All Sail Set. Armstrong Sperry

      INTRODUCTION

      IT MIGHT be supposed, with sailing ships becoming more and more of a curiosity every year, and with so many excellent books on the subject following one another from the press, that little remains to be told of the famous days of sail. On the contrary, from certain signs of the times, it appears that sea literature is entering upon a new lease of life, and many tales have yet to be published, neither romantic nor sensational, but genuinely truthful and realistic narratives of the lives of deep-water mariners.

      The maritime history of New England in the first part of the nineteenth century has certain features not found elsewhere in the world. A stormy, difficult coast; a hardy race of men, who were also born traders; an almost unlimited supply of oak and pine suitable for shipbuilding, and a network of manufacturing centers—all these combined to produce a shipping community second to none. It is not enough to have ships coming into harbor and merchants with cargoes to consign. True maritime prosperity arises when men take naturally, without immediate thought of money making, to ships and shipbuilding, when whole families are so saturated with seafaring thoughts that it becomes the natural way of life for boys to adopt, and the girls accept as part of their existence the absence of their husbands and sweethearts for long voyages.

      It was only natural, moreover, that the development of faster and larger vessels should take place along the shores of New England and Canada. This was the most densely settled section of the American continent, and the demand for tonnage was keener here than elsewhere. The discoveries of Bowditch and Maury made possible a speed unknown before. It was not seriously believed that the newfangled steamboats which Samuel Cunard was building would ever compete with sails in transporting cargoes. The cost of fuel was too great. A new design of windship was coming into vogue to maintain the prestige of New England, vessels with long, knifelike bows and a vast spread of canvas, built on the lines of a fish so that speed could be maintained in light winds. The clipper ship was the deep-water man’s answer to the challenge of the steamboat, and when gold was discovered in California, the opportunity came to show the world what he could do. The greatest naval architect of the day was given practically carte blanche by shipowners to design the fastest and finest ship possible. Donald McKay produced many magnificent vessels, but his shipyard never gave birth and being to anything that captured the imaginations and the hearts of men so completely as did his Flying Cloud.

      Flying Cloud had a long career for a ship of her class. The tremendous spread of canvas and the relentless driving by their captains in search of a record, strained all the clippers so much that they were soon used up. They were, as shipwrights say, unduly spent. Compare the few short years of such ships with Erin’s Isle, built in 1877 in my father’s yard at Saint John, N. B., about the same tonnage and rig as Flying Cloud, but not designed for speed. She sailed the seas for nearly forty years and then became a coal hulk, not because she was worn out, but for lack of charters. The driving of the clipper ships was the last desperate attempt of sail to compete with steam. There was something heroic about that challenge. But as H. M. Tomlinson says somewhere, rather grimly, ships make time but steamers keep it. There was, in the long run, no possible chance for the windship. She went down gloriously, a thing of beauty that had outlived her day.

      Flying Cloud is the heroine of this story of a boy’s start at sea. Enoch Thacher, who tells the story in his old age, is the son of a worthy merchant who had lost his fortune when Empress of Asia went down with all hands off Cape Horn. To help his mother, Enoch goes to Donald McKay, who knew his father, and takes a position in the drafting room in McKay’s yard while Flying Cloud is on the stocks. His love for ships and the sea has been fostered by his old friend, Messina Clarke, a shellback of the old school, who looked with distrust upon McKay’s long, concave clipper bows, even when the ships made record passages. Enoch becomes a devoted worshiper of McKay, and the dream of his life is to go to sea. At fifteen his vocation is plain before him. He has learned every rope and spar in the shipyard. He has seen Flying Cloud go out in ballast to load in New York for San Francisco and China. To his joy, Donald McKay recommends him for a cadetship and wins over his widowed mother to consent. Enoch takes the coach to New York and joins the Cloud in South Street.

      The pattern of all books that tell of boys going to sea is no doubt Two Years Before the Mast. But Richard Henry Dana was a special case. He was a young Harvard man who took a voyage around the Horn a hundred years ago. He was not a sailor in the professional sense any more than are the young collegers who sail as summer cadets in our steamers. This is not to depreciate the achievement of Dana as

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