The Lightning

Donald McKay's Black Ball Quartette clippers; Lightning, Champion of the Seas, James Baines, and the Donald McKay accomplished astounding achievements across the Atlantic for James Baines & Co. with their record runs from Liverpool to Australia. The sheer strength and beauty of these remarkable large clippers captured the imagination and pride of the British people and captured the lion's share of the Australian trade for James Baines & Co. as well.

It had been a prosperous collaboration between James Baines, Thomas Miller Mackay, and Donald McKay, and to show his appreciation, James Baines & Co. bought from McKay two more ships that were still on the stocks under construction, the sister ships Commodore Perry and Japan. Both had been designed before the Donald McKay and were being built for a proposed line of European packets and had identical dimensions. Their measurements were 212 x 44 11/12 x 29 feet and were designed as fuller ships with greater carrying capacity than the first three of their Quartette predecessors. Both ships were fitted with cabin and steerage passenger accommodations of a similar fashion to the Black Ball Quartette clippers.

The commercial demands placed on the Australian carrying trade were changing by 1855. The gold rush fever's sense of urgency had diminished somewhat as the Black Ball Line and her White Star Line rivals over the past few years had built up their fleets in response to the increasing numbers of emigrants desiring swift passages to Australia. The waiting lists for passage began to decline.

A new commercial factor was now entering the picture, that of the homeward passage, to bring home to England the expanding cargoes of wool, hides, wheat, and other Australian exports, Fuller ships of greater carrying capacity at the sacrifice of some of their speed were now at a premium and called for. Expedience placed a demand for this new kind of clipper, a swift vessel capable of carrying a large cargo, the "medium clipper."

Richard C. McKay sums up the merits of the Commodore Perry and the Japan, soon to become the Great Tasmania, in his book: Some Famous Clipper Ships and their builder Donald McKay

In these ships, their builder had combined two rare elements, buoyancy and stability to marked degree. They had little deadrise, but with great width of floor. Opposite the main hatchway, across the floor, between the curves of their bilges, each ship was 36 feet wide; and although all spars were aloft and boats stowed on top of their houses and on gallow frames, each drew only 10 1/2 feet of water on an even keel. They were regarded as "flat bottom" craft and caused much discussion in shipbuilding circles on both sides of the Atlantic. We think their construction entitles Donald McKay to the distinction of being the originator of the "Medium" clipper model, afterwards universally used by American shipbuilders. They were designed before the Donald McKay, which many claim was the first of this class.

The Commodore Perry and the Japan, as she was originally named, were launched in the fall of 1854 from Donald McKay's East Boston shipyard. The Commodore Perry sailed in December 1854 for a swift passage across the Atlantic to join the Black Ball fleet at Liverpool. The Japan sailed three months later and upon her arrival she was registered with a new more appropriate name, the Great Tasmania.

The Commodore Perry soon made a name for herself with a record passage on January 12, 1855 to Sydney, Australia and proved Donald McKay's theory that a medium clipper with a flat bottom was superior to great deadrise.

On her second Australian voyage, she sailed from Liverpool in February, 1856, and arrived in 72 1/2 days. Her following voyages were slower. In 1859 she sailed to Melbourne taking all of 120 days. The Commodore Perry then took aboard passengers from other Black Ball Liners and transported them to New Zealand. Future Australian voyages for the Commodore Perry often included that port of call. One extended round voyage in 1861 lasted for two years.

The Commodore Perry sailed for Melbourne again in 1862, and from there she was ordered to Bombay, and Calcutta; where James Baines & Co. had contracted her to take aboard a large number of Indian coolies and she sailed for British Guyana on October 4, 1862, for a long passage of 120 days.

She was unable to obtain any return cargo there and sailed for Trinidad, where her captain had to wait for a suitable cargo for two months before sailing on to London, arriving there on June 20, 1863. Her activities after that are shrouded in mystery.

The Commodore Perry made her last voyage for the Black Ball Line on March 5, 1866, this time for Queensland, and reached that Australian port in 107 days. By then the recession had hit and James Baines & Co. had come under extreme financial difficulties in April, 1866, and by the time the Commodore Perry had returned to Liverpool in December she was sold off; after having already been double-mortgaged to Thomas Harrison in 1865, and then to Barned's Bank in 1866. Tyneside shipowners Thompson & Harper bought the Commodore Perry for service in the coal trade and she ended out her years as a coal carrier.

On her last voyage, she sailed from England with a cargo of coal for Galle, Ceylon, in 1869. She was on her way to Bombay from Ceylon when it was discovered on August 24, 1869, that her cargo of coal had caught fire. The crew battened down the hatches to starve off the oxygen to the fire, but the heat was unbearable for the crew below deck.

The ship took on a pilot off Bombay. Soon after on August 28, 1869, the Commodore Perry exploded; sending a hatch cover flying off that injured a crew member. A steward suffocated below deck.

Crews from nearby ships came to offer assistance to the Commodore Perry crew, and Captain Black called for hoisting her sails and slipping her anchor while volunteers ran her up on the beach where she burned to the water's edge, a sorry ending for another one of Donald McKay's clipper ships lost to fire; as she burned and sank just two months before the Lightning met a similar fate.

The history of the Great Tasmania's service to the Black Ball Line was much like that of her sister ship and besides her service to Melbourne she was often routed to Sydney and Hobart.

She also made a voyage to India sailing form Liverpool on April 26, 1858. The Great Tasmania returned to England with a mixed cargo along with a large number of soldiers returning from their service at the time of the Supoy Mutiny.

The British Government had failed to send adequate food rations along with other essential supplies such as hammocks and clothing aboard with the soldiers. Epidemics of cholera and dysentery broke out, along with many cases of scurvy from malnutrition over the passage, and sixty soldiers died before they reached England and this tragedy caused a great scandal with the government getting the blame.

The Great Tasmania sailed for Melbourne again in December 1862, and this was her last passenger voyage for the Black Ball Line.

The end of the Great Tasmania is shrouded in mystery. Richard C. McKay had this to say:

What finally became of the Japan we know not. One story has it that she was condemned and sold at Port Louis on account of her passengers remaining there; bringing about $9,000.00,-which gave each person enough to enable him to leave the island. Originally she had been named Great Tasmania. Rebuilt, rechristened by an unknown name, probably she plied the Indian Ocean or China Sea laden with sugar or opium, swarming with centipedes and scorpions, and manned by rice eating Lascars.

Three other McKay clippers were later purchased by James Baines and his partners. They were the Flying Cloud, the Blanche Moore, and the Empress of the Seas. The later Black Ball Line voyages of the Flying Cloud are covered elsewhere in this book.

The Blanche Moore was launched from Donald McKay's East Boston shipyard in 1854 and was said, by Richard C. McKay, to be an extreme clipper, although this has fact has been called into question of members of the shipping community on the other side of the Atlantic.

She was built for the firm of Charles Moore & Co. of Liverpool that was an early follower of James Baines in the purchase of large American clipper ships to charter out for the Australian Gold Rush trade. The only other Liverpool firm to purchase American clippers was the White Star Line.

Charles Moore & Co. was also the owner of the iron ship Tayleur, that the White Star Line had chartered for an emigrant passage to Australia, and had been wrecked on her maiden voyage with heavy loss of life that many at that time thought was due to the adjustment problems of her compasses because of her iron hull.

In 1856, the Black Ball Line chartered the Blanche Moore to make the November Liverpool sailing to Melbourne and she remained chartered in this service until 1862, when James Baines along with three partners bought her. Soon, they sold off sixteen of the shares to Thomas Harrison, eight shares to Thomas Sully Stowe, Harrison's associate, and four shares to Black Ball Captain James Clark.

The Blanche Moore made the November 10, 1863 sailing from Liverpool to Melbourne in 94 days and then returned to England by way of India and back around the Cape of Good Hope and signed off her crew at London on October 26, 1864.

After ten years of passenger service with the Black Ball Line, the condition of the Blanche Moore had steadily deteriorated and she was no longer fit for the passenger carrying trade. The ship was then put up for the Indian trade and on March 10, 1865, sailed for Galle, Ceylon, and then for Calcutta. It is not certain, but it is believed that the Blanche Moore took on coolies and made a passage to the West Indies, or perhaps was laid up in Calcutta for repairs, for she did no return to England until April 1866. By that time James Baines & Co. had already sold her to the White Star Line and the Blanche Moore sailed under that flag until she was wrecked on April 26, 1867.

With Confederate raiders prowling the seas for Yankee merchant ships during the Civil War, clipper ships could be had for a cheap price. James Baines purchased the large extreme clipper Empress of the Seas in September 1860 from Wilson & Sons of Baltimore, and she soon joined the Black Ball fleet on the Liverpool-Melbourne run.

On her second voyage, she made a phenomenally fast passage to Melbourne in 66 1/2 days. She was anchored off Port Phillip at the quarantine station at Port Nepean waiting for the morning tide of December 19, 1861 to begin the homeward passage, when a fire in the fore hold broke out.

Her quick thinking pilot ordered the crew to slip her cable to try and beach her and her sails were hastily set, but her deck was soon in flames that shot up her main and fore masts.

The Empress' crew was joined by the crews of the pilot schooner and health officers' boats. A desperate effort was made to beat out the fire, but they had no fire pumps and after a few hours the Empress was abandoned.

Ship's boats ferried the frightened passengers and £80,000 worth of gold in twenty-two boxes ashore along with much of the passengers' luggage. A charred hulk was all that remained by the time the fire had burnt out and the ship was towed away and later broken up.

The rumors flew that a member of the Empress' crew had held a grudge against the captain and had set fire to the ship, but it never was discovered if this rumor was true. But the sad truth was that another Black Ball liner, another magnificent McKay clipper, was lost to fire and the Empress of the Seas was no more.

The Sandridge Pier

By 1859, the numbers of emigrants departing for Australia was dropping off sharply and by 1860 the Black Ball Line started a new service in September of that year from London that was run by Mackay & Co.

The emigration traffic picked up three years later and London by 1864 became the main port of the Black Ball Line with a larger number of sailings to Australia than from Liverpool from that point on. Over the coming years Plymouth grew as a major port of departure, and by 1867 passed Liverpool and became the second leading port.

Queensland had become a major Australian port of destination. The Black Ball Line began buying ships again in 1860 to replace the ships that had been lost over the past few years as the financial depression of 1857 began to fade away. Most of them were Canadian built ships, seven in number, along with four ships from British yards.

A great effort was also made to diversify, especially in the area of transporting Chinese migrants to foreign ports and Australia despite the efforts of the British Government to ban the carrying of Chinese gold seekers to Australia on British ships. The Chinese and Indian coolie trade to the West Indies and British Guyana went on for their labor was needed in the Colonies.

In the slack periods to come, thousands of sheep were transported from Australia to New Zealand aboard Black Ball Liners. Among them, the Empress of the Seas. Gold was discovered in New Zealand in 1864, and close to 12,000 emigrants sailed for New Zealand that year and the Black Ball and White Star lines made numerous sailings that year.

The financial depression of 1857 was world wide and had taken a heavy toll on American shipping as well. British shipping interests were on the rebound by the end of the decade, but American shipping did not recover.

In 1862, the Civil War was raging in the United States and Yankee merchant ships were fair game for Confederate raiders prowling the seas and eight to ten-year-old American clipper ships built for the California gold rush could be purchased at a low price from American ship owners who could not afford to maintain their fleets of idled clippers. For their owners dared not send them out of the safe harbors of the world as long as the Confederate raider Alabama, and others out there on the high seas waiting for them.

Over a dozen American clippers were bought by James Baines & Co. in 1862, and a slightly lesser number in 1863. A few clippers were also bought in 1864. They bought sixteen Canadian ships over those years as well.

The four main shareholders of the Black Ball Line at this time were James Baines, Thomas Miller Mackay, John Taylor, and Joseph Greaves. Around this time, they also purchased an iron auxiliary steamer and three iron ships, for great improvements had been made in iron shipbuilding over the past few years and if James Baines & Co. of Liverpool and T. M. Mackay & Co. of London were to hold on to their share of the Australian trade they had to be competitive.

James Baines was said by some not to like steamships for he had put off using them for the longest time, but in reality he was just waiting until the time that improvements came in 1864 when steamships proved their practical and economic worth in making the long voyage to Australia. The compass problem aboard iron ships had been solved by then.

The heavy investment in new ships severely strained the finances of the London and Liverpool partnerships, especially after the emigration traffic began to decline in 1865 and their Queensland venture ran into difficulties.

Steamships were expensive and the partners found it difficult to raise the capital. It was a risky venture and the burden of assuming personal liability in all matters and debts incurred was just too much for the partners of the Black Ball Line, as well as for their rivals, and they found a way of setting up the Limited Liability Joint Stock Company through the help of the new Companies Act, and offered shares to the public.

From then on, the liability of the shareholders would be limited to the value of the held shares. In this way, the shipping community was able to raise the capital to build steamships without undue risk. New joint-stock shipping steamship companies were formed in Liverpool. Sailing ship lines, in the spirit of competition with London and the times, soon went that route as well and set up their own joint-stock companies.

The three major sailing ship lines, the Black Ball Line, White Star Line, and Gibbs, Bright & Co., joined together to sell shares in the new Australian and Eastern Navigation Company. Many prominent men in the shipping and banking community were on the board of directors. Liverpool investors were intrigued and soon were clamoring to make deposits for shares.

The directors were slow to allot the shares, too slow for some investors, and it was soon discovered after small investors complained in the newspapers that the directors had bought 19,074 shares and their friends were hoarding another 25,000 of the subscribed 40,000 shares. And that their friends acquired their shares with the understanding that they were not to sell for a period of time until the price was driven up.

Some of these shares were allotted to people in Australia, something the prospectus made no mention of. The directors had deliberately delayed allotting shares to Liverpool investors, even after taking their deposits, and all this flew in the face of the Liverpool investors. The growing scandal was fanned by the newspapers for two-thirds of the shares were supposed to be offered to the public. The scheme quickly collapsed like a house of cards. A verse thereafter appeared in the satirical paper Porcupine that summed up the scandal most appropriately.

James Baines' reputation was certainly harmed by the scandal and his hopes of a Black Ball Line of steamships went down with the cards as well.

The partners had gambled heavily that the Australian trade would revive, but instead the partners ran into increasing financial difficulty as the emigration traffic declined and the partners were forced to mortgage more of their ships to pay their debts as they came due. Their resources were stretching thin and their venture into the Queensland trade was not turning out as profitable as they had hoped.

Charles Mozley had taken over control of the Barned Bank after Israel Barned died in 1858. Mozley and Baines were good friends and the two had enjoyed a similar lifestyle. Baines had been borrowing large sums of money from the Barned Bank since 1849 and the early Australian gold rush years had been prosperous for both the bank and James Baines & Co.

In 1865, Mozley had turned the Barned bank into a limited company with £2,000,000 in capital. Around that same, time Mozley's cousin vanished following a cash fraud and a taint of scandal tarnished their reputation. Mozley's new bank had taken over all the loans of the Barned Bank and loaned out more money to the shipping, cotton, and timber interests.

James Baines & Co. and T. M. Mackay & Co. were in debt to Mozley's bank for close to £600,000 and their assets were worth less than their debt.

The shipping world soon took a downward spiral and many shipping firms including the Black Ball Line were unable to make their loan payments. Without working capital Mozley's bank collapsed in 1866, along with many other banks of that day, and this brought on the "crisis." This time Baines was unable to get out of his predicament.

Historian B. G. Orchard reported upon the sad demise of "Jamie Bubble," saying ". . . that 'Bubble' was really on his beam ends."

The White Star Line foundered at that time as well as the Royal Bank of Liverpool and both went under.

The liquidation of the Black Ball Line was to follow and forty of their ships were sold off; including all of the remaining McKay Clippers: Lightning, Champion of the Seas, Donald McKay, Blanche Moore, Commodore Perry, and the Flying Cloud. Baines would later acquire an interest in the Flying Cloud again.

Twenty-one ships remained; including the Marco Polo. Nine more ships were sold in 1867. The Lightning, Champion of the Seas, and the Donald McKay were bought by Thomas Harrison, along with others, and were soon chartered back to the restructured firms that then became known as Baines, Taylor & Co. of Liverpool and T. M. Mackay, Son & Co. of London. The two firms tried to continue on with their service to Queensland and Melbourne, but the number of emigrants bound for Australia had declined considerably and did not pick up over the coming years and many sailings were delayed for want of freight and passengers. The passenger levels never reached what they were in the early days.

The firms tried to expand their sailings to include Cape Town and the Indian ports of Calcutta and Bombay over 1869-1870.

Between 1867 and 1870, the firms were somehow able to purchase more ships and some of the smaller ones were sent to Australia with cargo and sold. But the financing of their operations could only be obtained with high interest rates for the banks would no longer mortgage their ships. By 1870, the firms' cash flow problem had become acute and they were in debt. Then came the opening of the Suez Canal.

The end of the Black Ball Line came on April 28, 1871 when the firms suspended payment on their debts which amounted to £30,000 and Baines, Taylor & Co. of Liverpool, and T. M. Mackay, Son & Co. of London met with creditors at the London Tavern, Bishopsgate Street, Liverpool.

Seventeen years earlier that same London Tavern had catered the déjeuner aboard the Lightning upon her arrival in Liverpool following her maiden voyage from Boston.

A magnificent chapter in the era of the clipper ships had come to the final end. The world would never see again a crack Black Ball clipper built by Donald McKay flying the red swallow-tailed houseflag from the top of the main mast with her sea of canvas reaching out to catch every puff of wind to carry her hundreds of passengers and crew on their voyages from England to the Colonies and other ports around the world.

James Baines and Thomas Miller Mackay, along with the other senior partners, John Taylor and Thomas Marwood, all went their separate ways.

Some of the ex-Black Ball liners, including the Flying Cloud, were bought by John Taylor and he and some associates ran passenger clipper ships from London to Queensland for several years.

Thomas Marwood ran a passenger service from Liverpool to Australia that was prosperous for many years.

Thomas Miller Mackay went into the phosphate business and James Baines returned to the shipping business and his earlier career as a shipbroker and for many years ran a one-man firm, but never again did he capture the prosperous times of his early days.

He was, however, somehow able to raise enough capital to purchase four ships, two Canadian and two English, to carry on in the shipping trade.

Every year or so it seems he changed his offices, a sign of his failing prosperity, but he carried on and his business expertise continued to serve him well and in his later years as his council was actively sought out by many in the merchant community and his advise was freely given.

By that time, Baines had given up his earlier vices and no longer smoked and drank and reading had become central to his life. Following the death of his wife in 1872, Baines and his family moved to a smaller house close to Peel Terrace and moved again two years later to another house close by.

Baines' only son, James Picton Baines, died on July 16, 1877 of asthma when he was just twenty years old. His two elder daughters got married and moved out in 1879. Baines sold the house and moved on to share a house briefly and soon after moved to a house of his own at 24 Nile Street in a respectable neighborhood of senior servants and clerks, and lived there for his remaining years.

On March 8, 1889, James Baines died of cirrhosis of the Liver. His funeral was attended by many in the shipping community including a number of captains of the ex-Black Ball Line, and his memory would live on for many years to come in myth and legend.

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The Era of the Clipper Ships
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