Barons of the Sea

by Steven Ujifusa

  In June 1853, with Lauchlan McKay still in command, Sovereign of the Seas set sail to Liverpool. Her mission: carry prospectors and supplies to England, and then on to a new gold rush, this one in Australia. In the past, Donald McKay had avoided making passages on his own clippers. Yet on Sovereign of the Seas’s run across the Atlantic, he booked passage with his wife, Mary.42 That same day, the Cunard paddlewheel steamer SS Canada departed Boston with a full load of passengers. It was a stateof-the-art ocean liner, equipped with navigation lights for safety and able to maintain a steady speed of 10 knots in almost any wind and weather.43

  Despite bad weather and rough seas, Sovereign of the Seas flew past the SS Canada in mid-ocean; on one day, she even logged an astounding 340 nautical miles. But wind failed the clipper toward the end, and Canada thrashed ahead. The steamship cruised into Liverpool two days ahead of her American rival—foreshadowing the growing capability of steam and the increasing irrelevance of sail.

  Nonetheless, Sovereign of the Seas had outperformed any other sailing ship on the Atlantic run, making the 3,100-mile passage in 13 days, 22 hours, and 50 minutes, beating the old Black Ball packet ship Yorkshire’s best transatlantic time (on the harder westbound route) by 3 days.44, 45 In triumph, the crew raised a big white banner from the ship’s mast that read in black letters:

  Sovereign of the Seas

  Fastest Ship in the World

  Sailed New York to Liverpool

  Record Time—13 days, 22 hours46

  According to Donald McKay’s grandson Richard, the crowds on the Liverpool docks were greeted with the following chantey, sung lustily by the Sovereign’s crew:

  O, Susannah, darling, take your ease

  For we have beat the clipper fleet,

  The Sovereign of the Seas!47

  The braggadocio worked. Impressed by the ship’s performance, the British shipping firm James Baines & Company chartered Sovereign of the Seas for the continuing trip to Australia. There would be no competition from a steamship this time; its emerging technology didn’t permit it the range for such a long voyage.

  The clipper departed Liverpool for Melbourne on September 7, carrying sixty-four passengers and $1 million worth of cargo.48 She reached her destination in a record-setting seventy-seven days, beating even the new steamship Great Britain, designed by the master engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. James Baines was so pleased with Sovereign’s performance that he commissioned four new extreme clipper ships from McKay. All would be purpose-built for the Australia trade.

  Donald McKay felt that he had proven the naysayers wrong, bucking the conventional Boston wisdom that shipbuilders should not be ship operators. Cash in hand, he set about building something even more monumental.

  Back in Boston, Enoch Train, a bit surprised that his former namesake ship had made such a splash, supposedly asked Donald McKay what he thought of Sovereign of the Seas.

  “Well, she appears to be a pretty good ship,” McKay responded, “but I think I can build one to beat her.”49

  She would be his magnum opus. But neither Train nor any other shipowner made an offer. McKay would have to build this one on spec, as well.

  *

  I. A set of stairs leading from one deck to another.

  II. A small anchor used to reposition the ship.

  III. Find out how much water was in the hold and assess the damage.

  CHAPTER 14

  GREAT REPUBLIC

  Such is the Great Republic—the ship of ships. She is a monument of the skill and genius of her builder, and an honor to our common country.

  —BOSTON POST, October 5, 18531

  October 4, 1853, was launch day for McKay’s Great Republic. Boston’s mayor Benjamin Seaver had declared a civic holiday: schools and shops were closed. Thousands of people from Boston and beyond came by train, coach, and on foot to East Boston to marvel at the huge ship on the ways.

  At his big house on White Street, Donald McKay rose early as always and walked down to his shipyard, this time accompanied by his wife, Mary, and his children. He may have noticed that his sixteen-year-old son, Cornelius, was not looking well at all. He learned the reason as soon as he arrived at the yard. The night before, Cornelius and his friends had broken into the champagne stores, consuming everything, including the bottle to be used at Great Republic’s christening.

  Everyone at the shipyard knew that it would be bad luck to launch the ship without a proper christening. With everything else they had to do that day, they would have to find a substitute.

  As the shipyard prepared for the launch, Donald McKay paced Great Republic’s pine decks. The breeze from the harbor ruffled his coat and black bow tie. The aroma of timber and sawdust filled his nostrils, as did the tang of the salt air and hot pitch. His calloused hands tested the hemp shrouds. All seemed secure. He glanced over the woodwork of the upper deck, looking for imperfections, and then leaned over the bulwarks and called out orders to his men far below. McKay’s workers yelled and scurried in response. Swinging heavy iron mallets, they knocked out the last of the timber props supporting the hull. One by one, the props thudded onto the muddy ground. Above the din of machinery and the neighing of horses, McKay also heard another sound: the growing murmur of the spectators who were streaming in through the Border Street gates.

  “Visitors were in town from the back country and from all along the coast to witness the launch,” a reporter from the Boston Post observed, “particularly from Cape Cod, delegations from which arrived by the morning train. The wharves on both sides of the stream where a view was obtainable were thronged with people; men, women and children vied in interest to get a look, and boys and men clung like spiders to the rigging of the ship, and the sides and roofs of the stores and houses, to get a glance at the sublime spectacle.”2

  All of Boston seemed afoot or afloat, all moving toward the slumbering giant. Her copper hull sheathing and jet-black topsides glinted in the sunlight. Across the harbor, the gold-leafed dome of the statehouse glowed in reply.

  *

  The year had begun with Donald McKay’s ambition burning as bright as ever. After having sold Sovereign of the Seas for a handsome profit, he plowed his fortune into the construction of an even grander ship. Obsessed as always with the idea that bigger was better, he pushed the limits of ship design to create the ultimate clipper. Great Republic would have a designed displacement of 4,555 tons, making her the largest merchant ship in the world, bigger than any transatlantic steamship. In his model shop, McKay had laid out the hull for a true titan of the seas: stretching 335 feet in length—more than 80 feet longer than Sovereign of the Seas—longer than a modern football field. Previous ships of her type had three masts. Great Republic would be rigged as a four-masted barque: foremast, main, mizzen, and jigger. The first three masts would carry square sails, while the last one would have a fore-and-aft spanker (the trapezoidal sail meant to assist with tacking the ship). Her main course yard (which carried the main sail) was 120 feet in length, almost the length of earlier tea clippers such as Houqua.3 She would have four complete decks, soon to be outfitted with luxurious staterooms for 50 paying passengers, and bunks for 150 sailors, officers, and cadets.

  Even so, McKay had given the enormous vessel the graceful lines of a racing yacht. The plentitude and scale of her construction was a testament to the rich resources of the North American continent: 1.5 million feet of Southern hard pine, more than 2,000 tons of white oak, 336 tons of iron bolts and fastenings, and 56 tons of copper hull plating.4

  Great Republic was McKay’s canvas-draped reply to the large, coal-guzzling transatlantic steamers that were the talk of the shipping world. She was almost twice the tonnage of the two great ships of the Collins Line, SS Pacific and SS Arctic, which had cost $700,000 each to build and had attracted a generous $385,000 annual mail subsidy from Congress. In 1853 no one had any way to know that Edward Knight Collins’s subsidy would eventually be revoked and his company would fold after two terrible disasters: the sinki
ng of SS Arctic in 1854, killing 300 of the 400 people on board (including Collins’s wife and two of his children), and the disappearance at sea of SS Pacific in 1856, with a loss of 186 lives. For now, these steam vessels posed a formidable threat to their rivals. Yet for his part, supremely confident in his new ship’s success, McKay felt he had no need for government assistance. Sail, he felt, was still the only efficient way to make sustainable profits on long-haul voyages.

  Indeed, McKay had become nationally and internationally famous as the shipbuilder with the Midas touch. For the first time in history, thanks to relaxed trade policies, English shipowners could now place orders with American builders, and to charter American vessels for long runs to the port cities of the far-flung British empire. McKay would soon begin work on a lucrative order from the British shipowner James Baines, who had shunned his country’s yards and turned to him to build a quartet of California-style clippers for his line to Australia. All would fly the Union Jack. McKay was also building two American clippers based on Sovereign’s design: Romance of the Seas (purchased while on the stocks by a Baltimore shipping firm for $125,000) and Empress of the Seas (built for George Upton, owner of Stag Hound).

  And so Donald McKay—for perhaps the first time in his life—was flush with cash. McKay had always reinvested his profits only in his ships and yard, in contrast to his rival William Webb, who invested his profits in a variety of enterprises, including the Panama-Pacific Railroad. As a result, Webb’s net worth was approaching a half million dollars, making him a very rich man in 1850s America, almost in the same league as the Delanos and the Forbes brothers. McKay’s personal wealth lagged considerably behind. Although, during his eight years in business, he had paid an estimated $2 million to his East Boston shipyard workers and suppliers, he himself was not worth even close to six figures.5 McKay once said proudly that he had “done over five millions worth of business since I have been in East Boston, yet I have cheated no one.”6 As a craftsman and artist, his work was superlative; as an honest employer, he seems to have had reason for pride; but as a financial manager, his judgment was more than questionable.

  Yet rather than set some of this sudden windfall aside for a rainy day or diversify his investments in some way, McKay plowed all of the proceeds from the sale of Sovereign of the Seas, as well as the advance funds from the construction of the other vessels, into Great Republic. He could boast that Sovereign of the Seas had earned about $200,000 during her first eleven months under Funch, Meinke & Wendt’s ownership. McKay himself netted $150,000 from her sale.7 This may have fed his belief that Great Republic could be profitable too. If the behemoth vessel did not perform as expected, McKay would be ruined.

  When construction started on Great Republic, no buyer stepped forward for the massive vessel. McKay was unfazed. He had built on speculation before, and he would do so again, selling his ship after she proved herself on the high seas. Rather than sending Great Republic to California, McKay planned to have his brother Captain Lauchlan McKay sail her to London to pick up passengers and cargo, and then go on to Australia.

  McKay was still chasing gold dust. Prospector Edward Hargraves—who had cut his teeth in the California gold fields—had hit pay dirt in the town of Orange in New South Wales in 1851, two years before. Hargraves’s discovery prompted a stampede of emigrants just as in California Gold Rush days, now in search of riches Down Under. Australia’s days as a feared convict colony were over. During the next decade, almost three hundred thousand English emigrants set sail to start a new life in Australia. About eighteen thousand Americans joined them. They were followed by the usual witch’s brew of gamblers, conmen, criminals, prostitutes—and merchants eager to sell wares at inflated prices. As the Sydney Morning Herald noted gleefully: “The discovery of the Victorian Goldfields has converted a remote dependency into a country of worldwide fame; it has attracted a population, extraordinary in number, with unprecedented rapidity; it has enhanced the value of property to an enormous extent; it has made this the richest country in the world; and, in less than three years, it has done for this colony the work of an age, and made its impulses felt in the most distant regions of the earth.”8

  McKay hoped to tap this new source of business. And former China merchant Robert Forbes, now comfortably rich from his opium dealings and his brother John’s savvy investments, followed the construction of McKay’s huge new vessel with great interest. Forbes and McKay had become friendly over the past few years, and, perhaps as a nod to the old salt’s influence in Boston society, McKay rigged Great Republic with Forbes’s new invention of a double-topsail rig.

  The Forbes rig was indeed a blessing to the men who would climb aloft and work her sails. By splitting the traditionally large topsail in two, the dangerous task of reefing (partially furling the sail in strong winds) was a thing of the past, and furling sails in a hurry could be done in a much safer way than before.9 As Great Republic was being constructed, Captain Forbes’s rig proved its worth speeding the Canton–New York voyage of the small clipper barque Mermaid. “This rig is working its way slowly into favor with shipowners,” noted one publication, “and when its advantages are known, it will soon be universally adopted. It is the proper rig for large clippers. The Mermaid has tested it in a voyage around the world, and like other vessels with it, has sailed with less men, than if she had been rigged in the usual style.”10

  The Forbes rig, with its split topsails, was especially promising for Great Republic, the crew of which would have to handle fifteen thousand square yards of canvas under full sail—more than any other clipper. Also perched on deck was a fifteen-horsepower steam engine, which in an emergency would help hoist the yards, as well as help load cargo into her hull. Donald McKay was resistant to using steam power for propulsion, but he was more than happy to give the crew a steam engine to help them work a sailing vessel.

  As construction proceeded, Donald put his brother Lauchlan in charge of outfitting the vessel. He grew worried as Lauchlan, flush with confidence after his success with Sovereign of the Seas, went way over budget. He complained to Lauchlan about “the extravagance of the expenses you lavished on her” and “the stupid increase in her spars.” Donald McKay had insured the vessel for $235,000, but her construction costs now ballooned up to $300,000.

  Even before launch, visitors gathered to gawk at the massive ship rising in McKay’s East Boston yard. A devotee of sailor-related charities, Robert Forbes wrote McKay to propose charging a small fee for a tour, proceeds which could then be given to the Sailors’ Snug Harbor of Boston, a boardinghouse for retired seamen:

  As your ship, the Great Republic, is likely to be visited by thousands of admirers, I suggest that you make her the medium of doing a great service to an institution which is about going into operation, and of which I am, for want of a better, the presiding officer. The “Sailors’ Snug Harbor of Boston” has the sympathy of all those who take an interest in ships, and they would willingly pay a “York shilling” to see your ship and at the same time serve a benevolent object. If you approve of the suggestion, I will carry it out at once by sending a competent agent on board, and if any one should by mistake drop a dollar in the purse, I will give him credit for it.

  I am a very truly

  Your friend and servant,

  (signed) R. B. Forbes11

  McKay’s response to the old China trader:

  Dear Sir:

  Yours requesting my concurrence in your very benevolent suggestion, that of having the privilege of collecting a small sum from the visitors to the Great Republic for the benefit of the “Sailors’ of Snug Harbor” in Boston, has been received. I assure you that nothing will give me more pleasure than to afford you such an opportunity. This class of men have too long been neglected: they do the labor, they sail the clippers of which we boast as a nation; and any little reward that they may be able to collect along this way, will be highly pleasing to me. And I hope the public will contribute in this way, and feel it to be a privilege to be ab
le to build up a bulwark to shelter the weather-beaten sailor, now no longer able to earn his bread by his perilous profession.

  I am, dear sir, yours truly

  (signed) Donald McKay12

  As midday approached on October 4, some fifty thousand men, women, and children spread out before Donald McKay and his ship. Great Republic perched at an incline on the tallow-greased ways, ready to slide into the water stern first. She was held back only by means of a tenon-and-timberI plank that would be sawed at the launch.13 At her prow was a five-foot-long eagle figurehead—tongue flaring and eyes glaring—fashioned out of white pine. On her stern was another gilded eagle—this one complete with body and wings—talons grasping an American shield painted in red, white, and blue. Below, gilded letters spelled out “Great Republic” and “New York,” her port of registry.

  At the stroke of noon, shipyard supervisor Captain Alden Gifford stood in front of Great Republic’s prow, her bowsprit and screaming eagle figurehead looming up in front of him. From her main truck flew a blue coach whip pennant, as well as a white flag bearing the arms of the United States. An American flag adorned each of her other masts. To complete the festive ensemble, a Union Jack streamed from a staff mounted on her bowsprit.14

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Boston’s most celebrated poet, then read aloud his poem “The Building of a Ship” to the assembled crowd. It closed with the following stanzas:

  Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea

  Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,

  Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,

  Our faith triumphant o’er our fears,

  Are all with thee, are all with thee!

  Captain Gifford then picked up a glass bottle—now filled with Lake Cochituate water piped down to Boston via a new aqueduct—and smashed it against the hull.

  The glass shattered, and the exploding water flashed in the sunlight.

  On board, McKay felt a jolt, and the horizon started to move. The tallowed launching ways began to smoke as Great Republic picked up speed and hit the water. A huge wave crested up and broke onto the shore. Finally, the ship came to a halt, held back by a web of hemp cords.