The Coast of California - From an old Currier & Ives print

The Challenge had hardly anchored in the harbor off Clark's Point when the U.S. revenue cutter Lawrence came out to meet her. Eight of the mutinous crewmen were already in handcuffs lined up on deck, and First Mate Douglass herded them off the ship to the cutter; all charged with mutiny. Birkenshaw claimed that he had a broken arm, but Captain Ottinger of the Lawrence saw no signs of a fracture when he took a look at Birkenshaw's arm the next day.

The harbor pilot told Waterman to wait for two days, as wharf space was unavailable at the moment. The Challenge then anchored off Bird Island and was soon surrounded by runners and crimp boats; wherries, skiffs, and Whitehall boats, that always came out whenever a clipper from New York arrived in the harbor. Before long, every sailor who was not ill or crippled went over the side with his seabags into a crimp boat and all were off to the saloons, bordellos, and gambling halls that lined the waterfront. Waterman was powerless to prevent this and let them go.

One who didn't make it to the waterfront was a seaman in the sick bay known as J. W. who died that first day at anchor. His coffin was rowed ashore in a ship's boat the next day and buried somewhere in San Francisco.

Soon, the sailors from the Challenge were making their way through the saloons, telling their tales to all, adding to the tales with every tip of the glass. In twenty-four hours the stories had taken on a life of their own with the hotheads fanning the flames. San Francisco Newspapers quickly picked up on the growing story and in the rush to print took little time to check out the facts carefully and get them straight and that fanned the flames even higher.

The next day, Charles Griswold, the Griswold's agent in San Francisco, sent aboard a gang of longshoremen. They worked at wages up to five dollars an hour each and were slow to heave up the anchor. The Challenge was slowly towed to a berth at the Pacific Street Wharf, while the longshoremen went about stowing sails and clearing up the decks. They were not in a hurry and this all took about five hours to accomplish and meant money to the ship owners, who often grumbled, but really had no choice in the matter and chalked it all up as a nuisance expense.

The Challenge arrived at the Pacific Wharf, accompanied by boats that rowed alongside, filled with troublemakers who had come to jeer her captain. Waiting at the wharf with the stevedores, was a large menacing mob. They shouted out their threats as Waterman strutted down the gangway. He walked right through them and made his way up Pacific Street to California Street and the building that housed the Alsop & Company offices who were the San Francisco agents for N. L. & G. Griswold.

Charles Griswold greeted Waterman and congratulated him for his 108-day passage, excellent time for a winter passage around Cape Horn. The Challenge had beaten the Telegraph, which had left that same morning from New York, and would arrive two weeks later. After handing over the Challenge's manifest, Waterman met with local reporters and their stories started showing up in the newspapers over the next few days.

San Francisco, as of late, had been on the rebound coming back from a state of near anarchy through numerous stages of reform when the Challenge arrived.

For the longest time, the Hounds and Ducks had spread a reign of terror throughout San Francisco. The Hounds were mustered out members of the 1st New York Volunteers from Five Points and the Bowery who had sailed around the Horn. Upon their arrival in San Francisco, the Mexican War was already over, so the regiment disbanded. Few wanted to go back to New York and many of them had lit out for the gold fields. They soon found that mining for gold was too much work and were so troublesome that the miners swiftly ran them out of the camps.

Most returned to San Francisco and ganged up together in a big tent they called Tammany Hall at the corner of Kearney and Commercial Streets. They survived as thieves and extortionists and were quick to prey upon South Americans and Chinese and hounded them unmercifully, henceforth earning the nickname the "Hounds."

The Vigilance Committee rousting the Sydney Ducks

The "Ducks" were worse than the Hounds and were from the convict settlements of Australia. They all lived along the waterfront between Broadway and Pacific streets in an area they called Sydney Town. They were even more depraved than the Hounds and more adept at rabble-rousing. Suspicious fires occasionally broke out whenever the wind blew away from Sydney Town and it was suspected that the fires were set by the Ducks who would always be the first ones to show up to loot through the rubble. Any time there was a commotion about town people would say, "The Sydney Ducks are cackling again."

The Hounds and Ducks terrorized the corrupt political establishment who were more interested in looting the treasury and taking their cuts from the gambling halls, saloons, and bordellos, than enforcing the laws, as the police force continuously proved inept and ineffective. Dozens of murders had gone unsolved that spring and none brought to justice. Those few convicted of lesser crimes were imprisoned in the floating jail, an abandoned vessel in the harbor, and easily escaped over the side and swam away.

A state on anarchy had loomed over the city by the bay, and on June 10, 1851, as the Flying Cloud was getting ready to sail from New York, a Committee of Vigilance had their first secret meeting in a warehouse and citizens then signed a constitution. The preamble read:

Where it has been apparent to the citizens of San Francisco that there is no security for life and property, either under the regulations of society as it at present exists, or under the laws as now administered, therefore the citizens whose names are hereunto attached do unite themselves into an association for the maintenance of peace and good order of society and the preservation of the lives and property of the citizens of San Francisco.

Their headquarters was soon established on Battery Street and its own blue-and-white flag flew over the building. They lost little time when called to action to deal with rioters, robbers, arsonists, and murderers, although they never called themselves "vigilantes." Two strokes on a bell was the agreed upon signal to call them into action, that came from two firehouses centrally located a half-mile from each other. When the police were found lax in their duties, the Vigilance Committee would administer justice on their own. They had no qualms at all in hanging a Sydney Duck just a few hours after they had caught him stealing a safe. Hounds were also given summary justice and Hounds and Ducks alike were hung from the two stout beams at the headquarters.

By that fall, public officials were frustrated, but could do little to curb the determined zeal and efficiency that the Vigilance Committee used in establishing law and order. But many law-abiding citizens sung their praises for the city at last seemed to be coming back from the reign of terror state of lawlessness that had existed in the city for so long.

By the time of the Challenge's arrival, the Vigilance Committee had slowly begun to disband and relax its grip on public affairs. But as word of the terrible privations that the Challenge's crew had suffered on their perilous voyage around the Horn spread along the waterfront saloons, a new "Vigilance Committee" began to form. It was made up mostly of newly converted thugs, outlaws, derelicts, and unscrupulous outcasts of diminished courage and mental capacity that had recently been hunted from one end of the city to the other.

The ruffians called a "public meeting" out in the sand hills where it was decided that they would "execute" Captain Waterman and First Mate Douglas "on sight" and then burn the Challenge at her wharf.

The real Vigilance Committee soon heard of this plot and warned Waterman. They offered their protection from the unruly mob and quickly made themselves ready to scatter the mob if necessary.

Douglass remained on board the Challenge after Waterman departed and watched and waited to pick his moment to slip away while the stevedores were unloading cargo.

Angry men were still lurking about the Pacific Street wharf, and aboard the skiffs and Whitehalls nearby in the harbor. They waited as the stevedores hoisted crates and barrels out of the holds and over the sides to the waiting barrows on the wharf. And also over the other side onto barges to be sent up the Sacramento River to the gold fields; all under the direction of T. H. Allen whose business was unloading the New York Clippers when they arrived at the wharf.

Douglass decided that to just walk off the ship through the midst of the angry mob would be much too dangerous for him, and as the mob grew in size and anger, he feared that they were about to come aboard to grab him. So he decided that he had to find another avenue of escape off the ship and looked to pick his time.

The stevedores went about their work unloading this unusually large mixed cargo, a vast array of goods, as Douglas watched and waited. He and Allen had hatched a plan and Allen would help him escape off the ship.

After a while, the skiffs and Whitehalls took a break from their surveillance and converged at the far end of the wharf, while only Allen's boats were along the harbor side. It was then that Douglas picked his moment to make his move and signaled to Allen, who came along side as Douglas hoisted his seabag over his shoulder and climbed down the rope ladder into Allen's boat.

Allen began rowing for the commercial wharf when the two were spotted, and the cry went out and half a dozen skiffs and Whitehall boats soon blocked their way to the wharf. Allen swiftly changed direction and lit out for the ghost fleet anchored out in the bay a mile away off Rincon Point, with the skiffs and rowboats chasing after them.

Out in San Francisco Bay were close to 500 deserted vessels that had come around the Horn in the mad rush to get to the gold fields and had been abandoned and left to rot. They were all clustered together offshore and their masts were like a forest rising from the bay. Allen was a skilled oarsman and knew the bay and the ghost fleet well, along with the myriad of ways through the maze of ghostly hulls.

Allen pulled hard on his oars and reached the ghost fleet a mere two hundred yards ahead of his pursuers and entered the labyrinth canyons of rotting hulls. He made his way as best he could through the canyons between the canopy of masts and spars, sagging shrouds and stays, and the tangled webs of rigging and tattered canvas that swung from the masts. Green-stained copper plates had peeled away and buckled from the hulls, leaving the wood underneath exposed which now sprouted weeds. The smell of grease, tar, and decay wafted in the salt sea stagnant air between the dark canyon mazes of swaying vessels in the labyrinth, as Allen rowed on through, picking a zigzag pattern of escape in a determined effort to confuse and throw off his pursuers.

Allen knew his way around the maze and his pursuers didn't. Still, he worried that they might accidentally somehow take a lucky turn and get in front of him. He listened to the shouts and clamor of his pursuers that echoed down the canyons of the ghost fleet hulls. Soon, he picked his time to leave the floating jungle and pulled hard straight ahead with his last remaining strength for Rincon Point as his pursuers emerged from the maze and quickly picked up the chase.

Douglass anxiously stood in the bow and was ready to run as soon as Allen's boat scudded up on the sand, and was off and running through the bushes and swiftly disappeared before the others reached the beach. Allen nonchalantly waited at his boat with more than likely a pistol discreetly hidden under his coat just in case any of the pursuers had second thoughts about coming after him.

Instead, they landed on the beach and just raced off into the bushes, baying like a pack of hounds after their prey. They soon returned without their elusive quarry, but by that time Allen had wisely left the scene and rowed away.

By the time the unsuccessful hunters rowed back across the bay to the Pacific Street Wharf, most of the unruly mob had drifted off to the saloons, where the Challenge remained the major topic of conversation. A fact not lost on the city newspapers that certainly were not above using yellow journalism and sensationalized the story to help sell copies of their newspapers in the ongoing circulation wars.

The following story appeared in the November 1st edition of the California Courier and turned out to be the spark that fanned the flames.

The ship Challenge has arrived, and Capt. Waterman, her commander, has also-but where are nine of his crew? And where is he and his guilty mate? The accounts given of Captain Waterman towards his men, if true, make him one of the most inhumane monsters of this age.

If they are true, he should be burned alive-he should never leave this city a live man. Nine of his men are missing, and the sailors who are here declare that four were shaken from the mizzen-topsail yard into the sea, where they were drowned, and five of them died from the effects of wounds and ill treatment.

The scene at this time on board of the ship beggars all description. Five of them are mangled and bruised in the most shocking manner. One poor fellow died today, and five others, it is expected, will soon be in the embrace of death. One of the men now lying on his deathbed has been severely injured in his genitals, by a kick from this brute in human form. Had these poor men been put in a den with bears and panthers, they could not have been much more inhumanely and shockingly maimed. they are all now lying in the forecastle of the ship. The captain, the vile monster, has made his escape, and so has his brutal mate.

It is an infamous outrage to have such a bloody murderer to command a ship. He is noted for his cruelty everywhere, and in the streets of New York he dare not show himself, nor dare he hereafter show himself in this city. We hope that the respectable house to which he is consigned here will not only disavow his conduct, but if they have the power, remove him from command. If he is not removed, we hope this community will not permit such a monster t o sail out of this port as captain of any vessel. In all sincerity, we hope the monster may be caught, and dealt with in the severest manner. We did hear last night, that the mate had been taken, and now we trust that all humane men will turn out and pursue the captain until he is captured and punished.

Soon after the Courier editorial hit the streets, a motley gang of thugs dressed in their unwashed red flannel shirts, slouched hats, and cowboy boots, and armed with pistols and bowie-knives, made their way along the waterfront; all stinking of dance-hall gin and cigars. Their numbers grew as they moved along toward the Pacific Wharf, where the Challenge lay moored and demanded that Captain Waterman be handed over to them. But Waterman was long gone.

They arrived in time to see the sick members of the Challenge's crew being carried off the ship in stretchers, all the victims of scurvy, dysentery, and venereal disease and not the "shockingly maimed" victims mentioned in the Courier. Just the sight of the stretchers was enough to set off the mob and they surged on up to the Alsop Building on California Street screaming for revenge.

Waterman was there, talking with Charles Griswold and Captain John Land, the Rainbow's first captain, who was to take over command of the Challenge. Griswold quickly motioned for Waterman to leave and he headed up the stairs to the roof to escape before Griswold went to open the door.

The mob tried to rush on through the door, but Griswold held his ground and refused to let them enter, telling them that Waterman was not there. Griswold decided to play for time and told them that if they would select from the mob a group of six, he would let them in to search the premises. It was a clever stall for time as the mob went for it.

While they argued amongst themselves as to who the delegates would be, Waterman made good his escape by sticking a ladder out the top floor window and climbing to the roof taking the ladder with him. He then jumped over to the roof of the neighboring building, where he hid for a time on the top floor out of sight until the mob decided to leave.

By the time that the six-man delegation was let in the door to search the building, Waterman was nowhere to be found. In the spur of the moment, they became angry and grabbed Captain Land instead and dragged him out of the building into the street shouting to Griswold as they left that if Waterman was not produced they would find the nearest lamppost and hang Captain Land, instead.

All this commotion was turning into a full-blown riot and San Francisco's mayor, Charles Brenham, was quick to arrive on the scene, accompanied by members of the Committee of Vigilance. The mayor called for order from the Alsop Building steps, but the mob paid no attention to his pleas.

Soon, a rope appeared and one of the mob started to fashion a noose. Suddenly, two loud clangs rang out and members of the Committee of Vigilance began arriving on the run, all of them armed with guns. Mayor Brenham told the mob to leave.

No one left, so he pulled out his gold watch and raising the timber of his voice, he said, "I shall now give you just ten minutes to disperse, and if you fail to comply, I shall order every last one of you to be incarcerated in the city Bastille. In other words, I will put every damned one of you in jail."

The minutes slowly ticked on by as more Committee of Vigilance members rushed in to join their cohorts. Soon, there were six hundred of them, all armed as they circled the mob who soon began to slowly walk away, until after ten minutes only members of the Committee of Vigilance were left in the street. Captain land was shaken up by the ordeal, but unhurt. He hurried back to the offices of the Alsop building.

Some of the hotheads from the mob returned to the Pacific Street Wharf and continued to shoot off their mouths, some proposing that they storm the Challenge and burn and sink her. But the wind had by then gone out of their sails and before long they all wandered back to the saloons to get drunk again.

When darkness came, Waterman slipped out of San Francisco and left for his ranch.

James Douglass had escaped his pursuers and was discovered the following morning ten miles down the Monterey road, drunk and asleep in a cart, by Sheriff Jack Hayes and his deputies. They tied his hands behind his back, and after slipping a lariat around his shoulders, led Douglass back to San Francisco from their horses.

Douglass was unrepentant, muttering as the horses led him along, about his recent ordeal at sea, about his many confrontations with his unruly, malingering, mutinous crew, saying that he would whip them all over again.

As they came along a tree by the road, Douglass offered, "Well, gentlemen, if you want to hang me, here's a pretty tree. Do it like men." A small crowd soon gathered and followed along into San Francisco where Douglass was locked up for his own protection from the mob, as word spread along the waterfront of his capture.

By then, lots of accusations flew about the city, so many that the U.S. marshals went on to charge Waterman and Douglass with assault and murder. Douglass was locked up in jail mainly for his own protection from the mob.

Everyone who had sailed aboard the Challenge started suing everyone else. The Grand Jury handed down many indictments. Waterman insisted on a trial to clear his and Douglass' names and to quiet attacks upon his character. Waterman and Douglass' trial dragged on and the recriminations continued to fly among all the parties as they all testified against one another. A bewildering series of charges and counter charges dragged on for months, which held the citizens of San Francisco spellbound with the daily accounts in the competing newspapers that heaped editorial bombast upon one another in their circulation wars.

Upon the testimony of the crew, it came to light that a large number of those who had shipped aboard the Challenge as able seamen were deemed incompetent and mutinous. The food had been of the best quality as were the living accommodations. The punishment meted out by the officers to maintain proper discipline aboard the ship in the adverse circumstances that they faced over the course of the voyage was deemed no more than necessary to maintain the safety of the ship and her cargo.

The eventual sentences handed out in the end were lenient all around. The mutineers were freed and Waterman and Douglass got off with light sentences. Waterman held strong to his convictions and never showed the slightest remorse concerning his conduct and treatment of the crew over the voyage.

Public opinion had swayed back and forth and the sympathies at last swayed in Waterman's favor, henceforth the following Alto California editorial:

It should be the duty of all order-loving citizens but particularly of the press, to put down this attempt to forestall judgment in this case, and we cannot but depreciate the course pursued by one of he city newspapers in the matter. The veriest crime-hardened transgressor is entitled to a suspension of public opinion on his acts when the law has taken cognizance of his offices, and it is asking no more that justice, than Captain Waterman should receive the full benefit of unprejudiced and impartial public opinion in his case.

Some of the newspaper editors were clearly worried that the publicity from all the trials would have an adverse effect upon the shipping merchants who might reconsider sending their vessels elsewhere. But that turned out to be a naive conclusion as long as the profits remained sky high for the San Francisco run.

News of the Challenge's ordeal and trials reached New York and the New York Herald ran the following headline in November. 30, 1851.

ARRIVAL OF THE CLIPPER CHALLENGE, IN ONE

HUNDRED AND NINE DAYS-DEATHS AMONG

THE CREW-GREAT EXCITEMENT-CAPT.

WATERMAN AND FIRST MATE

OBLIGED TO FLY FOR THEIR LIVES!

At the conclusion of his trial, Robert Waterman was exonerated of all blame over the deaths of his crew. He was commended for his courage and nautical skills in bringing the Challenge safely into San Francisco "without the loss of a spar, sail or piece of rigging."

Throughout Captain Waterman's legal ordeal, Nathaniel and George Griswold of N. L. & G. Griswold back in New York did nothing to help him.

Captain Arthur H. Clark had some comments on this matter:

It is therefore humiliating to record that neither the owners of the Challenge nor their underwriters, for both of whom Captain Waterman had saved thousands of dollars, ever had the courtesy to make the slightest acknowledgment of his services, although they were well aware of their obligation in this matter. It is, however, some consolation to know that he asked and needed nothing at their hands.

The Challenge was branded as a "hellship" and Captain John Land, the new captain, and the Griswold's agents had trouble recruiting another crew. They had to dicker with the San Francisco crimps for weeks before Alsop & Co. came up with the outrageous sum of $200 per man, paid in advance before the crimps rounded up 40 sailors. Captain Land considered them all to be a motley collection of lowlifes "of the worst order," but he was stuck with them.

There was a savage drunken knife fight before the ship set sail between Sparks, the new Third Mate, and one of the new crew, a Sydney Duck. The Third Mate lost the knife fight and received a nasty knife wound below the elbow where his arm was nearly severed and Sparks had to be rushed off to a doctor's office.

Next: Later years of the Challenge

The Era of the Clipper Ships
Bibliography / Sea Witch / Directory / Maritime Links
Home / McKay Clan / Ship's Store / Introduction / Tradewinds