The Challenge

Soon, the Challenge ran head on into a storm much like the one that had battered the Flying Cloud around. Ominous black clouds and lightning loomed on the southern horizon that promised that a larger storm was headed their way. The calm period that proceeded this storm's arrival was put to good use as crewmen scurried up the rigging to furl in the canvas and tie the sails down with gaskets before the storm's arrival. The southwest trade winds were becoming more erratic and intense as the Challenge entered the "Fearful Fifties" and the clipper fortunately experienced fair winds long enough to sail through the Strait of Le Maire past Staten Island. Thousands of seabirds screamed at their passing presence and off the starboard bow loomed the rocky tip of Tierra del Fuego, the "Land of Fire."

Waterman was optimistic that he would have a swift passage around the Horn and charted the Challenge on a southwest slant for a time. Then took a tack to the northwest, followed by another tack to the southwest over another leg in his effort to gain some westing and was making good progress, although his calculations as to his true position was optimistic and off a little; not as far west as he thought.

As he approached Diego Ramirez Island, a fierce gale suddenly blew down on them that brought with it a head-on blizzard of snow and huge rolling waves, some of them sixty feet high. In the Southern Hemisphere it was the middle of winter. Ship owners back in New York gave this fact little thought in their mad rush to get their precious goods around the Horn to San Francisco and expected much from their captains to make the passage regardless of the weather. This storm showed no sign of slacking off. Instead, it got worse as the screaming westerly gales blew head-on.

Douglass limped around deck screaming for all hands and Coghill soon forced a half a dozen men up the mizzenmast's slippery rigging, pushing and kicking them on. He drove his men out along the foreropes of the rolling ship to take in topsails and secure them to the spars with gaskets. The waves were so high that they brushed the yardarm tips as they rolled on past. Those up in the rigging froze in terror as the crest of each wave, known as "Cape Horn snorters," crackled and broke. Sending forth to eastward a white frothy mane as the stays and rigging screamed out so loud that the men up in the mizzentop yards could not hear Douglass on the deck below as he was screaming at them to get a move on, and this soon led to disaster.

Douglass kept his watch lined up on deck and they fought to keep their balance on the pitching clipper as they started to loose the mizzentopsail braces to furl in sail. Too much line was loosed and a powerful gust of wind quickly filled the canvas with a boom sounding like a cannon shot. The sail recoiled into the yardarm knocking one of the men in the mizzentop yards off his perch and he went tumbling, screaming into the stormy sea. No attempt could be made to rescue him, as the ice cold water would have surely killed him instantly.

Coghill screamed for Douglass to cant the yardarm in the desperate hope of spilling the wind from the sail, but the flapping canvas was out of control. Men on the yard desperately fisted in some of the canvas with one hand and tried to grab for more with the other. The flapping sail got away from them again and there was another boom as the sail whipped back against the yardarm and two more men were knocked off their perches with one falling into the sea and the other onto the deck. Both men died.

In the huge seas, waist-high waves rolled over the rails and cascaded over the deck with each roll of the ship. Douglass and his men were caught by the frothing white water and it swept them all across the deck banging them into the bulwarks. Douglass lashed his men back to the pinrail and ordered them to try and take control of the topsail brace. Finally, both watches managed to furl the mizzentopsails, maintopsails, and foretopsails to the yardarms, which eased the angle of the heel and the peril was somewhat diminished. With this feat accomplished, Coghill's battered, bleeding survivors climbed down the ratlines and staggered off to their bunks. Douglas and his watch remained on deck making sure that the braces remained secure. The seaman who had fallen to the deck and died was taken below. There was a brief ceremony the following day and his body, wrapped in a tarpaulin and weighted down, was swung over the side into the sea.

The screaming westerly winds came on that day in hurricane like gusts of up to 80 or 90 knots. Sheets of sleet accompanied the gusts as the sea rose up to mountainous heights and rolled along so high that even such a large, sharp clipper like the Challenge could not cut through the waves as each wave broke and came crashing down upon her. Sending tons of sea water flooding over her decks sweeping the men off their feet as they scrambled to grab hold of anything that they could get their hands on to keep from being washed over the side.

At the top of each wave, the ship would pause for a moment. Everyone onboard would experience a moment of terror as the Challenge pitched forward and began her roller coaster ride down the backside of the wave toward the trough. Which would bring the clipper fetching up to a sudden shuddering stop, her stays and timbers straining to the max, as the next giant wave came boring down on the Challenge just as she started to climb again.

In the wheelhouse, two quartermasters wrestled with the wheel to keep the Challenge heading into each wave. This became particularly perilous for when at the top of the crest of each wave the clipper would pitch forward and her long rudder would momentarily lift out of the sea. The clipper would roll off to leeward as she began her descent down the wave sliding sideways as her lower yardarms dipped into the sea almost capsizing the ship until the keel and rudder took hold to bring the ship head-on again to meet the next wave.

Only one or two storm jibs flew off her bow, along with a fore-and-aft staysails and reefed topsails, just enough sail to control the ship and keep her on course and to catch the winds in the valleys between the waves.

The screaming westerlies picked up with intensity in gusts close to a hundred knots as the Challenge's windward shrouds went taught with tension and her leeward shrouds sagged. Soon, the sails were ripping along the seams and tore to ribbons in seconds. Bolt ropes yanked loose from their clews with a crackling sound like gunfire, as men scrambled up the rigging to attend to the flapping canvas, to reef it in or replace it with heavier canvas, before it ripped to shreds in the wind. The shrouds and footropes were covered with ice and slippery. The new heavier canvas the men hauled aloft was frozen stiff, making handling most difficult for men whose hands were bloodied and frozen blue, as the surging winds threatened to blow them off the yardarms. The constant pounding of the heavy seas threatened to drive the Challenge under.

The endless wail of the howling wind deafened the crew, who could barely hear one another, as the wind screamed on, day after day, which unnerved everyone aboard the constantly pitching ship. The foul-weather gear, that only a few of the more experienced sailors brought along on the voyage, did little to ward off the paralyzing cold and left the men at the end of their watch in a state of exhaustion as they huddled together in a corner of the forecastle. Many of them soon came down with pneumonia and nearly all were frostbitten. Many were also injured from being battered about aloft with broken arms and legs, ribs, or worse. The sick bay of the ship was filled up with 17 men with many more crewmen feigning illness and injury, by then more than willing to shirk their duties to keep out of the treacherous rigging.

A series of storms came on, one after the other, for the next three weeks as the crew shuddered in terror. The forecastle air stunk of vomit, sweat, and urine, but staying there was preferable to going up into the rigging again to face certain death.

Over the course of one storm, Douglass came up on deck and "found it nearly deserted." Waterman stayed on deck the whole time catching occasional naps on a bench near the companionway in the charthouse. All the while, he kept fighting for every bit of westing, but each new storm that came his way drove him back. Desperate to find the more favorable winds that were mentioned in Maury's Wind and Current Charts, he took the Challenge south to 60° south close to Antarctica, but could not find favorable easterly winds there either.

Waterman was frustrated and exhausted beyond belief and he and Douglass were absolutely outraged at the conduct shown by the malingering crew. So the two men now felt that they had no recourse than to begin a reign of terror. Soon, they went after George Lessing, "The Dancing Master," who had somehow avoided punishment for so long, and as the next storm was building up, Douglass ordered Lessing up the rigging. Pleading dysentery, Lessing refused and Douglass screamed at him "Go aft!" The captain will cure you," and shoved Lessing toward the ratline.

Waterman joined in the bullying, "I think we'll baptize him," as he grabbed Lessing and tossed him over into the lee scuppers where the frigid waters sloshed around. The sadistic Douglass jumped the fallen man and held his head under water as Lessing thrashed about. Until Douglas yanked him up and marched him over to the weather rail and tied him to the rail and left him there in the freezing wind for close to an hour before cutting him free. The shivering sickly man then went below to his bunk. A few days later he had all the signs of acute dysentery, and twelve days later he was dead.

Waterman certainly must have realized by then that Douglass was out of control with his frequent berserk outbursts of sadism that could flash at any time he went after a malingerer. But Waterman let it go on and Douglass soon went after another malingerer who complained of chilblained legs and gave him a similar baptism in the freezing slush. Second Mate Coghill was also becoming increasingly more violent. Waterman did nothing to reign him in either. Leaving both his mates to whatever desperate measures they deemed necessary to get the Challenge around the Horn. Leniency was the last thing that ran through Waterman's mind.

Pawpaw, the illiterate Italian immigrant that had been picked up by the South Street crimps and unceremoniously dumped aboard the ship at the beginning of the journey, just stood still and shook his head whenever Douglass barked out orders at him. He simply did not understand English. During a change of tack, Pawpaw was at the braces heaving on the line with the rest of the crew when the command was made to let go. Pawpaw didn't understand the command and continued pulling on the line and the split timing necessary to bring the ship around into the eye of the wind was almost lost. Waterman became enraged and went over to Pawpaw and whacked him on the back with a belaying pin to make him let go of the line.

The next time Pawpaw was called on deck during a squall, he refused to leave his bunk. Douglass stormed into the forecastle, grabbed him and dragged him up on deck and ordered him up in the rigging. Pawpaw just muttered something in Italian and pointed to his feet gesturing that they were frozen with frostbite.

Douglass punched him in the ribs doubling him over and the Italian proved to be well enough to retreat to the forecastle as Douglass went after him and beat him up severely about the head and chest before dumping him there on the forecastle floor in a heap. Charles Weldon, one of the ship's boys who helped to lift the injured man to his bunk, witnessed all this brutality. Within an hour Pawpaw, too, was dead.

For the next eighteen days, the brutality continued as Waterman continued tacking north and south trying to progress to the west, but the westerlies continued to push him back. The sky was filled with dark foreboding clouds so Waterman could not fix his position and he had no way of knowing where he was.

Suddenly, the winds changed and veered around and blew from the east, just like Maury stated that they occasionally would, and the Challenge at last raced for the Pacific pursued by the rolling waves that now chased her to the west.

Each wave that passed under the Challenge brought her counter up and with it a foaming white crest that broke over both rails of the fleeting Challenge as the helmsman struggled with the wheel to keep her on her westing course. Soon, the sun came out and Waterman at noon took a sextant reading and realized that the Challenge was almost around the Horn. When the Challenge reached 75°-west longitude, Waterman took her on a northwest slant up the Pacific.

Now, the clean-up effort began and soon the forecastle was pumped out and wet clothes hung out to dry on the forward deck. White fleecy clouds loomed across the sky now in the daylight hours and the stars sparkled in the night. Storm wreckage was littered about the deck and the battered crew was slow to come back from their injuries and the malingering went on.

Douglas was still in pain from his leg wound and Waterman remained in a funk as the realization that he was not going to get his $10,000 bonus ate away at him. The Challenge was 66 days out of New York and they had not yet reached the equator in the Pacific. While his chances of setting a record passage had slipped away from him, Waterman was still determined to set a good one. His fierce pride dictated that and he was soon again taking out his frustrations on his crew, even though two more men had died of dysentery in the sick bay.

After the storm wreckage was cleared away, Waterman ordered the crew to begin holystoning the decks. Smiti, the Finnish crewman who understood little English, was slow to respond to this new labor and spent much time watching the others work. Like Pawpaw, Smiti had also been swept up by the South Street crimps and dumped aboard the ship back in New York and really had no business being aboard the Challenge.

Waterman took notice of Smiti on his knees doing nothing and went over and beat him on the head with a belaying pin. Smiti pointed to his scurvy-swollen legs and muttered something in Finnish and Waterman whacked him again and again until Smiti got around to holystoning the deck.

Waterman grew increasingly frustrated by the malingering lethargy shown by his crew and his anger grew. Then suddenly, Fred Birkenshaw was betrayed by someone who knew where he was. Douglass had waited for the first opportunity when all hands were called on deck to prepare for a squall, before sending the ship's boy, Charles Weldon, into the lower forecastle for inspection. It was a dark space in the ship's bow where spare cordage was stored. After squirming through the cramped space, Weldon touched the hidden man, screamed, and got out of there as fast as he could and ran to report his findings on deck.

Discovered, Birkenshaw crawled out from his hiding place where he had survived on food and water brought to him by friends. Birkenshaw emerged on deck blinking and rubbing his eyes in the sunlight and told Douglass that he would make a full confession, begging the first mate not to hurt him. After grabbing him, Douglass pushed him aft shouting triumphantly, "I've got the son-of-the-bitch!"

"Put him in irons," was Waterman's reply. But before he was led away, Douglass told the captain that Birkenshaw had a confession to make and that he had better hear it first. Birkenshaw had raised Waterman's ire because he was one of the few veteran seamen aboard his ship and had been 16 years in the Royal Navy and four years in the merchant marine. They certainly could have used him for their rounding of Cape Horn. Birkenshaw was now before him and Waterman's voice rose as he began to speak.

Waterman asked, "Have I ever ill-used you in any way?," to which Birkenshaw answered no. Waterman questioned him about the mutiny and Birkenshaw denied taking part in any conspiracy, but all the others had implicated him as the ringleader already. Birkenshaw said it was not true and Waterman erupted in anger screaming "Down on your knees, you son-of-a-bitch!" And swung his heaver as Birkenshaw tried to ward off the blow with his arm with the blow breaking his arm instead of his head. All the while, screaming out that he was innocent.

Soon, one of the ship's boys was ordered to set up in the rigging a block and tackle as Waterman quickly made a hangman's noose from the line. He slipped it over Birkenshaw's head and pulled on the line at the other end till Birkenshaw was up on his toes and decided to confess.

At Waterman's request, Cornelius Sterling, one of the ship's passengers, recorded Birkenshaw's confession of conspiracy which implicated just about the entire crew, including the second mate Coghill, who Birkenshaw said had promised to supply the handcuffs that were to be used on Waterman and Douglass. Instead, Birkenshaw was placed in handcuffs and marched off to sick bay and left there with his arm untreated.

Coghill was soon confronted and indignantly denied any part of the conspiracy or uprising, claiming that he had been asleep in his bunk when Douglass was attacked. Waterman gave him the benefit of the doubt, but over the rest of the voyage he never let Coghill forget that he was keeping an eye on him.

For a time, the Challenge caught the southern trade winds in the Pacific, which sped the clipper right along, but as she crossed the line at the equator, she ran into the doldrums just as she had in the Atlantic. With the wind no longer in her sails, the big clipper lay dead in the water; bobbing in the long swells of the glassy sea. Until the northeast trade winds picked up and began to fill her sails again, and she at last began to show the speed that she was designed for.

Two weeks later she was off the California coast, where she found another patch of airless sea and drifted around for four days, dead in the water again, as Waterman nearly went berserk. The Challenge's last day's run was but 35 miles and the ship did not reach the Farallons until October 29, 1851, and sailed through the Golden Gate into San Francisco harbor flying her distress flag from her mast upon completion of her 108-day passage from New York.

The Flying Cloud had already departed for Hong Kong nine days earlier, bound for a cargo of tea to fill her hold with on her voyage home. The Flying Cloud had won the race around the Horn with a record-breaking passage of 89 days, 21 hours and beaten the Challenge by 19 days.

Next: The Challenge arrives through the Golden Gate

The Era of the Clipper Ships
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