THE PERFECTION OF SAILS—THE CLIPPER SHIPS
In the 17th Century a new people began to make their mark in the
world of the sea. Formerly the development of ships had been almost
exclusively, at least for two thousand years, in the hands of
Europeans—the Mediterranean peoples first, and later, the peoples of
northern Europe.
One of the important reasons for the north European interest in ships
had come about as a result of the discovery of the New World and, with
that, the discovery that the world was actually round. That dynamic age
now often called the age of discovery opened up new lands that lent
themselves to colonization, and because Europe was filled with energy
and was in a proper frame of mind to take advantage of the opportunity,
important colonies sprang up in the Americas, in the Pacific, and in
Africa.
From the point of view, however, of influences on the development of
ships these colonies, in themselves, had, with one exception, little
effect. This one exception was the row of British colonies that lined
the Atlantic Coast of North America from the Bay of Fundy to Florida.
Here there began to grow up a people whose forebears had known the
boisterous seas of northern Europe, and who were scattered along a
narrow coastline where they found ready and at hand the best timber
in the world from which to build ships. Furthermore, the fisheries of
this coast were rich, and, too, traffic between these colonies soon
sprang up and demanded ships to carry it, for roads were either bad or
were non-existent and the great boulevard of the sea lay outside the
entrances to the numerous fine harbours that indented the coast.
[Illustration: A BRITISH EAST INDIAMAN
_These merchant ships, which sailed from England to the Far East, were
almost as much like warships as they were like merchantmen. They were
finely built, but they took their time on their voyages out and back._
]
At first, naturally enough, the ships that were built were small, but
by the beginning of the 18th Century the business of building ships was
an important one, particularly in New England. So important was it, and
so well and so cheaply were ships built in this new part of the world,
that Europeans found it to their interest to buy ships from the many
yards that dotted this coast. This business continued to increase in
the American colonies until, in 1769, according to Arthur H. Clark, in
“The Clipper Ship Era,” 389 vessels, of which 113 were square-rigged,
were built. All of these, it is true, were small, none of them
being over 200 tons, but the business was flourishing and valuable
experience that later proved of great importance was being secured.
During this same time “The United Company of Merchant Venturers of
England Trading to the East Indies,” or, as it was later generally
called, the East India Company, was gradually developing, for the long
voyages from England to the East, those magnificent ships that now are
universally referred to as East Indiamen.
So lucrative was the trade that these ships were engaged in, for it
was a carefully controlled and legalized monopoly, that truly great
amounts of money were made for the stockholders of the company and for
the officers of the ships. And because the trade was exceptionally
profitable these ships were wonderfully built and cost sums that, for
those days, were huge. The ships, because they were navigating waters
frequented by pirates and might be called upon to fight their way both
out and back, were almost ships of war, and the discipline on board
was more like the discipline of ships of the British Navy than like
that of ordinary merchant ships. The crews were spick and span in neat
uniforms. The men were drilled as carefully as man-of-war’s-men, and
the crews were large, and consequently their work was not hard.
The ships themselves were built in the finest possible manner, and the
cost of one 1,325-ton ship built for this service is said to have been
more than a quarter of a million dollars—£53,000 to be exact—a sum
truly huge for those days, and one not exactly to be sneezed at to-day.
This great company, with its monopoly that sometimes made it possible
for a ship to earn 300 per cent. on her entire cost in a single round
trip from England to India or China, was organized in 1600. The fact,
however, that there was no competition for them to face resulted in a
conservative outlook that made for slowness rather than for speed, and
little actual advance in the science of design of either hulls or sails
came as a result of the building of these costly and sturdy ships.
For two and a third centuries, however, this grand old company
continued, and during that time many a fortune was built up for the
investors, but finally the people of Britain rebelled at this monopoly,
and Parliament, in 1832, withdrew the charter and threw open the trade
to the East to other British lines.
[Illustration: A BLACK BALL PACKET
_Ships of this type carried the transatlantic passengers of the early
part of the 19th Century. Because of the demand of the owners of the
Black Ball Line and of its competitors, America, where these lines
were owned and where their ships were built, developed the designers
who ultimately gave the world the clipper ships._
]
But the conservatism of the sea is strong, and, while other lines took
advantage of the opportunity to send their ships to the East they
patterned them more or less after the ships of the East India Company,
and little effort was made to secure speed.
But later, in 1849, the Navigation Laws which limited trade between
Great Britain and her colonies to British ships, were repealed, and
foreign carriers were, for the first time, permitted to enter this
lucrative field.
This was the end of one act and the beginning of another, for the
repeal of these laws gave the opportunity it needed to that new
country, now a nation, that for two hundred years had been teaching
itself to build ships of the trees from the rocky soil of New England.
But a little more is needed to understand just why the ship-builders
of the United States of America were in a position to leap so suddenly
into prominence among the carriers of ocean freight.
For two hundred years, as I have said, Americans had been building
ships, and in that time the industry had had its ups and downs.
British legislation, in colonial days, had had its adverse effect. The
Revolutionary War, and, later, the War of 1812, had dealt disastrous
blows at American shipowners, but these people were of sea-going
stock, and each time they recovered. Then, after the War of 1812, and
particularly after the long Napoleonic struggle was brought to an
end in 1815, trade between the new American nation and Europe, and
particularly between America and Britain, developed by leaps and bounds.
International commerce grew as it had never grown before, and, shortly,
lines of “packets”—that is, passenger ships running regularly between
two ports—went into service between Britain and America.
The Black Ball Line was the first of these. Its ships were
distinguished by a large black circle on the foretopsail below the
close reef-band, where it would be visible as long as the ship
carried even a shred of sail. The earlier ships of this line were
from three hundred to five hundred tons, and before long more than a
dozen were in service. They sailed regularly and for the first ten
years of the line’s existence averaged, according to Arthur H. Clark,
twenty-three days for the voyage east, and forty days for the return,
the discrepancy between these two being due to the prevailing winds of
the North Atlantic which, on the route these ships sailed, are from the
southwest. The Gulf Stream, too, or rather the continuation of the Gulf
Stream, sometimes known as the Gulf Stream Drift, aided them on their
eastward voyages.
[Illustration: A WHALING BARK
_With a lookout at the masthead these ships cruised all over the earth
in the first half of the 19th Century._]
During the thirty years following the founding of the Black Ball Line
a number of other similar lines were founded, notably the Red Star
Line, the Dramatic Line, and the New Orleans Line from New York. All
of these, and others, were American owned, and with the opening of the
Erie Canal, which gave access to the Great Lakes, and opened a vast new
land, trade greatly increased.
These ships were not large at first, but gradually they increased in
size until, in 1849, the _Albert Gallatin_, of 1,435 tons, became the
largest of the lot, although a number of others approached her in size.
These ships were in a new kind of service. Before the origin of the
Black Ball Line there had been few passenger ships. More often than
not ships had accommodations for passengers, as the East Indiamen
had, but ships had seldom, prior to the opening of the 19th Century,
devoted much space to passengers. In a later chapter I shall discuss
the reasons for this. But once ships began to carry passengers to
the practical exclusion of freight, speed became desirable, and the
North Atlantic packets were designed more and more with speed in mind.
This resulted in a demand for really scientific naval architects and
because Americans were the ones chiefly interested in building faster
ships, and because, too, the packet lines could afford to pay for their
services, able men turned their attention to this important problem.
Thus it was that, between 1816 and 1849, a demand on the part of the
American packet lines for faster ships produced in America a group
of designers who evolved a type of sailing ship that the world has
never seen surpassed for speed on the wide stretches of the open sea.
And thus it was, too, that with the repeal of the Navigation Laws in
England, America was able to put into service between Britain and
the Far East such ships as made conservative British seamen gasp for
breath ere they, too, set about following, with eminent success, in
the footsteps of their transatlantic brothers. Then, instantly, the
gigantic rush of gold hunters to California gave added impetus to the
demand for faster ships, and almost overnight the era of the clipper
ship had begun.
[Illustration: THE _RED JACKET_
_The clipper ship that made the fastest trip across the Atlantic ever
made under sail. Her record from Sandy Hook to Rock Light was thirteen
days, one hour._
]
According to Arthur H. Clark’s “The Clipper Ship Era,” which contains
a complete and fascinating account of this whole period (and it is
actually a story for a book rather than for a mere chapter into which
it is impossible adequately to compress it), the first clipper ship
ever built was the _Ann McKim_, a ship built at Baltimore in 1832.
During the War of 1812 a number of Chesapeake Bay ships which came to
be called “Baltimore clippers” proved very successful as privateers.
These ships were fast, and probably the name “clipper” had some
connotation at the time suggesting speed. But these “Baltimore
clippers” were not, as the word was later used, clipper ships in the
true sense. The _Ann McKim_, as I have said, was actually the first of
these.
This ship was an enlargement to scale of one of the small, fast sailing
vessels which two hundred years of ship-building experience had taught
American shipwrights to construct. The _Ann McKim_, then, was a
small sailing ship built by the foot, so to speak, while her smaller
counterparts had been built by the inch. Her proportions were identical
to those of the small fry that skimmed about Chesapeake Bay. Only in
size and in the elaborateness of her finish did she differ.
Before the advent of the _Ann McKim_, no one seems to have thought of
building a ship of her size—she was 143 feet long—on any lines but
those which for so long had been accepted as proper for a ship, and
they were far different from the lines accepted for small boats. But
despite her originality the _Ann McKim_ proved to be fast.
It seems to be true that this ship did not directly affect ship design.
But in the next nine years a number of fast ships appeared, and then
John W. Griffiths, a young naval architect of New York, in a series of
lectures on the subject of ship design, laid down the basic rules that
brought into being those beautiful ships—of which there were never more
than a handful, by comparison with the other ships of the world—that
suddenly leaped into world-wide prominence.
To the uninitiated, the changes proposed by Griffiths seem unimportant
and perhaps uninteresting, for it resulted only in sharper bows and
finer lines, in the movement, farther toward the stern, of the ship’s
greatest beam, and of “hollow” water lines—that is, the curve of the
hull aft from the bow along the water line was concave before it
became convex, as it long had been for its whole length on other ships.
The first ship to be built along these new lines, and therefore the
first clipper ship of the new order of things, was the _Rainbow_, which
was launched in 1845. It is interesting, too, to note that, while she
was lost—perhaps off Cape Horn—on her fifth voyage, few of the later
clippers ever broke the records she set. Griffiths, with the touch of
genius that he had, had instantly approached such perfection as mortal
man can reach.
[Illustration: THE _GREAT REPUBLIC_
_The greatest clipper ship ever built. Unfortunately, before she made
her first voyage she caught fire and had to be sunk. She was refloated
and refitted, but never made a voyage in her original rig. When new
masts were put in her they were made smaller than the first ones.
Still she turned out to be one of the very fastest of the clippers._
]
And unlike the _Ann McKim_, the _Rainbow_ did affect ship design. It
is true that critics announced that these new ships would capsize
from the very weight of their spars, that they could not stand up in
a boisterous sea, that they were freakish and ridiculous. But still
they were built, and there were races out to China and back again; and
sometimes they brought to New York the news of their own arrivals at
Canton or Shanghai.
So quickly had Griffiths’s ideas of ship design taken hold that in the
four years from the launch of the _Rainbow_ until 1849—when the repeal
of the Navigation Laws permitted foreign ships to compete for business
between Britain and her colonies and the rush to California opened
up another profitable field—a number of these new clipper ships were
making regular voyages.
The story of the first American clipper ship to carry a cargo of tea to
Britain from China is an interesting one, and I can do no better than
quote directly from Mr. Clark’s account of the voyage in “The Clipper
Ship Era.”
“The _Oriental_,” says Mr. Clark, “sailed on her second voyage from
New York for China, May 19, 1850 ... and was 25 days to the equator;
she passed the meridian of the Cape of Good Hope 45 days out, Java
Head 71 days out, and arrived at Hong-kong, August 8th, 81 days from
New York. She was at once chartered through Russel & Co. to load a
cargo of tea from London at £6 per ton of 40 cubic feet, while British
ships were waiting for cargoes for London at £3:10 per ton of 50 cubic
feet. She sailed August 28th, and beat down the China Sea against a
strong southwest monsoon in 21 days to Anjer, arrived off the Lizard
in 91 days, and was moored in the West India Docks, London, 97 days
from Hong-kong—a passage from China never before equalled in point of
speed, especially against the southwest monsoon, and rarely surpassed
since. She delivered 1,600 tons of tea, and her freight from Hong-kong
amounted to £9,600 or some $48,000. Her first cost ready for sea was
$70,000. From the date of her first sailing from New York, September
14, 1849, to her arrival at London, December 3, 1850, the _Oriental_
had sailed a distance of 67,000 miles, and had, during that time, been
at sea 367 days, an average in all weathers of 183 miles per day.”
[Illustration: THE _ARIEL_, 1866
_Which, with the_ Fiery Cross, Taeping, Serica, _and_ Taitsing,
_sailed what was, perhaps, the greatest race ever run. After sailing
16,000 miles from Foo-Chow, China, to London, the_ Ariel, Taeping,
_and_ Serica _docked in London on the same tide, the_ Taeping _the
winner by only a few minutes. The other two were only two days behind,
although the first three took 99 days._
]
Such performances were not rare for these ships, and because they were
the rule, rather than the exception, the reputation of clippers grew
apace, and interest rapidly grew in their comparative speed. Thus it
was that many races were sailed, half around the world, during which
every stitch of canvas possible was carried for every mile of the way,
and captains studied winds and currents with such care and success that
well-matched ships were often in sight of each other off and on during
voyages of thousands of miles.
The development of the clipper ship was rapid, and her decline was
almost equally fast. Eight years after the _Rainbow_ took the water
Donald McKay, an able designer and builder, launched the _Great
Republic_, one of the very largest sailing ships ever built. While this
ship has been surpassed in size by several later sailing ships, no
other ship ever built was designed to carry so enormous a press of sail.
The mainmast of this great vessel was a huge “stick” 131 feet long and
44 inches in diameter. Above this were the topmast, 76 feet long; the
topgallantmast, 28 feet long; the royalmast, 22 feet long; and the
skysailmast, 19 feet long. All of this was topped by a 12-foot pole.
The great structure of the built-up mainmast towered more than 200 feet
above her deck.
But this greatest of all sailing ships was destined never to take a
voyage with these gigantic masts and spars. Just after she had finished
loading in New York for her first voyage, a warehouse fire ashore
dropped embers in her rigging and she was so badly burned that she was
sunk in order to save what was left. Her beautiful masts had had to be
cut out of her during the fire, and when she was finally raised and
rebuilt freight rates had fallen so far that it was not thought best to
re-rig her in her original dress. A reduced rig was installed, making
possible a great reduction in the size of her crew, but even with her
reduced rig she crossed the Atlantic from Sandy Hook to Land’s End in
13 days.
Until the Civil War broke into the peaceful development of America,
clipper ships were built in many yards, although the introduction of
iron as a ship-building material was giving Britain the upper hand
again, after the Americans had temporarily wrested it from her. This
introduction of iron in itself would have caused the elimination of
America from mid-19th Century ship-building, but the Civil War laid a
heavy hand on the young country, and American ships largely disappeared
from the sea, save along the Confederate coast where great fleets lay
in wait for fast blockade runners that slipped out to Bermuda and the
Bahamas for cargoes of European goods to take through the blockade to
the needy South.
[Illustration: A GLOUCESTER FISHERMAN
_Such schooners as this are common in the New England fishing fleets.
They are seaworthy and fast, and probably the men who sail them are
the greatest seamen of our time._
]
England, however, had once more found herself, and soon her yards were
building clipper ships that equalled the Americans—surpassed them, some
say, but more than one challenge for an ocean race was issued by groups
of Americans only to find no takers in British shipping circles. Now
and then, it is true, British ships outsailed American. But now and
then, too, Americans outsailed their transatlantic brothers, so it is
difficult to decide as to their relative merits.
But there is no doubt of one thing—the greatest ocean race ever
sailed was one in which five British tea clippers were engaged. The
_Ariel_, _Taeping_, _Fiery Cross_, _Taitsing_, and _Serica_ sailed from
Foo-chow, China, within two days of each other, on the 29th, 30th,
and 31st of May, 1865, all bound for London. Forty-six days later the
_Fiery Cross_ rounded the Cape of Good Hope, followed by the _Ariel_,
which also made that meridian in forty-six days; the _Taeping_ in
forty-seven days; the _Serica_ in fifty days; and the _Taitsing_ in
fifty-four days. Through June and July they sailed, and on August 9th
the _Fiery Cross_ and _Taeping_ sighted each other. The ships passed
the Azores in the following order, _Ariel_, _Taitsing_, _Fiery Cross_,
_Serica_, and _Taeping_, all closely grouped. From there to the English
Channel the race continued, with each ship unacquainted with the
position of the others, save occasionally when their courses brought
them together. Yet on the morning of September 5th, two of these ships
sighted each other as they entered the English Channel. As they came
closer together each recognized the other—they were the _Ariel_ and the
_Taeping_, which had left Foo-chow within twenty minutes of each other
more than three months before. Up the Channel they raced, side by side,
and on September 6th, these two ships, and the _Serica_, which had
sailed up the Channel four hours behind them, docked in London on the
same tide and all three of them within an hour and forty-five minutes
of each other, the _Taeping_ the winner by a few trifling minutes.
Nor were they far ahead of the other two, which docked on the 7th and
9th. Three ships had sailed 16,000 miles in 99 days, and the other two
in 101. Never before or since has a long ocean race shown such evenly
matched ships.
[Illustration: AN AMERICAN COASTING SCHOONER
_Square-rigged ships have largely disappeared because, among other
things, their crews were large. These schooners, which sometimes have
four or five masts, can be handled by small crews and consequently are
able to continue to vie with steam._
]
But the days of the clipper ships were numbered. Steam was already
making inroads, and when the Suez Canal was opened in 1869, steamships
could make the voyage to the East through the narrow waters of the
Mediterranean and the Red Sea, where sailing ships were impotent to
follow, in much less time than even the clippers could round Cape Horn.
And so there passed from the sea what were probably the most beautiful
of all the ships that ever sailed its dark blue surface. Yachts there
may be whose fragile lines are just a bit more delicate, whose sails
are bleached more white. But such comparison is odious. It is as if Du
Barry were compared with Juno. Now and again a watchful eye may still
see a square-rigged ship being impudently towed about some teeming
harbour by some officious tug, and occasionally a fortunate voyager may
see one with her sails set as she harnesses the wind to take her half
across the world. But the romantic days of sail have gone. The voyages
from London to China around Good Hope, from New York to San Francisco
around the Horn—they are things long past. Steam and a ditch through
the sandhills of Suez did it. And now another ditch through the hills
of Panama has double-locked the door, and sail is gone.
But hold! Sail is nearly gone, and yet it is here!
No more do fleets of monster ships with towering masts spread square
sail after square sail to the honest winds of heaven. They, it is true,
have almost disappeared, and what is left is not to be compared with
what is gone. Yet in these days of steam and coal, of grimy stokers and
machines _called_ ships, there still remains, to gladden the eye of the
white-haired men who sailed the clipper ships a half a century and more
ago, a type of sailing ship that has proved to be so handy, so capable
and efficient, that all the machines of a machine-mad world have not
been able to drive them from the sea.
These are the schooners and the other craft whose sails, based on those
old Dutch vessels that first used the jib, are of a different design.
The clipper ships and their predecessors were “square-rigged” ships. A
schooner is a “fore-and-aft” rigged ship, and to-day the “fore-and-aft”
rig is the only rig in common use.
It will have been seen, from this account, that the development of
sails was slow. Century followed century and ships progressed but
little. Even the most rapid period of development covered the four
centuries, from 1450 to 1850, so that, while fore-and-aft sails have
reached their present stage more rapidly than square-rigged ships,
still the story is one that covers centuries.
I have already told of the origin in Holland of the jib, which seemed
to grow out of the lateen sail. It was from that beginning that the
“fore-and-aft” rig developed.
The narrow waterways of the low countries demanded a type of sail that
could be handled more easily and could sail closer to the wind than the
square sail could. This the fore-and-aft sail did, and so it filled an
important need. I have not the space, in what remains of this chapter,
to trace its growth in all its detail. Furthermore, E. Keble Chatterton
has done so admirably in “The Story of the Fore-and-Aft Rig.”
Let it suffice to say that the growth has been more a perfection than a
series of revolutionary changes. At first the rig was crude. The sails
were laced to the masts, for hoops sliding on the mast and to which the
sail is made fast, while now almost universal, were then unknown. A
boom was used to spread the foot of the sail, but not until the famous
yacht _America_ crossed the Atlantic and won the cup that still is held
in America as the greatest racing trophy in the world was the foot of
the sail laced to the boom.
Many times I have sat at the wheel of the _America_ as she lies in the
basin of the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, her masts denuded of the
pile of canvas that drove her to that famous victory, and thought of
her and of the little group of men whose careful thought resulted in
her triumph. Such men as those, in the thousands of years through which
ships have grown, have been the men who have made possible the growth
of the dugout canoe with its sail of skin into the _Great Republics_
and the _Americas_ and, later, the _Majestics_. Such men as those have
aided greatly in the advance of civilization.
I have space here for but one more thing. The Dutch, as I have said,
were responsible for the origin of the fore-and-aft rig, and Europeans
largely developed the yawl, the ketch, the brig, and several other
forms that use fore-and-aft sails. But schooners are the most numerous
of these and they originated, as their name did, in a New England
shipyard. The story is an old one and well known, but I shall include
it here, for it is the only case of which I know in which a new ship
form together with its name appeared so abruptly.
It was in Gloucester, Massachusetts, that port now famous for the
ablest schooners that sail the seas, that the schooner originated. In
1713 an ingenious builder built a boat and placed in her two masts
bearing fore-and-aft sails. For a head sail he spread that triangular
canvas now so common, but this was the first time that these sails, all
long familiar, had been arranged according to the now common plan.
She left the stocks and floated lightly on the water, and an interested
spectator cried, “Look! See how she scoons!”
The owner must have been a man of wit as well as originality for he
replied: “Very well. A scooner let her be.” And schooner she still is,
but in the two centuries since that time her form has impressed itself
on many thousand ships, and the port that gave her birth has gained a
reputation that is world-wide as the port of the ablest schooners and
the ablest sailors that ever graced the great expanse of ocean.