The Original Fables of La Fontaine / Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney

s of Chesapeake Bay excelled and their handiwork was known as the "Baltimore clipper," the name suggested by the old English verb which Dryden uses to describe the flight of the falc

ith an eye to the number of tons they were able to carry. More finely molded lines had hitherto b

e renowned clipper brigs and schooners of their own port. The result was the Ann McKim, of nearly five hundred tons, the first Yankee clipper ship, and distinguished as such by her long, easy water-lines, low free-board, and raking stem. She was built and finished without regard to cost, copp

ct, who was a pioneer in that he studied shipbuilding as a science instead of working by rule-of-thumb. The Rainbow, which created a sensation while on the stocks because of her concave or hollowed lines forward, which defied all tradition and practice, was launched in 1845. She was a more radical innovation than the Ann M

n who commanded them than to their hulls and rigging, and to support the theory the career of Captain Bob Waterman is quoted. He was first known to fame in the old Natchez, which was not a clipper at all and was even rated as slow while carrying cotton from New Orleans to New York. But Captain Bob took this full-pooped old packet ship around the Horn and employed her in the China tea trade. The voyages whi

souls out of his sailors. The rumors that he frightfully abused them were not current, however, until he took the Sea Witch and showed the world the fastest ship under canvas. Low in the water, with black hull and gilded figurehead, she seemed too

ries as these: "Passed a ship under double reefs, we with our royals and studdingsails set.... Passed a ship laying-to under a close-reefed maintopsail.... Split all three topsails and had to heave to.... Seven vessels in sight and we outsail all of them.... Under double-reefed topsails passed several vessels hove-to." Much the same record might be read in the log of the medium clipper Florence-and it is the same story of carrying sail superbly on a ship which had been built to stand up under

uries of pomp and power, the great East India Company had been deprived of its last exclusive rights afloat in 1833. Its ponderous, frigate-built merchantmen ceased to dominate the British commerce with China and India and were sold or broken up. All British ships were now free to engage in this trade, but the spirit and customs of the old regime still strongly surviv

al. We must set our long-practised skill, our steady industry, and our dogged determination against his youth, ingenuity, and ardor. Let our shipbuilders and employers take warning in time.

ail at three pounds ten per ton. Captain Theodore Palmer delivered his sixteen hundred tons of tea in the West India Docks, London, after a crack passage of ninety-one days which had never been equaled. His clipper earned $48,000, or two-thirds of what it had cost to build her. Her arrival in London created a profound impression.

s of the English ship-owner, and that British vessels, well-manned and well-found, were known to lie for weeks in the harbor of Foo-chow, waiting for a cargo and seeing American clippers come in, load, and sail immediately w

the first ship to reach London with tea of the new crop. The Lord of the Isles finished loading and sailed four days ahead of the Maury, and after thirteen thousand miles of ocean they passed Gravesend within ten minutes of each other. The British skipper, having the smartest tug and getting his ship first into dock, won the honors. In a similar rac

ation Club, organized by Boston merchants and owners, challenged the shipbuilders of Great Britain to race from a port in England to a port in China and return, for a stake of $50,000 a side, ships to be not under eight hundred nor over twelve hundred tons American register. The challenge was aimed at the Stornaway and the Chrysoli

n larger ships sailing around the Horn to San Francisco, a long road which, as a coastwise voyage, was forbidden to foreign vessels under the navigation laws. After the Civil War the fastest tea clippers flew the British flag and into the seventies they survived the competition of steam, racing among the

ough the Golden Gate. In the twelve months following, 775 vessels cleared from Atlantic ports for San Francisco, besides the rush from other countries, and nearly fifty thousand passengers scrambled ashore to dig for gold. Crews deserted their ships, leaving them unable to go to sea again for lack of men, and in consequence a hundred of them were used as storeh

mpede might last but a little while. To take instant advantage of it was the thing. The fastest ships, and as many of them as could be built, would skim the cream of it. This explains the brief and illustrious era of the California clipper, one hundred and sixty of which were launche

attle with the furious tempests of Cape Horn and at the same time the driving power to sweep before the sweet and steadfast tradewinds. Such a queenly clipper was the Flying Cloud, the achievement of that master builder, Donald McKay, which sailed from New York to San Francisco in eighty-nine days, with Captain Josiah Creesy in command. This record was never lowered and was equaled only twice-by the Flying Cloud herself and by the Andrew Jackson nine years later. It was

all merchant vessels afloat. This Titan of the clipper fleet was commanded by Donald's brother, Captain Lauchlan McKay, with a crew of one hundred and five men and boys. During her only voya

andy Hook to Queenstown would have been covered in seven days and nine hours. Figures are arid reading, perhaps, but these are wet by the spray and swept by the salt winds of romance. During one of these four days the Sovereign of the Seas reeled off 424 nautical miles, during which her average speed was seventeen and two-thirds knots and at times reached nineteen and tw

directly concerned, and partizan bias is apt to color the views of the best of us when national prestige is involved. American historians themselves have dispensed with many unpleasant facts when engaged with the

est sailing ships that ever traversed the ocean." This fairly presents the issue which a true-blooded Yankee has no right to evade. The greatest distance sailed by the Sir Launcelot in twenty-four hours between China and London was 354 knots, compared with the 424 miles of the Sovereign of the Seas and the 436 miles of the Ligh

miles a day. In this Australian trade the American clippers made little effort to compete. Those engaged in it were mostly built for English owners and sailed by British skippers, who could not reasonably be expected to get the most out of these loftily sparred

stion of rival speed and power under sail-a question which still absorbs those who love the sea. His conclusion is that in ordinary weather at sea, when great power to carry sail was not required, the British tea clippers were extremely fast vessels, chiefly on account of their narrow beam. Under these conditions they were perhaps as fast as the American clippers of the same class, such as the Sea Witch, White Squall, Northern Light, and Sword-Fish. But if speed is to be reckoned by the maximum performance of a ship under the most favorable conditions, then the British tea c

er Ship Era.

Western Ocean. In 1851, for instance, the Raven, Sea Witch, and Typhoon sailed for San Francisco within the same week. They crossed the Equator a day apart and stood away to the southward for three thousand mi

en, bleeding fingers the icy sheets and canvas. A fortnight of this inferno and the Sea Witch and the Raven gained the Pacific, still within sight of each other, and the Typhoon only one day behind. Then they swept northward, blown by the booming tradewinds, spreading studdingsails, skysails, and above them, like mere handkerchiefs, the water-sails and ring-tails. Again the three clippers crossed the Equator. Close

e Liverpool packet rats who were lured from their accustomed haunts to join the clippers by the magical call of the gold-diggings. There were not enough deep-water sailors to man half the ships that were built in these few years, and the crimps and b

ht safely to port is a shining tribute to the masterful skill of their officers. While many of them were humane and just, with all their severity, the stories of savage abuse which are told of some are shocking in the extreme. The defense was that it was either

part, Captain Waterman asserted that a more desperate crew of ruffians had never sailed out of New York and that only two of them were Americans. They were mutinous from the start, half of them blacklegs of the vilest type who swore to get the upper hand of him. His mates, boatswain, and carpenter had broken open their chests and boxes an

blandly maintained the doctrine that if you wanted the men to love you, you must starve them and knock them down. The fact is proven by scores of cases that the discipline of the American clipper was both famously efficient and notoriously cruel. It was not until long after American sailors had ceased to

led medium clippers enjoyed a profitable trade for many years later, and one of them, the Andrew Jackson, was never outsailed for the record from New York to San Francisco. This splendid type of ship was to be found on every s

ing for charters. The yards ceased to launch new tonnage. British builders had made such rapid progress in design and construction that the days of Yankee preference in the China trade had passed. The Stars an

Embargo, the French Spoliations, and the War of 1812. The conditions of trade and the temper of the people were now so changed that this mighty industry, aforetime so robust and resilient, was unable to recover from such shocks as the panic of 1857 and

had vanquished sail-an epochal event in a thousand years of maritime history-but the nation did not care enough to accept this situation as a new challenge or to continue the ancient struggle for supremacy upon the sea. England did care, because it was life or death to the little, sea-girt island, but as soon as the United States ceased to be a strip of Atlantic seaboard and the panorama, of a continent

e Pacific, they sighted now and then the stumpy, slatternly rig and greasy hull of a New Bedford whaler, perhaps rolling to the weight of a hug

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to a hair. On a voyage of two or three years, moreover, there was always plenty of time tomorrow. Brave and resourceful seamen were these New England adventurers and deep-sea hunters who made nautical history after their own fashion. They f

eafter played a minor part, although her barks went cruising on to the end of the chapter and her old whaling families were true to strain. As explorers the whalemen rambled into every nook and corner of the Pacific before merchant vessels had found their way thither. They discovered uncharted islands and cheerfully fought savages or suffered direful

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tom of sailing on shares or "lays" instead of wages was never changed. It was win or lose for all hands-now a handsome fortune or again an empty hold and pockets likewise. There was Captain W.T. Walker of New Bedford who, in 1847, bought for a song a ship so old that she was about to be broken up for junk and no insura

rous voyages were taken as the owners' share, and the incomes of the captain and crew were so niggardly as to make one wonder why they persisted in a calling so perilous, arduous, and poorly paid. During the best years of whaling, when the ships were averaging $16,000 for a voyage, the master received an eighteenth, or about nine hundred dollars a year. The highly skilled hands, such as the boat-

helles knew the lean, sun-dried Yankee whaleman and his motto of a "dead whale or a stove boat." The Civil War did not drive him from the seas. The curious fact is that his products commanded higher prices in 1907 than fifty years before, but the number of his ships rapidly decreased. Wha

wy and unsubstantial as the gleam of their own topsails when seen at twilight. The souls of their sailors have fled to Fiddler's Green, where all dead mariners go. They were of the ol

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