discovery.

Captain Bob had won a reputation for discipline as the mate of aBlack Ball liner, a rough school, and he was not a mild man.Ashore his personality was said to have been a most attractiveone, but there is no doubt that afloat he worked the very soulsout of his sailors. The rumors that he frightfully abused themwere not current, however, until he took the Sea Witch and showedthe world the fastest ship under canvas. Low in the water, withblack hull and gilded figurehead, she seemed too small to supporther prodigious cloud of sail. For her there were to be noleisurely voyages with Captain Bob Waterman on the quarter-deck.Home from Canton she sped in seventy-seven days and then inseventy-nine--records which were never surpassed.

With what consummate skill and daring this master mariner drovehis ship and how the race of hardy sailors to which he belongedcompared with those of other nations may be descried in the logof another of them, Captain Philip Dumaresq, homeward bound fromChina in 1849 in the clipper Great Britain. Three weeks out fromJava Head she had overtaken and passed seven ships heading thesame way, and then she began to rush by them in one gale afteranother. Her log records her exploits in such entries as these:“Passed a ship under double reefs, we with our royals andstuddingsails set . . . . Passed a ship laying-to under aclose-reefed maintopsail . . . . Split all three topsails and hadto heave to . . . . Seven vessels in sight and we outsail all ofthem . . . . Under double-reefed topsails passed several vesselshove-to.” Much the same record might be read in the log of themedium clipper Florence--and it is the same story of carryingsail superbly on a ship which had been built to stand up underit: “Passed two barks under reefed courses and close-reefedtopsails standing the same way, we with royals and topgallantstudding-sails,” or “Passed a ship under topsails, we with ourroyals set.” For eleven weeks “the topsail halliards were startedonly once, to take in a single reef for a few hours.” It is notsurprising, therefore, to learn that, seventeen days out fromShanghai, the Florence exchanged signals with the English shipJohn Hagerman, which had sailed thirteen days before her.

Two notable events in the history of the nineteenth centuryoccurred within the same year, 1849, to open new fields of tradeto the Yankee clipper. One of these was the repeal of the BritishNavigation Laws which had given English ships a monopoly of thetrade between London and the British East Indies, and the otherwas the discovery of gold in California. After centuries of pompand power, the great East India Company had been deprived of itslast exclusive rights afloat in 1833. Its ponderous,frigate-built merchantmen ceased to dominate the British commercewith China and India and were sold or broken up. All Britishships were now free to engage in this trade, but the spirit andcustoms of the old regime still strongly survived. Flying thehouse-flags of private owners, the East Indiamen and China teaships were still built and manned like frigates, slow,comfortable, snugging down for the night under reduced sail.There was no competition to arouse them until the last barrier ofthe Navigation Laws was let down and they had to meet the Yankeeclipper with the tea trade as the huge stake.

Then at last it was farewell to the gallant old Indianian and herornate, dignified prestige. With a sigh the London Timesconfessed: “We must run a race with our gigantic and unshackledrival. We must set our long-practised skill, our steady industry,and our dogged determination against his youth, ingenuity, andardor. Let our shipbuilders and employers take warning in time.There will always be an abundant supply of vessels good enoughand fast enough for short voyages. But we want fast vessels forthe long voyages which otherwise will fall into American hands.”

Before English merchants could prepare themselves for these newconditions, the American clipper Oriental was loading in 1850 atHong Kong with tea for the London market. Because of herreputation for speed, she received freightage of six poundssterling per ton while British ships rode at anchor with emptyholds or were glad to sail at three pounds ten per ton. CaptainTheodore Palmer delivered his sixteen hundred tons of tea in theWest India Docks, London, after a crack passage of ninety-onedays which had never been equaled. His clipper earned $48,000, ortwo-thirds of what it had cost to build her. Her arrival inLondon created a profound impression. The port had seen nothinglike her for power and speed; her skysail yards soared far abovethe other shipping; the cut of her snowy canvas was faultless;all clumsy, needless tophamper had been done away with; and sheappeared to be the last word in design and construction, as leanand fine and spirited as a race-horse in training.

This new competition dismayed British shipping until it couldrally and fight with similar weapons The technical journal, NavalScience, acknowledged that the tea trade of the London marketshad passed almost out of the hands of the English ship-owner, andthat British vessels, well-manned and well-found, were known tolie for weeks in the harbor of Foo-chow, waiting for a cargo andseeing American clippers come in, load, and sail immediately withfull cargoes at a higher freight than they could command. Eventhe Government viewed the loss of trade with concern and sentadmiralty draftsmen to copy the lines of the Oriental andChallenge while they were in drydock.

British clippers were soon afloat, somewhat different in modelfrom the Yankee ships, but very fast and able, and racing them inthe tea trade until the Civil War. With them it was often nip andtuck, as in the contest between the English Lord of the Isles andthe American clipper bark Maury in 1856. The prize was a premiumof one pound per ton for the first ship to reach London with teaof the new crop. The Lord of the Isles finished loading andsailed four days ahead of the Maury, and after thirteen thousandmiles of ocean they passed Gravesend within ten minutes of eachother. The British skipper, having the smartest tug and gettinghis ship first into dock, won the honors. In a similar racebetween the American Sea Serpent and the English Crest of theWave, both ships arrived off the Isle of Wight on the same day.It was a notable fact that the Lord of the Isles was the firsttea clipper built of iron at a date when the use of this stubbornmaterial was not yet thought of by the men who constructed thesplendid wooden ships of America.

For the peculiar requirements of the tea trade, English maritimetalent was quick to perfect a clipper type which, smaller thanthe great Yankee skysail-yarder, was nevertheless most admirablefor its beauty and performance. On both sides of the Atlanticpartizans hotly championed their respective fleets. In 1852 theAmerican Navigation Club, organized by Boston merchants andowners, challenged the shipbuilders of Great Britain to race froma port in England to a port in China and return, for a stake of$50,000 a side, ships to be not under eight hundred nor overtwelve hundred tons American register. The challenge was aimed atthe Stornaway and the Chrysolite, the two clippers that wereknown to be the fastest ships under the British flag. Though thissporting defiance caused lively discussion, nothing came of it,and it was with a spirit even keener that Sampson and Tappan ofBoston offered to match their Nightingale for the same amountagainst any clipper afloat, British or American.

In spite of the fact that Yankee enterprise had set the pace inthe tea trade, within a few years after 1850 England had sosuccessfully mastered the art of building these smaller clippersthat the honors were fairly divided. The American owners werediverting their energies to the more lucrative trade in largerships sailing around the Horn to San Francisco, a long roadwhich, as a coastwise voyage, was forbidden to foreign vesselsunder the navigation laws. After the Civil War the fastest teaclippers flew the British flag and into the seventies theysurvived the competition of steam, racing among themselves forthe premiums awarded to the quickest dispatch. No more of thesebeautiful vessels were launched after 1869, and one by one theyvanished into other trades, overtaken by the same fate which hadbefallen the Atlantic packet and conquered by the cargo steamerswhich filed through the Suez Canal.

Until 1848 San Francisco had been a drowsy little Mexicantrading-post, a huddle of adobe huts and sheds where Americanships collected hides--vividly described in Two Years Before theMast--or a whaler called for wood and water. During the yearpreceding the frenzied migration of the modern Argonauts, onlytwo merchant ships, one bark and one brig, sailed in through theGolden Gate. In the twelve months following, 775 vessels clearedfrom Atlantic ports for San Francisco, besides the rush fromother countries, and nearly fifty thousand passengers scrambledashore to dig for gold. Crews deserted their ships, leaving themunable to go to sea again for lack of men, and in consequence ahundred of them were used as storehouses, hotels, and hospitals,or else rotted at their moorings. Sailors by hundreds jumped fromthe forecastle without waiting to stow the sails or receive theirwages. Though offered as much as two hundred dollars a month tosign again, they jeered at the notion. Of this great fleet at SanFrancisco in 1849, it was a lucky ship that ever left the harboragain.

It seemed as if the whole world were bound to California andalmost overnight there was created the wildest, most extravagantdemand for transportation known to history. A clipper costing$70,000 could pay for herself in one voyage, with freights atsixty dollars a ton. This gold stampede might last but a littlewhile. To take instant advantage of it was the thing. The fastestships, and as many of them as could be built, would skim thecream of it. This explains the brief and illustrious era of theCalifornia clipper, one hundred and sixty of which were launchedfrom 1850 to 1854. The shipyards of New York and Boston werecrowded with them, and they graced the keel blocks of thehistoric old ports of New England--Medford, Mystic, Newburyport,Portsmouth, Portland, Rockland, and Bath--wherever the timber andthe shipwrights could be assembled.

Until that time there had been few ships afloat as large as athousand tons. These were of a new type, rapidly increased tofifteen hundred, two thousand tons, and over. They presented newand difficult problems in spars and rigging able to withstand thestrain of immense areas of canvas which climbed two hundred feetto the skysail pole and which, with lower studdingsails set,spread one hundred and sixty feet from boom-end to boom-end.There had to be the strength to battle with the furious tempestsof Cape Horn and at the same time the driving power to sweepbefore the sweet and steadfast tradewinds. Such a queenly clipperwas the Flying Cloud, the achievement of that master builder,Donald McKay, which sailed from New York to San Francisco ineighty-nine days, with Captain Josiah Creesy in command. Thisrecord was never lowered and was equaled only twice--by theFlying Cloud herself and by the Andrew Jackson nine years later.It was during this memorable voyage that the Flying Cloud sailed1256 miles in four days while steering to the northward undertopgallantsails after rounding Cape Horn. This was a rate ofspeed which, if sustained, would have carried her from New Yorkto Queenstown in eight days and seventeen hours. This speedypassage was made in 1851, and only two years earlier the recordfor the same voyage of fifteen thousand miles had been onehundred and twenty days, by the clipper Memnon.

Donald McKay now resolved to build a ship larger and faster thanthe Flying Cloud, and his genius neared perfection in theSovereign of the Seas, of 2421 tons register, which exceeded insize all merchant vessels afloat. This Titan of the clipper fleetwas commanded by Donald’s brother, Captain Lauchlan McKay, with acrew of one hundred and five men and boys. During her only voyageto San Francisco she was partly dismasted, but Lauchlan McKayrigged her anew at sea in fourteen days and still made port inone hundred and three days, a record for the season of the year.

It was while running home from Honolulu in 1853 that theSovereign of the Seas realized the hopes of her builder. Ineleven days she sailed 3562 miles, with four days logged for atotal of 1478 knots. Making allowance for the longitudes anddifference in time, this was an average daily run of 378 seamiles or 435 land miles. Using the same comparison, the distancefrom Sandy Hook to Queenstown would have been covered in sevendays and nine hours. Figures are arid reading, perhaps, but theseare wet by the spray and swept by the salt winds of romance.During one of these four days the Sovereign of the Seas reeledoff 424 nautical miles, during which her average speed wasseventeen and two-thirds knots and at times reached nineteen andtwenty. The only sailing ship which ever exceeded this day’s workwas the Lightning, built later by the same Donald McKay, whichran 436 knots in the Atlantic passage already referred to. TheSovereign of the Seas could also boast of a sensational feat uponthe Western Ocean, for between New York and Liverpool sheoutsailed the Cunard liner Canada by 325 miles in five days.

It is curiously interesting to notice that the California clipperera is almost generally ignored by the foremost English writersof maritime history. For one thing, it was a trade in which theirown ships were not directly concerned, and partizan bias is aptto color the views of the best of us when national prestige isinvolved. American historians themselves have dispensed with manyunpleasant facts when engaged with the War of 1812. With regardto the speed of clipper ships, however, involving a rivalry farmore thrilling and important than all the races ever sailed forthe America’s cup, the evidence is available in concrete form.

Lindsay’s “History of Merchant Shipping” is the most elaborateEnglish work of the kind. Heavily ballasted with facts and ratherdull reading for the most part, it kindles with enthusiasm wheneulogizing the Thermopylae and the Sir Launcelot, compositeclippers of wood and iron, afloat in 1870, which it declares tobe “the fastest sailing ships that ever traversed the ocean."This fairly presents the issue which a true-blooded Yankee has noright to evade. The greatest distance sailed by the Sir Launcelotin twenty-four hours between China and London was 354 knots,compared with the 424 miles of the Sovereign of the Seas and the436 miles of the Lightning. Her best sustained run was one ofseven days for an average of a trifle more than 300 miles a day.Against this is to be recorded the performance of the Sovereignof the Seas, 3562 miles in eleven days, at the rate of 324 milesevery twenty-four hours, and her wonderful four-day run of 1478miles, an average of 378 miles.

The Thermopylae achieved her reputation in a passage ofsixty-three days from London to Melbourne--a record which wasnever beaten. Her fastest day’s sailing was 330 miles, or notquite sixteen knots an hour. In six days she traversed 1748miles, an average of 291 miles a day. In this Australian tradethe American clippers made little effort to compete. Thoseengaged in it were mostly built for English owners and sailed byBritish skippers, who could not reasonably be expected to get themost out of these loftily sparred Yankee ships, which were muchlarger than their own vessels of the same type. The Lightningshowed what she could do from Melbourne to Liverpool by makingthe passage in sixty-three’ days, with 3722 miles in tenconsecutive days and one day’s sprint of 412 miles.

In the China tea trade the Thermopylae drove home from Foo-chowin ninety-one days, which was equaled by the Sir Launcelot. TheAmerican Witch of the Wave had a ninety-day voyage to her credit,and the Comet ran from Liverpool to Shanghai in eighty-four days.Luck was a larger factor on this route than in the California orAustralian trade because of the fitful uncertainty of themonsoons, and as a test of speed it was rather unsatisfactory. Ina very fair-minded and expert summary, Captain Arthur H. Clark,*in his youth an officer on Yankee clippers, has discussed thisquestion of rival speed and power under sail--a question whichstill absorbs those who love the sea. His conclusion is that inordinary weather at sea, when great power to carry sail was notrequired, the British tea clippers were extremely fast vessels,chiefly on account of their narrow beam. Under these conditionsthey were perhaps as fast as the American clippers of the sameclass, such as the Sea Witch, White Squall, Northern Light, andSword-Fish. But if speed is to be reckoned by the maximumperformance of a ship under the most favorable conditions, thenthe British tea clippers were certainly no match for the largerAmerican ships such as the Flying Cloud, Sovereign of the Seas,Hurricane, Trade Wind, Typhoon, Flying Fish, Challenge, and RedJacket. The greater breadth of the American ships in proportionto their length meant power to carry canvas and increasedbuoyancy which enabled them, with their sharper ends, to bedriven in strong gales and heavy seas at much greater speed thanthe British clippers. The latter were seldom of more than onethousand tons’ register and combined in a superlative degree thegood qualities of merchant ships.

* “The Clipper Ship Era.” N.Y., 1910.

It was the California trade, brief and crowded and fevered, whichsaw the roaring days of the Yankee clipper and which was familiarwith racing surpassing in thrill and intensity that of the packetships of the Western Ocean. In 1851, for instance, the Raven, SeaWitch, and Typhoon sailed for San Francisco within the same week.They crossed the Equator a day apart and stood away to thesouthward for three thousand miles of the southeast trades andthe piping westerly winds which prevailed farther south. At fiftydegrees south latitude the Raven and the Sea Witch were abeam ofeach other with the Typhoon only two days astern.

Now they stripped for the tussle to windward around Cape Horn,sending down studdingsail booms and skysail yards, making allsecure with extra lashings, plunging into the incessant head seasof the desolate ocean, fighting it out tack for tack, reefingtopsails and shaking them out again, the vigilant commandersgoing below only to change their clothes, the exhausted seamenstubbornly, heroically handling with frozen, bleeding fingers theicy sheets and canvas. A fortnight of this inferno and the SeaWitch and the Raven gained the Pacific, still within sight ofeach other, and the Typhoon only one day behind. Then they sweptnorthward, blown by the booming tradewinds, spreadingstuddingsails, skysails, and above them, like mere handkerchiefs,the water-sails and ring-tails. Again the three clippers crossedthe Equator. Close-hauled on the starboard tack, their bowspritswere pointed for the last stage of the journey to the GoldenGate. The Typhoon now overhauled her rivals and was the first tosignal her arrival, but the victory was earned by the Raven,which had set her departure from Boston Light while the othershad sailed from New York. The Typhoon and the Raven were only aday apart, with the Sea Witch five days behind the leader.

Clipper ship crews included men of many nations. In the averageforecastle there would be two or three Americans, a majority ofEnglish and Norwegians, and perhaps a few Portuguese andItalians. The hardiest seamen, and the most unmanageable, werethe Liverpool packet rats who were lured from their accustomedhaunts to join the clippers by the magical call of thegold-diggings. There were not enough deep-water sailors to manhalf the ships that were built in these few years, and the crimpsand boarding-house runners decoyed or flung aboard on sailing dayas many men as were demanded, and any drunken, broken landlubberwas good enough to be shipped as an able seaman. They were thingsof rags and tatters--their only luggage a bottle of whiskey.

The mates were thankful if they could muster enough real sailorsto work the ship to sea and then began the stern process ofwhipping the wastrels and incompetents into shape for the perilsand emergencies of the long voyage. That these great clipperswere brought safely to port is a shining tribute to the masterfulskill of their officers. While many of them were humane and just,with all their severity, the stories of savage abuse which aretold of some are shocking in the extreme. The defense was that itwas either mutiny or club the men under. Better treatment mighthave persuaded better men to sail. Certain it is that life in theforecastle of a clipper was even more intolerable to theself-respecting American youth than it had previously been aboardthe Atlantic packet.

When Captain Bob Waterman arrived at San Francisco in theChallenge clipper in 1851, a mob tried very earnestly to find andhang him and his officers because of the harrowing stories toldby his sailors. That he had shot several of them from the yardswith his pistol to make the others move faster was one count inthe indictment. For his part, Captain Waterman asserted that amore desperate crew of ruffians had never sailed out of New Yorkand that only two of them were Americans. They were mutinous fromthe start, half of them blacklegs of the vilest type who swore toget the upper hand of him. His mates, boatswain, and carpenterhad broken open their chests and boxes and had removed acollection of slung-shots, knuckle-dusters, bowie-knives, andpistols. Off Rio Janeiro they had tried to kill the chief mate,and Captain Waterman had been compelled to jump in and stretchtwo of them dead with an iron belaying-pin. Off Cape Horn threesailors fell from aloft and were lost. This accounted for thecasualties.

The truth of such episodes as these was difficult to fathom.Captain Waterman demanded a legal investigation, but nothing cameof his request and he was commended by his owners for his skilland courage in bringing the ship to port without losing a spar ora sail. It was a skipper of this old school who blandlymaintained the doctrine that if you wanted the men to love you,you must starve them and knock them down. The fact is proven byscores of cases that the discipline of the American clipper wasboth famously efficient and notoriously cruel. It was not untillong after American sailors had ceased to exist that adequatelegislation was enacted to provide that they should be treated ashuman beings afloat and ashore. Other days and other customs! Itis perhaps unkind to judge these vanished master-mariners tooharshly, for we cannot comprehend the crises which continuallybeset them in their command.

No more extreme clipper ships were built after 1854. TheCalifornia frenzy had subsided and speed in carrying merchandisewas no longer so essential; besides, the passenger traffic wasseeking the Isthmian route. What were called medium clippersenjoyed a profitable trade for many years later, and one of them,the Andrew Jackson, was never outsailed for the record from NewYork to San Francisco. This splendid type of ship was to be foundon every sea, for the United States was still a commanding factorin the maritime activities of South America, India, China,Europe, and Australia. In 1851 its merchant tonnage rivaled thatof England and was everywhere competing with it.

The effects of the financial panic of 1857 and the aftermath ofbusiness depression were particularly disastrous to Americanships. Freights were so low as to yield no profit, and the finestclippers went begging for charters. The yards ceased to launchnew tonnage. British builders had made such rapid progress indesign and construction that the days of Yankee preference in theChina trade had passed. The Stars and Stripes floated over shipswaiting idle in Manila Bay, at Shanghai, Hong-Kong, and Calcutta.The tide of commerce had slackened abroad as well as at home andthe surplus of deep-water tonnage was world-wide.

In earlier generations afloat, the American spirit had displayedamazing recuperative powers. The havoc of the Revolution had beenunable to check it, and its vigor and aggressive enterprise hadnever been more notable than after the blows dealt by theEmbargo, the French Spoliations, and the War of 1812. Theconditions of trade and the temper of the people were now sochanged that this mighty industry, aforetime so robust andresilient, was unable to recover from such shocks as the panic of1857 and the Civil War. Yet it had previously survived andtriumphed over calamities far more severe. The destructionwrought by Confederate cruisers was trifling compared with thework of the British and French privateers when the nation wasvery small and weak.

The American spirit had ceased to concern itself with the sea asthe vital and dominant element. The footsteps of the young men nolonger turned toward the wharf and the waterside and the tiers oftall ships outward bound. They were aspiring to conquer an inlandempire of prairie and mountain and desert, impelled by the samepioneering and adventurous ardor which had burned in theirseafaring sires. Steam had vanquished sail--an epochal event in athousand years of maritime history--but the nation did not careenough to accept this situation as a new challenge or to continuethe ancient struggle for supremacy upon the sea. England didcare, because it was life or death to the little, sea-girtisland, but as soon as the United States ceased to be a strip ofAtlantic seaboard and the panorama, of a continent was unrolledto settlement, it was foreordained that the maritime habit ofthought and action should lose its virility in America. All greatseafaring races, English, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Dutch, havetaken to salt water because there was lack of space, food, orwork ashore, and their strong young men craved opportunities.Like the Pilgrim Fathers and their fishing shallops they hadnowhere else to go.

When the Flying Cloud and the clippers of her kind--taut, serene,immaculate--were sailing through the lonely spaces of the SouthAtlantic and the Pacific, they sighted now and then the stumpy,slatternly rig and greasy hull of a New Bedford whaler, perhapsrolling to the weight of a huge carcass alongside. With a pooropinion of the seamanship of these wandering barks, the clippercrews rolled out, among their favorite chanteys:

    Oh, poor Reuben Ranzo,    Ranzo, boys, O Ranzo,    Oh, Ranzo was no sailor,    So they shipped him aboard a whaler,    Ranzo, boys, O Ranzo.

This was crass, intolerant prejudice. The whaling ship wascareless of appearances, it is true, and had the air of an oceanvagabond; but there were other duties more important thanholystoning decks, scraping spars, and trimming the yards to ahair. On a voyage of two or three years, moreover, there wasalways plenty of time tomorrow. Brave and resourceful seamen werethese New England adventurers and deep-sea hunters who madenautical history after their own fashion. They flourished coevalwith the merchant marine in its prime, and they passed from thesea at about the same time and for similar reasons. Modernitydispensed with their services, and young men found elsewhere moreprofitable and easier employment.

The great days of Nantucket as a whaling port were passed beforethe Revolution wiped out her ships and killed or scattered hersailors. It was later discovered that larger ships were moreeconomical, and Nantucket harbor bar was too shoal to admit theirpassage. For this reason New Bedford became the scene of theforemost activity, and Nantucket thereafter played a minor part,although her barks went cruising on to the end of the chapter andher old whaling families were true to strain. As explorers thewhalemen rambled into every nook and corner of the Pacific beforemerchant vessels had found their way thither. They discovereduncharted islands and cheerfully fought savages or suffereddireful shipwreck. The chase led them into Arctic regions wheretheir stout barks were nipped like eggshells among the grindingfloes, or else far to the southward where they broiled in tropiccalms. The New Bedford lad was as keen to go a-whaling as was hiscounterpart in Boston or New York to be the dandy mate of aCalifornia clipper, and true was the song:

      I asked a maiden by my side,    Who sighed and looked to me forlorn,      “Where is your heart?” She quick replied,    “Round Cape Horn.”

Yankee whaling reached its high tide in 1857 when the New Bedfordfleet alone numbered 329 sail and those owned in other ports ofBuzzard’s Bay swelled the total to 426 vessels, besides thirtymore hailing from New London and Sag Harbor. In this year thevalue of the catch was more than ten million dollars. The oldcustom of sailing on shares or “lays” instead of wages was neverchanged. It was win or lose for all hands--now a handsome fortuneor again an empty hold and pockets likewise. There was CaptainW.T. Walker of New Bedford who, in 1847, bought for a song a shipso old that she was about to be broken up for junk and noinsurance broker would look at her. In this rotten relic heshipped a crew and went sailing in the Pacific. Miraculouslykeeping afloat, this Envoy of his was filled to the hatches withoil and bones, twice running, before she returned to her homeport; and she earned $138,450 on a total investment of eightthousand dollars.

The ship Sarah of Nantucket, after a three years’ cruise, broughtback 3497 barrels of sperm oil which sold for $89,000, and theWilliam Hamilton of New Bedford set another high mark by stowing4181 barrels of a value of $109,269. The Pioneer of New London,Captain Ebenezer Morgan, was away only a year and stocked a cargoof oil and whalebone which sold for $150,060. Most of the profitsof prosperous voyages were taken as the owners’ share, and theincomes of the captain and crew were so niggardly as to make onewonder why they persisted in a calling so perilous, arduous, andpoorly paid. During the best years of whaling, when the shipswere averaging $16,000 for a voyage, the master received aneighteenth, or about nine hundred dollars a year. The highlyskilled hands, such as the boat-steerers and harpooners, had alay of only one seventy-fifth, or perhaps a little more than twohundred dollars cash as the reward of a voyage which netted theowner at least fifty per cent on his investment. Occasionallythey fared better than this and sometimes worse. The answer tothe riddle is that they liked the life and had always thegambling spirit which hopes for a lucky turn of the cards.

The countless episodes of fragile boats smashed to kindling byfighting whales, of the attack renewed with harpoon and lance, ofships actually rammed and sunk, would fill a volume by themselvesand have been stirringly narrated in many a one. Zanzibar andKamchatka, Tasmania and the Seychelles knew the lean, sun-driedYankee whaleman and his motto of a “dead whale or a stove boat."The Civil War did not drive him from the seas. The curious factis that his products commanded higher prices in 1907 than fiftyyears before, but the number of his ships rapidly decreased.Whales were becoming scarce, and New England capital preferredother forms of investment. The leisurely old sailing craft wassucceeded by the steam whaler, and the explosive bomb slew,instead of the harpoon and lance hurled by the sinewy right armof a New Bedford man or Cape Verde islander.

Roving whaler and armed East Indiaman, plunging packet ship andstately clipper, they served their appointed days and passed ontheir several courses to become mere memories, as shadowy andunsubstantial as the gleam of their own topsails when seen attwilight. The souls of their sailors have fled to Fiddler’sGreen, where all dead mariners go. They were of the old merchantmarine which contributed something fine and imperishable to thestory of the United States. Down the wind, vibrant anddeep-throated, comes their own refrain for a requiem:

    We’re outward bound this very day,    Good-bye, fare you well,    Good-bye, fare you well.    We’re outward bound this very day,      Hurrah, my boys, we’re outward bound.

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Old Merchant Marine
By Ralph D. Paine
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