|
|
2010/03/06-19h50
The "yellow fever" yachts
|
| The discovery of a seam of gold in San Francisco in 1848 prompted the greatest migration since the Crusades. Indeed this massive
wave of pioneers broke via the fastest possible route, the sea, with the creation of the most extraordinary three-masters
of the 19th century, the Clippers.
|
 At the tail end of the summer of 1848, all the newspapers along the East coast, from Washington to Boston, headlined the discovery
made by pioneer James W. Marshall: a seam of gold was found at Yerba Buena, only recently renamed San Francisco. However,
this bay, discovered by the British privateer Francis Drake (1576), frequented by Spaniards until the war against Mexico (1846),
a temporary stopover for Russian, English and American whale hunters, was but a small hamlet of 500 souls, over 4,000 kilometres
from New York as the crow flies!
As luck would have it, California, in the tutelage of an American governor
for two years, had just been sold by the Mexicans on 2nd February 1848. The "yellow fever" epidemic spread like wildfire across
America before reaching Europe, but there was a major problem. How could they reach the East coast? Lieutenant Beale, who
traversed the continent to report the news, took nearly eight months to reach Washington and overcome all the pitfalls of
the Far West: Indians, deserts, mountain chains, immense plains,...
|
|
Two hundred days at sea...
As such the fastest route remained the sea, namely 14,000 miles via Cape Horn, a difficult, hard, dangerous, turbulent course,
that the ships of the day managed to traverse in around 180 to 200 days... Everything that floated was commandeered to set
out from New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Salem, New Orleans and even Liverpool and Le Havre, to transport gold nugget seekers,
extraction equipment and supplies. Some were in such a bad state after confronting the storms of the Deep South and the calms
of the Doldrums, and their crews were so mesmerised by the gold riches, that around a hundred boats were run straight up onto
shore and were left abandoned. They then served as floating pontoons, hotels, shops and saloons, embedded with back fill which
settlers extracted from the mines to encroach on the sea and build docks. In 1849 alone, 91,405 emigrants disembarked in California
from the sea!
|
|
The migration was such that there was beginning to be a shortage of ships. However the rich merchants from the East coast
could sense that the wind was changing: for lack of gold, there was silver to be earned in transporting passengers and merchandise.
A barrel of flour that cost $6 in New York could be sold for up to $200 in San Francisco! In a single voyage, the cost of
a new boat was largely paid off... Ship owners then placed orders in yards in New York, Boston and elsewhere, for the fastest
ships of the age. These so-called clippers, which measured up to 102 metres in length and weighed up to 4,555 tonnes, included
ships like the four-masted Great Republic, built by Donald McKay in East Boston in 1953...
|
|
The ephemeral age of the ClipperThe origins of the term `clipper' are imprecise. For the captain of Bonnefoux (1855), "the Klipper is an English ship which,
ordinarily, sails between Singapore and Macao against the NE'ly monsoon. Quite simply we refer to the Clipper as a commercial
vessel where speed is the element to which all others take second place". For Anglo-Saxons, the word originated from the
expression "to clip a record", which is to beat a record, or from the verb "to clip", that is cut through or cleave through
(the waves). The clippers, whose lines were to inspire the French privateer vessels and the schooners of Chesapeake, came
from the Sea Witch, designed by John Willis Griffiths and built in 1846 by the Smith & Dimon yard.
They are characterised
by their distinctive clipper bow, their slender waterline entry for the time, a very full hull cross-section, positioned aft
of amidships with a small transom clear of the counter. Around a hundred clippers were built in less than half a century,
before being dethroned by steamships, and were chartered for the "Tea Route" from Shanghai, Canton and Hong Kong to Liverpool
or New York (1847-1875), the "Gold Route" from New York to San Francisco (1849-1855), the "Antipodes route" from Europe to
Australia (1850-1880), the "Coffee route" between Brazil and Le Havre or the "Guano route" between Chile and France. The "Gold
route" via Cape Horn was gradually abandoned; William Aspinwall (owner of the Rainbow and Sea Witch) having created the faster
and safer railway line, extended as far as California by a steamship crossing.
|
|
Flying cloud
Built for Enoch Train, the Flying Cloud was so famous, even before her launch on 15th April 1851, that she was sold
on the dock to the Grinnell & Minturn Company of New York for $90,000! Helmed by Captain Josiah Perkins Creesy, she beat
the record for the voyage to San Francisco on her first ever outing, in a time of 89 days and 21 hours. Setting off on
2nd June 1851 and laden with various merchandise including butter and cheese, a storm raged three days out, hitting the heavily-canvassed
clipper, breaking her topgallant mast, part of the mizzen mast, her mizzen topgallant mast and her main topsail, whilst the
mainmast split 30 cm from the forestay mounting plate. The crew took two days to repair the damage...
A few weeks
later, during another storm, a strange area of water ingress was discovered: two of the sailors keen to force the captain
to stop off in Brazil, had pierced the deck with an auger... Rounding Cape Horn in the depths of the austral winter, she endured
further storms and dismastings and arrived at the Golden Gate in a pitiful state on 31st August. The captain was given an
ovation, while his second in command was clapped in irons for disobedience...
Designed and built by Donald McKay
in East Boston in a little over three months, she was made of wood composite (chestnut, elm, oak, Maine cedar, Georgia pine
and a maple keel, "salted" to ensure the wood was preserved) around an iron frame with a copper sheathing. Interestingly the
Captain's wife, Eleanor Creesy, was in charge of the navigation and benefited from the first charts drawn up by Lieutenant
Matthews Fontaine Maury. The latter, using books aboard the American vessels, redrew the compass roses of the Atlantic with
a 5° square: Pilot charts. The Flying Cloud was to beat her own record by half a day three years later, a reference time which
was to last 135 years!
|
|
 The heterogeneous crews To drive such vessels, fifty to a hundred men were required according to the tonnage. As such the Sovereign of the
Seas (3,000 tonnes) embarked one captain, 4 lieutenants, 2 quartermasters, 2 carpenters, 2 sailmakers, 3 stewards, 2 chefs,
80 sailors and 10 ship's boys! With the seasoned American sailors preferring the less testing courses of the North Atlantic,
the crews were made up of French, German, English, Spanish and Greeks, with Scandinavians being the most highly sought after
and the Irish, known as packet rats, the wildest. However the majority didn't even speak English and a lot of them were boarding
a ship for the first time.
With the clippers continuing on their way to China to load up with tea before returning
to New York, occasionally via Liverpool, the captains were often forced to resort to some rather unscrupulous labour contractors.
In the saloons of San Francisco, hotel managers and "hostesses" were to get any well-built fellow drunk or drugged to complete
the crews. However they also sold the Captains cadavers or even mannequins, which they slipped a rat into to make it look
like they were still moving and were just drunk! Other sailors barely had time to disembark before they were `shanghaied'
and unknowingly led away to a departing ship. For the most part they had no training and the minute they'd cast off they ended
up at the top of a 50 metre mast unfurling a topgallant sail...
|
|
An iron discipline The sole master aboard after God, the clipper captains had a lot to keep them busy what with their crew and at times their
passengers. The majority of them were former novices trained on the liners of the North Atlantic such as John Keay, the Palmer
brothers and Robert Waterman. The latter was a leader of men who, it was said, didn't think twice about locking up the halyards
to prevent the sailors from reducing sail area. The captain didn't simply take care of controlling the ship, but also handled
the navigation, the surveillance of numerous repairs to the rig and sails and the polite small talk with the passengers in
the cabins. At times he would sleep with one eye open on the poop deck for several weeks to ensure the smooth running of the
clipper.
|
|
The sailors earned around $12 a month for an outward journey and were well fed. However the wages for the return journey could
be as much as $150. The hellish pace set by the captains was such that there were frequent mutinies and numerous accidents.
Over 60 sailors perished in this way in the first six months of 1850: carried away by a wave, falling from a yard, crushed
during a dismasting, frozen in snow squalls or killed by thrashings from a cat-o'-nine-tails... On arrival in California,
where swindlers abounded, the captains were unable to disembark sometimes, such was the ill-feeling the crew had for him.
Sea lawyers promised the moon to sailors denouncing the ill treatment, to the extent that Captain Waterman and his staff owed
their lives to an intervention by the sheriff of San Francisco, who prevented a sentence of execution and the destruction
of the clipper Challenge.
Candidates for emigration flocked to the United States from all across Europe, and in
France, around fifty ships were fitted out to transport passengers. The first French three-masted vessel, Meuse, disembarked
its settlers in San Francisco in September 1849. This was followed less than two years later by 25,000 emigrants fleeing from
the economic crisis or the Revolution of 1848. Each vessel carried between 150 and 350 passengers, who paid 750 Francs for
a place in steerage and up to 1,500 Francs for a cabin. The voyage lasted between 120 and 200 days and the record between
Le Havre and San Francisco went to the vessel Alphonse-Nicolas Cézard with a time of 108 days.
Dominic
Bourgeois
|
|
 Flying CloudLOA: 90 m
Deck length: 68.60 m
Maximum beam: 12.40 m
Maximum sail area: 3,000 m2
Displacement: 3,500 tonnes
Measurement:
1,782 tonnes
Height of the mainmast: 60 m
Crew: 65 persons
|
|
|
|
|
