It was while running home from Honolulu in 1853 that the Sovereign of the Seas realized the hopes of her builder.In eleven days she sailed 3562 miles, with four days logged for a total of 1478 knots.Making allowance for the longitudes and difference in time, this was an average daily run of 378 sea miles or 435 land miles.Using the same comparison, the distance from Sandy Hook to Queenstown would have been covered in seven days and nine hours.Figures are arid reading, perhaps, but these are wet by the spray and swept by the salt winds of romance.
During one of these four days the Sovereign of the Seas reeled off 424 nautical miles, during which her average speed was seventeen and two-thirds knots and at times reached nineteen and twenty.The only sailing ship which ever exceeded this day's work was the Lightning, built later by the same Donald McKay, which ran 436 knots in the Atlantic passage already referred to.The Sovereign of the Seas could also boast of a sensational feat upon the Western Ocean, for between New York and Liverpool she outsailed the Cunard liner Canada by 325 miles in five days.
It is curiously interesting to notice that the California clipper era is almost generally ignored by the foremost English writers of maritime history.For one thing, it was a trade in which their own ships were not directly concerned, and partizan bias is apt to color the views of the best of us when national prestige is involved.American historians themselves have dispensed with many unpleasant facts when engaged with the War of 1812.With regard to the speed of clipper ships, however, involving a rivalry far more thrilling and important than all the races ever sailed for the America's cup, the evidence is available in concrete form.
Lindsay's "History of Merchant Shipping" is the most elaborate English work of the kind.Heavily ballasted with facts and rather dull reading for the most part, it kindles with enthusiasm when eulogizing the Thermopylae and the Sir Launcelot, composite clippers of wood and iron, afloat in 1870, which it declares to be "the fastest sailing ships that ever traversed the ocean."This fairly presents the issue which a true-blooded Yankee has no right to evade.The greatest distance sailed by the Sir Launcelot in twenty-four hours between China and London was 354 knots, compared with the 424 miles of the Sovereign of the Seas and the 436 miles of the Lightning.Her best sustained run was one of seven days for an average of a trifle more than 300 miles a day.
Against this is to be recorded the performance of the Sovereign of the Seas, 3562 miles in eleven days, at the rate of 324 miles every twenty-four hours, and her wonderful four-day run of 1478miles, an average of 378 miles.
The Thermopylae achieved her reputation in a passage of sixty-three days from London to Melbourne--a record which was never beaten.Her fastest day's sailing was 330 miles, or not quite sixteen knots an hour.In six days she traversed 1748miles, an average of 291 miles a day.In this Australian trade the American clippers made little effort to compete.Those engaged in it were mostly built for English owners and sailed by British skippers, who could not reasonably be expected to get the most out of these loftily sparred Yankee ships, which were much larger than their own vessels of the same type.The Lightning showed what she could do from Melbourne to Liverpool by making the passage in sixty-three' days, with 3722 miles in ten consecutive days and one day's sprint of 412 miles.
In the China tea trade the Thermopylae drove home from Foo-chow in ninety-one days, which was equaled by the Sir Launcelot.The American Witch of the Wave had a ninety-day voyage to her credit, and the Comet ran from Liverpool to Shanghai in eighty-four days.
Luck was a larger factor on this route than in the California or Australian trade because of the fitful uncertainty of the monsoons, and as a test of speed it was rather unsatisfactory.In a very fair-minded and expert summary, Captain Arthur H.Clark,*in his youth an officer on Yankee clippers, has discussed this question of rival speed and power under sail--a question which still absorbs those who love the sea.His conclusion is that in ordinary weather at sea, when great power to carry sail was not required, the British tea clippers were extremely fast vessels, chiefly on account of their narrow beam.Under these conditions they were perhaps as fast as the American clippers of the same class, such as the Sea Witch, White Squall, Northern Light, and Sword-Fish.But if speed is to be reckoned by the maximum performance of a ship under the most favorable conditions, then the British tea clippers were certainly no match for the larger American ships such as the Flying Cloud, Sovereign of the Seas, Hurricane, Trade Wind, Typhoon, Flying Fish, Challenge, and Red Jacket.The greater breadth of the American ships in proportion to their length meant power to carry canvas and increased buoyancy which enabled them, with their sharper ends, to be driven in strong gales and heavy seas at much greater speed than the British clippers.The latter were seldom of more than one thousand tons' register and combined in a superlative degree the good qualities of merchant ships.
* "The Clipper Ship Era." N.Y., 1910.
It was the California trade, brief and crowded and fevered, which saw the roaring days of the Yankee clipper and which was familiar with racing surpassing in thrill and intensity that of the packet ships of the Western Ocean.In 1851, for instance, the Raven, Sea Witch, and Typhoon sailed for San Francisco within the same week.
They crossed the Equator a day apart and stood away to the southward for three thousand miles of the southeast trades and the piping westerly winds which prevailed farther south.At fifty degrees south latitude the Raven and the Sea Witch were abeam of each other with the Typhoon only two days astern.
