35. Augur, Tall Ships to Cathay, 117.
36. William Henry Low II to Harriet Low Hilliard, August 1, 1841, Loines, China Trade Post-Bag, 92.
37. Jacques Downs, Golden Ghetto: The American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping of American China Policy, 1784–1844 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015), 81.
38. Warren Delano II to William Hunter and Edward King, February 24, 1841, Delano Family Papers II, Papers of Warren Delano II, 5, General Correspondence, Russell and Company—Wood, container 34A, FDR Library.
39. Grant Jr., “Fair, Honorable, and Legitimate Trade.”
40. “Treaty of Nanking,” UCLA Asia Institute, accessed July 26, 2016, www.international.ucla.edu/asia/article/18421.
41. John Quincy Adams, Memoirs, 9: 30-31, quoted in Downs, Golden Ghetto (Kindle edition, 2015), location 5489.
42. Grant Jr., “Fair, Honorable, and Legitimate Trade.”
43. Ibid.
Chapter 4: Yankees in Gotham
1. Cynthia Owen Philip, “New Englanders-on-Hudson,” About Town, Fall 2014, 5.
2. Washington Irving, A Knickerbocker’s History of New York (Gretna, LA: Pelican Press, 2009), 193.
3. New York Evening Post, October 27, 1817. Square Riggers on a Schedule: The New York Sailing Packets to England, France, and the Cotton Ports (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1938), 23.
4. Walt Whitman, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” accessed February 13, 2017, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/45470.
5. M. C. Hallberg, “Railroads in North America: Some Historical Facts and An Introduction to an Electronic Database of North American Railroads and Their Evolution” (Harrisburg, PA: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2009), 19.
6. Frank Gray Griswold, Clipper Ships and Yachts (New York: Dutton’s, 1927), 25.
7. Quoted in Ward, Before the Trumpet (1985), 18.
8. Colonel Duncan S. Somerville, The Aspinwall Empire (Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport Museum), 8.
9. Ibid., 10.
10. Walter Barrett, Old Merchants of New York (New York: Knox and Sons, 1885), 158. http://files.usgwarchives.net/ny/newyork/bios/oldmerchants/griswold-nathaniel.txt.
11. Downs, Golden Ghetto (Kindle edition, 2015), 432.
12. Joe McMillan, “A. A. Low & Brother,” House Flags of U.S. Shipping Companies, accessed March 29, 2015, http://fotw.fivestarflags.com/us~hfl.html#low.
13. Diary of Philip Hone, June 2, 1836, quoted in Martin Simmons, Union Club of the City of New York (New York: Union Club, 1986), 3.
14. William C. Hunter, quoted in Ward, Before the Trumpet (1986), 70.
15. Warren Delano II to Franklin Hughes Delano, Canton, November 11, 1838. Papers of Franklin Hughes Delano, box 3, Delano Family Papers, FDR Library.
16. Mrs. C. M. Kirland, “The Mystery of Visiting,” Sartain’s 6 (May 1850): 317.
17. Diary of Philip Hone, June 17, 1836, quoted in Simmons, Union Club, 9.
18. Simmons, Union Club, 9.
19. Charles Lockwood, “Gangs, Crime, Smut, and Violence,” New York Times online, September 20, 1990, www.nytimes.com/1990/09/20/opinion/gangs-crime-smut-violence.html.
20. Mike Walsh, quoted in Edward K. Spann, New York: The New Metropolis, 1840–1857 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 233.
21. John Steele Gordon, “Five Myths About Millionaires,” Washington Post online, September 21, 2011, www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-millionaires/2011/09/21/gIQAvyGqqK_story.html.
22. Kevin Phillips, Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich (New York: Broadway Books, 2002), 26.
23. Matthew Hale Smith, as quoted in John Steele Gordon, An Empire of Wealth: The Epic Rise of American Economic Power (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009), 211.
24. Mary L. Knapp, An Old Merchant’s House: Life at Home in New York City, 1835–65 (New York: Girandole Books, 2012), 51–54.
25. Ibid., 15.
26. Kleeman, Gracious Lady, 15.
27. Knapp, An Old Merchant’s House, 88.
28. Ward, Before the Trumpet (1986), 87.
29. Delano Family Papers, quoted in Ward, Before the Trumpet (1986), 79.
30. Anna Lyman to Edward N. R. Lyman, October 1843, quoted in Frederic A. Delano, Warren Delano (II) and Catherine Robbins (Lyman) Delano, 6.
31. Ward, Before the Trumpet (1986), 79.
32. Mary Lesley Ames, The Life and Letters of Peter and Susan Lesley (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1909), 137.
33. Warren Delano, April 6, 1843, quoted in Downs, Golden Ghetto (Kindle edition, 2015), location 3879 of 13153.
34. Diary of Edward Delano, June 16, 1841, in Downs, Golden Ghetto (Kindle edition, 2015), location 3921 of 13153.
35. Robert Bennet Forbes, Personal Reminiscences, 167.
36. Catherine Lyman Delano, quoted in Kleeman, Gracious Lady, 14.
37. Grant Jr., “Fair, Honorable, and Legitimate Trade.”
Chapter 5: Mazeppa and the Problem Child
1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835), quoted in Benjamin W. Labaree et al., America and the Sea: A Maritime History (Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport Museum, 1998), 239.
2. Some Ships of the Clipper Ship Era (Boston: State Street Trust Company, 1913), 12.
3. John Murray Forbes, Letters and Recollections, vol. 1, 67.
4. Ibid., 13.
5. Clark, Clipper Ship Era, 59.
6. Irving Howard Chapelle, The Baltimore Clipper: Its Origins and Development (New York: Dover, 1988), 3.
7. Clark, Clipper Ship Era, 61–62.
8. Ibid., 59.
9. Loines, China Trade Post-Bag, 15.
10. Low, Some Recollections, 9.
11. Ibid., 13.
12. Ibid., 10.
13. Michaël Barbaix to author, email, February 13, 2017. Barbaix is the former first mate of the modern-day clipper ship Stad Amsterdam.
14. Low, Some Recollections, 12.
15. Ibid., 13.
16. William Armstrong Fairburn, Merchant Sail (Center Lovell, ME: Fairburn Marine Education Foundation, 1945–1955), 3652.
17. Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast, 9.
18. Ibid., 5.
19. Low, Some Recollections, 15.
20. Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast, 10–11.
21. Richard Cadwalader to author, email, February 27, 2017.
22. Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast, 5.
23. Low, Some Recollections, 48.
24. A. B. C. Whipple, The Challenge (New York: William Morrow, 1987), 33.
25. Low, Some Recollections, 31.
26. Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast, 128.
27. Warren Delano II to Franklin Hughes Delano, Canton, November 11, 1838. Family Correspondence, 1838–1888, container 3, Franklin Hughes Delano Papers, FDR Library.
28. Treaty of Peace, Amity, and Commerce Between the United States of America and the Chinese Empire, July 3, 1844, accessed December 6, 2016, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Wanghia.
Chapter 6: Captain Nat
1. Clark, Clipper Ship Era, 87.
2. Ibid., 86.
3. John R. Spears, Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer: An Old-Time Sailor of the Sea (New York: Macmillan, 1922), 2.
4. William L. Crothers, The American-Built Clipper Ship, 1850-1856: Characteristics, Construction, Details (Camden, ME: International Marine, 2000), 24–28.
5. Spears, Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer, 2.
6. Clark, Clipper Ship Era, 79.
7. Spears, Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer, 2.
8. Ibid., 89.
9. Ibid., 103.
10. Albion, Square-Riggers on Schedule, 167.
11. Spears, Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer, 166.
12. D. A. Levy, Captain Robert H. “Bully” Waterman, 1808–1884 (Sausalito, CA: Terra /Maritime History Project, 2012), loc. 136.
13. Low, Some Recollections, 63.
14. Spears, Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer, 167.
15. Abiel Abbot Low to Edward Allen Low, April 17, 1845, Loines, China Trade Post-Bag, 241.
16. Melbourne Smith, “To See Which Is Sea Witch,” Nautical Research Journal 26, no. 2 (June 1930): 55–62.
17. Adam Brodsky, “Grave Injustice for NY Ship Hero,” New York Post online, October 25, 2013.
18. Crothers, American-Built Clipper Ship, 14.
19. Spears, Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer, 187.
20. R. B. Forbes to Nathaniel Brown Palmer, March 13, 1844, Palmer-Loper Papers, series II:1, reel 1 of 9, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
21. Edwin L. Dunbaugh and William duBarry Thomas, William H. Webb (Glen Cove, NY: Webb Institute, 1987), 18–19.
22. Crothers, American-Built Clipper Ship, 177.
23. Ibid., 68.
24. Ibid., 139.
25. Ibid., 128.
26. Ibid., 147.
27. Ibid., 156.
28. Ibid., 229.
29. New York Herald, c. May 1844, quoted in Carl C. Cutler, Greyhounds of the Sea: The Story of the American Clipper Ship (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1960), 114–15.
30. A. A. Low to Warren Delano II, May 27, 1844, Loines, China Trade Post-Bag, 238.
31. Low, Some Recollections, 45.
32. Charles R. Schultz, Life Aboard American Clipper Ships (College Station: Texas A&M University Sea Grant Program, 1983), 8.
33. Low, Some Recollections, 49.
34. Ibid., 52.
35. Ibid., 55.
36. Ibid., 47.
37. Henry Low to Nathaniel Brown Palmer, September 18, 1844, Palmer-Loper Papers, series II:1, reel 1 of 9, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
38. T. W. Ward to Nathaniel Brown Palmer, May 24, 1844, Palmer-Loper Papers, series II:1, reel 1 of 9, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
39. Low, Some Recollections, 14.
40. Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast, 17.
41. Low, Some Recollections, 50–51.
Chapter 7: Family Pressure Under Sail
1. Benjamin R. C. Low, “Houqua, In Memoriam A.A.L.,” in Loines, China Trade Post-Bag, 60.
2. Edward Allen Low to Abiel Abbot Low, December 23, 1844, in Loines, China Trade Post-Bag, 240.
3. Augur, Tall Ships to Cathay, 155.
4. Abiel Abbot Low to Edward Allen Low, April 17, 1845, in Loines, China Trade Post-Bag, 242.
5. Abiel Abbot Low to Edward Low, in Augur, Tall Ships to Cathay, 155.
6. Abiel Abbot Low to Edward Allen Low, April 17, 1845, in Loines, China Trade Post-Bag, 241.
7. Ibid., 242.
8. Clark, Clipper Ship Era, 67.
9. Ibid., 66.
10. Ibid., 67.
11. New York Herald, January 1845, quoted in Cutler, Greyhounds of the Sea, 113.
12. Warren Delano II to Franklin Delano, January 14, 1846, Family Correspondence, 1838–1888, container 3, Franklin Hughes Delano Papers, FDR Library.
13. Robert Forbes, Personal Reminiscences, p. 209.
14. Ibid.
15. Warren Delano to Franklin Delano, October 28, 1845, Delano Family Papers, Family Correspondence 1838–1888, container 3, FDR Library.
16. Ward, Before the Trumpet (1985), 80.
17. Kleeman, Gracious Lady, 14–15.
18. Spears, Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer, 187.
19. “John Willis Griffiths, Designer—Sea Witch,” Nautical Research Journal, undated, accessed December 15, 2016, www.sitesalive.com/ocl/public/03s/bios/johnwgriffiths.html.
20. Quoted in Albion, Square Riggers on a Schedule, 167.
21. Obituary of Charles H. Marshall, quoted in Ward, Before the Trumpet (1986), 39.
22. Robert Carse, The Moonrakers: The Story of the Clipper Ship Men (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), 47.
23. Clark, Clipper Ship Era, 75.
24. Ibid., 76.
25. Ibid.
26. Whipple, Challenge, 34.
27. New York Herald, December 9, 1846, quoted in Cutler, Greyhounds of the Sea, 121.
28. Cutler, Greyhounds of the Sea, 123.
29. New York Herald, August 15, 1847, quoted in Cutler, Greyhounds of the Sea, 123.
30. Cutler, Greyhounds of the Sea, 138.
31. “John W. Griffiths, Designer—Sea Witch.”
32. Dunbaugh and Thomas, William H. Webb, 36, 46.
Chapter 8: Memnon: Delano’s California Bet
1. Richard Wagner, Der Fliegende Holländer, produced by Louise Hope, Juliet Sutherland, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net, April 12, 2010, accessed September 20, 2016, www.gutenberg.org/files/31963/31963-h/31963-h.htm.
2. New York Herald Tribune, quoted in Edward J. Renehan Jr., Commodore: The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 158–59, https://books.google.com/books?id=Oo-FsjHw4c4C&printsec=copyright#v=onepage&q&f=false.
3. Warren Delano II, undated, Delano Family Papers II, Papers of Warren Delano II, 5, General Correspondence, Russell and Company—Wood, container 34A, FDR Library.
4. Richard C. McKay, South Street: A Maritime History of New York (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1934), 395.
5. “Master Mariner of Note Goes to His Final Rest,” San Francisco Call 93, no. 18 (December 18, 1902), California Digital Newspaper Collection, accessed November 16, 2016, http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC19021218.2.114.
6. Robert Bennet Forbes, Notes on Ships of the Past (Boston: J. F. Cotter, 1885), 19.
7. Larrie D. Ferreiro, “A Biographical Sketch of John Willis Griffiths from Primary and Archival Sources,” Nautical Research Journal 52, no. 4 (Winter 2007): 224.
8. Low, Some Recollections, 65.
9. Ibid., 70.
10. Glenn A. Knoblock, The American Clipper Ship, 1845–1930: A Comprehensive History, with a Listing of Builders and Their Ships (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014), 101.
11. Low, Some Recollections, 72.
12. Ibid., 77.
13. Ibid., 81.
14. Ibid., 85.
15. Ibid., 84.
16. James K. Polk, 1848 State of the Union Address, December 5, 1848, accessed May 15, 2015, www.presidentialrhetoric.com/historicspeeches/polk/stateoftheunion1848.html.
17. DeBow, Statistical View of the United States, Seventh Census, 16364.
18. Matthew Hale Smith, as quoted in John Steele Gordon, An Empire of Wealth: The Epic Rise of American Economic Power (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009), 211.
19. Helen La Grange, Clipper Ships of America and Great Britain, 1833–1869 (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1936), 72.
20. Horace Greeley, An Overland Journey, from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859 (New York: C. M. Saxton, Barker, 1860).
21. Chester G. Hearn, Tracks in the Sea: Matthew Fontaine Maury and the Mapping of the Oceans (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002), 135.
22. Nathaniel Philbrick, Sea of Glory: America’s Voyage of Discovery, The U.S. Exploring Expedition (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), xix.
23. Matthew Fontaine Maury, quoted in Hearn, Tracks in the Sea, 135.
24. Knoblock, American Clipper Ship, 102.
25. Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast, 19–20.
26. Greeley, An Overland Journey, from New York to San Francisco.
27. “A Signal Station on Telegraph Hill: Gold Rush Communications,” San Francisco Maritime, National Park Service, accessed December 15, 2016.
28. Warren Delano I to Warren Delano II, April 10, 1850, Papers of Warren Delano II, General Correspondence, 1843–1891, Forbes, John Murray-Wood, Mrs. E. Wood, Delano Family Papers, FDR Library.
29. Kleeman, Gracious Lady, 16.
30. Paine, The Old Merchant Marine, 161.
31. George F. Campbell, China Tea Clippers (New York: David McKay, 1974), 47.
32. London Times, 1850, quoted in Whipple, Seafarers, 71.
33. Octavius T. Howe and Frederick D. Matthews, American Clipper Ships, 1833–1858, vol. 2 (New York: Dover, 1986), 641.
34. Ibid.
35. Lieut
enant Matthew Fontaine Maury, Expeditions and Sailing Directions to Accompany the Wind and Current Charts (Washington, DC: G. Alexander, 1852), 42.
36. Lars Bruzelius, “Sea Serpent,” Maritime History Virtual Archives, last modified January 8, 2000, www.bruzelius.info/Nautica/Ships/Clippers/Sea_Serpent(1850).html.
37. Boston Atlas, November 20, 1850, quoted in Cutler, Greyhounds of the Sea, 158.
Chapter 9: Enter Donald McKay
1. Edward Everett, Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions, vol. 3, “Launch of the Defender” (Boston: C.C. Little and J. Brown, 1859), 363.
2. W. H. Bunting, Portrait of a Port: Boston, 1852–1914 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971), 52.
3. “John F. Kennedy and Ireland,” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, accessed July 13, 2015, www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/John-F-Kennedy-and-Ireland.aspx.
4. George Francis Dow, The Sailing Ships of New England, Series III (Salem, MA: Marine Research Society, 1928), 17.
5. Crothers, American-Built Clipper Ship, 20.
6. Alex Roland, W. Jeffrey Bolster, and Alexander Keyssar, The Way of the Ship: America’s Maritime History Reenvisioned, 1600–2000 (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2008), 174.
7. Richard C. McKay, Donald McKay and His Famous Sailing Ships (Mineola, NY: Dover), 21.
8. “The New Clipper Packetship Staffordshire,” Boston Daily Atlas, July 21, 1851, Maritime History Virtual Archives, accessed July 6, 2015, www.bruzelius.info/Nautica/News/BDA/BDA(1851-07-21).html.
9. Charles MacIver, quoted in Howard Johnson, The Cunard Story (London: Whittet Books, 1987), 55.
10. Roland, Bolster, and Keyssar, Way of the Ship, 167.
11. Low, Some Recollections, 41, 43.
12. Paul Hamilton, Donald McKay’s Family (Attleboro, MA: CreateSpace, 2010), 24.
13. Ibid., 43.
14. McKay, Donald McKay and His Famous Sailing Ships, 18.
15. Cutler, Greyhounds of the Sea, 144.
16. Edward Everett, Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions, vol. 3, “Launch of the Defender” (Boston: C.C. Little and J. Brown, 1859), 364.
17. Interview with Paul Hamilton (great-great grandson of Donald McKay), November 22, 2013.
18. Whipple, Challenge, 80.
19. Ibid., 79-80.
20. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Building of a Ship,” as quoted in Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed., An American Anthology, 1787–1900 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1900), 185.
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