Elaborate receptions were held aboard the Flying Cloud and the Challenge with special guests and the press invited aboard to inspect both ships. Robert Waterman was in his element entertaining the Griswold brothers' and William Webb's invited guests aboard the Challenge and basked in all the limelight while playing his role to the hilt. All the while, shipping merchants continued rushing their goods aboard both ships.
Mining equipment and supplies came aboard the Flying Cloud, as well as all sorts of goods for the growing number of businesses and households in San Francisco. A wide assortment of gourmet foodstuffs to suit the tastes of the most discriminating and wealthy San Franciscans arrived right before the sailing date; cheese, butter, sugar-cured hams, brandied peaches, and large stores of brandy and whiskey. Bales of cotton duck were added last to fill in the odd spaces in the hold.
When Captain Creesy was not busy supervising the loading of cargo, he interviewed potential sailors--mostly landlubbers--in search of quick passage to the gold diggings. Real sailors were scarce. Even the Liverpool Packet Rats were in short supply. Creesy had combed the taverns along the South Street waterfront for experienced sailors with little success.
Eventually, with some help from Grinnell, Minturn & Company recruiters, he was able to bring together a semblance of a crew of 59 able-bodied seamen, ordinary seamen, and boys. Among them, of course, were a number of derelicts provided by the crimps, but certainly a far better crew selection than most clippers sailed with during those times from New York.
The ownership of the Flying Cloud was divided up into 32nd shares. Moses H. Grinnell and Robert Minturn each held 9/32 shares. Henry Grinnell, John E. Williams, and Francis S. Hathaway each held 4/32 shares. Captain Creesy held 2/32 shares. Francis S. Hathaway was a good friend of the captain and his influence had much to do with Creesy getting the command of the Flying Cloud.
Grinnell, Minturn & Co. sent the following letter on May 28th, via Gregory's Express to Captain F.W. Macondray in San Francisco to be delivered to their agent S. Griffitts Morgan. The letter follows:
Dear Sir:
We have the pleasure to advise you that we shall dispatch from here the fine clipper ship Flying Cloud for your port with a cargo of our freight. She will sail on the 31st Inst. under command of Captain Creesy formerly of the Onieda, and he will call upon you on arrival and arrange for the management of the ship's business, which we beg to recommend to your best attention and shall be much obliged by your affording Capt. Creesy every assistance and giving the ship all practicable dispatch. As regards the disposal of her freight money we will write you hereafter. We hope by the mail now expected from California to hear of the arrival with you of the Sea Serpent of which ship we have had no tiding since she put into Valparaiso.
We are, very truly yours
Grinnell Minturn & Co.
Eleanor Creesy came aboard the Flying Cloud and unpacked her chests in the captain's cabin. Among their belongings were Matthew Fontaine Maury's Wind and Current Charts and Sailing Directions. Eleanor Creesy, known to her husband and friends as Ellen, would serve as navigator and would guide the Flying Cloud over her 14,000-mile journey around Cape Horn to the Golden Gate.
Eleanor Creesy, [Hereafter known as Ellen or Eleanor Creesy in the story] was from an old seafaring family of Marblehead and had no fear of the sea. She excelled as a competent navigator as she had learned many navigational secrets as a young girl from her father. She was most enthusiastic about navigation, unusual for a woman at that time, and was an avid admirer of Maury and his Wind and Current Charts and Sailing Directions, and was known to have corresponded with Maury in the past.
Ellen had sailed aboard every ship that her husband commanded ever since 1841, after they were married in Marblehead. She had sailed to China many times and knew the oceans of the world very well. But Ellen and Perkins had never sailed around Cape Horn before.
The twelve passengers who booked passage aboard the Flying Cloud, all from Massachusetts and New York, came aboard on Saturday, May 31st, placed their luggage in their staterooms and soon departed the ship back to the hotel to await the sailing. None of the passengers were gold seekers, but were traveling to the west to seek out opportunities in the business community, and to join other family members who had gone before.
Three of the passengers who came aboard to stow their belongings were Whitney Lyon and his two sisters, Ellen and Sarah, three members of a family from Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts; heading west. Their father, Lemuel Lyon, had recently returned from the Sandwich Islands, where he had successfully engaged in the California-Sandwich Islands trade. His had returned to Massachusetts to gather up his large family of six children, and begin to make the move West. Lemuel Lyon's wife, Ann Frances Whitney, had died nine years before.
It was an eleven-year stretch between the ages of his children. Whitney was the eldest at twenty-four. Sarah was next at twenty-two and Ellen had just turned twenty and planned to marry her future husband upon arrival at San Francisco. Sarah planned to sail on to the Sandwich Islands after the wedding to join her brother and father.
The three youngest siblings, Maria, Levina, and Elisha; nineteen, fifteen, and fourteen respectively, were to move to Lexington to be near extended family and attend as "boarding scholars" the Academy, until their father sent for them in a year or two.
Lemuel would press on and take a steamer to Aspinwall and the Isthmus route across New Grenada to Panama City ahead of his children departing on the Flying Cloud, and meet them upon their arrival at San Francisco.
Other passengers came aboard the Flying Cloud to stow their possessions. Among them, Mrs. Sarah Bowman and her ten year old son, Edward, by her first marriage. The two were en route to San Francisco to join Sarah's second husband, Charles Carson Bowman, ten years her senior, who had gone ahead west to seek business opportunities in California spurred on by the Gold Rush.
Charles Carson Bowman had been a well established Dorchester merchant who dealt in West India goods and groceries. They had lead a comfortable life in Massachusetts for a time before Charles decided to seek his fortune in San Francisco. Sarah and Edward would join him there. The two departed and returned to the Astor Hotel to await the sailing.
The winds blew in briskly from the Northwest that Sunday morning of June 1, 1851, and a large crowd of water-gazers gathered along the waterfront, as they did every few days, to watch another giant clipper depart on the Cape Horn run to the Golden Gate. This time around, it was the Flying Cloud's turn, as the last of her cargo was loaded aboard and soon her hatches were closed and she made ready to sail.
Along the promenade in Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan, ladies strolled around with parasols to shield away the midday sun, accompanied by gentlemen in top hats. Others less well dressed also wandered along the promenade railing, all eager to see the goings on in the harbor, hopeful of catching a glimpse of the latest clipper being towed down the river to Battery Point that would soon dwarf all the other ships in the harbor.
All kinds of sailing vessels moved through the harbor; schooners, sloops, and brigs, in all directions. Up and down the North River, steamers made their way, regardless of the tides. Pilot boats rushed about out toward the Narrows. Steam tugs chugged away up the East River, some with large merchantmen in tow. Ferryboats plied back and forth to Staten Island. Young boys dived for pennies from the seawall. Beggars worked the crowds along with prostitutes.
A brisk wind kicked up the whitecaps in the harbor and the crowds gathered along the East River and Battery grew in size in eager anticipation of the Flying Cloud's departure, which the newspaper had been playing up all week. The stevedores had already brought the huge ice blocks aboard and stowed them 'tween decks on sawdust in the icehouse, along with all the perishable provisions.
Sundays and Mondays were deemed as the most auspicious sailing days by superstitious sailors, a fact not lost on the Creesys that Sunday morning.
While Captain Creesy tended to last minute preparations, Ellen arranged their belongings in their cabin and unpacked the sextant and chronometers and put them in a secure place.
Soon, a harbor pilot came aboard and at two p.m. Captain Creesy gave the order to his first mate to cast off the lines. A tug took the Flying Cloud's bow hawser and proceeded to chug down the river, with the Flying Cloud in tow, to the cheers of hundreds gathered along the waterfront, and proceeded down to Battery Point, where the Flying Cloud anchored for the night.
On Monday morning, June 2, 1851, at eleven o'clock, the twelve passengers arrived at Pier 19 at the foot of Maiden Lane and boarded the steam launch Achilles, that soon proceeded down the East River to Battery Point, where the Flying Cloud lay anchored awaiting her passengers and crew. Captain Creesy gave a sharp eye to his pocket watch, the tide, and the wind, as the passengers came aboard, and soon they had the last of their carry-on luggage stowed away securely in their staterooms.
With the pilot aboard, Creesy determined that the ebb tides and the winds were right and gave the order to depart at two o'clock in the afternoon. The crew hoisted anchor, sails were swiftly set, and the Flying Cloud caught the ebb tide and southwesterly breezes out to Sandy Hook, where the pilot was discharged at 7 p.m. and returned to the harbor in his pilot boat.
The Flying Cloud then caught the winds out into the North Atlantic, bound for Cape Horn.
The following article appeared in the June 4, 1851 edition of the New York Tribune:
We find it impossible to give any description of her as she passed down the bay Monday and went dancing into the broad Atlantic. There was a stiff, steady wind, and the beautiful vessel, almost hid by the cloud of canvas which she spread, seemed to glide through the waters as smoothly as the Reindeer and the New World cleave the waters of the Hudson.
Fair winds blew for the next three days and Creesy took advantage of them to personally train his crew. Recruiters from Grinnell & Minturn had been able to provide a few able-bodied seamen, known as "A.B.'s." There were a number of ordinary sailors and the rest were a mixed crew of landlubbers trying to get to the gold fields and derelicts provided by the crimps. Captain Creesy was a hard man to please and was not at all happy with his first mate, and right from the start thought that the man was a malingerer. Fortunately there were several first-rate mechanics aboard among the officers and crew.
The lessons began with the total familiarization of the 130 lines that converged along the pinrails and ran up to all three masts. A sailor had to be able to find the correct one on a pitching deck in the dark and the wrong choice of line could lead to disaster. Novice sailors also had to learn to climb up the rigging to work in the yards. Teamwork was paramount to the successful working of a ship. The A.B.'s led the way aloft and were gingerly followed by the others, each new man instructed not to look down as they were instructed in the proper way to move up the ratlines through the rigging and out on the yardarms to handle the sails. From up high, the Flying Cloud's hull looked slim and the first time sailor would often freeze in terror with his first look down. They were then urged on by the A.B.'s and taught the tasks expected of them, all the while securing their footing and steadying themselves with each roll of the ship.
From the deck, Captain Creesy shouted out the commands and the men on the yards learned to untie the gaskets and let the cotton duck sails fall free. The cringles at the bottom end of each sail were hauled in. Soon, the breeze filled the sails as the Flying Cloud speed on.
The first climb aloft was always a terrifying experience. Each man slowly climbed down the rigging shaking with fear and wishing that he would never be called upon to do it again. But slowly the reality of the tasks expected of him began to set in with the realization that he would be called to go aloft as often as necessary; for the safety of his ship for the remainder of the voyage, and that he had better get used to it, or else face the wrath of his captain.
All manner of sailing maneuvers and procedures were gone over time and time again, with particular attention paid to the complicated procedure of tacking, which for a square-rigged ship required much skill and teamwork and split-second timing. The training took place, fortunately, in moderate winds over the next few days.
The ship would catch the most favorable slant of the winds to pick up momentum, before the Captain would call out "Hard a-lee!" and the helmsman would spin the wheel away from the wind to leeward and swing around into the wind. Quickly, the lines to her stay sails, jibs, and fore-and-aft sails, that caught the winds on the windward side, were cast loose, along with her fore top sail, as they came head-on to the wind and trimmed to the wind on the leeward side. If the proper momentum was achieved, the ship would swing around as the fore-and-aft jibs and staysails were hastily sheeted in. This helped to move her bow about where she would begin her new tack; ready to catch the winds from the new direction and on the command of "Mainsail haul!", all aboard would haul up on the lee braces yanking up the Flying Cloud's big mainsail, which soon caught the winds on her new tack.
Everything had to be done with split-second precision and timing, or else the ship would be driven back to her original tack and the entire procedure would have to be repeated over again. A failed procedure in heavy seas could lead to disaster. Captain Creesy tutored them over and over until he was satisfied with their progress. It was important that they learn how to work together as a crew before encountering the treacherous seas they would soon encounter when they approached Cape Horn. Where they would get the chance to prove their worth.
The Flying Cloud was but three days out flying a full array of canvas on a bright sunny gusty afternoon on her dash west-south-west out into the North Atlantic to the 40th parallel. A northwesterly gale was picking up and began to blow down on the lofty clipper as she knifed her way through stormy seas. The hard blow of the winds kept the passengers below deck in their staterooms for most of the day. Some of them chose to amuse themselves in the great cabin to pass the time until the dinner hour and had scarcely sat down to their meal when disaster struck.
Suddenly, there came a crackling sound of snapping stays aloft. The ship's main topgallant mast came crashing, down taking with it the mizzen topgallant pole; toppling over the side of the upper yards in a tangled dangling clump of splintered masts, spars, sails, and stays, one hundred feet up; suspended from the rigging and banging into the main mast with every roll of the ship.
The commotion of crashing rigging and shouting men up on deck echoed down and the shocked passengers all looked to their Captain. Creesy gave them all a worried look and told them to stay below while he swiftly made his way up the companionway stairs to the deck to find out what sort of disaster had befallen his ship and was soon gazing aloft to assess the damage.
It was swiftly determined that the hard blow had found a failure in the upper rigging, but the lower masts, yards, sails, and rigging were still untouched. They would have to work fast to get the tangled masts and yards lowered down to the deck before the swinging wreckage damaged the lower sails. Creesy hollered off his orders to the crew.
First, to the helmsman to steer the Flying Cloud downwind, and then to all his sailors and sent them scurrying up the ratlines to untangle the mess. With great effort, the determined crew lowered the broken masts and yards down to the deck. Creesy continued yelling up to the men not to be too free with their knives and to cut the rigging only when necessary. The 74-foot topsail yard was the last thing to be lowered down from 70 feet aloft. It weighed over two tons, and with great care the crew gingerly lowered it carefully down to the deck.
Creesy surveyed the splintered spars and determined that most of them could go up again, although the topsail yard now became a main topgallant pole mast and was soon hoisted to its new position at the mount while workman drove home the fid. Now, the mast was ready for the standing rigging with the running rigging soon to follow.
Dismastings at sea were nothing new to Captain Creesy and soon he had an ongoing salvage operation going on, as the Flying Cloud proceeded on her course under reduced sail while his crew went about repairing the rigging.
Within 48 hours, the main and mizzen topgallant masts were back in place and all sails set and the Flying Cloud proceed to sail on down the Atlantic picking up her speed again under new wings. Her passengers had witnessed a fine show of seamanship and congratulated the crew for a job well done. The crew had come together at a time of peril and took pride it setting things right with the ship.
Creesy was proud of his crew and let them know it. A measure of grog was ordered by the captain to be measured out that Saturday night to the crew, along with a rare treat of their Sunday duff. Creesy was most thankful that this dismasting had not forced him to take the Flying Cloud under jury-rig to Rio de Janeiro for needed repairs, like so many other less fortunate clippers were forced to do, thus blowing their chances for a record run around the Horn.
For the next three days the southerly winds blew the Flying Cloud along out to the 40th parallel, where on June 11th, Ellen charted a new course due south in the run for the equator.
As the Flying Cloud entered into the horse latitudes, Creesy discovered that the toppling main gallant mast had split the lower mast where they were joined at the hounds and weakened the entire structure. Creesy had the splintered section strapped down as best he could and kept the Flying Cloud on course and she soon passed on through a series of squalls and on into the doldrums. Creesy complained in his log: "Calm. Calm. Calm." He often whistled for the wind.
It was now Eleanor Creesy's turn to guide the Flying Cloud on through the doldrums. She did so in less than four days after consulting Maury's Wind and Current Charts.
The calm belts of the sea, like mountains on the land, stand mightily in the way of the voyager, but, like the mountains on the land, they have their passes and their gaps.
Methodically, Ellen charted the Flying Cloud's progress across a part of the ocean she and her husband had never sailed before, as they ran for the equator at a southeast slant out to the 30th parallel right above the equator taking Maury's advise to heart.
The Flying Cloud picked up the southeast trade winds by June 24th, and two days later the ship was tacking on a temporary slant to the northeast in an effort to round Cape de São Roque, the Brazilian coast that jutted out into the South Atlantic. Ellen plotted each tack, carefully paying close attention to Maury's recommendations, that proved to be right on the mark.
The Flying Cloud sailed close to the Brazilian coast to find the favorable winds and currents as Creesy noted in his log entry on July 3rd, "Land in sight all day," all the while keeping a sharp lookout for shoals and taking soundings all along the way.
Once past the treacherous sandbanks of the cape, the Flying Cloud caught the light easterly winds to the south, free at last to find her wings as Creesy piled on the canvas, all the while keeping a sharp eye to the weather as they sailed on down the South American coast.
On July 8th, the Flying Cloud ran into a fierce storm that swept down from the Andes and the accompanying thunderstorms, squalls, and gales lasted four days. Creesy faced the storm with shortened sail but soon her staysails shredded away to ribbons. Water was coming over the lee rail and her weakened mainmast creaked.
Alarmed, Creesy sent men aloft to take down the Cloud's main royal and topgallant spars, which greatly relieved the pressure on the main mast. All the while, he was keeping an eye on a brig off to the east in distress that had lost her top-hamper and had disappeared over the horizon. He was too busy with his own problems to offer any assistance.
Sporadic gales out of the southwest blew through the night of July 11th and on through the morning, as the Flying Cloud plunged on through towering seas, as sheets of water sloshed across the deck. Only a couple of reefed topsails flew aloft, just enough sail to keep the ship under control as the leerail drew perilously close to going under. By mid afternoon, the ship's carpenter discovered that the forecastle was flooding.
Upon investigation, it was deduced that a stopper for the entry for the anchor cable had been knocked loose over the course of the storm since it was below the surface on the leeward side as the Cloud tacked directly to the south. So Creesy fell off to tack eastward for a while and ran before the wind. The keel then leveled off as the hawsehole came above the surface of the water. Now it could be checked out. The carpenter found this to be the case and soon replaced the stopper, but the water kept coming in and steadily gained on the pumps.
The sight of all the water below began unnerving one of the sailors and he reported a shipmate that he suspected had drilled a hole in the hull. The determined carpenter sloshed his way through the flooded forecastle and found the leak under a bunk that had been on the leeward side over the course of the previous tack. Two holes had been bored close together through the thick planking to make an opening almost four inches across and the sea water had come pouring in as the ship was on her leeward tack to the south. Now on a tack to the eastward, the carpenter was able to patch up the hole and reported his findings to the captain.
Immediately, Creesy ordered the ship back on its southbound tack, and soon an investigation was underway to find the guilty party. It was determined that two men had used an auger and a marlinspike. One man bore the holes under his bunk with the auger and the second man had used the marlinspike and joined the two holes. One of his shipmates had seen the first man leave the forecastle with the auger in his hand and had turned him in.
The two men had been worried about the sprung mast and had hoped that the captain would put into Rio to attend to the problem. When they discovered that their captain had no intention of doing so, they had decided to drill their holes, thus giving their captain no choice other than to put into Rio. At which point both men planned to jump ship. Instead, they were placed in irons with Creesy releasing them only long enough the following day to assist in the cleaning up of the wreckage following the storm.
On July 13th, the Flying Cloud was south of Rio on a southern tack running straight for Cape Horn.
Next: Sarah H. Bowman
The Era of the Clipper Ships
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