This story was orginally published in the Maine Sunday Telegram on June 10, 2007.

Evolution in ship design sometimes takes a magnificent leap forward only to be followed in short order by extinction. That’s what happened to the most spectacular of all sailing ships: the clipper.

For a brief period, from about 1846 to 1859, economics lined up just right with development in ship design to produce ships that were built for speed at the expense of all other considerations.

Sacrificing cargo capacity, safety and durability, shipyards built ships with knife-edge bows and towering masts. The owners gave them names that spoke of their speed and power: Flying Cloud, Flying Dragon, Stag Hound, Lightning, Wizard King, Sea Witch.

Maine was a relatively small player, producing approximately 60 clipper ships, about 15 percent of the total American fleet.

But Maine yards produced some of the fastest and most famous ships.

The Red Jacket, built in Rockland, traveled between New York and Liverpool, England, in 13 days, one hour and 25 minutes, a record for sailing vessels that lasted until 1980, when it was broken by a lightweight hydrofoil trimaran.

The Snow Squall, whose hull was painted gleaming white when launched on its maiden voyage from South Portland, set a round-trip record of 53 days between New York City and Rio de Janeiro.

The Flying Scud, built in Damarsicotta, claimed the fastest day’s run ever, traveling 449 miles in a 24-hour period.

The Typhoon, built in Kittery in 1851, traveled from Calcutta to the Cape of Good Hope in 37 days, a record equaled by only one sailing ship, the Witch of the Wave, which was built the same year on the other side of the Piscataqua River in Portsmouth, N.H.

The advent of the graceful clipper ships allowed the fitting of a full-length figurehead at the bow, often in the form of a woman.

One of the most beautiful of the extreme clippers, the Nightingale, built in South Eliot in 1851, had at its bow an exquisitely sculptured figurehead of Jenny Lind, the opera star known as the ”Swedish Nightingale.”

SPEED CREATES PROFITS

Until the 1840s, cargo moved over the seas in slow, high-capacity vessels. Efficiency, not speed, was the key to profits.

The opening of tea trade with China changed the economics. Merchants found that the ship that arrived with the first tea of the year made the highest profits. Suddenly, global shipping turned into a race.

The California gold strike in 1849 continued to fuel the quest for speed as clippers raced around Cape Horn to deliver supplies and people to San Francisco.

The Flying Dragon, launched in Bath in 1852, was the fastest of the Maine-built California clippers. It was the only Maine clipper to make the passage between New York and San Francisco in less than 100 days.

When it came to designing clipper ships, economy and long life were literally thrown to the wind. Narrow bows allowed the ships to drive though the seas at much greater speeds. The greater breadth of the ships in proportion to their length increased buoyancy and the ability to carry an exceptionally large spread of sail.

Crews of 25 to as many as 100 men worked to position the sails to optimum effect.

The ships were even faster than the early steamships that were in use at the time.

For a while, these expensive sailing ships paid for themselves on a single voyage, said John Lienhard, host of a nationally syndicated radio show called ”The Engines of Our Ingenuity, ” which explores the connection between technology and culture.

clipper ships were part of a state of mind, he said. At the time, increasingly faster locomotives also were being developed, he said, and the public became enthralled with the idea of ”pure, beautiful, soul-satisfying speed.”

THE END COMES FAST

But the economic forces that made clipper ships profitable dissipated as rapidly as they had arisen. The depression of the mid-1850s, which culminated in the Panic of 1857, reduced the demand for freight and dampened the urge for speed. Sailing vessels faced a growing challenge from steamers, which, unlike sailing vessels, could keep a tight schedule.

Many  clipper found work hauling less valuable cargo, such as cotton, sulphur and guano.

The beautiful Nightingale in 1860 became a slave ship under the command of New Yorker Francis Bowen, the ”Prince of Slavers.”

In April 1861, American sailors and marines captured the Nightingale while it was anchored near the mouth of the Congo River in Angola. They found 961 Africans – men, women and children – chained between decks.

The Navy later used the ship to help blockade the Confederate coast during the Civil War.

After the war, the ship returned to the merchant service until it foundered in the North Atlantic in 1893 and was abandoned at sea.

The Snow Squall met its end in 1864, when it ran aground near Cape Horn. The captain got the ship off the rocks and was able to sail to the Falklands, where its wreckage was preserved in the cold climate.

By the 1930s, the American  clipper ships had vanished completely. They had either burned or had been sold for scrap or lay on the ocean floor.

The Snow Squall was the only American-built  clipper ship whose hull could still be seen. In 1987, a group of Mainers brought a portion of its bow back home. Today, a section of the hull is on display at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath.

The Portland Harbor Museum in South Portland has reconstructed a portion of the bow using timbers from the vessel.

Today, the  clipper ship remains the fastest commercial sailing vessel ever built. The design of the  clipper ship was a technological achievement that is unlikely to be duplicated because the economic conditions that supported it are gone forever, Lienhard said.

Instead, the graceful  clipper today survives as a symbol of the power of the human imagination.

”Strange things happen when you release the practical constraints that bind the inventive mind, ” he said.

”The results are artificial, of course, but they can be stunning to see.”

 

Staff writer Tom Bell can be contacted at 791-6369 or at

tbell@pressherald.com

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