East Boston Wharves
Twelve year old Cornelius accompanied his father, Donald McKay, and carried his new bright red sled off the East Boston ferry-boat when they reached Boston that snowy Sunday morning in January 1847. Donald began pulling the sled with young Cornelius aboard as the two proceeded along on their way to Boston Common. Soon, they came upon the scene of two men that they both recognized from their shipyard, in front of a shoe store. They were obviously distraught as they counted up their coins over and over, muttering between themselves that they still did not have enough to buy the "high tops" boots that they saw in the window that both workmen so desperately needed. Work had been slack as of late and the two men, both skilled shipwrights, had worked part-time on the New World and had immediately recognized their employer and Cornelius as they came along the snowy street.
At a glance, Donald McKay sized up the situation, had a few words with the men and invited them into the store. The shipbuilder told the storekeeper to outfit the men with "Hightops" boots. Both workmen warmly thanked Donald McKay for his kind attention to their plight and left with packages of boots under their arms.
Father and son reached Boston Common, where they joined the happy crowds of children and grown-ups sledding down the hills and paths for a while. Donald McKay checked the bulls eye watch that Dennis Condry had given him. It was time to move on to Enoch Train's beautiful home at 70 Mt. Vernon Street.
The two were greeted by Enoch Train at the door and soon ushered into the library. Ship plans and drawings lay strewn across a large mahogany table. On the other side stood Robert G. Shaw, one of Boston's leading merchants who greeted them cordially.
A long animated discussion followed and out of it all came the contract to build the Ocean Monarch, 1303 tons, and the largest vessel yet for Train & Company's Liverpool packet service. Train's business was growing rapidly on the Boston to Liverpool North Atlantic run, particularly now with the great wave of Irish immigration due to the potato famine.
Five months later, the Ocean Monarch was launched in July 1847, and sailed under the command of Captain Murdoch, formerly the captain of the Joshua Bates and considered to be a very capable shipmaster.
The Ocean Monarch joined with the John R. Skiddy, Joshua Bates, Washington Irving, and New World of Enoch Train's White Diamond Line in making short passages across the North Atlantic on the Boston - Liverpool run. All Train's ships had a huge "T" that stood out on the foretopsails. These big McKay packets were slow in light winds, but light winds rarely blew in the North Atlantic.
Work began early in 1847 in the McKay Shipyard on the ship A.Z., a 700-ton cotton packet for Messrs. Zerega & Co., New York merchants and ship owners, to transport cotton to the English market. She was launched in October 1847. The A.Z. soon showed her good sailing qualities by swiftly carrying cotton and passengers across to Liverpool on her maiden run.
Impressed, Messrs. Zerega & Co. ordered another cotton packet built, larger than the last, to be named the L.Z., a vessel of 897 tons.
The Anglo-American, a beautifully modeled packet whose deck arrangements resembled the Washington Irving, was the next to join Enoch Train's packet fleet. She was launched from Donald Mckay's East Boston shipyard in February 1848, and soon sailed for Liverpool under the command of Captain Albert H. Brown, and made a fast maiden passage to Liverpool. The Anglo-American's bow was sharp and beautifully formed, with less flare than other Train packets. The best of woods were used in her construction, seasoned white oak, yellow pine, and hackmatack. The workmanship that ran throughout her cabins was the finest of all the packet fleet, and the workmanship for the steerage accommodations superior as well. The Anglo-American was 156 feet long, with a breadth of beam 33 feet, a depth of hold 20 feet, with rounded lines and smooth sides as seen in a pilot boat. The Anglo-American lived up to her namesake and plied the North Atlantic packet trade back and forth between Liverpool and Boston, until 1852, when she was sold and went on to many years of service sailing back and forth from England to Australia under the name Arrogant.
The 532-ton Jenny Lind was Donald McKay's first try at building a cotton ship, otherwise known as a "Kettle Bottom," a ship with odd design peculiarities that took advantage of measurement laws and reduced official tonnage. This was a ship that could load up cotton bales easily, sticking them everywhere about the ship, and get over the bars on the Mississippi River. The Jenny Lind was launched in May 1848, and was soon engaged in the "Triangular Run" for Boston merchants Messrs. Fairbanks and Wheeler.
New Orleans
by John Stobart
This painting has been electronically reproduced via courtesy of Maritime Heritage Prints, which holds the copyrights.
Maritime Heritage Prints
John Stobart Galleries
_____________________________________________
First, she sailed from Boston to New Orleans with general merchandise, and there took on a cargo of cotton. Then, the Jenny Lind sailed to Liverpool, where after unloading cotton, the ship would take on emigrants and cargo for the run to Boston.
In the off season for the cotton trade, the Jenny Lind switched to the emigrant trade and plied back and forth between Boston and Liverpool.
The men who worked the cotton packets were a tough breed known as "Hoosiers," and stayed with their ships in southern ports over the winter stowing cotton aboard for the run to Liverpool. Over the summer months, they would sail aboard the packets back and forth from Liverpool to Boston. All the Hoosiers were good chantymen and sang heartily away as they went about their tasks. A good chantyman singing the solo made the work easier where all his mates would sing the refrain and work in unison heaving on the windlass brakes on the forecastle head or walking 'round the capstan pushing along the capstan bar singing "Blow, my Bully Boys, Blow," and other chanteys.
* * * * *
George Francis Train, Enoch Train's ambitious young cousin, was at the Liverpool dock on August 24, 1948, waiting for the Ocean Monarch to arrive, when word came of the sorry end of the Ocean Monarch, destroyed by fire at sea and 400 lives lost. He captured the moment in his biography, My Life in Many States: and in Foreign Lands:
In '48 I was at the pier one day on the lookout for the Ocean Monarch. Although the telegraph had been established in '44, it had not been brought from Nova Scotia to Boston, and we had only the semaphore to use for signaling. When a ship entered the harbor, the captain would take a speaking-trumpet and, standing on the bridge shout out the most interesting or important tidings so that the news would get into the city before the ship was docked. The Persia was also due with Captain Judkins and it came in ahead of the Ocean Monarch. Some three or four thousand persons were on the pier waiting eagerly for the captain's news. I was at the end of the pier, and saw Captain Judkins place the trumpet to his lips, and heard him shout the tidings. And this is what I heard:
"The Ocean Monarch was burned off Orm's Head. Four hundred passengers burned or drowned. Captain Murdoch taken off a spar by Tom Littledale's yacht. A steamer going to Ireland passed by, and refused to offer assistance. Complete wreck and total loss.
From the pier dead silence greeted these dire tidings and soon the pier was swept with wild excitement and cries of grief, a sorry aftermath for such a tragedy at sea. For an immigrant passenger aboard the Ocean Monarch mistook a ventilator for a chimney and had lit a fire that soon spread throughout the ship and sent her to the bottom of the sea.
News of the California gold discoveries reached Boston in September 1848. Soon, the lull in the shipyards was over as hastily purchased ships were brought into the yards for renovation to make them seaworthy for the swiftly organized "companies" to make their way around the Horn to the gold fields.
The New York Shipyards had already sprung to life with the launching of the Memnon that fall. Other clippers were soon to follow. Gold fever spurred on activities in the East River shipyards to a furious pitch as freight rates soared and South Street shipping merchants scrambled to put their returning tea clippers up for San Francisco, before sending them back to China for another cargo of tea. The highly lucrative tea trade was taking on new dimensions.
The China tea trade had always been an expensive gamble that only the wealthiest of shipping merchants could afford, for it was a high-risk highly profitable business. A shrewd shipping merchant could make a substantial profit if his ship could bring the first shipment of tea home before the rest of the fleet. Shipping merchants had found a clever way to delay customs duty payments, with the acquiesce of the government, for up to 18 months without interest, and this allowed the shipping merchant to invest the pre-tax profits in two round tea voyages to China and back before paying off the customs duty of the previous voyage if he had a very fast ship.
A typical cargo of tea in China cost $200,000. The customs duty would be $400,000, and the tea would bring $700,000 at auction, leaving a $100,000 profit to the shipping merchant. So the grace period concerning the payment of the customs duties was a kind of interest-free loan that shipping merchants used to their great advantage in pyramiding their profits.
Of course, the government benefited from this arrangement, too, by turning Yankee ingenuity loose and greasing the wheels of commerce. It was one of the only ways for the government at the time to acquire sorely needed revenue, and in the early days following the War of 1812, it was a godsend because of the scarcity of capital. Many merchants got into the tea trade as a way for them to raise capital to finance other business ventures.
Now, the wealthiest of shipping merchants were ready to gamble again on the Gold Rush, with the infinite wisdom of their experience telling them that there were ways to reap the harvest of the gold fields other than washing it out of the streams in a pan.
They would ship the necessities of life around the Horn at extravagant shipping rates that were so high that they would pay for the building of the ships on their first voyage to San Francisco. Any cargo of scarce merchandise brought huge profits to the merchant who got there first. The entire cargo would be auctioned off and sold upon arrival before it was even unloaded off the ship. It was a high stakes game of gamble, risk, and speculation. With a lot riding on the sailing qualities of ships and how much cargo they could carry around the Horn.
But the stormy seas off Cape Horn called for sturdier, larger vessels with which to carry the heavy equipment and general merchandise cargoes, that were a lot heavier than tea. And such ships had to sail around the Horn in all seasons and race against the clipper fleet to San Francisco. Merchant shippers, captains, and shipbuilders pondered this latest opportunity that the South Street counting houses were presented with. The thought was certainly not lost that such large clippers built for the Gold Rush-California trade could also sail across the Pacific from San Francisco to China in ballast and bring a cargo of tea home in record time. So thoughts of loftier clipper ships made their way into the late night dreams of William Aspinwall, The Low Brothers, John W. Griffiths, William H. Webb, Nathaniel Palmer, Samuel Harte Pook, Donald and Albenia McKay, and others.
As the L.Z neared completion in early December 1848, a tragedy occurred that staggered Donald McKay. Albenia suddenly died on December 10th after a brief illness. She was just thirty-three years old and had been wife, mother, and mentor to her husband. Now she was gone.
At that time, five of Donald McKay's brothers and their families were living in East Boston. He needed them now to help look after his growing family of motherless children.
He sought solace by turning to his ships.
From the signal tower high atop the Navesink Highlands, that stood 250 feet over the treacherous entrance to New York Harbor at Sandy Hook, the watcher from the semaphore station stared out from his panoramic view of the Atlantic Ocean in disbelief. On the far horizon to the southeast he spotted what could only be a heavily sparred ship. It was a clear Sunday afternoon, a day when one could see 40 miles out to sea. The anxious watcher focused in his telescope at the rapidly approaching tea clipper flying clouds of canvas that could only be the Sea Witch, ring tails and studding sails set, scudding up the New Jersey coast as she caught the winds from the south-southeast. Her sleek, black hull slicing through the choppy swells, with the crew at last taking in her studding sails one after the other and running up her private signal. It was March 25, 1849, and there were no tea clippers due for another two weeks, but there was no denying that there was the Sea Witch, flaunting her coiled dragon figurehead with the pointed tail, back from her third voyage around the world. Robert Waterman had come flying back from China to New York in 74 days, 14 hours, and beaten the tea fleet home.
The watcher lost little time in jotting down a message on his pad and handed it to the semaphore operator, and soon the message was sent by the long signal arms that would be seen across the bay at the Coney Island semaphore station. The message was immediately sent by telegraph to the Howland & Aspinwall shipping office at 55 South Street. Soon, the waterfront was buzzing with the news. Within hours, a pilot had come aboard the Sea Witch and guided the sleek black tea clipper to her moorings at the South Street wharf. The firm of Howland and Aspinwall would make a fortune at the tea auction and bask in the glory of a new record for the China to New York run. Again, William Aspinwall's hunches and daring had paid off in a big way. With profits more then enough to pay for the building of another clipper.
Upwards of 50 tea-laden ships would follow in the coming weeks. Two of the fleet, the Onieda and the Carrington, both fast ships, had left Macao sailing in company on January 5, 1849. Neither Captain Creesy of the Oneida, or Captain Abbott of the Carrington logged anything about sighting the Sea Witch that day. That was because Waterman had sailed from Whampoa to Hong Kong on January 4th, and sailed from there in the evening hours of January 9th.
The Sea Witch shaved over 1,000 miles off the regular route of the Northeast monsoon season for a voyage of 14,255 miles with brief stops at Anjier and St. Helena. Waterman had shaved another three days off his existing record of the China run of 77 days in the Sea Witch on his last voyage, which had shaved a day off his first run back from China in 78 days.
He had brought the Sea Witch home on this last scamper which he concluded would never be surpassed, at least by him and the Sea Witch, and was now content to pass on command to his hard driving first mate, George Fraser, and retire. Waterman was forty-three years old and over the course of his three record-breaking China runs had earned a large sum of money. He had promised Cordelia before departing on the third voyage that this would be the last.
New York City went wild with the news of this latest record-breaking run. The Commercial Advertiser wrote:
The splendid ship Sea Witch, Capt. Waterman, arrived here on Sunday in seventy-five days from China, having performed a voyage around the world in 194 sailing days.
During the voyage she has made the shortest direct passages on record, viz.: 69 days from New York to Valparaiso; 50 days from Callao to China; 75 days from China to New York. Distance run by observation from New York to Valparaiso, 10,568 miles; average 6 2/5 miles per hour. Distance from Callao to China, 10,417 miles; average, 8 5/8 knots per hour. Distance from China to New York, 14,225 miles; average, 7 7/8 knots per hour. Best ten (consecutive) days' run, 2,634 miles; 11 1/10 knots per hour.
Waterman basked in his latest limelight at the Astor Bar and soon left for Connecticut to reunite with his wife. Griffiths basked in the limelight as well and was never at a loss for words when praising the ship that was his masterpiece. He wrote:
The model of the Sea Witch had more influence upon the subsequent configuration of fast vessels than any other ship ever built in the United States.
Next: The Oriental
The Era of the Clipper Ships
Bibliography / Sea
Witch / Directory / Maritime
Links
Home / McKay Clan / Ship's
Store / Introduction / Tradewinds