Under Full Sail

by Rob Mundle

  When the worst of the storm had disappeared over the horizon to the east, the conditions quickly improved. The moment it was considered safe to proceed, Forbes called for the appropriate number of sails to be set, at the same time advising the helmsman, standing at the wheel on the poop deck, what the new course would be.

  The loss of a day when lying a-hull was deemed expensive, particularly when Marco Polo was racing to secure the fastest time to Melbourne against almost a dozen other ships. But in conditions like those just experienced, only a logical and practical approach to seamanship could have been applied. Now, with all sails set, Marco Polo was back at full clip, covering 300 nautical miles in one day, and 342 in another: an impressive average of 14.25 knots.

  Though the ship was making good speed, everyone on board had to endure bitterly cold weather delivering snow, rain and sleet from leaden skies. Bird’s diary revealed that life on board was still miserable:

  There is not much going on Deck now, it’s so cold. Music and singing, reading and such like is the order of the day, with concerts in the evening. We stay in our Births all day and Burn 2 Lamps to heat it and read and write.

  The weather began to improve – but temporarily:

  From May 11th to Wed. May the l8th we Have Had a lovely week of weather as fine as a Sailor can wish for and as good a Breeze . . . We sighted the Island of Desolation [Kerguelen Islands] on Saturday about 4 in the afternoon, the exact time the Captain said we should, which proves that Hes a good navigator. Just as we sighted it a tremendous Hail Squall sprung up which lasted some time. Had we not at that time within 10 Minutes we must Have been on the Rocks as we were going at a precious rate. Its a long and large Island with Mounds of Rocks laying out in the Sea, which Has the appearance of Iceburghs at a distance . . . The thermometer stands 30 on Deck this morning. Decks covered with Snow and Bitter and cold this morning. Snowballing the order of the morning. A man put in chains for Striking the Captain also the Baker and Cook in Limbo . . . I hope we shall sight Land this day Week.

  Then, approximately 1200 nautical miles to the south-west of Albany in Western Australia, Marco Polo was confronted by another danger. Bird chronicled:

  From Wed 18th up to Wed 23rd May this has been a very rough week of Weather. We Had Had one Sharp Gale of wind this Week taking away more of our Sails which we are very short of, which detained us again a little. We saw a very large Ice Burgh on Sunday about 10 times as big as the Marco Polo. A grand sight it was. Just at day break with the Breakers flying again . . .

  By now everyone was becoming anxious about reaching Melbourne – and the goldfields. Adding to this unease was news that ‘All the live stock is used up, the last of the Mutton and Pork [was eaten] today with the exception of a Sow and a few Half Starved Fowls’. But most of all, everyone wanted to know if Marco Polo would win the race against Antelope and the others, in a contest where none of the opposition had been sighted.

  They did not have to wait long to find out. At eight o’clock in the evening on Saturday, 26 May, a light appeared on the horizon ahead, off the port bow. It was the lighthouse at Cape Otway, at the entrance to Bass Strait. Once the lighthouse was abeam, Forbes called for sail to be reduced so the ship would slow down and reach the entrance to Port Phillip Bay in daylight.

  In the middle of the night, the ship’s lookout, positioned high in the rig, shouted to those on deck that he could see the outline of a ship ahead. Marco Polo sailed up to her, and as soon as she came alongside, much jubilation filled the air. Bird explained what followed: ‘She proved to be the Hallifax from London 116 Days out and the Dutch Captain was quite flabbergasted when He was informed we were out only 73 days.’

  With the assistance of a Port Phillip pilot who had come out from the shore, Forbes guided his ship through the swirling and treacherous waters at the entrance to the bay at 8am and continued north to the anchorage at Hobson’s Bay. Before long this anchorage was easily identifiable to those on board as countless masts came into view. They resembled a forest of dead conifers, all entwined by a web of vines.

  Here, having noted that ‘the bay is full of ships’, Bird made his last diary entry relating to the voyage:

  Melbourne is now in sight and quite a sight to see the tents pitched along the Beach. The Country appears very level and very green considering its now within 3 weeks of the Midst of their Winter. We all go ashore to Morrow in Hopes of getting hold of some Dust as there is good news from Melbourne and the Diggings.

  Not long after the anchor was cast, and the bosun had confirmed that it was set, first a ripple of excitement, then a tumultuous roar, erupted among the hundreds of passengers and crew on deck. Deafening cheers went up when it was announced that Marco Polo’s time for the 13,000 nautical miles from Liverpool was faster than all other rivals – including Antelope, which, despite having steamed away from Liverpool before Marco Polo set sail, was yet to be seen.

  While everyone celebrated the win and the fact that Marco Polo had bettered her previous record by some hours, Bully Forbes could take pride in his achievement and look forward to collecting the heavy bets that had been placed with him by rival captains.

  Within twenty-four hours, though, Forbes received tragic news relating to a close friend, Captain Mackay, who was the master of the ship Sea. Not long after Marco Polo had arrived in port, Mackay had guided his ship away from Hobson’s Bay at the start of a voyage to Callao in Peru. Early the following morning, Mackay ignored warnings from pilots not to exit through the reef-riddled entrance to Port Phillip Bay because a fast-flowing ebb tide and storm-driven seas offshore were making conditions extremely dangerous.

  When Sea was halfway out to the open ocean, a tacking manoeuvre went horribly wrong: she stalled head-to-wind – stopped making headway – and would not respond to the helm. Sea was then at the mercy of the powerful, ugly seas and churning tidal eddies. In a very short time, she was beyond help, and being driven beam-on towards the surf-covered rocks at Point Nepean, on the eastern side of the entrance to the bay. Inevitably, one giant wave loomed onto the scene and hammered the ship onto those rocks.

  Despite efforts by the brave crew aboard a whaleboat that had been launched from the pilot schooner Boomerang in the hope of reaching the stricken vessel, there was nothing that could be done. At nightfall, men could still be seen clinging to the forward section of the ship, but by morning they were gone: Captain Mackay and his entire crew had perished.

  It was reported later that the captain possibly had some of his crew locked in irons while at anchor in Melbourne to prevent them from jumping ship and heading to the goldfields. He apparently intended to release them when the ship was in Bass Strait and well away from the coast.

  *

  Meanwhile, the sail-versus-steam race between Marco Polo and Antelope turned into a non-event. The steamship limped into Port Phillip Bay after an embarrassingly slow voyage of 163 days – a time due mainly, it is believed, to a series of mechanical failures.

  By the time Antelope entered the port, Marco Polo was just four weeks from arriving back in Liverpool, after recording some impressive twenty-four hour runs while crossing the southern seas. A boisterous welcome awaited Forbes when he guided his ship back into the Mersey on 13 September – exactly six months after departing for Melbourne.

  A month earlier, Great Britain had set off on yet another voyage to Melbourne, a passage that did confirm the potential of steamships on such a long journey. Despite experiencing some rough weather in the Roaring Forties and Furious Fifties, she reached Melbourne in sixty-five days: eight days quicker than Marco Polo’s best time over the same course. Her return voyage was even more remarkable: while the distance back to England was considerably greater than the outbound route, Great Britain was home in just sixty-two days.

  Following the near-embarrassing performance of the much-touted Antelope, the rapid round-the-world run by Great Britain reclaimed a considerable amount of respectability for the coal-burners. But the swiftness of the considerably
smaller Marco Polo on her second run to Melbourne had left no doubt that for the time being, the long-haul course was still very much the domain of purebred sailing ships. The fast-flying clippers that carried emigrants drawn by the magnetic appeal of that non-magnetic metal, gold, were the reason why the power of sail remained dominant in the marketplace.

  However, there was one telling factor when it came to these great ships: the ability of captain and crew to drive their charges at full clip while remaining safe. And once again, Bully Forbes had proved just that as master of Marco Polo on her second circumnavigation of the globe.

  Sadly, it would only be another fifteen years before a great engineering feat amid the sands of Egypt heralded the final downfall of these beautiful birds of the sea, and ensured that the steamers would finally triumph. Still, the last hurrah of the great clippers would be their most spectacular phase of all.

  CHAPTER 9

  Triumph of the Steam Kettles

  The end of the clipper era

  It was late 1861. More than 10,000 peasants – forced labourers – were hacking their way through Egyptian sand dunes using crude picks and shovels, and with each blow they struck and each spadeful of sand they heaved, the death knell of the clipper ships was being sounded ever louder.

  These were the beginnings of one of the world’s engineering masterpieces: the Suez Canal. It was a project that would see 75 million cubic metres of sand removed over the next eight years so that the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea could be linked by a canal that was wide and deep enough for the largest commercial vessels to pass though. The canal would be a mere 104 nautical miles long, but its existence would mean that the voyage from Europe to South Asia – which had previously meant rounding the Cape of Good Hope and sailing into the Indian Ocean – was reduced by more than 3750 nautical miles.

  This, coupled with the improving speed and reliability of steam-powered ships, would also have a direct impact on passages from Europe to Australia. For the Suez Canal would be the domain of the steamers alone: sailing ships would not be able to pass through because the prevailing winds did not suit. Yes, they could be towed through the canal by a steam tug, but that would be a costly and difficult exercise.

  The Suez Canal could have been built many years earlier. Napoleon Bonaparte, who became the Emperor of France in 1804, had contemplated its construction. However, the plan had been abandoned after French surveyors and engineers incorrectly calculated that the surface of the Mediterranean Sea was 33 feet below that of the Red Sea: a circumstance that would require expensive locks to be built into the canal system. Later, it would be proved that the sea levels of the two waterways were identical.

  It was another Frenchman, Ferdinand de Lesseps, who finalised a ninety-nine year agreement with Egypt and Sudan in 1856 to construct and operate a canal that would be ‘open to ships of all nations’. The project would take fifteen years to plan and complete. Initially, the construction was by hand, and a workforce of some thirty thousand forced labourers was used to carve the canal into the desert sands.

  The use of what was effectively slave labour was strenuously opposed by the British Government, which had expressed its opposition to the project from the outset. However, the underlying reason for this sentiment was probably Britain’s fear that the French – with whom they were frequently at war – would gain a distinct advantage over the Royal Navy through the canal’s construction, particularly in the eastern Mediterranean, where some of their more recent conflicts had occurred.

  With no chance of a negotiated agreement between the two adversaries regarding the use of peasants as a workforce, the British took matters into their own hands: they sent armed Bedouins among the labourers to start revolts. It was a ploy that delivered the desired result. In 1863 the Khedive of Egypt and Sudan, Isma’il Pasha, bowed to this and other international pressure and abruptly banned the use of forced labour.

  While this was a major setback for Lesseps’s company, it eventually proved to be a windfall. The use of the labourers for the construction of the canal had proved to be agonisingly slow and expensive. So, with manpower no longer available to him, Lesseps built specially designed steam-powered dredges and shovels that could quickly and efficiently transfer the removed sand onto the adjacent shores.

  *

  At the official opening of the canal on 17 November 1869, the celebrations were upstaged – once again, by the British.

  The honour of opening the canal was bestowed on Isma’il Pasha, and he invited Empress Eugénie of France – the wife of Napoleon III – to join him aboard the imperial yacht L’Aigle (Eagle), which was to lead the fleet and become the first vessel to officially pass through the canal.

  However, on the night before the opening ceremony, Captain George Nares of the Royal Navy decided it was time to fly the British flag in the face of the French. He guided his ship HMS Newport into the canal and, in complete darkness, navigated his way through the fleet of ships waiting to be part of the next day’s celebrations, to a position in front of L’Aigle.

  It was a mortifying sight for the French when they awoke the next morning: not only was HMS Newport positioned at the head of the fleet with her British ensign flying proudly, but they also knew that the narrowness of the canal would prevent L’Aigle from passing her at any point once the parade of ships got underway.

  The French immediately lodged a terse complaint with the Royal Navy. Captain Nares’s superiors served him with an official reprimand – then unofficially congratulated him on his excellent night-time navigation skills, and on promoting British interests to the eyes of the world.

  The opening of the canal brought a rapid and dramatic change to international trade. With the world’s first transcontinental railroad between America’s east and west coasts finally having been opened just months earlier, it was now possible to transport passengers and cargo right across the northern hemisphere without having to sail around either Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope.

  *

  On 22 November 1869, just five days after the opening of the Suez Canal, a clipper that was to be hailed the fastest ship that ever left the ways was launched in Dumbarton, at the eastern end of Scotland’s Firth of Clyde.

  Just before she slid down the well-greased slipways at the Scott & Linton shipyard and into the chilly waters of the River Leven, a bottle of red wine was broken over her bow, and with that, she was given a most unusual name: Cutty Sark. Before long, as the sea miles lying in her wake increased dramatically, this ship became legendary among seafarers and the public in England, China and Australia.

  Her launching came just two decades after the first of the true clippers was seen under sail, and while she was not the largest ever built, she epitomised how dramatically the clipper concept had advanced. Famed English maritime author Basil Lubbock, in his 1924 book The Log of the Cutty Sark, extracted a quote from an old seaman who had previously sailed on clippers considered to be among the best, including ‘what was probably the fastest four-mast barque ever launched, Loch Torridon’. The seaman’s letter to the author read in part:

  I served on board the Thermopylae on her maiden voyage, 1868–9, when she made the quickest passage ever between London and Melbourne, 60 days from pilot to pilot, and 61 port to port. I also served on board Ariel, Cutty Sark, James Baines, Lightning, Serica, Taeping and Loch Torridon and haven’t the slightest hesitation in saying that the Cutty Sark was the swiftest of the lot.

  Lubbock unearthed two other strong endorsements: ‘During the whole time I never saw anything pass her, steam or sail’ and ‘I never sailed a finer ship. At 10 and 12 knots an hour she did not disturb the water at all. She was the fastest ship of her day.’

  Everything was different about Cutty Sark – her shape, dimensions, even her name. The owners of the Yankee clippers had used Glory of the Seas, Flying Cloud, Eagle Wing and so many other classic monikers, while the British at this time were excited by mental images engendered by the names of ships on the Australian emigration
run: Champion of the Seas, Queen of the Colonies, Chariot of Fame, Dawn of Hope and the like.

  However, Jock ‘White Hat’ Willis, the head of the family company John Willis & Sons shipping line – founded in 1791 by his father, John ‘Old Stormy’ Willis – would have none of these fanciful traditions when it came to naming his exciting new cargo clipper. Instead, he turned to a work by Scottish poet Robbie Burns, ‘Tam o’ Shanter’, published in the same year as the company was established.

  The poem related the story of Tam, a farmer who had a regular habit of getting drunk after attending the village markets in the Scottish town of Ayr. One particular night he was in his usual state of inebriation, riding his horse Meg towards home, when he passed a well-illuminated church that was known to be haunted. Intrigued by this sight, and still drunk, Tam turned Meg towards the church, and on reaching the edge of the halo of light coming from the building, he was able to see witches and warlocks inside, dancing merrily while the devil played the bagpipes.

  He was struck immediately by the sight of Nannie, a remarkably beautiful and lustful young witch – ‘ae winsome wench’ – wearing a short, see-through linen sark (chemise). She was reeling and dancing erotically in an entirely carefree mood. Tam was overcome by this sensuous scene, so to voice his approval while not knowing her name, he shouted: ‘Weel done, cutty-sark!’ (Well done, short chemise!) Realising the witches and warlocks were then aware of his presence, Tam immediately turned Meg and high-tailed it towards home with the witches and warlocks in pursuit. He made it to safety across the bridge spanning the River Doon, but not before the winsome wench – his ‘Cutty Sark’ – had caught Meg’s tail and ripped it off.

  The image of the seductive witch Nannie, reeling around in her short and flimsy sark, was the inspiration for the ship’s name and her famous figurehead. Nannie’s barely covered breasts were consistent with the widely held belief of superstitious sailors that a figurehead featuring a woman’s cleavage pacified the seas (unlike another maritime superstition that said it was bad luck to have a woman on board). However, setting the figurehead of Nannie apart from all others was her outstretched arm, the hand of which grasped a horse tail made from rope.