Captain Johnson
During 1852, 95 clippers ships along with ten clipper barques sailed from northeastern ports around the Horn for San Francisco. Seventeen of them made the passage in less than 110 days. Clipper captains raced; this became "The Deep Sea Derby."
Clippers taking part in this "Deep Sea Derby" included the Flying Dutchman, Dauntless, Westward Ho, Northern Light, Queen of the Seas, Grey Feather, Whirlwind, Telegraph, Contest, Game Cock, Meteor, Winged Racer, Golden Eagle, Fleetwood, Jacob Bell, Flying Childers, Golden West, Red Rover, Peerless, and Bald Eagle.
This remarkable contest has been described by the historian Carl C. Cutler in Greyhounds of the Sea: The Story of the American Clipper Ship, as representing "the very crest of the clipper wave."
The Flying Fish entered the Golden Gate on January 31, 1853, with the winning Deep Sea Derby passage of 92 days, 4 hours, anchor to anchor. There to greet her in San Francisco Harbor, was the Westward Ho, another McKay clipper that had been launched on September 24, 1852. The Westward Ho had entered the Deep Sea Derby sailing from Boston twenty-two days after her launching on October 16, 1852, fifteen days before the Flying Fish; to chase after the Dauntless that had cleared Boston Harbor the day before on her maiden run to the Golden Gate, the same day the Flying Dutchman departed New York.
The Westward Ho had sailed around the Horn in 107 days arriving at the Golden Gate only a few hours before the Flying Fish, and her crew was rolling up her canvas as the Flying Fish arrived.
The Westward Ho had missed that mark set for her, but she did have a very fine run making it down the North Atlantic to the equator in 29 days, and 23 days on to 50° South. And from there, around the Horn in 13 days, quite remarkable time considering the fact that Captain Johnson was consistently drunk over the course of the voyage. The following account is from a passenger said to be an experienced seafaring man:
Westward Ho ought to have done the run in 90 days. The captain was a drunken beast and remained in his cabin for nearly the whole passage, boozing on his own liquor and that of the passengers from whom he can beg and at last broke out the fore hold in search of liquor and found some champagne cider on which he boozed the remainder of the passage.
We were off the Plate River with a fair, strong wind headed east and north for several days until there was nearly a mutiny among the passengers. I finally told the mate to put her on her course, and we would back him up in any trouble. The captain never knew of any change; we lost at least ten days' time by such delays.
At one time after passing Cape Horn, we were running about N. by W., wind S.S.W., long, easy sea, and wind strong under topgallant sails, and she was going like a scared dog, her starboard plank sheer even with the water, two men at the wheel, and they had all they could do to hold her on her course. One day she ran over 400 nautical miles.
The drunken captain was at once displaced in Frisco and the mate who had navigated from Boston placed in charge. He made the run to Manila in 31 days.
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Tracks in the Sea : Matthew Fontaine Maury and the Mapping of the Oceans
Navigation at sea was a matter of guesswork until well into the 19th century. Changing that became the obsession of Matthew Fontaine Maury. While others built railroads, Maury mapped highways of wind and current over the seas. Hearn uses Maury's career as a window on America's maritime development in the 19th century, including the clipper-ship era of the 1850s, the rise of steam and steel, and the Civil War.
