A fast packet Lies in New Yorks East River, flags streaming to the winds that wiLL soon be driving her, while another taLL ship is almost ready for Launching.from Smith and Dimon s East Fourth Street yard. The year is 1833, in this contemporary painting by James Fulton Pringle, and in twelve years, the Rainbow, first ofa new breed ofship, the American clipper, wiLL be Launched from this very spot to set new records in the New York to China run. ("Messrs. Smith & Co. Ship Yard," 1833, by James Fulton Pringle (1 788-1847), oil on canvas; courtesy New York State H istorical Association, Cooperstown, New York)
rhe fast pac ker PaulJones, he whittl ed a model of rhe kind of vessel he'd like ro sail o n this run. H e had an attentive audience, in rhe perso n of William H . Low, of the shipping firm A. A. Low & Broth er. So, a new ship was built for rhe C hin a trade. Named Houqua for rhe great Chi nese trader admired by Ameri ca ns and E nglish alike, she turned our ro be a refined vers io n of rh e fl arfl oo red packers in rhe So uth ern trade, wirh sharpened ends and rounder bil ges for improved light-weather performance. W hen she appea red on rh e East River, James Gordo n Benn ett co mmented that her bows were "as sharp as the roes of a pair of C hin ese slippers." T he naval architectural historian Howard I. C hapelle, in his authoritat ive The Search for Speed Under Sail (1967), points our th at a hand-carved model would be roo rough ro take off lin es for the full-sized ship- but surely a model co uld illustrate th e bas ic ideas of th e d es ign. In a more se ri ous criticism of this tal e of innovation , C hapelle points our that fast packers as sharp and fl arfl oo red as Houqua had bee n entered in th e C hina trade befo re this, mainly from the ya rd of Wi lli am H. Webb, who beca me o ne of rh e premier designers of clipper ships, fast packers and big steamers. Bur perhaps rh e overrid ing co nsideration in all this is that the Houqua was seen as a ve ry sharp vessel (see Benn ett's co mment above), and proved rob e remarkably fast. The breakthrough ship of this era, the Rainbow, went miss ing
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with all hands in 1848. It was presumed that she was lostoffCape Horn , sin ce she rook rh at route. Ir seems ro m e her foremast was not stepped fa r enough back from the stem ro allow for the fin eness of the drawn-o ur bow. Captain Lan d, who had nearly driven her under on her maiden voyage, probably watched this probl em in his subseq uent fast runs. It was a new cap rain who rook her o ut o n that last voyage. No o ne knows, of course, what happened ro rhe ship-foe, icebergs, even a charging whale co uld and did sink ships. But o ne wo nders if the progressive shipowner Wil liam Aspinwall wasn't ri ght ro seek outside advice about the pl ace ment of the masts. John G rifflths's next clipper, the worldbeater Sea Witch, had her foremast stepped much farther abaft rh e stem than did her predecessor.
The Quest for Speed W hat was th e drivin g force behind this ever-growing ques t for speed ?A cluster of related deve lopment was at play ro drive leaders in shippin g and fore ign trade ro push for faster ships and shorter pa sages . Most impo rtant was the liberated thinking of businessmen, who discovered rhe echoing co nsequences of fast passages o n rhe viral North Atlantic run, whe n rhe hard-driven packets of th e Black Ball Lin e began ro take the cream of this most valuable carrying trad e beginning with the sailing of packers on set schedules in 1818. Free of the semi-monopolistic practices of English sh ippers,
SEA HISTORY 88, SPRING 1999