Minnehaha Figurehead
On the morning of March 22, 1856, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow took the ferry from the Boston wharf, accompanied by his two sons, Charles and Ernest, over to East Boston for a visit to Donald McKay shipyard to attend the launching of the Minnehaha. There at the yard, he and his sons joined other leading citizens of Boston, many of them prominent merchants. Also in attendance for the occasion, was Mrs. Julia Bennett Barrow, the most popular actress of Boston.
The Minnehaha was a beautiful three-deck medium clipper of 1698 tons and a very handsome full-modeled ship that was designed for carrying capacity rather than speed, yet her lines suggested that she would also be a fast sailer. Mary McKay had come up with her name, Minnehaha, after being inspired by Longfellow's poem, "Hiawatha." An intricately carved figurehead of the Indian maiden graced her bow.
Before the launching, Longfellow and his sons went aboard the Minnehaha along with others to explore the ship and soon pronounced themselves delighted with the workmanship they saw that ran throughout her.
At 11:30 a.m., the time was at hand and a large crowd had assembled about the yard to witness the Minnehaha's launching. The ring of the hammers filled the cool March air and spectators held their breath in silence as workman knocked away the dog shores, one by one, until the last block under her stem was knocked away.
The Minnehaha lingered for a moment and then slowly began to travel down the ways gathering force along her graceful journey to the sea. Standing upon her bow was Captain Alden Gifford and as soon as the Minnehaha was clear of the ways the captain christened her with a bottle of pure Cochituate water that he smashed over her bow calling out loudly as to be heard over the delighted crowd "Minnehaha, your name's Minnehaha."
For a time the crowd looked on and admired the beautiful proportions of the Minnehaha as she gently bobbed in the swells of the harbor. Soon, the crowds began to depart and the workmen of the yard, along with their families, retired to the mold loft for their usual refreshments that followed the launching of a ship.
Donald McKay invited his guests to Eagle Hill where Boston's leading caterer had prepared a feast for the occasion.
After partaking in the refreshments for a time, General John S. Tyler, upon his host's urging, offered up these sentiments for the occasion:
In the presence of the first shipbuilder, the first poet, and I think I may say the first actress in our country, I feel embarrassed in this position, and I shall detain you only to offer this sentiment:
Success to all three in all their efforts for the glory of New England.
Longfellow's response:
Mrs. Barrow requests me to return you her thanks for the kind manner in which the allusion to herself has been received. As Mr. McKay is here, he will return thanks for himself.
In proposing to you his health, I would say that it is a singular circumstance that whereas with architecture we generally associate the name of a builder with the structure, yet in this form of architecture, and the most difficult form, because it has to do more than any other with curved lines, we hardly ever hear the name of the builder long associated with the work he builds. I will propose to you-
Success to the Minnehaha, and the health of the builder.
Colonel Adams was next to speak and he extolled upon the many benefits that Donald McKay had brought to the community, particularly as an employer of many men in his shipyard.
Mrs. Julia Bennett Barrow, inspired by the occasion, then recited several passages from Longfellow's great poem "Hiawatha"
Perhaps this was one of them:
This was Hiawatha's wooing!
Thus it was he won the daughter
Of the ancient Arrow-maker,
In the land of the Dacotahs!
From the wigwam he departed,
Leading with him Laughing Water;
Hand in hand they went together,
Through the woodland and the meadow,
Left the old man standing lonely
At the doorway of his wigwam,
Heard the Falls of Minnehaha
Calling to them from the distance,
Crying to them from afar off,
Fare thee well, O Minnehaha!
The Minnehaha was originally intended for the Australian and China trade and her maiden voyage was to Australia with Captain Gifford in command. For a number of years she engaged in trade with the Far East with Captain Beauchamp taking over command after a time.
Upon a return voyage in January 1862, the crew of the Minnehaha rescued the crew of the barque Waverley and on February 4th landed them at Table Bay.
The Minnehaha then sailed on to New York, arriving there in May 1862, where she was sold for $62,500 to Samuel G. Reed & Co., of Boston.
The Minnehaha, now under the command of Captain Hopkins, next sailed on a Cape Horn voyage with a cargo of coal for San Francisco to deliver to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company.
The Minnehaha encountered very heavy gales in the South Atlantic and the constant battering brought on by the gales caused her to leak and the clipper was forced to put into Rio to make repairs. To get at the leaky area, much of the coal had to be removed and the repairs dragged on for 35 days.
On November 6, 1862, the Minnehaha continued on with her voyage around the Horn and arrived at San Francisco 103 days from Rio on February 17, 1863. On the last leg of the voyage as she was crossing the bar, the Minnehaha shipped a sea and the stern rail was carried away and sea water filled the cabin. Still, her captain was able to take her into the bay for repairs.
The Minnehaha departed San Francisco for Callao, arriving there in 48 days, for a cargo of guano and from there sailed for England.
The Minnehaha again sailed with a cargo of coal for San Francisco, this time from London, with Captain David Bursley in command. A fierce pampero came down on the Minnehaha in the South Atlantic off the Platte and severely battered the clipper about for 16 hours; shifting the cargo around, and the ship was hove on beam ends with the head carried away.
She encountered fierce westerly gales while rounding the Horn and it took 32 days to get around. From the equator, the winds in the North Pacific pretty much deserted her and from there the Minnehaha was 37 days to the Golden Gate and 189 days from London.
The Minnehaha then returned to the Far East trade. Almost three years later, the Minnehaha was at Honolulu, still under the command of Captain Bursley, after a 29-day voyage from Yokohama.
The Minnehaha then sailed on to Baker's Island, arriving there on November 20th and moored in the harbor. Ten days later, heavy squalls blew down on Baker's Island and all the ships in the harbor were forced to escape out to sea to put out anchors and wait out the storm. Calm weather came for three days and then the squalls returned and by all accounts the heaviest squalls that had ever hit the Island.
On December 3, 1867, the Minnehaha's head moorings were not strong enough to hold her due to the ferocity of the squalls, which then blew the bow of the clipper upon the reef. The stern moorings were the next to go and soon the Minnehaha lay broadside on the reef forcing the crew to abandon ship, taking little of their belongings, and by the following day the Minnehaha had completely smashed apart on the reef as the storm raged on for 60 hours. The Minnehaha had gone on to the happy hunting grounds of clipper ships. There was no cargo aboard at the time of the disaster and her owners collected $56,000 for their loss.
*****
The harsh winter of 1856 had taken a heavy toll on American ships in the North Atlantic. And the commercial depression spurred on by the sinking of the Central America in 1857 spelled further troubles for the already battered American Merchant Marine. Shipyards from Virginia to Maine were idle.
Even Donald McKay who had kept his shipyard going longer than all the others was forced to close in 1857 to await better times and this greatly troubled him. He had been a generous employer for many years and his skilled corps of shipbuilding mechanics were like one big family.
The era of the clipper ships had been good to the East Boston shipbuilding community, particularly to the yard of Donald McKay. It was said that over the preceding decade, hundreds of workman had been on the payrolls at the McKay shipyard and seven million dollars had come into the community. Now the era was drawing to a close and Donald McKay spent many a sleepless night trying to come up with new ingenious ways to extend the prosperity that he had brought to so many families of his loyal mechanics.
Often over the years he risked his own capital building clippers on spec so that his workers might keep busy making a living. Then, he kept many of them on the payroll when his yard was idle too and this further diminished his declining fortune.
Providing for his own large extended family was a big burden on him too. East Boston had become the new home of the numerous numbers of the McKay Clan and most of them were now involved in the shipbuilding trade at Donald McKay’s shipyard or others nearby or elsewhere in New England.
Anna McKay died in East Boston on November 14, 1856 to the great sorrow of all that knew her. Hugh continued to work in Donald’s yard.
Donald McKay’s own family was rapidly growing as his second wife Mary, 17 years his junior, bore him many children. He now had fifteen children in all. The older children from his first marriage to Albenia were in their teens. Cornelius was by then in his early twenties and had entered his father’s profession as a shipbuilder.
The responsibilities for providing for his growing family grew as the economic prosperity declined. It was hard for Donald McKay to accept this nagging reality and he fought it with all his heart and soul. He was going to find his way out of this tangled morass and somehow bring the glory years of the era of the clipper ships back again.
He was willing to take risks to keep his dreams of lofty clipper ships alive in a world that was rapidly changing. He would continue to build them on "spec" if he had to and trust his intuition that he would eventually find a buyer for his latest creation. He had done so in the past and would do so again.
But now out of desperation he was forced to look for other opportunities that might tide him and his yard over in uncertain times until the pendulum swung back the other way; perhaps another gold rush, and lofty clippers would be called for in the world of commerce once again.
Earlier in the decade in 1855, plans were in the wind for the building of several steamships that would rival the Collins Line of New York. The British Cunard Steamers, it was whispered in maritime circles, might be needed for service in the Crimean War and would not be making passages across the North Atlantic for a time. An urgent need of a proposed Boston and European Steamship Company was soon perceived by many of the upstanding citizens of Boston. Among them George P. Upton, Enoch Train, George R. Sampson, E. Hasket Derby, and others.
The Massachusetts Legislature also liked the idea "for the purpose of navigating the ocean by steam." Donald Mckay made a model of a paddle-wheel steamer, the Cradle of Liberty, that he presented at a public meeting. He claimed that such a steamer would be capable of crossing the Atlantic in six days. He also proposed that her steam engines be made in Boston and not rely on Scottish Napier’s engines as proposed by others. A committee was formed, resolutions adopted, but the whole plan eventually came to nothing. Donald McKay then turned his attention elsewhere in his search to come up with other ideas to keep his skilled mechanics busy.
In 1858, Donald McKay was able to open his yard again to build the medium clipper Alhambra and she rose slowly on the stocks taking over a year to complete. Alongside the Alhambra, work on the first of four Cape Cod fishing schooners, the R.R. Higgins, soon began.
Donald McKay designed the schooner and then turned over the building supervision to his eldest son Cornelius Whitworth McKay. The R.R. Higgins quickly proved to be such a successful fishing schooner that three more were then built; the Benjamin S. Wright, Mary B. Dyer, and the H. & R. Atwood. This was all the work that Donald McKay could find for a limited number of his skilled mechanics for the next four years right up to the time of the outbreak of the Civil War.
The economic boom spurred on by the California Gold Rush that had brought on the era of the clipper ships had turned to bust. All the secrets of building lofty clippers had been discovered and there were too many of them already in existence. The dropping freight rates now held no incentive to build any more. The San Francisco market had been saturated, so much so that many a disgusted ship captain even dumped unwanted cargoes overboard in the bay before sailing on to other ports.
There were no more fortunes of gold waiting there for the taking by the owners of lofty clipper ships when they arrived through the Golden Gate in San Francisco. The best merchant minds had long since turned to other pursuits; most notably with shrewd investments in railroads to expand the borders of civilization in a relentless drive to the west for that was where the profits were by then. It was only a matter of time before the railroad stretched from sea to shining sea.
Still, the California clipper ship trade did pick up a bit in 1858 and 91 clippers cleared from Eastern ports for the run around the Horn to the Golden Gate, 11 of them medium clippers from Mystic, Connecticut, with the Twilight and Andrew Jackson leading the way with 100-day passages. Mystic clippers would continue to make some very fast runs around the Horn for years to come.
Dashing Wave, the Portsmouth, New Hampshire clipper launched from the Fernald and Pettigrew yard five years earlier, made a good passage of 107 days. Stag Hound made a 121-day passage from Boston to the Golden Gate in 1858 and beat the Mystic clipper Elizabeth F. Willets and three other clippers: Flying Eagle, Southern Cross and Phantom that had sailed around the same time.
Elsewhere on the oceans of the world, the British clipper Lord of the Isles took back the tea trade laurels from the Yankees for the first time in eight years. Apparently the Yankee clipper captains had held out for higher prices too long and were underbid by their British rivals.
The Lord of the Isles made the fastest passage of the year with a remarkable 89-day run with a precious cargo of tea from China to Dover, England. Two other British clippers followed with 92 and 93 day runs. The British clippers had come into their own by that time for the moderate airs of the China run suited them well.
The American clippers were generally more suitable for the rough seas off Cape Horn and the Australian trade. The China trade clippers, such as those designed and built by Palmer for the Lows, were kept busy by their owners and were not available for the British to charter. This had spurred the British on to come up with their own fleet.
By 1858, they had reclaimed their tea trade and soon would be mistress of the seas again as the American Merchant marine continued to languish.
As 1858 drew to a close, the N.B. Palmer sailed from Shanghai with her precious cargo of tea bound for New York. Her young Captain Higham had temporarily taken over command from Captain Low at New York, having been the ship’s chief officer, and made the N.B. Palmer’s fastest passage to China in 88 days.
Now, the N.B. Palmer raced down the South China Sea with her young 28-year-old Captain determined to get another swift passage out of the Low clipper as he gestured to his first officer who shouted out orders to the men aloft to lay on all possible sail.
This would be his last chance of a record run for Captain Hingham was gravely ill of consumption and was wasting away from tuberculosis of the lungs. Still, he paced the quarterdeck day and night regardless of the weather and the coughing spells that racked his weakened steadily deteriorating condition. He knew his days as a clipper ship captain as well as his days on this earth were numbered, but this sad irony of his life was not, however, going to slow him down in any way.
In 18 days the N.B. Palmer ran the gauntlet of reefs and pirates of the South China Sea and passed Anjer at Java Head into the Indian Ocean. Twenty-nine days later, she rounded the Cape of Good Hope and the N.B. Palmer tore up the South Atlantic past St. Helena with all sheets flying.
She arrived off Sandy Hook 82 days from Shanghai in the company of the Kathay, an extreme clipper that had been launched from Jacob A. Westervelt’s New York shipyard in August 1853.
The Kathay had sailed from Foo Choo Foo, China, a closer port, thirty days before the N.B. Palmer had cleared Shanghai. Captain Hingham had tied the record of 82 days for the Shanghai to New York run.
The South Street waterfront for the moment gave a warm show of enthusiasm reminiscent of earlier days as the pilot guided the N.B. Palmer up the East River Sunday morning January 17, 1859 to the Low’s dock. Although, everyone was saddened to learn of her Captain’s plight as Hingham, now near death, was taken off the clipper to the hospital and then to his home in Brooklyn.
Five days later, Captain Hingham died and in New York Harbor every flag flew at half mast in honor of the passing of a brave young man who had gladly offered and given his life to the sea.
Older captains, too, were dying off, or retiring from a life at sea. Most of the extreme clippers by 1859 had been dismasted more than once and after half a decade or more of relentless hard driving. All were in a leaky condition and most of their owners by then were in dire financial straits and could not afford expensive repairs for clippers that could not find a paying cargo to justify such expenses.
One by one their masts were cut down, their yards shortened and their sails reduced as they were refitted and re rigged with the new Howes rig to make them easier to handle by smaller crews. Other less fortunate clippers were discarded outright and sold for a pittance.
The salvaged cut down clippers were still, however, very fast ships upon occasions when the winds were right. In a good blow they could sail almost as fast as they did in their glory years. But in light winds without an array of sails in the loftiest of places, they were slow.
Eighty-five clippers cleared for Cape Horn and California from eastern ports in 1859, with the big extreme clipper Sweepstakes, one of the last clippers to still retain her original rigging, entering the Golden Gate in 106 days.
The Sweepstakes had been launched from the Westervelt shipyard of New York on June 21, 1853. Her launching had been a precarious ordeal in that as she was sliding down the ways there was little clearance half way down and her keel scraped the ground. She careened into the staging area of her sister clipper ship Kathay under construction at the time and a large number of spectators were thrown into the water. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt.
It took over three days of expensive salvaging efforts to get the clipper to the water and off to the Brooklyn Navy Yard for coppering and repairs which amounted to $20,000 as she was found to be badly strained. The Sweepstakes was a very heavily sparred clipper, more so than the Flying Cloud. So it is understandable that she would win the laurels for the Cape Horn run in 1859 with all her original lofty masts and yards intact.
Across the Pacific, an exciting race took place in March 1859 between the Romance of the Seas and the Snow Squall, a small Down East extreme clipper that had been launched from Alfred Butler’s Cape Elizabeth, Maine shipyard in 1851.
The Snow Squall was Alfred Butler’s masterpiece and was indeed "A small, very sharp ship with fine lines" as Howe and Matthews state in American Clipper Ships, and was purchased just off the stocks by Charles R. Green of New York for $30,410. She was to engage in the Far East trade.
Her early runs were disappointing for her owner, but she eventually came up to her owner’s expectations and by the end of the decade was one of the fastest clippers in the fleet. The Snow Squall was 1000 tons smaller than the McKay built race horse of a clipper, but Captain Lloyd of the Snow Squall was more than willing to race the Romance of the Seas, then under the command of Captain Caldwell.
The Romance of the Seas sailed from Shanghai on March 21st with the Snow Squall following the next day and both clippers raced down the South China Sea with canvas flying to match the diminishing monsoon winds.
The Snow Squall caught up with her larger rival at Anjier but then the Romance caught the strong Indian Ocean trade winds out past Java Head that sent her flying to the Cape of Good Hope, that she rounded on May 7th two days ahead of the Snow Squall.
It was in the South Atlantic that the Snow Squall found her wings and she crossed the line on May 29th, two days ahead of the Romance. The Snow Squall held her lead all the way to Sandy Hook, arriving there on June 22nd, and at the East River docks the next day with a 92-day passage from Shanghai.
The Romance of the Seas arrived two days later with a 94-day passage. While not record passages, they were good considering the time of year. The Snow Squall had also beaten the heavily sparred Chelsea, Massachusetts clipper Malay that had left Shanghai two weeks earlier and the two had entered New York harbor together. The nimble Snow Squall was indeed a fast and lucky clipper and in later years during the Civil War managed to elude capture and outrun the Confederate raider Tuscaloosa off the Cape of Good Hope.
In 1859, the Yankee clipper captains reclaimed their share of the British tea trade by accepting the lower rate of between £2 and £3 per ton, far less than in past years. But in those economically trying times, they were glad to secure the tea cargoes at any price for the run to England.
Of the twelve American ships that carried British tea that season, ten of them were clippers. They were: Sea Serpent, Sultan, Ringleader, Charmer, Golden City, Rapid, Grace Darling, Alboni, Florence, and Bald Eagle. Only four of them sailed in the favorable season and all of the Yankee clippers made faster passages to Great Britain than the British clippers. This was the Yankee clippers’ swan song in the British tea trade for another chapter in the era of the clipper ships was drawing to a close.
Donald McKay sailed to England on a hat-in-hand tour in the fall of 1859 to meet with the British Admiralty in regards to arranging the sale of New England timber to the British shipyards. When that task was completed, Donald McKay went on to inspect the Royal Dock Yards and private British shipyards in England and Scotland. He carried with him letters of introduction from some prominent Americans, including Ex-President Franklin Pierce, Secretary of the Navy Isaac Toucey, Lieutenant M.F. Maury, and Stephen A. Douglas. All of them had nothing but praise for Donald McKay.
He then crossed the Channel to France, where he was invited to inspect French shipyards. He also toured shipyards in Prussia, Denmark, and Russia. All of his observations were reported on in the New York Commercial Bulletin and other newspapers in the United States. No new commissions, however, came out of this tour that lasted over a year and Donald McKay found himself still in the same financial quandary.
While touring the European shipyards, he took note of all the latest innovations concerning the building of ironclad steamships. Ultimately, he was forced to at last accept the fact that there was no holding back the age of steam and marine engines and decided that he would have to change with the times.
He also knew that the Civil War was coming and that the Union would need ironclad men-of-war in the troubled times ahead. In his agile mind, he planned for their construction, knowing that the call would eventually come for them. As soon as he returned to East Boston, he would begin converting part of his shipyard to build marine engines and ironclad steamships.
While in Europe, he decided to write a book when he returned to East Boston entitled: Prospectus of an Intended Work on the Theory & Practice of Naval Architecture Particularly Illustrating American Ship Building. He spent some time in early November 1859 while in England outlining this literary endeavor. It was a large scope project that included sixty large plates that illustrated Mckay’s ships with the dimensions of their construction in great detail. He completed the drawings and wrote the manuscript that ran about 300 pages. Unfortunately the work was never published.
A smaller number of clipper ships, 63 in all, took part in the Cape Horn run to the Golden Gate from Eastern ports in 1860. The fastest passage was a 103-day run made by the Mystic clipper Mary L. Sutton that had the unusual distinction of making a second run of 110 days that same year. Only five other clippers made the run that year in 110 days or less. The Great Republic made the run in 104 days.
The Golden State and the Golden Fleece both cleared New York on June 22nd and raced all the way around Cape Horn in an exciting deep sea contest and entered the Golden Gate on the same day, October 29th, with 129-day passages just a few hours apart.
Another exciting contest took place later on that year between the Black Hawk from New York and the Spitfire from Boston that had both cleared from their respective home ports on April 8th and had identical 107-day passages around the Horn to the Golden Gate. The Romance of the Seas came through the Golden Gate five days later with the third best run of the year in 105 days.
Only four Yankee ships carried British tea in 1860 and only one clipper, the Flying Cloud. By that time her masts and yards had been cut down twice and greatly reduced and she was not the lofty clipper she once was that had set the earlier records on the San Francisco run.
The Flying Cloud loaded tea at Foochow under the watchful eyes of Captain Winsor and with her hatches sealed, cleared that port on August 6, 1860, for the run to London. The Flying Cloud was in the South Atlantic sailing past St. Helena when the American presidential election took place and with Abraham Lincoln’s victory the turmoil and Civil War that followed sealed the fate of the era of the clipper ships. The fair winds were gone and the clouds of war now loomed on the horizon.
Donald McKay returned to East Boston from Europe in 1860 following his hat-in-hand tour with no new contracts in his pocket like he had in earlier times and upon his arrival home he immediately began to advocate for the building of ironclad steamships for the United States Navy.
He proposed to build an ironclad corvette in 1861. The Navy was impressed, but no orders came, mostly due to lacking funds. When the Civil War began, Donald McKay threw his shipyard open to the disposal of the Union cause for repair work.
Donald McKay then returned to England in 1861, where he did business with the British Admiralty. It would take the coming clash between the Monitor and the Merrimac to stir things up with the United States Navy before they urgently gave Donald McKay and other shipbuilders in the Boston area the go ahead to build warships for the Union cause.
Next: Donald McKay: Peacemaker
The Era of the Clipper Ships
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