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Built from Boston east, larger numbers of them slid down the banks along the Maine coast. The economic boom in the west, which began with the gold rush, in 1849, was renewed at the end of the civil war in 1865. It was the route west around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America, that became the most heavily-traveled by these most heavily-burdened ships. Shipping was a profitable, big money business. Many ships paid for themselves on the first voyage and went on to generate high returns for investors for years. The Down Easter hulls were broader-beamed for greater carrying capacity. One example of a stoutly-built Down Easter had 11" square timbers, spaced closer than clipper hulls, 6" planking and 4" ceilings. They were built strong for tough use and lacked the fancy detail work of the clippers. By the 1860’s, England was building iron ships. Donald McKay at East Boston, built Down Easters, “but it was Maine, rather than Massachusetts, that kept the flag afloat at the spanker gaff of sailing ships.”1 Maine, with its long history of ship-building, continued building wood ships that came to dominate the Cape Horn trade and compete in ports around the world. The boom in Down Easter construction peaked in the 1880’s. This expansion was directly linked to the new California grain trade. The first consignment of grain from San Francisco was carried by a clipper, in 1855. In 1860, 1,080 tons of wheat and 59,000 barrels of flour were shipped. Twenty-two years later, in 1882, 1,128,000 tons of wheat and 920,000 barrels of flour on 559 ships left California. In the 1880’s, Searsport supplied more than 10 percent of America’s sea captains. At that time, in a town of 2,000 people, 77 of them were in command of American sailing ships. There were 14 members of the Pendleton family alone, who were Searsport shipmasters. This concentration of the merchant marine brought great wealth and great losses at sea. It was said that the graveyard there had more tombstones than coffins. Thomaston at this time had 100 captains, 25 of them were from the Watts family. Many were young captains, some were under 25 years of age. Racing to destinations was still a part of the business. Date, time and point of departure and date, time and point of arrival; with the number of days at sea, made up a typical newspaper posting. Other information might include the captain and cargo. In the 1870’s there were no national sports, and there were no communications or much safety equipment at sea. Thousands of vessels, tens of thousands of shipyard workers, sailors, investors and their families had vested interests in the maritime economy. Captains and others regularly bet on ships. Before the railroads, most people rarely traveled on land much faster than some of these ships traveled at sea. A voyage around the Horn from New York to San Francisco ranged from about 110 to 135 days, though it was done in less. The return trip was typically shorter by about two weeks. Writers from Longfellow to Jack London wrote about Down Easters. Wandering Jew, built by J. Pascal, at Camden, Me., in 1877, was known as a fast ship. The Wandering Jew had good lines and was well-rigged. Thought to be one of the best looking American merchant ships, she was also among the fastest. One run from Hong Kong to San Francisco, under it’s “sail carrier” captain, D.E.Nichols was made in 39 days. In 1895, a much-publicized and wagered-upon race was run from China to New York, between the Wandering Jew and Tam O’ Shanter. They both sailed on January 3, so evenly-matched that they arrived at the same hour. All bets were cancelled when the race was declared a dead heat.
At any given port, crewmen could take off. The pressure to maintain a full crew shifted to recruiting practices that included shanghaiing, which was basically kidnapping. Boarding-house runners and crimps (agents of sorts) became the sources for last minute “staffing” by captains. Going around to boarding houses where they made fantastic, and typically false, offers to sailors for joining the crew, runners lured the unwitting aboard. If that failed, using drink, drugs or a whack on the head, sailors (or anyone they could get) were shanghaied from ports. The new crewman usually arrived at night, just before the ship sailed, passed out or in a drug-induced stupor, and woke up to find himself at sea. In the business of finding crew for captains, crimps were paid the sailor’s first three months wages for anyone they brought on board. Before long, the second mate arrived and it was off to work. The mate was not the personnel director stopping by to discuss health-care plan options. But health care is what would be needed if the new crewman didn’t get busy. There have been fictional descriptions of second mates, but this one is said to have been related as fact by an American foremast hand. “He was a long, lean, leather-faced, piratical-looking brute who prided himself upon a record of crime and bloodshed, who swore by Yankee institutions “because on America ships, by God, a man was a man, by God, and there wasn’t no damn laws, by God, that prevented you from gouging a dam Dutchman’s eyes out if he shipped as an able seaman, by God, and didn’t know his business.”2 A so called “bucko” second mate might also be known for belaying pin soup. This, however, was not a reference to his domestic side. The belaying pin was a hardwood or iron peg, shaped approximately like a baseball bat, but about half the length. They are removable pins used to tie-off running rigging on deck. Some mates found them convenient weapons to whack unruly sailors. A blow to the head could bleed enough to produce “belaying pin soup”. Seamen could bring a mate or captain to court. If found guilty, the captain’s name would appear in the Red Record, but punishment would not necessarily go much beyond. More often, judges declared the officer’s action justified discipline. Some captains and mates got a reputation from their regular appearances in the Red Record, which was first published in 1888. Conditions, crews, captains and mates obviously would have varied from ship to ship. But, the Down Easters, more than many other ships, were generally known to have provided good food and maintained the rigging. Standing rigging held up the masts and yards, running rigging controlled the sails that drove the ship. Pushing these ships through the roughest seas made good rigging a high priority for crew, officers and investors. Generally mates, the executive officers, demanded that everything be shipshape, spit and polish being the order of every day. Pine decks, in particular, had to be holystoned (A sandstone block.), oiled, coated with coal tar, then scrubbed until bright white. American Down Easters carried white cotton sails, unlike the majority of ships around the world with darker flax sails. The shipshape appearance and white sails identified them as American ships in foreign ports. However, more than bucko mates, shanghaied crew or ship shape decks, Down Easters were about driving vessels as fast and hard as thought possible. That is what had been done with clipper ships before them and by fishermen before them. The captain decided how much sail to carry and when to carry it. For captains, being known as a sail carrier was a source of pride, a reflection of their skill and courage. In the doldrums, a crew was driven stir-crazy with immobility. In a blow they were exhilarated, the edge of the precipice preferred. All ships were exposed to potentially-dangerous weather. The Down Easters were more likely to see it running around the horn. The Roaring Forties, the latitudes 40 through 60, were seas where weather could change rapidly, and did. Water currents around Antarctica and weather currents that flowed in the opposite direction, unimpeded by land, make the southern ocean different. Cold air off Antarctica flowing north to warmer air at 40 degrees latitude creates polar cyclones that circle the southern ocean. Sails were blasted out of their bolt ropes and thrown downwind, leaving fluttering shreds in the rigging. High-force gale winds could shriek through the hundreds of taught rigging lines for hours. Top masts were snapped off and thrown on deck or all the masts and rigging swept away in complete dismasting. The Cape Horn sailor was considered a seaman’s seaman, having been exposed to the most difficult seas, learned from it and lived through it. Their being called “shellbacks” may have had something to do with this experience. Square-riggers continued to race grain cargos across the oceans into the 1930’s. Down Easters grew in length and sail area until, at the end of the century, the Shenandoah, built by Arthur Sewell, at Bath, in 1890, weighed in at over 3,000 tons — it was big everything. A fourth mast was added to move along the 299' ship. Getting to her sky-sail yard was a climb of 217 feet above deck to the main’s truck. The Oregon pine, built masts were 38 inches in diameter and the main yard was 94 feet long. By the beginning of the 20th century, these ships were in a race for their lives. The steamship, fully-developed railroads and WWI submarines changed the shipping economy. The Panama Canal ended the Cape Horn trade route when it opened in 1914. The first ship through the canal was a Down Easter. Shipping was a profitable, big-money business, that was central to Maine’s coastal economy. The ability to build wood ships that could compete with iron ships extended the character and life span of the industry in Maine. When the building of iron steamships took the lead by the 1920’s, the shipbuilding industry consolidated. The ripple effect in the decline of regional support services to wooden shipbuilding — from timber suppliers to paint and labor — was made permanent by the economic crash of 1929. A fair amount of American sea lore that has been passed along to us came out of the era of the Down Easter. The long passages, onboard culture, and wild weather in the southern ocean, made for stories to be remembered. The ships and the sailors are gone, but the stories, fact, fiction and poem, remain. Most visibly-reflective of the great prosperity these ships helped generate, are the large white captain’s homes along the Maine coast. 1 The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860, Samuel Eliot Morison 2 The Down Easters, Basil Lubbock |
