Two Pook clippers, Game Cock, and Witchcraft, were launched on 21 December 1850. The Game Cock, 1392 tons, was slightly larger than the Surprise, and launched from the same yard of Samuel Hall of East Boston. Her sharp ends sacrificed everything for speed, and a figurehead of a gamecock with an outstretched neck graced the bow of this heavily-sparred clipper. She was owned by Daniel C. Bacon of Boston, who sent her to New York on 23 January 1851, where she arrived forty-eight hours later, and New Yorkers soon took notice of her loading cargo for San Francisco.
The Witchcraft, 1310 tons, was slightly smaller than the Game Cock, and built by Curtis & Taylor at Salem, for Salem merchants, Pickman & Richards. Her figurehead was a crouching tiger and she had a richly decorated bow. A huge uncoiling serpent graced her handsome curvilinear stern. She was 193 feet overall in length. Some superstitious people were put off by her name and made dire predictions as to her eventual fate, but no ill-fortunes ever befell upon her.
Both ships took to the water to the cheers of thousands and the world sang their praises wherever they sailed.
The year 1851 began with ever growing and glowing press accounts of clipper ship launchings. Each launching sounded more exciting than the last as the competing newspapers, caught up in the general excitement, tried to out-do each other in exhausting the English language supply of adjectives and in capturing the popular enthusiasm of the times. Along with each new launching, the press would claim that each new ship was the sharpest, largest, and loftiest to slide down the ways. From this period on, clipper ships grew rapidly in size. Shipbuilders answered the call.
They also had to deal with the problem of rigging ships that could deal with the stress placed upon them and the enormous amount of canvas that they were expected to carry. Shipbuilders thought long and hard about just what they were doing. All the early lessons from the Cape Horn and China runs had been learned by then.
Merchants from the counting houses now vied for the honors with unbridled enthusiasm and became obsessed with their new gigantic versions of clipper ships. The merchants had nearly forgotten all about steam, feeling now that it had "reached the limit of its possibilities," reasoning that it was far too expensive and too slow. Besides, it was also too dangerous as the recent mysterious disappearance of the steam ship President along with her passengers and crew would attest.
The newspapers now all echoed this sentiment and for the time being steam was dead in the water, a 180 degree turnaround from the way things had been only a year before. The building of steam powered vessels would, however, pick up again by the end of the year as the call for swift passages to Panama increased in the mad rush to get to the gold fields.
The New York Herald summed up this excitement with a Sunday, January 19, 1851 article:
There is great anxiety manifested, and much speculation indulged in, by a great many persons interested in ship-building, concerning the respective sailing qualities and sea worthiness of the various beautiful clipper ships that have left and are preparing to leave this port for California and China. Each vessel, as she is launched from one of the ship yards of our city, and every one that comes to our port, from some Eastern yard, has its separate admirers. The various points of beauty, whether of hull or spars, are marked and descanted upon a critical eye. Some one, probably a New York shipbuilder, with a sparkling eye and animated continence, among the groups that are generally assembled in the neighborhood of the docks where the ships lie, will point out to you, what, in his opinion, are the masterpieces of the art. "The Eclipse, with her signals flying, ‘Through the Daylight,’ sailed on Wednesday for California and China, and the Ino, now receiving freight for the same destination, will be considered by him as combining all the elements of a vessel never to be excelled, and but on rare occasions to be equaled by any craft hailing from any other than a New York shipyard. From stem to stern-from keel to masthead-their various powers for skimming the waters or withstanding the anticipated heavy weather to be met with in weathering the Cape, and the qualities of their commanders to bring all the vessel’s powers into play, are talked of with as much earnestness as if the speaker had embarked his all in the voyage; and sanguine assertions are made that either of his favorites will beat anything that the Eastern States can ever produce in the shape of a sailing vessel.
But the Eastern built vessels are not without their friends and backers. The Sea Serpent, which left on the 11th, and the Stag Hound, now receiving her cargo, are cited as proud monuments of the skill of our Eastern brethren, each, in its turn, warranted as sure to take the starch out of anything afloat; and though admitting that for beauty of model and sailing qualities the New York vessels may probably have some claim to perfection, a confident guess is rendered that the results of the voyage will prove the East have as good, if not a better claim to superiority in ship building than their New York competitors.
Among so many vessels it is impossible to select one as superior, where all are beautiful. If this one has a neater or more beautiful stem, that has a more elegantly turned stern and a clean run; if one has a greater capacity for stowage and better bearings, another has a greater rise of floor, with its accompanying lightness of appearance. The trips, however, of the Eclipse and Sea Serpent will probably go some ways toward settling the matter in dispute, as each is of a different model, and one a New Yorker and the other an Eastern vessel, and each commanded by a man celebrated for his energy and great seaman-like qualities. It will be a neck and neck race-they having sailed within four days of each other, and are looked upon by the two parties as the champions of their different ideas of clipper ships.
Success to the winner!
By then, the clipper races from Sandy Hook to the Golden Gate had taken on the air of national sporting events. New York shipyards built half of the clipper fleet, owned two-thirds of them, and an even greater percentage of clippers sailed from that port.
For a distance of two miles, from South Street to Corlears Point, a forest of masts ran along the East River. From there, the shipyards stretched out to Tenth Street. The South River, too, was filled with ships. A visitor to the Trinity Church on Broadway could climb the lookout spire and take in the view from the height where according to the Times:
For miles around he would see forests of masts intermingling their delicate yards and beautiful tracery of rigging, from the top-most points of which flags of all the maritime nations flutter in the breeze. Casting his eye oceanward he would see a fleet of vessels under sail, some coming in before the fresh easterly wind, others beating downward in gallant style, to 'look for a fair wind outside,' as is often the wont of an impatient captain.
Thirty-one California clippers were launched in 1851, keeping nearly all the Atlantic seaboard shipyards busy building one or more ships. The most ambitious shipbuilder by far was William H. Webb. From his yard alone came: Challenge, Invincible, Comet, Gazelle, and Sword Fish.
. Briggs Bros. of South Boston built the Northern Light and Southern Cross. From the Somerset shipyard of Hood & Co. came the Raven.
At Medford, J. O. Curtis built the Shooting Star, and John Taylor built the Syren.
The Typhoon was built in Portsmouth, New Hampshire by the firm of Fernald & Pettigrew, and the Wild Pigeon and Witch of the Wave were launched from the Portsmouth shipyard of George Raynes.
. From Jacob A. Westervelt & Sons shipyard came the Eureka, the Hornet and the N. B. Palmer.
Hoboken, New Jersey turned out the Hurricane at Smith & Co.’s shipyard. From the Patterson & Stack shipyard in Williamsburg came the Ino. Jabez Williams built the Tornado. Isaac Taylor built the Syren. Trufant & Drummond built the Monsoon in Bath, Maine. And from the New York shipyard of Jacob Bell, came the Siren.
Donald McKay launched from his East Boston shipyard the Flying Cloud, Staffordshire, North America, and Flying Fish.
All were handsome ships as their owners spent large sums of money upon their construction to make them most seaworthy to withstand stormy voyages around the Horn. Each one was unique, however, in the individual attention directed to the refined decoration that ran throughout each ship that accounted for only a small portion of their overall expense. Only the finest carefully selected woods were used, such as Spanish mahogany and India teak for deck fittings. Rich ornamentation ran throughout each ship.
Such fine craftsmanship expressed the individual tastes of their owners and did much to enhance their prestige and reputations. Each new ship possessed its own special beauty and was specifically designed to attract the attention of the shippers and to command the highest freight rates. The newspapers of the day took note of all these embellishments in their lucid accounts of each new launching and exhausted the supply of adjectives in their descriptions.
Each ship launched was in a rush to get to the sea. The riggers would often still be working at a feverish pace rigging backstays and shrouds, even as the new ship was being towed down the East River out to Sandy Hook, where they would leave with the pilot and return to the harbor after being picked off by the tug. Upon their return, they would immediately begin their rigging activities aboard another vessel.
While the Stag Hound was still loading at the East River docks, the Sea Serpent sailed away from Sandy Hook on January 11th, and was followed by the Eclipse on January 15th. The John Bertram, an extreme very sharp 778-ton clipper that was launched from Ewell & Jackson’s East Boston shipyard on December 9, 1850, sailed from Boston for her maiden voyage around the Horn on January 11, 1851. An eagle on the wing graced her bow as she was designed especially for speed and said to be "as clean as a pilot boat." Grey Feather and the clipper bark Isabelita Hyne both sailed from New York on January 12th.
Grey Feather took 136 days to reach the Golden Gate. The Eclipse, Sea Serpent, and John Bertram all lost spars while rounding the Horn and all were forced to put into Valparaiso to make repairs. The John Bertram made it through the Golden Gate that May in 126 sailing days, the Sea Serpent in 125 sailing days, and the Eclipse in 123 sailing days. Respectable times, but nowhere near record passages. Stag Hound arrived five days after the Eclipse.
The San Francisco business district, that stretched along the waterfront for three quarters of a mile, had burned to the ground on May 3rd and the crews of the arriving clippers were greeted to this sight of smoldering devastation.
One of the few buildings to survive the fire was "the old adobe," one of the original structures in Portsmouth Square mentioned by Richard Dana in his Two Years Before the Mast, that soon became the sight of the first execution carried out by the Vigilance Committee. Members of the crew of the John Bertram witnessed the hanging of an Englishman named Jenkins, one of the "Sydney Ducks," He was a trouble maker from the Australian convict settlements, who soon swung from the gable of the old adobe roof.
It was a response to the growing state of anarchy and lawlessness that many law abiding citizens felt had gotten out of control, and the Vigilance Committee had been hastily formed to deal with the by then intolerable situation. For the time being, the "Hounds" and the "Ducks" were laying low or on the run.
The "Hounds" were disbanded soldiers of the 1st New York Volunteers who had come around the Horn from New York in 1847 at the time of the Mexican War, and had arrived after the war was over and mustered out of service at San Francisco. They had found digging in the gold fields not to their liking and had returned to the city and survived by extortion and thievery. Most of their victims were South Americans and Chinese.
Over 500 ships now rotted away in the harbor, deserted by their crews in the mad rush to get to the gold fields. Most sailors were unsuccessful in their quest for gold and returned to San Francisco. They did not, however, return to their ships, which was not unusual considering the low pay and conditions that most of them had sailed under on their way around the Horn. Before rotting away, some of the older vessels were pulled up on the mud banks and converted into hotels and warehouses. One ship was even turned into a jail. Some of the more seaworthy vessels were maintained by their officers, who somehow managed to pick up crews and sailed for home again.
The miner’s demand for goods was so great that the prices of everything soared to the skies. The price of flour shot up to two hundred dollars per barrel. Sugar shot up to five dollars a pound. Eggs sold for twelve dollars a dozen. Tools were rare indeed, with picks, shovels, hammers, and saws selling for up to eighteen dollars each. Cotton cloth and cheap wool sold for up to twelve dollars a yard. The price of shoes reached fifty dollars a pair. Boots sold for one hundred dollars. Guns sold for fifty dollars apiece and those prices were considered a bargain regardless of the workmanship of the firearm, and in that lawless community, were considered basic necessities. A deck of cards was five dollars, and quart of whiskey sold for forty dollars. Lumber was outrageously expensive.
Freight rated soared with this insatiable demand and a clipper ship that cost fifty thousand dollars to build in the east could easily recoup her entire building cost on a single voyage to San Francisco.
The flood of emigrants was endless. They came across the Plains and trekked through the swamps of Panama in their mad dash to the gold fields. Except for a trickling of freight that crossed the Isthmus, there was no way to get the goods to San Francisco except by way around the Horn in the clippers, as slower ships began to drop out of the race. Speed was at a premium and the clippers ruled the seas off Cape Horn.
All along every route to San Francisco and the gold fields, thousands of traveling gold seekers were stranded and desperately seeking passage from every port in South America and the Pacific ports of Central America. Many ships were battered by the westerlies and turned back, forced to put into South American Atlantic ports for repairs, some giving up the voyage and returning to the northeast, leaving passengers and mutinous crews to fend for themselves and find another way to the gold fields, or return home.
Over 90,000 emigrants had arrived by ship in 1850 and more were arriving with every ship that made it through the Golden Gate. San Francisco was fast becoming the melting pot of the world. Over 65,000 miners from Mexico, Peru, and Chile arrived in the first wave of emigration.
Shiploads of convicts from Australia began arriving in 1849, and now numbered in the thousands.
France held a lottery organized by Emperor Louis Napoleon and 3,885 Frenchmen came. Forty-five ships from Hong Kong came in 1849 carrying desperate farmers fleeing the Pearl River famine. One hundred more ships followed over the next two years.
Waves of prostitutes from the eastern United States, South America, Australia, and China were soon to follow. Foreigners now made up twenty-five percent of California’s population.
There was a constant steady flow of miners returning from the gold fields, all eager to spend their newfound riches on whatever vices amused them, and soon a thousand gambling halls sprang up almost overnight and they were licensed to stay open seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. The play never stopped. Fortunes were won and lost on the single turn of a card. The prostitutes usually ended up with whatever the gamblers didn’t get. Some of the prostitutes became respectable by marrying their patrons.
Many people soon found that there were more promising prospects in real estate, as land became a most valuable commodity, as the waterfront, expanded by a landfill, inched out into San Francisco Bay from Montgomery Street. From there, a dozen piers jutted out into the water, one of them almost a half-a-mile. Many new buildings were built on the landfill. Wooden shacks gradually replaced the tents that ringed the bay. They were periodically swept away by fire and quickly rebuilt again.
On the hills behind the waterfront, more substantial buildings of adobe, brick, and stone soon appeared that were less prone to the fire hazard. Speculation in real estate was of course a high stakes gamble, but fortunes could be made overnight--or lost as well. Swindlers were everywhere, all eager to take advantage of the easy mark. It took a clever man to keep his wits about him all the time.
Jobs in the city were plentiful at salaries that were many times higher than in the East. Recent arrivals swelled the growing population of the city that never slept. The nighttime glow of lanterns from the tents of the surrounding hills lit up the evening skies.
Some of the newcomers saw an opportunity in providing the growing population with fresh fruit, vegetables, and beef. One such person was Robert Waterman. He had come out of retirement after the third round voyage of the Sea Witch, and had taken the Pacific Mail Company steamship Northerner with the owner aboard and navigated around the Horn through the Strait of Magellan, and put into Valparaiso for coal, before steaming on for San Francisco.
He had gone there because he had found the economic opportunities there to his liking. He had accumulated a fortune over his many years at sea and was ready to move on to other ventures. In his farsighted vision of the future, he foresaw that it was only a matter of time before steam power would replace the sailing ship. He personally found steam powered ships not to his liking and had no desire to pursue this career any further upon delivery of the Northerner around the Horn.
He predicted that when the inevitable technological improvements in steamers came, the clipper ship races around the horn and sail power in general would abruptly come to an end. To Waterman, the clipper ship was the final noble, but futile gesture of sail, but it would not come to an end as soon as Waterman expected it to. In the meantime, the clipper ship frenzy would go on.
Robert Waterman liked California and decided to invest in farmland while it could be purchased at a good price. Fortunately, Waterman had a good friend out there, Archibald Ritchie, also a sea captain, who had already located in Solano County twelve square miles of fertile land along the Sacramento River in the Suisen Valley, thirty miles northeast of the Golden Gate. Upon arrival at San Francisco, Waterman went straight to the ranch.
Waterman was offered and took a half interest in the property for $17,000 and completed the deal on August 29, 1950, and looked forward to his future life as a farmer.
Waterman confided to Ritchie his thoughts concerning the completion of a transcontinental railroad across the United States. He estimated that it would take about ten years to complete the transcontinental railroad. By that time, steam ships would be eclipsed as well as sail as far as shipping goods from the east coast to the west coast, for then it would be much easier to ship freight across the country by rail, rather than shipping it around the Horn.
Waterman and Ritchie then turned to an agricultural expert, Joseph Alison, for help with the surveying of their property, who helped organize an agricultural plan for the land. With that completed, Waterman decided to return to New York in the fall by way of the Isthmus to settle all his business affairs and return to California with his wife.
Next: Charles Porter Low
The Era of the Clipper Ships
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