THE DAYS OF SAIL

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 88, 11 October 1937, Page 4

THE DAYS OF SAIL

RISE OF THE CUPPERS

WHEN PASSENGERS COOKED

FATE OF SEAMEN

Year after year goes up sigh after sigh (usually from the bosoms of those who have never sailed in them) of regret that the sailing-ship has vanished from the sea, says a writer in ""John o' London's Weekly." Nothing could be farther from the truth. Sail is dying, it is true; but it's dying hard. It may even never die at all; indeed, it is more than likely that a few sailing-ships will always remain either: for training purposes or as curious relics of another age, just as the hansom cab is still to be seen occasionally on the London streets. As long as -there is a sailor alive who; has spent some years in sailingships he .will despise the steamer with a fierce hatred; he may or may not be sincere, but his attitude is apparently relentless. Recently I showed a very aid man, who had in his day commanded a full-rigged ship, over a modern liner—a lovely thing of speed and elegance and comfort, and replete with : engineering marvels. 'B—— tea-kettle!" was his only comment.' But with "windjammed" still racing Erom Australian ports with grain, sail :ontinues to be, as it were, in the tiews. The 'list is growing smaller. The Herzogin Cecilie went ashore some time ago; the late Lady Houston, t will be remembered, offered to pay "or her salvage. Only thfs year the 2. D. Pedersen was wrecked. The jrace Harwar has been scrapped. Not me full-rigged ship remains under :he British flag, the last being the Sarthpool, which met her fate four or ive years back near !the Cape Verde Islands. Yet these lovely vessels sail Ironi, and to, British ports, and: may jften be seen at Falmouth, where lies ;he Cutty Sark (of which more anon) n her former gloor, ; though permanently at anchor now. CONTINUED INTEREST. The continued existence of sail nakes for continued interest in it, an nterest which is certainly increasing f the spate of literature dealing with jvery aspect ,of the subject is any :riterion. With the admirable books >f Mrs. Fox-Smith and M£. Keble 2hatterton as the foundation for Engish readers, the romance of sail, apart rom fiction, seems a field which grows • nore and more' tempting. The latest ;o enter it are two Americans, Helen ; ja Grange and Jacques La Grange, vho, between them—the former being •esponslble for the text and the latter ■ ' 'or thirty-seven extremely fine wood- i sngravings in Colour—have evolved , 'Clipper Ships of America and Great 3ritain, 1833-1869." 1 There is much technical material of mly limited interest, and much space , s devoted to "record" runs. It is feasant to think, for instance, that in 1 Way, 1852, the? '■ Staffordshire set sail : rom Boston and arrived at San I Trancisco 101 days later (which seems ] •ather a longish time) "having < mashed the record from 50deg. South < Pacific in a thirty-six day rail" But 1 '. would not put it at higher than that. < Of more general appeal is the fol- i owing contrast with a modern trans- '< Atlantic crossing in the Queen Mary i >r Normandie or even in a less glam- -1 >rous vessel: t ". . .. Legal., requirements sue- 1 :eeded in wiping out the old state of .1 iff airs that #i?§vailed when $ jers, who were expected to provide heir own fool, boarded .ships for f Vmerica with little more than a bag i if potatoes—or perhaps nothing at all. r Dhe two greatest causes of suffering j tnd death aboard ship in the 1850's c vere: the obligation of passengers to j :ook for themselves, and insufficient j 'entilation. . . :i JThere were actual j. :ases of starvation caused by the in-' V ibility of passengers, prostrated by ; ea-sickness, to cook for themselves." *j CHEAP PASSAGES, t On the other hand, prices were not ° ligh. A century ago "the finest and l . astest sailing vessels in tire world" J ook first-class passengers from Lon-'-j---lon to New York, or vice versa, for " hirty-flve guineas, which included all 9 ood and even wines. Steerage rates ti varied with the time of year and the t' lumber of passengers, usually fiuctuatng between six guineas, and three fuineas, with children at half price; t was sometimes possible to travel i' teerage across the Atlantic for as ti ittle as thirty shillings! ti What was the main cause of the ii ush of clipper ship building in the I larly fifties? Another rush—the gold I ■ush, , -i■-,-.',; ? ::,'.'. tl "Gold seekers swept forward to Call- ti ornia. Clipper ships tore round the w lorn, and beat a-race track in the hocking, iridescent waters,. ~ Man A eemeU to rival Nature in a perfect i irgy of inspired invention and turned >ut sleek thoroughbred after sleek a horoughbred, whose long white arms j, tretched outward to. 'embrace the q >reeze and draw into, themselves the eery essence of moving, pulsing life." a Which takes us some distance from $ ( statistics, and shows that „ ( Todgers' can do it." t} The first of these "sleek thorough- . >reds" to be described as an extreme Sj Upper ship was the Rainbow, 750 ■" ons and launched at New York, £ January 22, 1845. Like the more "' amous British tea-clippers of the ?* Ixties, she traded with China and was D ' iretty fast. Her life was short, and 5, he added to the many sea mysteries, '* or from her fifth voyage, in 1848, she : lever returned. No trace of her was A iver found. The Sea Witch, Oriental, a; Surprise, and Staghound were others Pif her type, the. last-named marking « he = entry of the master-builder of hi American history, the famous Donald pi tfcKay, who, by the way, was a Scot nn wrnin Nova Scotia. More than a score )f these Clipper ships are described lit ninutely, with lavish praise of their m tppearance and achievements. An ugly F: :ontrast" is the ■■ fate of the men who st worked them. d< FINISHED AT FORTY-FIVE. Nelson once said that the average j n ife of a seaman is, from hard service, inished at forty-five, Things had not mproved half a century after his leath: Ti "In 1850 reports from the Seamen's ] y Setreat at Station Island alone showed tii ;hat out of sixty deaths in a period of m six months, forty-two were between ar ;he ages of sixteen and thirty-two, and j n he average age was a fraction over _, ;wenty-eight years, ... If it were m jossibie to tabulate the yearly deaths tll n home ports, in foreign ports, and at . ;ea, the total- would be endrmous." , Land-sharks, male and female, were * wt idle. "Even tho best sailor found d t hard to resist being debauched, J" jeaten, robbed, and kicked back to *" »ea,for more money, and was always learning' Mat another ship lay waiting f l it the end of every road ashore, to- J° 'ether with another headache, and ™ mother grudge against his foresworn u jnemy, the captain," . Greater space is, naturally enough, -M ievoted to American clippers. But ai: Zie best-linown British ships of the Pi type, their names familiar to all lovers te: rf the sea, are faithfully described. 'Ai \mong the first of these was the Ai Stomoway which "was very wet and in liable to put her nose under tho in urater," but made,her first passage to Be

Hong Kong in 102 days. That famous pair, the Taiping and the Ariel, followed, loading at China ports with tea for London and racing each other home. The Ariel was immensely fast, and could do a day's run of 340 knots. Both were- lost in 1872. Another historic p > were the Sir Lancelot and Leander. The former was considered "the fastest sailing-ship' that ever traversed the ocean"; her hulk was painted pale sea-green and her figure head was a knight in armour; with plumed helmet and hand sword. She was still afloat in the nineties, under Arab ownership. THE THEEMOPYLAE. The Thermopylae made some fine passages in the sixties and seventies (including London-Melbourne in sixtysix days), and in the eighties joined the wool fleet. She ended her days as a Portuguese training ship, the Pedro Numes, and was torpedoed in the Tagus, as being no longer serviceable, as late as 1907. Finally, the s Cutty Sark. No sailingshiy has had so much written about her as the Cutty Sark, which may be a good reason for writing no more, However, she is the last of her vintage, for the grain-ships of today are vastly her junior. She was launched in 1869. Here is a picture of her in her debutante days: . "She was given a generous amount of brass-work trimming about her decks, her hull was black, with a gold line at the height of her main-deck, and she was sheathed with yellow metal. Her upper masts and yards were of Oregon pine, painted black, but her lower masts, lower yards and bowsprit were of Iron." Her figure-head was the witch Nannie in Burns's "Tarn o' Shanter," wearing the cutty sark (i.e., short chemise). In 1895 she was sold to the Portuguese and renamed Ferreira. I made a voyage in her in 1913, when ishe was neither lovely to look upon inor comfortable. But in 1922 Captain bowman bought her back for £3750, ' and she is likely to spend the rest of her life—she has undergone beauty treatment—-as a museum piece. And a very welcome one. ,