The Baltimore Clipper

When the pride of Baltimore was built a decade ago Maryland Public Television was there and our cameras went along on the maiden voyage under her first Captain Melbourne Smith. What you're about to see is the documentary we produced at that time. We repeat it now in memory of the pride of Baltimore. She has sailed in a sea of controversy for more than two centuries and the story she had to tell is one of intriguing contrasts and contradictions with legends that are variously romantic and violent heroic and tragic. Even today there is disagreement about how she came into existence and where. But one fact is certain this graceful vessel representing the highest development of small American sailing craft established the reputation of a dynamic city and state for this proud vessel is the Baltimore clipper ship that launched aboard. To tell the story of the Baltimore clipper is to begin here with the latest and probably the

last person the pride of Baltimore launched on February 27 1977. Built as a goodwill ambassador for the Port of Baltimore. Of course there are some who ask why build a boat like the pride of Baltimore Why spend almost half a million dollars on a design that dates back to the revolution. Well in the next half hour we'll try to answer many other questions about Baltimore Clippers and along the way we'll meet some fascinating people round off the Maryland Historical Society your own Garrity author of the new book the Republic's private Navy and we'll meet a Melbourne Smith builder and captain of the Pride who offers his explanation as to why Baltimore built itself. Well this is just her name alone the Baltimore clipper and the more famous is the city. The city that could have a Baltimore Clipperton lay claim to it. Thomas Kilmer the naval architect who designed the pride of Baltimore presents another possibility the more

significant at least most Americans as I think it is rather sadly I think. That they're. At a bottom or a cliff or as a first time and that. The all-American vessel the first American boat compelling reasons to create a new Baltimore clipper. But there were others. Baltimore Clippers played prominent roles during the revolution in the War of 1812. They were highly successful as privateers and they had their dashing romantic qualities their speed made them the choice of smugglers and pirates. It was their speed in fact that brought them their fame. Well they were clearly superior to other vessels of their time. Now Brian Smith explains why they outsail their lifetime they were built they were very modern nerve displacement to ballast ratio is one to one the same as a

modern vessel and they were built at that time strictly for speed only for speed and very few other vessels were built that way. And so she was a modern fast racing craft in her day to compete with the heavy British men of war. They were unique in other ways as well in Thomasville merging online some of those reasons. Well I think the most obvious one right here on this is that the deck is completely smooth contour from one end of the vessel to the other. The conventional theory and the early 90s was broken at least right in the air by a raised what was called a quarter deck or the pull. This is a flush deck on the bottom are clever I think is responsible for that reducing this into the form of architecture. The whole lives of course are very distinctive in the bottom are clever. First of all in a section of the

ship you're sliced it up like slices of bread bread would fry the sections were all very steep. Form at the bottom where more conventional time merchant vessels were vessels they had a more or less flat bottom and a quick turn at the build. This of course works against the cargo carrier can't carry nearly as much. AS. Merchant vessel but perhaps it can carry just as much because it can make twice the number of trips. The rake of the mast as another distinctive characteristic. Of pride. Are comparable to other features it's not a copy of. Any particular letter. With the pride. For example I happen to think. 15 degrees

or less in about 70 degrees. Away from the vertical. As I said the pride is not a copy. Replica that a particular clip or that we ever know about. Not that. We were against that but. It would have been impossible to find that it plans it that it was built at that time. They just didn't plans the pride of Baltimore tradition not withstanding was build from plans and she was constructed at the edge of Baltimore's Inner Harbor within sight of the Yards where many of the original ships were built. The bride took 10 months to fashion the work began on May 23rd 176 and continued through one of the coldest winters of the century. There were difficulties but as Tom Gilmore recalls they were far from insurmountable.

Well I don't think we read it. Right problems. I think. In that we were dealing with. What's been. Built. Never been. A bottom or a club or. The Fells Point. That were shaped by the builder. I think perhaps. That would have been.

All of it. For a. Great. Season. I'm late with one question that had haunted the Pride's builder since the project began was still unanswered. How well would you sail Captain Smith provides that answer. Oh she's a joy to sail. She's very fast. Very different than any other schooner that I had sailed. And she has no mechanical or modern.

Lines and sails so there's a lot of labor involved in sailing her but we carry a crew of 10 or 12 men. So we knew that there were a couple of mistakes. However there are not visible and I don't know and I can. Perform. Better than. I ever had was all this. Picture in mind because there are no records of all of our flippers performed except by inference that they were able to sail almost anything else. And. Go to windward that was their biggest. At that age the average merchant vessel or even naval vessel and the early 19th

century was stuck when it came to going to windward and these vessels could come in inches or position and staying there and walk away from it. They could make it their position and. Back up into the wind. Fire. This ability to sail into the wind with something of a phenomenon back in the late 18th century. Most ships of the period were awkward cumbersome vessels slow plodding and responsive. They were built that way not because of any logical design philosophy but because that's the way they had always been built. The maritime world was dominated by Europe and the Europeans were dominated by tradition dogged and strict doctrine. The Americans though were the mavericks of the maritime world they hadn't found the time to develop an oppressive bureaucracy. It would have to wait until maybe a later century so they were free to develop vessels that were suited to local needs and

conditions. The economy of the Chesapeake Bay country as well as that of the rest of the colonies was based largely on agriculture farms and plantations were located near navigable water because boats provided the principal means of transportation. Towns and villages too were invariably waterfront communities and as the colonies grew so too did the need for safety. Swift vessels capable of transporting both products and people from one colonial ports to another. The revolution brought with it another problem the British blockade of major American ports and the need for ships that could slip past the heavy men of war became critical. Fortunately Chesapeake boat builders had begun to develop sleek vessels before the revolution. Vessels with the speed that was needed to deliver urgently required munitions and supplies up and down the Atlantic coast. They were referred to as Virginia built or Baltimore built boats small fast schooners that were later known as Baltimore flyers and then soon after as

Baltimore Clippers. The development of the Clipper however was a slow process it didn't evolve overnight rather it was a gradual development from the Revolutionary War. There were a number of fast and very successful smugglers in the Revolutionary War that were built in the Chesapeake Bay area. Virginia built vessels probably from the lower part of the bay and they soon began to gain wide acceptance in the upper bay. There is some evidence that these early Clippers were modeled after the Bermuda sloops these craft were very fast much smaller however than most of the Baltimore Clippers and rigged differently. Still the similarities in design characteristics are quite striking. Historians though do not all agree on how the Clipper evolved. Some credit the French and that's a possibility since a few Clipper like craft were sent to the colonies by France during the revolution. Others feel there may have been the Mediterranean influence but Clipper whole form has some resemblance to the Mediterranean is the backer galley. Another theory holds that they descended from Scandinavian fishing boats built near Baltimore by early Swedish settlers.

But there may be some disagreement about the origins of the earth. There is little argument about its effect on Marilyn especially Voldemort in 1752 for example. But Amar was a minor settlements. Annapolis jester town and Oxford were far more important. Much of the early shipbuilding industry was centered on the eastern shore. The first known shipyard in Maryland was established on Kent Island in 634 and by the middle of the eighteenth century shipbuilding was a major industry with dozens of yards producing a fascinating array of vessels canoes brigs sloop small boats of every description and most significantly scooters. More and more of these schooners these early Clippers began to be built on the western shore of Baltimore soon emerged as a major shipbuilding center. Our most serious rival in fact was an upstart settlement just a mile or so to the east Fells Point. By 17 and 90 thanks to the reputation of our Clippers and to the annexation over archrival Fells Point the

Baltimore led the nation in shipbuilding. Baltimore soon established an international reputation to end some highly distorted observations were published abroad as in this romanticized view of the city in 1839. Here it is fanciful imagination elevates an ordinary harbor scene to one of a dramatic in the story is Mediterranean seaboard a kind of Baghdad on the Patapsco. There is no question though the Baltimore was very much on the map the city's famous spread to every capital of the world. And it was the exploits of the dashing Baltimore Clippers that were responsible. And it is now that we're going to talk to a couple of gentlemen who know a lot about those exploits. I think you're going to enjoy this additional segment to our show tonight. Going to talk to roundoff who is a curator of the Maritime Museum of the Maryland Historical Society and a retired architect. And to Dr. Jerome Geraghty professor of history at Essex Community College author of the Republic's private Navy the

American privateering business as practiced by Baltimore during the War of 1812. Let's begin with you Dr. Garrity. We might I think at this point we should talk a little bit about privateering. Let's explain to everybody what it really was. Well it's an ancient institution. Baltimore didn't invent it. It had in fact come out of the Mediterranean we think about 10 or 11 hundred where an innocent shipowner would find that somebody had stolen captured taken his vessel Well his ruler wouldn't want to go to war that was too big a move. Didn't want to ignore it because one of his citizens was upset. So they developed a sort of middle step where you would give this particular shipowner a license that came to be known as a letter of marque and reprisal. Is there any way to measure what the privateers in the Maryland area did. Well and that's a good point to say the Maryland area because we call them the Baltimore

clipper. But many were built actually on the eastern shore. Sometimes the hall was built there and was brought over to Baltimore for finishing maybe at Fells Point but they were very effective in the revolution. Baltimore and say where the Tuan blockaded ports and the privateers of Baltimore were quite effective. Course there was not much of a public Navy. Then in the War of 1812 the Baltimore schooner clipper. Reach the. I think the heights of its reputation internationally and Baltimore probably played its major role in history. It licensed one hundred and twenty two at least one hundred twenty two of these vessels and they went out to war on British commerce acting for their day. Much like the German submarines of World War 1 or World War 2. And being exactly as disruptive Thomas Boyle comes up for the War of 1812. Tell us briefly about him.

Time is bosun Arash man from Marblehead Massachusetts I think he married a Baltimore girl. He took out two of the most famous privateers and while the history of privateering and that would be the comet and the Chaucer and in those vessels he proved himself to be particularly all day ships commander one who in fact made a lot of money for his owners who retained him in command and then invested the profits from the comment in the Chaucer wee thing. But this man actually when you had to use a bigger vessels and go over to Europe for prizes because English in the first few months were alert to the danger in America. So you quit bigger vessels larger crews and you sent them further out. Boyle took his to England. And in England he actually actually issued a proclamation of blockade against the entire British

as one Baltimore schooner taking on that mighty naval power angle it went off very quiet over here and he is a man who can tell us I think about the kind what kind of ships were these due to handle on the sea. Well actually I'm not in a position to tell you do not have a good answer but yeah but give your weasel answer on that because actually as you can see they've got a crew of the bride a bowl of war now and they're working out their problems and so it takes a strong alert man who likes to be at sea. I think they were obviously tricky ships to sail for people who are accustomed to the traditional type of vessel but in the hands of the men who learned to use them they were a dangerous weapon.

I think the fact that they the sight of them used to scare the. Englishman English traitor. Just the mere sight of it gives you an idea of how effective effectively they sailed and how effective their crews were. They drew about 10 feet against him and they could go places probably easily. Well as this is a this is an argument because in the later years of the Clippers they proved to be too deep for many trades but compared again to the traditional ships that they were fighting against They were indeed shouldering half and. Tricky fast elusive more than 75 years the Baltimore Clipper was the leading type of American vessel. It was an indispensable weapon during our struggle for independence and revolutionized naval warfare during the War of 1812. It served admirably as a merchant vessel it represented a breakthrough in ship design and naval architecture out of the Dark Ages and above

all its international fame. Help ensure the growth and prosperity of a great American city. Small wonder that Baltimore would want to pay tribute to this noble vessel and the city did just that in grand fashion when it built the pride of Baltimore. It's logical to leave the city would want to show its creation to the rest of the world. That mission began on May 1st 1977 when the pride and bark on the maiden voyage to Bermuda. How

very high standard. And it did. As the city's goodwill ambassador the pride sailed the world up and down the East Coast the Great Lakes the Caribbean through the Panama Canal up the west coast to San Francisco and Vancouver she crossed the Atlantic several times and played host to thousands of visitors in foreign ports and every time she came home Baltimoreans crowded the dock to greet her. She was

their pride with her. Their hearts went out. It is this longing that the poet John Masefield called Sea Fever. I miss down to the seas again to the lonely sea in the sky. And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by and the wheels kick and the winds song and the white sails shaking and a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking. I'm down to the seas again for the call of the running tide is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied. And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying and the flung spray in the Browns and the seagulls crying. I'm most down to the seas again to the vagrant gypsy life to the gulls way and the whales way where the wind's like a wet knife and all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow Rover and a quiet sleep and a sweet

dream. When the long tricks over. This is been an encore presentation of a documentary produced in 1977. We have shown it tonight in tribute to the pride of Baltimore and our crew.