Robert Waterman had returned to New York from California in the spring of 1851, most anxious to reunite with his wife, round up his business affairs, and return to California with Cordelia and begin his new life as a farmer. He had been away for a long time and upon his arrival in the city, he dropped by to visit some of his old haunts; where sea lawyers in the 1840s on more than one occasion had gone looking for him.
He undoubtedly dropped by the Astor Bar, where he had once held court among his fellow sea captains and basked in the revere over his latest record setting passages while in command of the Natchez and the Sea Witch. Perhaps he felt the nostalgic tug of his early days when he had somehow found and harnessed the winds to move his ship along while others lingered in the doldrums. He certainly took notice of the growing clipper ship frenzy all along the waterfront, as merchants scrambled to load up and send their clippers off around the Horn to California. Whatever farsighted predictions Waterman had made as to the future of sailing ships to his close friends, the merchant houses along South Street were uninterested in hearing about it at the moment. They were far too busy.
The new clippers taking shape in the shipyards up the East River were much larger than his old ship, the Sea Witch, that was off somewhere at sea under the command of his former first mate, George Fraser.
To the amazement of everyone along South Street, even the conservative old Griswold brothers had caught the California frenzy and had gotten into the act. Their counting house was a large granite building at 71-72 South Street, two blocks north of Howland & Aspinwall's counting house, the owners of the Natchez and the Sea Witch, whom Waterman had last served.
The brothers Griswold, Nathaniel L. and George, hailed from East Lime, Connecticut, and had arrived in New York in the 1790s, and soon made a fortune shipping flour to the West Indies and bringing back sugar and rum. Eventually, they got into the tea trade because that's where the money was. N. L. & G. Griswold, by the 1840s, had acquired a fleet of forty-three ships, all flying the checkered blue and white house flag. The Panama was their most well known ship and her picture along with "Ship Panama" and "N. L. & G. Griswold," was printed on all her tea chest and carton labels and they were in every country store in America. Their firm was so prosperous that in jest people said that the initials stood for "No Loss and Great Gain." Three ships in succession were named "Ship Panama."
A Griswold ship being loaded at their East River Pier.
The Griswolds fit the mold of lanky, hatchet-faced New England Yankees with ruddy complexions, and both were over six feet tall. The younger brother, "Old Nat," was the shipping expert and wore a slouch hat, instead of the silk topper worn by other merchants. George was the bookkeeping wizard who also dabbled in banking and real estate. The Griswolds kept a tight rein on their captains and drove them hard. Both brother's penmanship was so bad as to be indecipherable even to themselves and this drove their clerks crazy. One clerk of the firm was considered indispensable, for he alone could understand George's scrawl.
Nat also branched out into other business and won a $100,000 dredging contract from the New York State legislature for the dredging and deepening of New York Harbor.
They owned their entire fleet, did little chartering, and auctioned off their tea independently, receiving up to $700,000 per cargo. Now, they wanted to get into the California trade in a big way and had commissioned William Webb to build a sharp new clipper for their firm that was to be the largest yet to slide down the ways, to be called the Challenge.
George Griswold soon took notice of Robert Waterman about town and approached him with a most intriguing offer, one that he knew Waterman would find hard to refuse, and offered him the chance to come out of retirement and set a record breaking California passage as captain of the largest clipper ship in the world. To sweeten the offer even further, George Griswold offered Waterman a $10,000 bonus if he took up the challenge of winning the Cape Horn sweepstakes with the Challenge and succeeded in making a passage of 90 days or less. George Griswold knew that this kind of talk would appeal to Waterman, and encouraged him to go up to William Webb's shipyard and take a look at the Challenge for himself. Griswold assured Waterman that there was still time enough for him to supervise the final layout of the rigging.
Like a moth drawn to the light, Waterman found this too hard to resist and went up to William Webb's shipyard, and was soon walking around the huge sharp hull of the Challenge, that was twice as large as the Sea Witch, checking her out from every angle. He had set all the early records in the China tea trade and they still stood unbroken and would stand the test of time, but he had yet to race a California clipper around the Horn to the Golden Gate for the laurels of that race as well.
Before long, Robert Waterman was quivering with anticipation and returned to the Griswold's counting house to take a look at the rigging plans and soon proposed adding additional sail. He had taken up the challenge of the Cape Horn sweepstakes not knowing at the time that he had just made the biggest mistake of his life.
The shipyard of William Webb
The busiest of all the shipyards along the East River in 1851 was that of William Webb. Who had inherited the shipyard upon the death of his father, Isaac Webb, known throughout the world as "the father of shipbuilders." Isaac Webb had built the Natchez that Waterman had sailed to fame over the China run.
Webb had established a reputation for himself over the past decade building swift packet ships for the North Atlantic trade. From 1840 to 1850, William Webb built the packets Montezuma, Yorkshire, Havre, Fidelia, Columbia, Sir Robert Peel, Splendid, Bavaria, Albert Galatin, Isaac Webb, and Vanguard. One of them, the Yorkshire, was known as "the fastest packet of her time." William Webb also built the China packets Helena, Montauk, and Panama. Webb was a meticulous craftsman who possessed a good intuitive sense as to the proper dimensions of a ship and tried to live up to his father's legacy and devoted much attention drafting out his carefully constructed models of the hulls of his ships. He was a stocky man of thirty-six years, gone prematurely bald with curly sandy hair.
Over the winter of 1850 and the early spring of 1851, Webb's yard bustled with activity building big, sharp, extreme clippers for the Cape Horn run when the Griswolds came calling to seek him out to build a clipper ship for them. Webb was very busy at the time, but when the talk came to money, the Griswolds told him to spare no expense in selecting the finest materials available, to use only the best shipwrights, and to make her the largest and sharpest clipper ship in the world. The sky was the limit. Webb found such an offer hard to refuse and agreed to take the project on at the unheard of price of $150,000.
William Webb prepared his layered lift-model by meticulously began whittling away with a determined expertise sharpening out the bow and rounding out the stern of the model of the Challenge. Upon the layout of his sheer plan, he adjusted the upper layers, thinning them at the forward end thus sharpening out her bow, and widening out the lower layers at the middle to give her less deadrise and a flatter bottom. The patterns were taken from the mold loft floor and used to make the wooden molds that a foreman took and used for the shaping of the timbers.
Webb kept a huge supply of timbers neatly stockpiled and stacked about his yard, all according to size, shape, and type of wood. White oak was the preferred choice of wood for framing timbers and planking of the Challenge, and white pine for her decks. Live oak from the swampy forests of the Georgia sea islands, that often grew in distorted shapes, was by far the preferred wood for all the angled pieces needed, such as ship's knees. Live oak brought premium prices of up to $1.50 a cubic foot.
Gangs of workers toiled away on the Challenge with assembly line proficiency. One gang followed another completing all the different chores required. First the plankers, followed by the carpenters, followed by the caulkers, then the sheathers. Carpenters were everywhere working away on her deckhouses, rails, hatches, and companionways. They in turn were followed by cabinetmakers who paneled her cabins and staterooms with rosewood, mahogany, and wainscoted oak.
The constant din of workmen and carpenters filed the air from dawn to dusk as the work approached completion. Around her black painted hull was a gold stripe that ran from bow to stern. At the catheads were two round eyes. At the stern of the ship, gilded branches were embellished on the counter along with her name, CHALLENGE; and below that, NEW YORK. Below her bowsprit, a specialist juxtaposed her figurehead; that of a gilded eagle with wings widespread.
No expense was spared with the completing of the final touches, and all the basic work was approaching completion, when Robert Waterman began the final supervision of her rigging. He was the acknowledged master having never lost a spar throughout his career at sea. Waterman had the uncanny ability for shifting around and finding the right balance of his ship. By adjusting the rake of her masts, adding spars and sails right up to the point of equilibrium without making the ship top-heavy, while extending the sails upward or laterally to catch every puff of wind and keep the ship moving forward at all times.
No one surpassed Robert Waterman at this, although there must have been some animated discussions between William Webb and the Griswold brothers about the matter because no shipbuilder liked having a captain tell him how to rig his ships. George Griswold had promised Waterman that he would have a free hand as to the final say with the rigging, and he proceeded along with his own variations that would carry more sail than any other ship in the world. All three masts had a slight rake of slightly more that one-inch to the foot in length. Her mainmast shot up 230 feet and was three feet in diameter at the base. The foremast was 219 feet and the mizzenmast 190 feet. The main yard of the ship was 90 feet long and two feet wide.
Waterman insisted that only the finest four-strand Russian hemp be used for the rigging to support the ship's masts and spars. The running rigging to hoist the sails and move the yards was to be of handspun Manila hemp.
Waterman added his own variations everywhere about the Challenge. Instead of attaching the foremast forestays to the bowsprit, he anchored them to the hull. That would keep the foremast from crashing down in heavy seas such as the ship would encounter off Cape Horn. The bowsprit on the Challenge was much sturdier than those of other ships and would fly a half dozen jibs along with other sails. The mainmast stays were secured to special bitts close to the foremast on the main deck, rather than to the anchor windlass on the foredeck. The security provided was greater in doing it this way and cleared the working area on the forward deck. Most of the lines of the Challenge's rigging led to her main deck, and much easier for the sailors to work. As opposed to the rigging on other ships which led to the fore deck, where the heavy seas encountered off Cape Horn were most dangerous to sailors forced to work the rigging there.
With all the press attention that the press paid to each new launching and the sizing up of each new contender loading up cargo at the same time for the Cape Horn sweepstakes, Robert Waterman was now becoming aware of Donald McKay's Flying Cloud as the ship he had to beat. He knew of the budding rivalry building up between William Webb and Donald McKay, and undoubtedly Waterman wandered by Pier 19 at the foot of Maiden Lane, where the large McKay clipper was taking on cargo to get a look at the Flying Cloud for himself.
Robert Waterman would be making the voyage aboard the Challenge without the company of his wife, Cordelia. She had only accompanied him only once aboard the Sea Witch over the second round voyage to China. The reason for this was that she did not like witnessing the way that her husband handled confrontations with his crew. It was another side of him that she never wished to see again. It had an unsettling effect on their relationship and although she still loved him, she decided never to go on a voyage with him again as long as he was the captain of the ship.
She certainly did not approve of this latest voyage, regardless of how much money it might bring in, for it would mean that she would not see him again for a long time. But once he had made up his mind, there would be no stopping him. She did, however, make him promise that this would be his last voyage and he vowed to her that it, indeed, would be the last and that he would send for her upon arrival in California. In the meantime, Robert Waterman felt obliged to play his role to the hilt again as a strutting dude of sail just as he had in the old days and basked in all the attention.
Word of the incredible 96-day, 15-hour run to the Golden Gate by the Surprise eclipsing the 97-day run of the Sea Witch had reached New York around that time, which stirred the level of excitement up along the South Street waterfront to an all time high.
On May 19th, Captain Creesy entertained aboard the Flying Cloud. The following press account appeared the next day:
GRINNELL & MINTURN'S FLYING CLOUD.--Hundreds of people have visited this beautiful and unique clipper built vessel, which will sail this day week, we believe, for California and China. She is nearly full, vast as is her capacity of tonnage.
We dined on board yesterday with as fine a 'band of brothers' As any man could desire for companions in a Flying Cloud. Indeed, so familiar were the voices of many that we could not realize that we had mounted to the nebular regions. Yet all admitted that we actually were inside a Flying Cloud. whose destination was California, and of which Capt. Creesy, over whose keen eye and intelligent face there was assuredly no mist, had commanded; and we can only say that more table luxury, more tasteful and costly furniture, more ample ventilation and comfort of every time, we never knew even in an earth-built packet ship or steamer.
The Flying Cloud is just the kind of vehicle, or whatever else it may be called, that a sensible man would choose for a ninety day voyage.
Next: Challenge
The Era of the Clipper Ships
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