of th e Postmas ter Ge neral's plan to have steam service from New windows still intact. This structure has been lovingly resto red (as York to Chagres on the Caribbean coast, connecting up across the reco unted in SH 38, page 6) and stands today as a remarkabl e fever-ridden jungles of the isthmus to the port of Panama on the testam ent to American style and workmanship in wood. The Pacific side. Th ere, other steamers would pick up mail and China cabin is one of the most perfectly proportion ed and passengers and cany them north ro San Francisco and Oregon. exquisitely finish ed rooms in Am erica today-evidence that howIt was either very foresi ghted or very lucky that Howland & ever crude the machines of a hundred-odd years ago mi ght seem Aspinwall made this heavy investment in what had been a sparsely to us, the Americans who built them had a vision of the ri ghtn ess trafficked route-only seven ships from New York and New of things which continues to give joy to the beholder. England ports had entered San Francisco in all of 1848. But when She Was Indeed the Glory of the Seas the California, destined for the Pacific run, cam e into Panama on In his authoritative study of the clipper ship, The Search for Speed 17 January 1849, she found 2,500 Ameri cans waiting on the dock, Under Sail, Howard Chapelle had maintain ed that th e clipper all desperately anxious to secure passage north to the go ld fi elds of ship , as a type, did not really exist- their des igns and ri gs were all San Francisco. She embarked 375, and burning spars and furni - over the lot, and the ships called "clippers" could not be call ed a ture for lack of coal , steamed triumphantly into San Francisco Bay distinct species. Chapelle, a tall m an with a white mustache, on 28 February. This launched the very successful and profitable piercing glance and commanding presence, served as C urato r of operations of the Pacific Mail Company. Marine Transportation at the Smithsonian Institution in WashAspinwall went on to build a railway across the isthmus to ington DC. Known as a person who did not suffer foo ls gladly, he connect the two ports with his steamship services in each ocean. nevertheless took a generous interes t in our work in the fledgling From that moment in 1853, people in SouthStreetSeaportMuseumonNew a hurry to get to San Francisco or York's East River. It was always a great It wasn't the exhilarating rush other West Coast ports took this route, occasion when C hap would stop off leaving the Cape Horn route as a for a chat in our crowded little office in ofthe sailing ship on the stretch, cargo run for sailing ships, carrying Fulton Street-an occasion often fo lbut the remorseless pounding only the occasional passenger. lowed by his sweeping us off to dinner In effect, the industrial age was somewhere in the neighborhood, to of the big, low-power engine linking land and sea routes with steam cheer us up and enco urage the work. consistently driving along a and iron. The great visionary British One day early in 1970, a few years artist ]. M. W . Turn er had celebrated after the publi cation of The Search for slender hull at low speed that the age of steam as something changSpeed Under Sail, C hapelle was in my gave steam its primacy .... ing mankind's perception ofspace and office talking about the different kinds time, notably in his marvelo us work of ship that had been call ed clippers in "Steam and Speed," a painting which dissolved the old solidities of their time. Glory of the Seas, McKay's last big square rigger, was the wo rld into a blur of speed and power. His assess ment of the called a "half clipper." She had a distin cti ve, shapely hull, but was actual and psychic impact of steam was right, I beli eve. But it is too full in the body to be called a pure clipper. important to realize that clipper ships sailed faster than any steamer Launched in 1869, she was built too late for the first-class could travel until long after the age of the clipper ship had passed. carrying trade needed to sustain th e li the-limbed beauties that had The answer to this conundrum is that steamers made their passages swept all before them on th e long-haul trades they were built for. consistendy, continuing to traverse the sea at five knots or so, while For 1869 was th e yea r that the transco ntin ental railroad across the the clipper that could roll off 15 knots or more often stood waiting United States was co mpleted with the dri ving of the ceremonial for a breeze, or battl ed her way close-haul ed under short canvas golden spike, thus short-circuiting the Cape Horn passage as a against adverse gales, which again could cut progress down to a viable way to cany passengers from New York to San Francisco (a crawl. It wasn 't th e exhilarating rush of the sailing ship on the route already comprom ised, as we've seen, by the completion of stretch, but the remorseless pounding of the big, low-power engine th e Aspinwall railway across the isthmus of Panama). And in 1869 consistently driving along a slender hull at low speed that gave the Suez Canal was opened, providing a direct water route to India steam its primacy on the ocean routes th at bind the world together. and China through the M editerranean and the Red Sea, a good T he big wooden paddlewheelers from New York's East River route for steam ers but not for sailin g ships, which throve on the yards continued to o pen up the Pacific and were soon trading to grand winds of the Roaring Forties so uth of the Cape of Good China and Japan. This didn' t las t much more than a decade. The Hope on th eir route around Africa. ships were vulnerabl e to fire and breakdown, and even without But the Glory was a beautiful vessel and from the hand of a catastrophe at sea the grea t sh ips shook themselves to pieces under master. I mentioned the grace of her figurehead in India House, the pounding of th eir huge single-cylinder engines. a few blocks so uth of our office in South Street-all that had been Of this las t flin g of th e big wooden ships in the first-class saved when the old ship was burnt for her m etal in 1923. Chapelle carrying trade, stemming from the same East Ri ve r yards that built confessed he had never laid eyes on this important remnant from the clippers, nothing survives today but some awe-inspiring the mas ter builder's yard. Not being a member oflndia H ouse, a photographs, and a sin gle evocati ve relic-the passenger saloon of private club, he had just not thought to walk in and have a look. the W ebb steamer SS China , preserved as a waterfront residence I wasn't a member either, but I got up and said: "Let's go." in Tiburon, California, with a handful of its etched clerestory When we got to that noble old brownstone named for the 14
SEA HISTORY 88, SPRING 1999