At the East Boston shipyard of Samuel Hall, the 1261-ton Surprise was the first clipper ship launched in Boston. The Surprise attracted quite a crowd that was delighted to see such a splendid ship glide swiftly down the ways, fully rigged to the sky sail yards with colors flying, on October 5, 1850. From the pavilions that Samuel Hall had erected, shipyard workmen's families cheered as the hull of the Surprise entered the water and swung to her anchors. Soon, the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters retreated to the mold loft to join their men folk, where a feast awaited them served on long tables and decorated with flags. The foreman of the yard took charge of the occasion. Samuel Hall entertained his invited guests who had attended the launching at his home.
The Surprise was designed by Samuel Harte Pook and Captain Phillip Dumaresq supervised the building of the ship that he would take command of and enter the California and China trade in the service of A. A. Low & Brother. A gilded eagle figurehead graced her bow. One hundred and eighty-three feet long, her ends were said to be quite sharp, but she was not quite as large and did not carry as much sail as other clippers of her era, such as Game Cock, Sea Serpent and White Squall. The Lows were delighted with her and gave Samuel Hall a $2,500 bonus.
The building of the Surprise proved to be a most unusual enterprise of collaboration that brought together an older established shipbuilder, Samuel Hall, and a young independent naval architect, Samuel Harte Pook, who was an outright genius. Complicating this mix even further was the fact that Captain Phillip Dumaresq was brought in, at the Lows' insistence, to supervise the construction of the Surprise. All in all, a highly unusual state of affairs brought about to fruition because the New York shipyards were just too busy to accommodate the Lows. They had been forced to look elsewhere and they were most anxious to seek out a naval architect who was well acquainted with the latest advances with marine technology that were at that moment taking place in the New York Shipyards, where John Willis Griffiths' theories had taken hold.
Boston shipbuilders up till then had little knowledge and exposure to the principles of scientific ship design and were stubborn in their Yankee ways, slow to adapt to new ways of doing things until they saw practical results.
It was an uneasy collaboration right from the start for no shipbuilder liked the intrusion of others telling him how to design and build his ships. Samuel Hall was a master shipbuilder with an uncanny ability to figure out the proper balance and stability of the ships he built in his East Boston shipyard. Young Pook found the older shipbuilder hard to get along with. But Hall and Pook had smoothed out their differences somewhat in their earlier collaboration to build the swift clipper barque, Race Horse, for Forbes, who had expressly brought young Pook into the yard because he was highly impressed with the young man's abilities.
Before the completion of that vessel, agents for A.A. Low & Bros. from New York had come calling, hats in hand, in search of a New England shipyard that could deliver a large clipper suitable for both the California and China tea trades. The recent outstanding maiden voyage of the Lows' Samuel Russell had made a profound impression on the Lows.
At the time, all the New York shipyards were busy, the California trade was booming and the Lows wanted a new clipper as soon as possible. The Lows' agents were impressed and delighted to find a young naval architect such as Pook, who was well acquainted with the latest scientific theories in shipbuilding. They encouraged the young designer and the older builder to continue their collaboration and again to combine their talents in the building of Boston's first clipper ship; along with Captain Dumaresq's supervision. The Lows' promise of a bonus to Samuel Hall upon the completion of the ship dangling about perhaps was instrumental to smoothing out whatever differences Hall had with the other two for the time being.
Over the course of Hall's collaboration with Pook, the older shipbuilder was reluctant to admit that he had learned a thing or two from the young designer. Instead, Hall insisted that the successful sailing qualities of the Surprise were due to the changes that he had made to Pook's designs during the construction of the Surprise.
Pook found the changes in design that Hall had made in building the Surprise to be "irritating and unimportant." It seems that Hall was determined to take credit as a designer as well as a shipbuilder. But Pook's ideas concerning model and sail plan would show up in all of Hall's later clippers, as they would with other shipbuilders in other shipyards wherever Pook-designed ships were built.
Pook's ideas called for a clipper with a large mid ship section and small deadrise balanced out with fine ends with a good flare forward that made for a good sea boat with above-water buoyancy both fore and aft.
Young Pook was "actually a poet who dreamed of perfect ships," according to marine historian William C. Clark. Along with John Willis Griffiths, Samuel Harte Pook would go on to leave an unsurpassed legacy upon the era of the clipper ships and whose influence reached out to every shipyard on the North Atlantic coast.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, on January 17, 1827, Samuel Harte Pook was the son of Samuel Moore Pook, a prominent shipbuilder for the Navy, who inherited his father's profession as a naval architect, and graduated from Portsmouth Academy in 1842 at the young age of fourteen. That same year, his father was promoted to head the Bureau of Construction of the Boston Navy Yard, under whom young Pook would serve his apprenticeship.
He was surrounded while growing up by others with the same first name as well. Young Pook got his middle name from Samuel Harte, who was a Naval Constructor who had been quick to take notice of flat-floored merchant vessels and had proposed them for the Navy.
Samuel Humphreys, the son of Joshua Humphreys of Constitution fame, was a close associate of the elder Pook and the two of them had designed the heavy corvette, Saratoga.
Samuel Moore Pook had gone on to design the corvette Plymouth that was said by many of her officers to have been "the finest vessel in her class in any navy."
Samuel Harte Pook began his apprenticeship at the Charlestown Navy Yard working on this remarkably well designed ship and learned his lessons well.
On the other side of the Mystic River, Otis Tufts began construction of the R. B. Forbes, in the fall of 1844, which was the first twin-screw, double-ended, iron steamer tug boat, commissioned by Robert Bennett Forbes.
Forbes was quick to take notice of the unusual talents of the young apprentice across the Mystic River, and soon enlisted young Pook's many talents in building his deep-sea tug, where he may have had a hand in laying down her lines. But whether he actually took part in designing her such as Fairburn in Merchant Sail, suggests is still a matter of discussion among maritime historians and Pook himself never made such a claim. Young Pook was fortunate to come along in his career right at such a time when the new technology of iron and steam were taking hold and the age of sail was climaxing in a flurry of glory. He was at the apex of both worlds as well as interested in both.
At the end of his apprenticeship, young Pook moved on to take a position at the Portsmouth Navy Yard and served under Naval Constructor Benjamin F. Delano with the building of the United States steamer Saranac, a wooden side-wheeler that was launched in November, 1948.
Upon completion of the Saranac in the early spring of 1850, Pook, with the encouragement and guidance of Robert Bennett Forbes, went on to open his own office as an independent freelance naval architect. He chose Cunningham's Wharf in East Boston at the junction of the Charles and Mystic rivers, a central location of maritime enterprise less than a mile south of the McKay Shipyard. Across the estuary, half way between, was the shipyard of Samuel Hall.
Three blocks away from Cunningham's Wharf was Otis Tufts Wharf, where the sheds and foundries that made the frames and plates for the R. B. Forbes were located, where a marine railway conveniently ran nearby.
One of the first tasks that young Pook took on was due to the "kind patronage" that Robert Bennett Forbes bestowed upon him. Forbes assigned Pook to work that summer of 1850 in Samuel Hall's shipyard on the clipper Barque Race Horse, a vessel to be built for Forbes' expanding interlocking business enterprises, right before Robert Bennett Forbes left on a voyage for China on June 20, 1949, the previous year. Forbes was gone for two years and returned to Boston on July 3, 1851.
The Race Horse was originally designed for the eastward round voyages of the tea trade. But upon her launching, she was quickly diverted from that calling and put up for the Cape Horn run in the mad rush to get goods out to the gold fields, and placed under the command of Captain David S. Babcock. The Race Horse sailed in mid-August on her maiden voyage around the Horn to San Francisco. By that time, work on the Surprise was well underway and Pook would see it on to completion, before ending his collaboration with Samuel Hall and moving on to other freelance assignments.
Samuel Harte Pook was a naval architect and not a shipyard owner and over the course of fifteen years in that profession he designed upwards of one thousand ships for around fifty shipyards from Baltimore to Maine, where others laid down the lines of the ships that he designed.
Pook's clippers were known for their delicate beauty about them, and beyond their graceful curves they were superb seagoing cargo carriers renowned for their stability and power, and many New England shipbuilders sought Pook out to design ships for them.
At that time, it was a shrewd Yankee practice for shipbuilders to contract Pook to design a clipper for them and to even get Pook to supervise the construction at the yard, as such was the case at Samuel Hall's shipyard. But Pook was often at odds with shipbuilders who had their own way of doing things and did not take kindly to Pook's "modern" suggestions. But after building their first Pook-designed vessel, and upon being pleased with her sailing qualities, many of these shipbuilders would go on to use the same lines to design other vessels with a few alterations. Then claim them as their own while not giving Pook any credit for them or further moneys.
Often, ship owners would just buy the lines and spar plan from Pook or just a half model and bartered with one another behind Pook's back. This was not unusual for the times, for to some extent all shipbuilders were copyists and looked to other shipbuilders for ideas.
Such is what happened over the course of the career of Samuel Harte Pook and his influence upon the era of the clipper ships would be most profound.
Upon the launching of the Surprise at Samuel Hall's East Boston Shipyard, Samuel Harte Pook moved on to design clippers for other shipyards. Over the next four years a number of fast well-modeled clippers credited to Pook were launched from New England shipyards. That included the Game Cock, Witchcraft, Telegraph, Northern Light, Defiance, Belle of the West, Fearless, Red Jacket, Herald of the Morning, Challenger, Ocean Telegraph, Blue Jacket, and the Ocean Chief.
After 1852 many New England and New York clipper that slid down the ways owed much to the principles laid down by Samuel Harte Pook. Although all of the builders tried to incorporate some of their own ideas into the design, and hardly ever built them to Pook's exact specifications. It certainly would have been interesting to see what Pook would have come up with if he had had a shipyard of his own.
The skyrocketing freight rates of the California trade were too hard to resist and the Lows decided to divert the Surprise from the China trade just long enough to take a run to San Francisco. After partially loading up in Boston, the Surprise was towed to New York by the R. B. Forbes. Crowds gathered along the East River as the Surprise was delivered to her loading berth. The New York Herald echoed the sentiment of the city saying that the Surprise was the handsomest ship ever seen in port. She completed loading a cargo of mixed merchandise and cleared New York on December 13, 1850.
The Surprise lived up to everyone's expectations on her maiden voyage around the Horn and arrived in San Francisco on March 19, 1851, eclipsing the Sea Witch's 97-day passage that she had held for almost eight months. Thus, the Surprise set a new record of 96 days, 15 hours and was now the ship to beat.
All along the Atlantic seaboard from Baltimore to Maine other clippers were launched in 1850: Witchcraft, John Bertram, Governor Morton, Eclipse, Seaman, White Squall, Sea Serpent, and others.
The Oriental entered Hong Kong Harbor August 8, 1850, in 81 days with halyards smoking and sheets flying, Captain Theodore Palmer at last taking in the canvas that had caught the prevailing monsoon winds up the South China Sea. The British Navigation Laws that had been in effect since 1651 since the time of Oliver Cromwell and later affirmed by King Charles II, had been repealed the year before in 1849.
Now, Hong Kong was a harbor of opportunity for fast sailing American ships that were no longer prohibited from carrying tea from China to England. The British ship owner's protectionist monopoly on trade had fallen. British leaders had wisely decided that it had to repeal the Navigation Laws in order for British commerce to compete and succeed in the free markets of the world. British merchants had to be free to pick and chose the cheapest, fastest ships to ply their trade, regardless of where they came from. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations spelled out the fallacy of such archaic protectionist policies in 1776, that were summed up by Arthur H. Clarke in The Clipper Ship Era:
(1.) Certain enumerated articles of European produce could only be imported to the United Kingdom for consumption in the United Kingdom for consumption, in British ships or in ships of the country of which the goods were the produce, or in ships of that country for which they were usually imported.
(II.) No produce of Asia, Africa, or America could be imported for consumption in the United Kingdom from Europe in any ships; and such produce could only be imported from any other place in British ships or in ships of the country of which they were the produce.
(III.) No goods could be carried coastwise from one part of the United Kingdom to another in any but British ships.
(IV.) No goods could be exported from the United Kingdom to any of the British possessions in Asia, Africa, or America (with some exceptions in regard to India) in any but British ships.
(V.) No goods could be carried from one British possession in Asia, Africa, or America to another, nor from one part of such possession to another part of the same, in any but British ships.
(VI.) No goods could be imported into any British possessions in Asia, Africa, or America, in any but British ships, or ships of the country of which the goods were the produce; provided also, in such case, that such ships brought the goods from that country.
(VII.) No foreign ships were allowed to trade with any of the British possessions unless they had been specifically authorized to do so by orders in the Council.
(VIII.) Powers were given to the sovereign in Council to impose differential duties on the ships of any country which did the same with reference to British ships; and also to place restrictions on importations from any foreign countries which placed restrictions on British importations into such countries.
With such protectionist maritime trade laws in place, there was little incentive to improve the design and construction of British merchant ships. Nor was there any incentive to transport goods any faster, except in the area of clipper schooners that were used for the opium trade.
American ships had long controlled the North Atlantic packet trade to Liverpool and the British were well acquainted with seeing them moored at the Liverpool docks. British captains in China took notice of American clippers loading tea for the New York merchant houses. Many a sailor aboard an Indiaman out on a becalmed southern ocean had seen a Yankee clipper glide by with sails in high places catching the only wind and leaving them behind in the wake.
There was no incentive to swiftly get British goods to market and this lack of enterprise drifted down to the sailing practices of British ships with Alexis De Tocqueville summed up in his Democracy in America:
The European sailor navigates with prudence; he only sets sail when the weather is favorable; in an unfortunate accident befalls him, he puts into port; at night he furls a portion of his canvas; and when the whitening billows intimate the vicinity of land, he checks his way and takes an observation of the sun. But the American neglects these precautions and braves these dangers. He weighs anchor in the midst of tempestuous gales; by night and day he spreads his sheets to the winds; he repairs as he goes along such damage as his vessel may have sustained from the storm; and when he at last approaches the term of his voyage, he darts onward to the shore as if he already descried a port. The Americans are often shipwrecked, but no trader crosses the seas so rapidly. And as they perform the same distance in shorter time, they can perform it at a cheaper rate.
The European touches several times at different ports in the course of a long voyage; he loses a good deal of precious time in making harbor, or in waiting for a favorable wind to leave it; and pays daily dues to be allowed to remain there. the American starts from Boston to purchase tea in China; he arrives at Canton, stays there a few days, and then returns. In less than two years he has sailed as far as the entire circumference of the globe, and he has seen land but once. It is true that during a voyage of eight or ten months he has drunk brackish water, and lived upon salt meat; that he has been in a continual contest with the sea, with disease, and with a tedious existence; but, upon his return, he can sell a pound of tea for a half-penny less than the English merchant, and his purpose is accomplished.
I cannot better explain my meaning than by saying that the Americans affect a sort of heroism in their manner of trading. But the European merchant will always find it very difficult to imitate his American competitor, who, in adopting the system I have just described, follows not only a calculation of his gain, but an impulse of his nature.
With the sweeping away of the Navigation Laws, a free trade policy was adopted, which in the short term would devastate British ship building, but in the long run, Britain would one day regain the title of mistress of the seas. It would take years for the British shipbuilding community to catch up with American ships. So in the meantime, the British would have to rely on swift-sailing American clippers to bring their precious perishable tea to England, and to charter and purchase American ships until their home shipyards could fulfill the needs of the British merchant houses.
At that time, the British Government urged a hasty transition over to iron for the building of their ships, because timber was so much more expensive in the British Isles and had to be imported. Their home shipyards could not build wooden ships as inexpensively as the Americans and therefore could not compete. The British Government also urged that British shipyards concentrate on the development of steamships with screw propellers
Lloyd's of London, who handled the lion's share of British maritime insurance, was able to slow down the devastating effect on British shipyards somewhat by condemning locust treenails in purchased American vessels, forcing their new owners to refasten them before they could obtain insurance.
But British merchants were free to charter American ships to ship their tea to England "in the best and fastest ships without respect to nationality or register."
The arrival of the Oriental at Hong Kong over her previous maiden voyage had created quite a sensation with British tea merchants.
This time around, Hong Kong shippers were vying with one another to charter the Oriental to carry tea to London "at any price." British ships were anchored in the harbor waiting for cargoes for which they were getting £3:10 per ton. This estimate measured out at fifty cubic feet or as much teas as you could squeeze into a space five feet square and two feet high.
Knowing that he could do better than that, Captain Theodore Palmer held out until Russell & Co., the Low's agents in Hong Kong, secured a bid of £6 per ton with the "ton" reduced in size to forty cubic feet. 1,600-tons of tea was soon loaded aboard at a freight charge of $48,000. The Oriental was induced to make "a switch in committed business" curtailing her planned return voyage to New York, and was off to London from Whampoa with a cargo of tea in less than three weeks.
The first American ship to load tea and sail for London following the repeal of the British Navigation Laws was the little Saybrook, Connecticut bark Jeanette, which set sail from Whampoa on August 25th, and she was followed by the Medford clipper Argonaut on August 27th. The Oriental would be the first American ship to arrive on the Thames River with a cargo of tea.
The Oriental set sail on August 28, 1850, and beat down against the southwest monsoon winds of the South China Sea and in 21 days reached Anjier. She then tore across the Indian Ocean diagonally southwest to the Cape of Good Hope, and then headed north up the Atlantic. They passed St. Helena and days later the Azores were sighted off in the distant haze from the deck of the Oriental by Captain Theodore Palmer and his crew, as they took a northeast turn for England. In 91 days they were off the Lizard, a rocky point out in the English Channel where an "easterly" was blowing hard. Still, the Oriental made her way to the West Indian Docks on the Thames River at London in 97 days, arriving December 3, 1850, a record breaking run.
The British who came to marvel at the Oriental numbered in the thousands and were taken in by her graceful lines, her sheer beauty, and her towering masts, which soared above every ship in the harbor. Theodore Palmer took great pride in his ship and kept the Oriental in perfect condition with sails furled neatly and all lines taught; all under the watchful eye of her captain. Her black shiny hull had a lacquered look to it and her holystoned decks snow white. The polished brass work glittered in the sun.
British ship owners looked on nervously knowing that they could never compete with ships like this. Concerned, the British Admiralty asked for permission to take off her lines in dry dock and obtained it. The newspapers discussed the Oriental editorially and swiftly British shipping men firmly resolved to take up the task of building ships of a similar type. For the time being American ships would rule the seas.
The Times of London summed it up:
The rapid increase of population in the United States, augmented by an annual immigration of nearly three hundred thousand from these isles, is a fact that forces itself on the notice and interest of the most unobservant and uncurious. All these promise to develop the resources of the United States to such an extent as to compel us to a competition as different as it is unavoidable. We must run a race with our gigantic and unshackled rival. We must set our long-practiced skill, our steady industry, and our dogged determination, against his youth, ingenuity, and ardor. It is a father who runs a race with his son. A fell necessity constrains us and we must not be beat. Let our ship-builders and employers take warning in time. There will always be an abundant supply of vessels, good enough and fast enough for short voyages, which otherwise will fall into American hands. It is fortunate that the Navigation Laws have been repealed in time to destroy these false and unreasonable expectations, which might have lulled the ardor of British competition. We now all start together with a fair field and no favor. The American captain can pursue his voyage to New York. Who can complain? Not we. We trust that our countrymen will not be beaten; but if they should be, we shall know that they deserve it.
This appeal went out to shipbuilders in Aberdeen and elsewhere. Meanwhile, the Oriental obtained a round passage charter for another tea run to China and back and set sail on January 14, 1851. She arrived in Hong Kong after a 116-day passage. The Oriental sailed on to Woosung 850, miles up the coast of China.
She took on a cargo of tea and sailed from Woosung on July 16th, beating her way against the monsoon down the South China Sea. The Oriental returned to London, arriving there on November 20, 1851, after 127 days at sea.
The Oriental then made another 116-day voyage to Hong Kong, China, arriving May 5, 1852. The Oriental loaded tea at Shanghai and sailed September 1st for New York, arriving there on December 16, 1852, after a 106-day passage. The Oriental had been away from the South Street docks for two years and seven months and over that period of time, she had logged an estimated 97,000 miles sailing across the oceans of the world, setting records wherever she sailed, as well as earning vast sums for the Lows.
The Oriental arrived off Sandy Hook looking "as trim as the day she left the riggers' hands, and as ready to set out for her second hundred thousand miles."
Theodore Palmer turned over command of the Oriental to Captain Fletcher, and the Lows lost little time in putting the Oriental up for San Francisco. On January 26, 1853, the Oriental cleared New York, sailed out past Sandy Hook on January 27th, and was off on her first stormy passage around the Horn.
Other clippers sailed from New York and Boston around that same time, January 15th to February 15th, among them: the Alert, Lucknow, Simoon, Flying Arrow, Wings of the Morning, Typhoon, Queen of the Pacific, Carrier Pigeon, Golden Racer, Star of the Union, Mystery, Northern Crown, Governor Morton, Golden State, Swordfish, Sea Serpent, Reliance, and Sirocco.
As she approached Cape Horn, the head of the Oriental's foremast was badly sprung and the clipper was forced to tack with the southwest wind and reverse her course, sailing north by east for three days, while the crew made temporary repairs while in the vicinity of the Falkland Islands.
The Oriental encountered high seas and screaming westerlies off Cape Horn that she handled in superb fashion. An amazing feat, for she was not designed as a Cape Horn clipper. Yet, she made the fastest run of any clipper over a period of thirteen months at the very height of the era when 163 clippers cleared East Coast American ports for the Cape Horn run to San Francisco.
Coincidentally, the next two fastest clippers to make the run over this thirteen-month period were the Contest and the David Brown, both clippers were owned by A. A. Low & Bro. of New York.
Ninety-eight days out of New York, the Oriental ran into a calm 50 miles out from the Golden Gate, where she lingered for two days, before entering port on May 7, 1853, a voyage of 100 days from New York.
The Oriental then sailed across the Pacific to China, first to Shanghai and then up the Min River to the port of Foo Chow, which had just opened to foreign trade. The Oriental loaded up a $175,000 cargo of tea and left the Foo Chow docks on February 25, 1854, with a pilot and escorted by native boats with lines guiding the Oriental down the Min River through the treacherous stretch known as the "chow-chow water." The winds and tides ran strong that day. The guide boats did not obey the pilot's directions and the Oriental struck a point of rocks. She soon sunk in deep water and her cargo of precious tea was a total loss. The passengers and crew were saved, but it was the sorry end of the Oriental, truly one of the finest ships of the clipper fleet.
Next: Sea Serpent - Stag Hound
The Era of the Clipper Ships
Bibliography / Sea
Witch / Directory / Maritime
Links
Home / McKay Clan / Ship's
Store / Introduction / Tradewinds