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Ships in San Francisco during the 1800s.


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Clipper Ship Captain: Daniel McLaughlin and the Glory of the Seas
Michael Mjelde
(Associates of the National Maritime Museum Libirary Pacific Maritime History Series)
Clippers are viewed as the epitome of elegant, exciting life at sea. Mjelde brings to life the realities of being master of a clipper during the last half of the 19th Century, focusing on the wheat trade beween San Francisco and England in the 1870s and 1880s.
Photographs and Drawings.
1997
Born November 29, 1823, Digby, Nova Scotia

Captain McLaughlin and his wife were shocked when they sailed into San Francisco in May of 1851 on Gray Feather to find the San Francisco waterfront a blackened ruin. This was the fifth time the waterfront suffered a fire, but this was intentional and destroyed 18 blocks and 2,000 buildings.

Tuesdsay, October 24, 1876
"This was an extremely busy day for 52-year-old Captain McLaughlin, master of the stately American medium clipper ship. It was sailing day. The captain had many last-minute duties to attend to before the heavily-laden vessel could depart for the open sea."

A three-and-one-half month, 14,000 mile voyage lay immediately ahead. The ship's ultimate destination was Liverpool, England by way of Cape Horn. Captain McLaughlin, at 5'8" stood taller than the average man of the 19th century. He was of slight build, had blue eyes, a ruddy complexion and long, curly brown hair flected with grey. The captain was a member of the American Shipmasters' Association (the U.S. counterpart of Lloyd's Register of Shipping). He was also a member of the Boston Marine Society; he because a part of this established group in 1863 when master of teh Boston ship Western Empire.

His wife Margaret was in San Francisco with him. She took care of last minute purchases while her husband met with Captain Josiah Nickerson Knowles, the immediate past master of the Glory. The captains took care of all the formalities accompanying the clearing of the ship at the Custom House located about three blocks from the waterfront. Captain McLaughlin filed his cargo manifest with a government clerk and Captain Knowles paid the miscellaneous fees required by customs.

After formalities, the captains and Mrs. McLaughlin boarded one of Captain Griffiths' neatly painted steam tugs to board the Glory of the Seas. It was not uncommon in this era for captains wives to join them on thier voyages, at times accompanied with their children.

Laden with grain, she was being towed to open sea for her first passage under the command of Captain McLaughlin, one of the vanishing breed of California gold rush shipmasters who helped make the name "clipper" mean something in American maritime history.

Captain McLaughlin would be referring to a copy of Mattew F. Maury's "Wind and Current Chart," which helped reduce the length of such long voyages by over a month. This is the same chart referred to by Mary Patten when her husband fell ill and she brought the extreme clipper Neptune's Car around the Horn to San Francisco.
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Page: http://www.maritimeheritage.org/captains
Date Entered: Between 1998 and 2008
Source: Clipper Ship Captain: Daniel McLaughlin and the Glory of the Seas, Michael Jay Mjelde, 1997
Daily Alta California, Family Papers, Historical Records, Submissions from Researchers


Research and WebDesign: D.A. Levy
Contact: D.A. Levy
www.MaritimeHeritage.org
Post Office Box 2878
Sausalito, California 94966
U.S.A.