The “Martaban.”
In 1853, an iron sailing ship was launched from the yard of John Scott, of Greenock, with intercostal plates and stringers. This was the Martaban, of 743 tons register, built for the well-known firm of Carmichael. Her specifications were the product of the brains of Matthew Orr, brother-in-law of the first Thomas Carmichael, and of John Ferguson, who was afterwards a member of Barclay, Curle & Co., the famous shipbuilders. The Martaban was classed nine years A1 at Lloyd’s, being rated equal to a nine years wooden ship.
At that time Lloyd’s had no rules or class for iron ships, so they retained Martaban’s original specification as a basis for their rules concerning iron ships. That the Martaban was a success is proved by the fact that she received £4 a ton for a cargo of coffee and cotton from Bombay to Havre, and was offered a Diplomé d’Honneur at the local exposition for delivery of her cargo in perfect condition.
Mr. THOMAS CARMICHAEL, of A. & J. Carmichael.
Iron Ships in the Australian Trade.
It was in the Australian trade that the iron passenger ship was to be seen in her perfection. She succeeded the great Liverpool clippers and the little Blackwall frigates, and she was as beautiful and perfect as any of her wooden sisters.
In the sixties, seventies and even eighties thousands of emigrants were carried from the Old Country to Australia and New Zealand in these magnificent iron clippers. They also took out blood stock of every description from racehorses to pedigree bulls and rams; and a nice time some of these animals must have had when the clippers were carrying on running their easting down.
Most of the ships raced home again with wool for the London sales, but a few, notably Heap’s fine ships, went on from Australia to India and Burma, generally with a load of walers for the army in India. In the Bay of Bengal they either loaded jute home from Calcutta or rice from Rangoon. Messrs. J. Heap & Sons were rice millers, and their ships took the firm’s rice home.
In the seventies and eighties these beautiful clippers were a never-ending interest in the London River, the Mersey, the Clyde and the great ports of the Antipodes. In Sydney landsmen made special Sunday excursions to Circular Quay to see the ships, and it was the same with the other ports in the days of masts and yards. Every Australian, whether native-born or new chum, kept a tender corner in his heart for the tall ships which had had so much to do with the development of his country. The Sydney-side native, indeed, not only took a pride in the regular traders to the port, but knew them intimately, and could generally be relied on to name an incoming clipper correctly long before she had reached the anchorage.
The New South Dock.
A visit to the docks of the London River is only made nowadays from dire necessity. Their charm has entirely departed. Instead of a forest of spars, nothing now shows above the warehouse roofs but the soot-covered, stumpy masts, blunt-nosed derricks, and squat funnels of a few steamers. Truly the glory of the docks has departed for ever, and only the sentiment remains. Joseph Conrad, in his delightful Mirror of the Sea, thus describes the New South Dock in the days of the iron wool clipper:—
To a man who has never seen the extraordinary nobility, strength, and grace that the devoted generations of shipbuilders have evolved from some pure nooks of their simple souls, the sight that could be seen five-and-twenty years ago of a large fleet of clippers moored along the north side of the New South Dock was an inspiring spectacle. Then there was a quarter of a mile of them, from the iron dockyard gates guarded by policemen, in a long, forest-like perspective of masts, moored two and two to many stout wooden jetties. Their spars dwarfed with their loftiness the corrugated iron sheds, their jibbooms extended far over the shore, their white and gold figure-heads, almost dazzling in their purity, overhung the straight, long quay above the mud and dirt of the wharfside, with the busy figures of groups and single men moving to and fro, restless and grimy under their soaring immobility.
I have a photograph of the South Dock just as it is depicted by Conrad, showing the long row of lean, knife-like cut-waters, surmounted by their spotless figure-heads, and with their bowsprits stabbing the sheds opposite, whilst the masts and yards criss-cross the dull grey of the London sky.