Captain Phillip Dumaresq, a wealthy man from a prominent Boston family, and former captain of the 1261 ton Surprise, who had also supervised the building of that clipper was given the charge of bringing the Bald Eagle to San Francisco in the "Deep Sea Derby" of 1852-1853.
Dumaresq was a superb captain and an accomplished navigator who commanded clippers because that was his true calling, as well as what he liked to do.
As a boy, he had gone on a voyage to China to restore his health and stayed at sea from then on, taking command of a ship by the time he was twenty-two years old.
Dumaresq was prominent among those captains eager to set the records and reap the laurels from the clipper ship races around the Horn. He was intrigued by the sporting aspects of the competition and was readily most eager to move on to command the newer and larger Bald Eagle, which was much more suited to making the Cape Horn passage.
The Bald Eagle sailed from New York on December 26, 1852, the last clipper to enter the Deep Sea Derby that year, and beat every clipper that sailed around the same time.
Dumaresq showed limitless energy over the course of the voyage, never sleeping in his bed, and slept standing on deck with one eye and one ear open at all times and lost 34 pounds by the time the Bald Eagle arrived at San Francisco on April 4th in 107 days, beating the Flying Childers and Jacob Bell, that had both sailed around the same time.
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Captain Phillip Dumaresq
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Contact: D. Blethen Adams Levy
www.MaritimeHeritage.org
Post Office Box 2878
Sausalito, California 94966
U.S.A.
The Maritime Heritage Project is a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity established in 1998.
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