She confided her misgivings to her husband, who told her to keep an eye on things. Repeated consultation of the compass at various times confirmed her suspicions. It was evident to her that Keeler was actually steering the ship to Valparaiso, Chile. No doubt he hoped to quit the ship and escape the law there rather than face the music in San Francisco. Mary related this to Joshua, who was much disgusted with the man. He decided to confront Keeler and summoned him to his cabin. Keeler informed him curtly that he was staying as close to the desired course as he could. Joshua knew this was nonsense and moved his berth to a spot where he could keep a vigilant eye on the compass. It didn’t take him long to see that his wife’s suspicions were fully justified.
Again, Keeler found himself unceremoniously bundled below decks and manacled. He knew now that there was to be no redemption for him and probably cursed the young woman who had once again outflanked him. The vessel was now racing up the Pacific, hurling herself into the friendly blue rollers with exuberant abandon and throwing up great glittering walls of white water as her bow sliced through the seas. She was making good speed and on board spirits were up. Yet for Mary, this was to be a profoundly gloomy time.
The frustrating final leg
Shortly after Keeler’s second departure from his post, Joshua had taken a turn for the worse. The headaches and fever had returned and, even more upsettingly, his sight had failed. Mary must have wondered if he would ever make it to San Francisco alive. She tried everything to alleviate his situation, even resorting to shaving his head in order to cool him down. Nothing seemed to help, and he spent much of the time delirious, his body racked by violent fits, which meant he often had to be physically strapped into his bunk. All the while, Mary nursed him and plotted the vessel’s course to San Francisco. Here she hoped he would be able to get the medical help he so desperately required.
A view of San Francisco as it looked in 1849. By the time the Neptune’s Car arrived in 1856, it had already expanded unrecognisably.
This painting of San Francisco dated 1878 shows how the gold rush town grew rapidly from its humble beginnings in the 1840s.
The clipper ship Flying Fish off Golden Gate. Although the Donald McKay flyer is running well, the area around San Francisco was notoriously tricky to navigate and many clippers were held up for days off the Farallon Islands, dogged by fogs and fickle breezes.
The run up the Pacific was uneventful, but it was as the vessel neared the Farallon Islands off the coast of San Francisco that Mary endured possibly the most frustrating part of the entire trip. The Neptune’s Car found herself helplessly becalmed within striking distance of her destination. The men reported that they could clearly see the coast of San Francisco from the upper masts of the clipper. Yet for ten days the vessel lay utterly idle, almost within striking distance of safety. Still Joshua tossed and turned in his berth, but his fever had been alleviated by the cooler airs off San Francisco and he had regained some lucidity as the boat drifted idle, awaiting a breeze. There was some hope for her beloved husband. He was still with her.
Every calm must eventually pass and after many days of listless, helpless drifting, the vessel picked up a gentle breeze that wafted her into port. Mary saw to it that her husband was removed from the clipper with alacrity and the very best medical care that the city could provide was lavished upon him. With Mary almost five months pregnant, it was vital that her husband recovered. She stepped off the clipper shortly after arriving in San Francisco and turned her back on the ship that had provided a home for her and her husband for more than two years. She never stepped foot aboard the gallant vessel again.
Incredibly, they had beaten the Intrepid into port by a clear 11 days. The Romance of the Seas was ahead, but it was still a mighty achievement. The Rapid, passed in distress off Cape Horn, had made it back to Rio where she refitted and replenished her crew. She eventually arrived in San Francisco after a truly epic passage of 225 days. There is no record of what happened to William Keeler following his arrival in San Francisco, but he would undoubtedly have faced a severe censure and at the very least would have been stripped of his mate’s certificate.
Meanwhile, news of Mary’s heroism had spread around the city and across America. Soon, newspapermen from as far afield as New York were clamouring to hear her story. Mary remained unmoved by this sudden celebrity and maintained that she had done no more than her duty in getting her husband to a safe port. She was approached by some of the first founders of the women’s sufferance movement in the US, who were starting to push for improved rights for women. These groups rightly saw Mary as a figurehead for their movement, evidence that a woman was every bit as capable as a man. Yet Mary wanted no part of it, remaining by her husband’s side and praying for his recovery.
A view of Boston waterfront as it would have looked when Mary and Joshua returned home.
End of the fairytale
Up until now, the saga had all the elements of a fairytale, but unfortunately life doesn’t always follow the script. Joshua was diagnosed at the time as having ‘brain fever’. Whether this was, in modern terms, meningitis, encephalitis or even a brain tumour will never be known. The most likely explanation is that he had what is now known as central nervous system tuberculosis. This brings on the same symptoms as those reported in his case. Whatever the ailment, Joshua never recovered and Mary was forced to endure his slow decline; his moments of lucidity and clarity became less and less frequent and he slowly came to occupy full-time a world of violent fits and nightmares.
Mary did, however, find many generous benefactors who were happy to help her out in her hour of need. After two months it was arranged that the couple should return to New York, this time catching a steamer to Panama, crossing the Isthmus and then back to the east coast and home. The journey was uneventful and the couple’s arrival in New York was reported in the Daily News thus: ‘One day last month, the people in the streets of New York observed a litter, evidently containing a sick person, carried up from the shipping to the Battery Hotel. Beside the litter walked a young creature who, but for her careworn countenance, might have been taken for a school girl.’
Shortly afterwards, a journalist from the New York Times visited Mary as she tended to Joshua and described the scene as follows: ‘With the modesty that generally distinguishes true merit, Mrs Patten begged to be excused from speaking about herself. She said she had done no more than her duty, and as the recollection of her trials clearly pained her, we could do no otherwise than respect her feelings. Her health is very much impaired from the trials she has undergone, yet she does not spare herself in the least and is most faithful and constant in her attentions to her husband.’
Soon after this account was published, Joshua was moved to his home town of Boston, where he died five months later. He had lived long enough to witness the birth of his son, Joshua Patten Junior, and one can only hope he retained enough lucidity to comprehend what had happened.
As for Mary, she was not destined to outlive her husband by many years. She died of tuberculosis in 1861, at the age of 24. It is highly likely she contracted it from her husband during her long days spent tending to him in the stuffy cabin of the Neptune’s Car. Life in the days of sail was cheap, as illustrated by the ten men who died aboard the Rapid as she battled around Cape Horn the same year that Mary took charge of the Neptune’s Car. Yet there is something desperately poetic about Mary Patten’s tigerish devotion to her husband. Her iron will and love of her partner made an ordinary woman step up to an extraordinary task.
CHAPTER FIVE
MUTINY ABOARD THE ‘WILD BOAT OF THE ATLANTIC’
It is of a flash packet,
A packet of fame.
She is bound to New York
And the Dreadnought’s her name.
She is bound to the west’ard
Where the stormy winds blow.
Bound away to the west’ard,
Good Lord, let her go.
Verse from the sea shanty ‘Dreadnought�
��
The trouble, Captain Samuel Samuels later recalled in his memoirs, began even before the voyage started. Captain Schomberg, Liverpool’s chief immigration officer, had been aboard the packet ship Dreadnought for about an hour, clearing her passengers for emigration to New York. Although her papers were in order, he was extremely reluctant to let the American clipper go. ‘Look at this crew,’ he said, gesturing at the surly rabble prowling the decks of the clipper. ‘I’ve never seen such a set of pirates in all my life and advise you not to take them. Think about what happened aboard the Columbia and I beg you to reconsider.’
Samuels winced at the mention of the Columbia. Her captain had been murdered in cold blood by a bunch of Liverpool packet rats, some of whom were now probably aboard his own boat. Yet Samuels remained steadfast and ushered Schomberg back to an awaiting boat. ‘Never fear,’ he said with a wink. ‘I will draw their teeth.’ The distraught officer was left with little option other than to depart with a feeling of deep foreboding in his heart.
Samuel Samuels: jailbird, vaudeville actor and finally master of the clipper packet Dreadnought.
He had every reason to be afraid. The Dreadnought had shipped one of the most unsavoury crews that Schomberg had ever witnessed in his long and illustrious career. He shook his head. ‘Those packet rats will be the end of him for sure,’ he murmured as he turned his back on the clipper with an air of finality.
Samuel Samuels did not see things that way at all. He had been skipper of the Dreadnought ever since she was built in 1853 for the transatlantic run and the trade had taught him everything you could ever wish to know about hardship and discipline. It had become notorious for hardship; year round these tough little vessels would brave the fury of Atlantic storms and freezing waters to keep up a regular service.
Departing Liverpool with a cargo of emigrants searching for a better life, the transatlantic packet would defy the cruellest weather the Atlantic could throw at her in order to make New York. Many passengers died en route as they huddled down below. When the ship was battered by gales, the hatches had to be battened down and the screaming of the passengers from the ’tween decks was often audible over the roar of the storm. The hugely variable conditions of the North Atlantic, combined with a gruelling schedule, truly made this run one of the toughest training grounds for captain and crew. By the 1800s the trade was almost exclusively in the hands of American ship owners and evocatively named shipping lines such as the Swallow Tail Line, the Dramatic Line and the Red Cross Line.
The Black Ball Line’s New York was a typical transatlantic packet. Clippers such as the Dreadnought superseded these slower vessels.
The American clipper AJ Fuller under way. She shared the powerful attributes of the Dreadnought, which meant both ships could keep running in all but the most severe gales.
By the 1850s the sailing packets were gradually being supplanted by steamships, and the Dreadnought was to be one of the last sailing ships to run this route carrying passengers, and the last vessel built for the trade by the Red Cross Line. Their ships were easily distinguishable by a huge red cross painted on the foresail. They were also notable for their extreme bad luck. By 1859, when Samuels shipped his unsavoury crew, the fleet consisted solely of the Dreadnought, the rest having been taken by wreck, fire and even piracy.
Many warned Samuels that his card must be marked, and after the sinking of the only other remaining Red Cross ship, the Andrew Foster, in 1856, he took the precaution of forbidding his family to sail with him. Yet the Dreadnought continued to succeed and had established herself as by far the fastest and most successful sailing ship on the transatlantic run.
The Dreadnought’s recipe for success
Built in 1853, she was actually not a particularly sharp ship and therefore should not have been terribly fast. What she did possess was a massive sail area and a powerful hull, which allowed a daring man to push the vessel beyond what most ships could tolerate in heavy weather. As Samuels explained: ‘She possessed the merit of being able to bear driving as long as her spars and sails could stand it. Many a time I have been told that the crews of other vessels, lying hove to, could see our keel as we skipped from sea to sea under every rag we dared to carry.’
Another view of the AJ Fuller in dry dock, which shows off her lines to good advantage.
A clipper ship hove to as she drops off her pilot and makes her departure from land.
Samuels also believed the big secret of the Dreadnought’s success was his willingness to push the vessel through the hours of darkness, when other skippers tended to snug their vessel down. The North Atlantic proved to be the ideal forum for her and, as the years rolled by, she acquired the nickname the ‘wild boat of the Atlantic’.
Samuel Samuels was evidently a very talented sailor and he had enjoyed a colourful youth which included running away to sea at a young age, time in jail for jumping ship and, most bizarrely, a stint treading the boards as part of a vaudeville act. Command of his first vessel came at the age of 21. Having gained this position ‘through the hawse-pipe’, you can guarantee that Samuels was a tough nut and something of a hellraiser. Aboard the Dreadnought he gained a reputation for the hard treatment of his crew.
Samuels had to push his crew hard since he had managed to make the Dreadnought the highest earning packet in the Atlantic by guaranteeing shippers that she would cross the ocean within a stipulated time. This daring business plan paid dividends, largely due to his ridiculously hard driving. In 20 passages made eastwards from New York, his ship averaged 19 days, with the quickest journey taking 13 days. No other packet could even come close to this, particularly when you bear in mind that the tall ship record, set by the Black Ball liner James Baines, was 12 days.
Emigrants mustered on deck as a packet prepares to depart Liverpool.
Liverpool packet rats
Now Samuels faced a fresh challenge. His speedy passages had come at a price to his crew and there was talk of tough treatment. This had come to the attention of Liverpool’s ‘packet rats’. These sailors were a special breed born from generations of Scousers working in the transatlantic trade. These men were famed for their toughness as much as for their laziness. The signing-on terms for a transatlantic crossing were that seamen got paid their wages in advance. This meant that in their terms they were ‘working a dead horse’ on the passage. Having already had their pay prior to departure, they had little or no motivation to work hard. Although they were very experienced sailors who were handy when it came to the essentials of sail handling, they would do little more than was required for their own safety and progress to the next port.
Samuels describes them thus: ‘The Liverpool sailors were not easily demoralised. They were the toughest class of men in all respects. They could stand the worst weather, food and usage and put up with less sleep, more rum and harder knocks than any other sailors. They would not serve in any other trade and they had not the slightest idea of morality or honesty. These rascals could never be brought to subjection by moral persuasion.’
The packet rats had a tendency to dominate and subjugate other crew members. Samuels often noted how a packet rat would come aboard having spent his advance on some drunken spree. Barefoot and ragged, he seemed ill-prepared for the lacerating cold of a transatlantic crossing. As the voyage progressed, Samuels would notice that the sailor in question would gradually acquire more and more layers of clothes, while other sailors who were not part of the ‘packet rat’ fraternity would lose theirs.
Emigrants say their final goodbye to England. For many it would be their last sight of their homeland.
Brutal tactics were required to make them work and under men like Samuels they got more than their fair share. So much so that by 1859 many regulars on the Atlantic run had a score to settle with Captain Samuels.
A number of the toughest seamen had formed themselves into a group known as the ‘Bloody Forty’, led by three Liverpool hard men: Sweeney, Casey and Finnegan. This gang shipped aboard the Dreadnou
ght in 1859 with the express intention of teaching Samuels a lesson. Their plot was public knowledge in Liverpool and many assumed that Samuels would discharge the crew rather than be fool enough to go to sea with this band of cut-throats.
Dreadnought’s skipper saw things differently, however. He knew he had to confront this problem head on and was confident he could deal with his crew. Backing down, he felt, would simply defer the problem. His confidence in his ability to deal with the troublemakers was bolstered by the fact that he was a noted shot with a pistol. Samuels also never trod the decks without his faithful dog, Wallace, at his side. Wallace was a huge Newfoundland, and was utterly devoted to his master.
Prior to departure, Samuels had the crew empty out their kitbags and any knives carried had their points snapped off. There was much grumbling among the crew at this, so the captain determined to lay down the law. Addressing them, he said: ‘The saucy manner you crew just assumed is insulting and you know it. Finnegan, you and Casey have sailed with me before so you know what to expect.’
Clipper Ships and the Golden Age of Sail Page 7