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The Sad Fate of the Clipper Ships
Chapter 22 of The Clipper Ship Era (1910) by Arthur Hamilton Clark
In our struggle to keep up with all the nonfiction writing published every day, we often lose sight of the remarkable popular-history articles and essays of the past. Many of them are worth remembering. The piece you can read below is one such notable work. I’ve previously republished another here.
Clippers were sailing ships designed for speed. Renowned for their grace and beauty, they ruled the seas during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. To the regret of many, steamships replaced them in the years after. Arthur Hamilton Clark’s book The Clipper Ship Era chronicles the development and glory years of these sailing vessels. Its final chapter (below) sadly narrates their disappearance.
We have already seen how, about the year 1855, the extreme clippers were succeeded in the United States by a class of vessels known as medium clippers. These vessels were not so sharp and did not carry as heavy spars or so much canvas as the old clippers, but they could carry more cargo and could be handled with fewer men. This made them more profitable when the demand for speed and the rates of freight had declined, and the extreme clippers were unable to command any higher rate than the medium clippers. After the Civil War ship-building for the oversea carrying trade steadily declined, though it was not until 1893 that the last American wooden sailing ship, the Aryan, was launched. During these thirty-eight years a good many ships were built, and by degrees a new type of vessel, designed to carry large cargoes at moderate speed, was developed, which enterprising agents advertised as clippers; but those who had known the real clippers were not deceived. Many of the old names survived; thus there were a second Memnon, another Rainbow, Sea Witch, Oriental, Eclipse, Comet, Northern Light, Ringleader, Invincible, Witch of the Wave, Blue Jacket, Charmer, Sovereign of the Seas, Lightning, and Andrew Jackson which should not be mistaken for the famous clippers after which they were named.
One may well ask what became of all the splendid clipper ships? The fate of some of them has already been told in these pages, others have disappeared from one cause or another, as time went on, until now scarcely one is left. During the Civil War many…
