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Editor's note: The following text was originally published on June 4, 1887 in "The Cumberland Mercury", Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia. Thanks to volunteer researcher George A. Thompson for finding, cataloging and transcribing this article. The language, spelling and grammar of the article reflects the time period when it was written.  Start of a race for Fifth Class Yachts 1902, Hudson River Ice Yacht Club. Ray Ruge Collection, Hudson River Maritime Museum. ICE YACHTING AT POUGHKEEPSIE. Sir,—I thought I would send you a little account of the sport an old subscriber of yours is enjoying at present. My profession — that of a civil engineer — carries me into all parts of the country, and sometimes I am fortunate enough to run across good sport of one kind or another, fishing and duck shooting being my general pastime; but at present I am located at the head-quarters of a sport less common, viz., ice boating, which beats everything I ever engaged in in this country. You cannot credit the amount of speed these boats gather until you have ridden in one with a good stiff breeze blowing off shore. The frames of the boats are mere skeletons. The chief timbers are placed in the form of a T; the centre timber, including bowsprit, is generally about 50ft. in length, and the cross piece or runner plank about 20ft. The commonest rig is jib and mainsail; the cat rig is sometimes used, and this season the lateen rig is coming into favour. A boat this size can be built for £100. The sailing is very simple; she wears without gybing, and tacks without trimming sails, which are always trimmed flat aft, unless the wind is very strong on her beam, then the sheet is allowed to go off a foot or so. A mile a minute is common speed, and is often beaten. Here are some records: The Snowflake made nine miles from here to New Hamburgh in seven minutes; the Haze made the same time, at one part of the run doing two miles in one minute. In 1879 the Comet, Phantom, Zephyr, and Magic together sailed ten miles in ten minutes; most of the time the wind blew so hard that their windward runners were elevated at an angle of 46°. There is very little friction on the runners, but the boats never make any leeway except with a very high wind and smooth ice. If any of your subscribers should happen to be in this country this time next season, they could not enjoy themselves better than by coming up here, where they will find a good hotel, and will be very well received by the members of the club. This is the height of the season, the afternoon sun melting the snow, and the night frost making a hard smooth surface for morning. To-day, if there is any wind, the champion pennant is to be sailed for. — Edwr. T. N. MACDOUGALL. Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Feb. 14. — Field. The Cumberland Mercury (Parramatta, NSW, June 4, 1887. 1887-06-04 -- The Cumberland Mercury (Parramatta, NSW) If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!
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Welcome to Sail Freighter Fridays! This article is part of a series linked to our new exhibit: "A New Age Of Sail: The History And Future Of Sail Freight In The Hudson Valley," and tells the stories of sailing cargo ships both modern and historical, on the Hudson River and around the world. Anyone interested in how to support Sail Freight should also check out the Conference in November, and the International Windship Association's Decade of Wind Propulsion.  'Annie Watt' in the Port River, 1970. (SLSA, PRG1324/1386) Our featured sail freighter today is the Annie Watt, an Australian trading ketch which had a century long career in the Gulf of Saint Vincent, South Australia. She was in service as a sail freighter from her launch in 1870 until she was retired into a precarious chain of owners and neglect before she was acquired by the South Australian Maritime Museum. The Annie Watt was typical of the "Mosquito Fleet" of small sail freighters like her which were prevalent as late as the 1940s, when they began a marked decline. She was 64 foot long, carrying 44 tons, and Ketch rigged. This means she had two masts fore-and-aft rigged, with the mizzen mast shorter than the main (in the front). She, and other members of the Mosquito Fleet, were used in the shallow waters of the Gulf's small ports, acting as lighters to bring cargo like wheat to the larger windjammers which would sit at anchor, and bringing general cargo around the bay, where roads and railroads were slow to be built.  Annie Watt at Black Point in 1927-settling into position at high tide (above) and loading on intertidal flats (below). (State Library of South Australia, b57250 and 57252) Like many other vessels designed for shallow water, these Tasmanian Ketches used Centerboards and Drop Keels which are also seen in Hudson River sloops and schooners. Loading at some places was done by using the tide: The ketches would sail into shallow waters over a firm but sandy bottom, drop anchor or tie up to a post, and then let the tide recede, leaving the ship on the flats. Cargo would then be brought from the dry land to the boat before the next high tide lifted the ketch free. The same method was widely used in the UK in the 19th and early 20th century, and brought to Australia by settlers, as was the rig and many other portions of the UK Shipbuilding tradition. While the Mosquito Fleet, and some other small inland trading fleets survived very late, even into living memory, in developed countries, it ended just before the Oil Crisis of the 1970s brought a large resurgence of interest in sail freight. As that crisis is mimicked by the energy transition and the energy crisis we see before us today, it is interesting to note how durable sail freight was even without these economic pressures. Read more about the Annie Watt in this 2014 article by Rick Bullers, which is the source for the images used in this blog post. AuthorSteven Woods is the Solaris and Education coordinator at HRMM. He earned his Master's degree in Resilient and Sustainable Communities at Prescott College, and wrote his thesis on the revival of Sail Freight for supplying the New York Metro Area's food needs. Steven has worked in Museums for over 20 years. If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!
Welcome to Sail Freighter Fridays! This article is part of a series linked to our new exhibit: "A New Age Of Sail: The History And Future Of Sail Freight In The Hudson Valley," and tells the stories of sailing cargo ships both modern and historical, on the Hudson River and around the world. Anyone interested in how to support Sail Freight should also check out the Conference in November, and the International Windship Association's Decade of Wind Propulsion. NOTE: This week's post is a guest post from the Royal Museums Greenwich in the UK about the Cutty Sark, one of the most famous of the Tea Clippers. To learn more about the Cutty Sark check out the Royal Museums Greenwich website.  CUTTY SARK in her current state at Royal Museums Greenwich. PetraDraha, 2017. Cutty Sark is the sole surviving tea clipper ship in the world. It wasn’t the first or the biggest; it wasn’t the fastest or most successful; it wasn’t even its owner’s favourite. But it is the last one left. And it is because of its survival that it has become one of the most iconic ships in the world: a symbol of the romantic ‘age of sail’; of the peak of clipper ship design; of Britain’s identity as a nation of tea-drinkers; of the exploitation and wealth of the British Empire and vital importance of merchant shipping to Britain, both then and now. Cutty Sark was launched in 1869, in Dumbarton, Scotland. It was built exclusively for the China tea trade, in which a fashion had developed for consuming the first of the season’s fresh tea. Thus it paid to be fast and as one of the last tea clippers to be built, Cutty Sark had some claims to be the pinnacle of a design, already at its apex. It is an ‘extreme clipper’, having all the design characteristics of clipper ships but with extra abundance. Clippers, typically, have three main design traits: a long, narrow hull; a sharp bow at the front of the ship for cutting through the waves rather than riding atop and a huge sail area. By the 1860s, composite construction, combining wood and iron to make a ship strong but lighter and with greater cargo space, was the favoured method of construction. Cutty Sark was one of these composite ships.  S1717: A painting of "Cutty Sark" by Frederick Tudgay in 1872, commissioned by owner John Willis. Courtesy of Royal Museums Greenwich. Clipper ships were pioneered by the Americans in the early nineteenth century. These small, fast and agile ships, able to zip along ‘at a clip’, put an emphasis upon speed rather than cargo space. The gold rushes in California and then Australia in the middle of nineteenth century meant that orders for vessels flooded the American market. Spurred by the need to obtain even a slight advantage in speed, American designers were bold and inventive, developing clippers which seemed to turn ship design on its head. Across the Atlantic, British shipping was at risk of stagnation. A series of reforms, including the end of the East India Company’s monopoly on trade in the east prepared the scene. The first British clipper ship, Stornaway, was built in Aberdeen in 1850. Tea first came to Britain in the middle of the seventeenth century. Initially hailed for its medicinal qualities, it was mainly enjoyed by the wealthy. But thanks, in part, to an extensive smuggling network, tea soon became a popular beverage for all. Little more than one hundred years after its introduction, tea was embedded in the very fabric of British life. As a tea clipper, Cutty Sark played its role in converting tea from exotic leaf to national staple. It would deliver over 4.5 million kgs of tea to Britain in just eight years. Yet it never lived up to its promise. In a somewhat poetic twist of fate, the Suez Canal was opened just five days before Cutty Sark was launched. These two feats of engineering, one which would seal the fate of the other were inextricably linked, providing a marker in time, almost a ‘before and after’ in the world of shipping. The canal provided a ‘short-cut’ out to China and back. Rather than having to sail all the way around the continent of Africa, ships could now cut through the Mediterranean and Red Sea reducing the voyage by over 3,000 miles. But the challenging navigation of the Mediterranean and relative windless conditions and expensive tolls on the canal itself meant that it was only viable for steam ships. Ships like Cutty Sark would have to stick to the long route. In 1870, the year of Cutty Sark’s maiden voyage, there were over fifty other sailing ships heading out to China and back. By 1878, there were just nine. Unable to compete, Cutty Sark was forced from the trade for which it had been built after just eight voyages, a tea clipper without any tea.  E8980: The Suez Canal in the early 1880s. Courtesy of Royal Museums Greenwich. After leaving the tea trade, Cutty Sark spent the next few years tramping: taking whatever cargo it could from port to port. It is not without irony that in this period the ship regularly transported coal for steamships’ coal stations. In fact, in total it transported more coal than tea in its career. While the network of coal and water stations required for the efficient passage of steamers developed around the world, the quickest and most reliable method of getting their fuel to them was by sail. When John ‘White Hat’ Willis, the ship’s owner, elected to place Cutty Sark in the Australian wool trade, it was as if Cutty Sark had found its calling. The trade, at the time, too far away for steamers to contend in, suited Cutty Sark. The route home took the ship around Cape Horn and the ‘roaring forties’, the fastest trade winds in the world, allowing the ship to make full use of its impressive spread of canvas to surge home. Under the confident leadership of Captain Richard Woodget, the ship’s longest serving and most successful master, Cutty Sark consistently broke records. Its best passage was just 73 days back to London, racking up speeds of up to 17.5 knots an hour and enjoying a new reputation as one of the fastest ships afloat.  A5473: Crew and guests on Cutty Sark in Sydney in 1887. Captain Richard Woodget is in the back row, third from right wearing a Tam O’Shanter hat in honour of the ship’s name. Courtesy of Royal Museums Greenwich. In 1895 an aging Willis, with no heirs to pass his fleet onto, sold Cutty Sark to a Portuguese firm. Renamed Ferreira, the ship became a general cargo carrier – carrying anything from coal to whale bone and fish guano - traversing the Atlantic between Portugal, the West Coast of Africa and the continent of America. In 1922, after departing London, Ferreira was damaged in a storm, had to call in at Falmouth for repairs and experienced astonishing good luck. There was probably not much more working life left in the ship, so when the local retired sea captain Wilfred Dowman, spotted Ferreira, the ship’s fortune was changed forever. In 1895, Dowman had been a 16 year old apprentice, who watched as Cutty Sark surged past his ship, leaving a lasting impression on the young man. Twenty-seven years later, Ferreira was a shadow of its former self yet Dowman’s memory had not dimmed. He knew it was a special vessel. Together with his wife, Catharine, the pair were committed philanthropists who paid well over the odds to bring the ship back to Britain, restore it and rename it Cutty Sark once more. Two years later, it reopened as a cadet training ship and visitor attraction. Following Dowman’s premature death, the ship was given to the Incorporated Thames Nautical College to serve alongside HMS Worcester as a cadet training ship in Greenhithe on the Thames. With the outbreak of the Second World War, the cadets were evacuated and Cutty Sark suffered from a terrible lack of maintenance. By the end of the war, sail-training was no longer deemed necessary and Cutty Sark’s future looked bleak. But befitting of the ship’s story, it was thanks to a passionate individual and a stroke of good luck that it is here today. HMS Implacable had fought at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 but by the late 1940s, like Cutty Sark, it was in very poor condition. Recognising the ship’s significance, a place in Greenwich was offered to it but its restoration costs were soon deemed to be too expensive in an age of austerity. Instead the ship was scuttled. Understandably, this caused an outcry which Frank Carr, then director of the National Maritime Museum, was able to utilise to save Cutty Sark. He persuaded the London County Council to give the Greenwich site to Cutty Sark; he engaged the support of HRH The Duke of Edinburgh and together they formed a society which raised public funds to restore the ship and create a new dry dock for it. They were also keen that Cutty Sark adopt yet another identity: that of memorial to the Merchant Navy, the days of sail and the 44,000 from the merchant service lost in both world wars. In 1954 the ship was floated into its new dock and final resting place. Three years later, after an extensive restoration, the ship was opened to the public by HM The Queen. In total, more than 650 men from 30 different nations served on Cutty Sark during its years as a British ship. Most would do so only once. On average, just 28 men would serve per voyage but it could be as few as 19. The oldest to serve was 54 and the youngest 14. These men had eleven miles of rigging and 32,000 square metres of sail to contend with in some of the most challenging conditions imaginable. The ship has visited nearly every major port in the world and transported millions of kgs of goods around the globe. Built to last just 30 years, it now sits in Maritime Greenwich, more than 150 years old and an inspiration to a new generation of sailing cargo ships. To find out more, please visit: Cutty Sark AuthorLouise Macfarlane is the Cutty Sark Curator at Royal Museums Greenwich, UK. If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!
 Detail of still from early documentary film, first shown publicly in 1912. In the foreground is a killer whale (Orcinus orca) named Old Tom, swimming alongside a whaling boat that is being towed by a harpooned whale (out of frame to the right). A whale calf can be seen between Old Tom and the boat. The whalers were based in Eden, New South Wales, Australia. Wikimedia Commons. This week, we're going a bit afield of the Hudson River for Media Monday. Our November 3rd lecture, "The Orca-Human Bond: The True Story behind The Whaler’s Daughter" with author Jerry Mikorenda, covered the amazing history of cooperation between killer whales (orcas) and Indigenous people (and later European whalers) in Australia. We'll have the lecture video up on our YouTube channel soon (some of our fall lectures are already up!), but in the meantime, you can enjoy this excerpt from the 2004 Australian documentary film, "Killers in Eden." Author Jerry Mikorenda said this documentary film was one of the inspirations for his YA novel, Whaler's Daughter. We've previously discussed whaling in Australia with the song "The Wellerman." Whaling in Two-fold Bay Australia was particularly special because of a unique pod of orcas that assisted human whalers with capturing migrating baleen whales. The "Law of the Tongue" was that the orcas would get first dibs on the baleen whale carcasses, preferring to eat only the lips and the tongue. The human whalers could then haul the rest of the carcass ashore to harvest the blubber for whale oil and other products. Sadly, as whaling continued, other more commercial whaling companies were less open to the idea of cooperating with the whales, and by the 20th century the pod had disappeared. If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!
In May of 2022, the Hudson River Maritime Museum will be running a Grain Race in cooperation with the Schooner Apollonia, The Northeast Grainshed Alliance, and the Center for Post Carbon Logistics. Anyone interested in the race can find out more here.  Chart from "Ocean Passages for the World" compiled by Boyle T. Somerville. Second Edition revised by A.F.B. Woodhouse. London: Hydrographic Department of the Admiralty, 1950. The Great Grain Races from Australia to England in the early 20th century were a relic of the Golden Age of Sail, and were informal races between sailing vessels plying the last economically viable trade route for Sail Freight. Lasting from the 1920s to the late 1940s, the Grain Races weren't quite as intensive as the Tea Races, which will be the subject of a later post, but still are a set of impressive achievements. Since these are what the current Northeast Grain Race is based upon, they are worth a bit of explanation. The Wheat Trade from Australia to England was a long distance trade which required a large amount of fuel for a steamer or motor vessel to undertake, meaning that the labor costs of a sailing vessel weren't an issue in competition. Further, the journey was going to be relatively slow no matter which method was used to transport the grain, so shippers and receivers would sacrifice speed for lower costs. Thus, sailing vessels, principally from Gustaf Erikson's fleet from the Aland Islands in Finland, could ply this trade profitably. From the 1920s to 1949, with the exception of the WWII years, the grain races were held informally. While not everyone started or ended at the same port, the goal was to have the shortest passage possible with the least cost in damaged equipment. The informal nature of the competition was due in large part to the lack of a bonus for arriving early with a cargo: The prize was principally fame for the ship and her crew, not fortune; those betting in coffee houses ashore stood to make more than the ship or sailors on any wagers. According to Georg Kahn's book The Last Tall Ships most of the passages were about 100 days from Australia around Cape Horn to England. The shortest was a passage of 83 days by the ship Parma in 1933, which is an impressive passage time. The fastest ship overall, with 7 voyages averaging 99 days each, was the Passat. This time period, however, was one of undermanned, mostly older vessels running this trade. While a fast passage was desirable, it was more important to avoid expensive repairs, whether that be to rigging, hull, or sails, because the margins for the trade were very narrow. Arriving late with a cargo of grains was not a great loss to the shipper or receiver in most cases, thus the ships could take up to 130 days or more to make the journey, if needed. The under-strength crew was partly an effort at cost savings as competition from what we would now consider "Conventional Shipping" became ever stronger, but also a result of the scarcity of skilled windjammer sailors. Standard Seamanship For the Merchant Service (page 13-17) from 1922 remarks upon this in the chapter on type of vessels, and the death of working sail is taken as essentially inevitable in that same manual: "Nowadays it is a hard problem to find enough able-bodied seamen to man a craft of this type properly. This accounts for the fact that many a square rigger loses half her canvas before a green crew is broken in…. The coming sailing vessel of the future, however, is the auxiliary; no matter what her rig may be. A vessel fitted with crude-oil engines, placed aft for convenience, offers a decided advantage to navigators and one that is beginning to be appreciated…. Many authors dismiss sail with a few sad words of farewell." Sail Freight had been slowly declining since the 1870s due to increased fuel efficiency and reduced cost in steam shipping, the proliferation of larger steam ships, and the opening of canals which shortened journeys for steam ships, but were unsuited to sailing vessels. The destruction of sailing ships by U-Boats in the First World War due to their limited ability to avoid torpedoes also contributed to the decline of Sail Freight in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. There are some lessons to be learned from these races. First, people will take interest in these types of competitions, and will rise to the challenges offered. Second, many sustainable transport systems will likely first find viability in very long distance transportation, as opposed to the short distance we are competing at in the current grain race. Where distances are long and fuel expensive, Sail Freight is likely to revive especially well. In cases where the addition of some modern technology to sailing vessels to automate or simplify crew functions, a smaller crew would mean lower expense for operation, making sail freight more competitive. With the addition of electric motors, moving through a calm or around areas like The Cape Of Good Hope where the winds can be contrary can be transited under power, likely shortening transit times, the main advantage cited in the manual above for auxiliary sailing craft. The Northeast Grain Race is a bit more of a game than a strictly-defined race, due to the points-based system and permissive rules on vehicles which can enter, but is very much in the spirit and tradition of the Great Grain Races of up to a century ago. By looking for inspiration in the past, we can certainly find models for making our future a sustainable and entertaining one. You can find more information on the Grain Race here. AuthorSteven Woods is the Solaris and Education coordinator at HRMM. He earned his Master's degree in Resilient and Sustainable Communities at Prescott College, and wrote his thesis on the revival of Sail Freight for supplying the New York Metro Area's food needs. Steven has worked in Museums for over 20 years. If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!
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