The Old Merchant Marine: A Chronicle of American Ships and SailorsPaine, Ralph Delahaye
History
The Old Merchant Marine: A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors
Paine, Ralph Delahaye
Merchant marine -- United States -- History
A typical match race was sailed between the Black Ball liner Columbus,
Captain De Peyster, and the Sheridan, Captain Russell, of the splendid
Dramatic fleet, in 1837. The stake was $10,000 a side, put up by the
owners and their friends. The crews were picked men who were promised a
bonus of fifty dollars each for winning. The ships sailed side by side
in February, facing the wild winter passage, and the Columbus reached
Liverpool in the remarkable time of sixteen days, two days ahead of the
Sheridan.
The crack packets were never able to reel off more than twelve or
fourteen knots under the most favorable conditions, but they were kept
going night and day, and some of them maintained their schedules almost
with the regularity of the early steamers. The Montezuma, the Patrick
Henry, and the Southampton crossed from New York to Liverpool in fifteen
days, and for years the Independence held the record of fourteen days
and six hours. It remained for the Dreadnought, Captain Samuel Samuels,
in 1859, to set the mark for packet ships to Liverpool at thirteen days
and eight hours.
Meanwhile the era of the matchless clipper had arrived and it was one of
these ships which achieved the fastest Atlantic passage ever made by a
vessel under sail. The James Baines was built for English owners to be
used in the Australian trade. She was a full clipper of 2515 tons, twice
the size of the ablest packets, and was praised as "the most perfect
sailing ship that ever entered the river Mersey." Bound out from Boston
to Liverpool, she anchored after twelve days and six hours at sea.
There was no lucky chance in this extraordinary voyage, for this clipper
was the work of the greatest American builder, Donald McKay, who at the
same time designed the Lightning for the same owners. This clipper,
sent across the Atlantic on her maiden trip, left in her foaming wake a
twenty-four hour run which no steamer had even approached and which
was not equaled by the fastest express steamers until twenty-five years
later when the greyhound Arizona ran eighteen knots in one hour on her
trial trip. This is a rather startling statement when one reflects
that the Arizona of the Guion line seems to a generation still living
a modern steamer and record-holder. It is even more impressive when
coupled with the fact that, of the innumerable passenger steamers
traversing the seas today, only a few are capable of a speed of more
than eighteen knots.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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