Tales of the clipper ships

by C. Fox Smith

Goodness knows how these two old ships’ venerable ribs managed to stick together running down the Easting: nor indeed how it was that they didn’t carry their freight of hopeful fortune seekers to the bottom before they were well clear of the Channel. However, by hook or by crook, stick together they did, long enough at any rate to lay the foundation of Featherstone’s success. The “Childe Harold”—she who was the “General Bunbury”—created a bit of a sensation in the last lap of her third voyage by sinking, poor old soul, in the West India Dock entrance at the head of a whole fleet of shipping crowding in on the tide. The “Don Juan”—the backsliding “Earl Clapham”—came to grief, by a stroke of luck, just off the Mauritius, and her old bones (it must have taken a small forest of teak to build her) fetched double what Featherstone had paid for her for building material. But they had served their purpose. Thereafter, Featherstone never looked behind him.

The old “Giaour”—she started life as a steamer, in the days when steam was suffering from over-inflation, and a good many speculators were scalding their fingers badly with it. The “Cottonopolis,” of the defunct “Spreadeagle” Line—that was how she began. Her accommodation was the talk of the town, said to be the most lavish ever seen—a wash basin to every six cabins—but she devoured such quantities of fuel, as well as turning out such a brute in a seaway that her passenger list was never more than half full, that the shareholders were glad to get rid of her at a loss. There she was—an ugly great lump of a ship, with masts that had a peculiar rake to them, something after the style of a Chinese junk. Sail, too ... like a witch, she did!... Then the little “Thyrza”—she was a pretty little butterfly of a thing; but she was as near being a mistake as any purchase Featherstone ever made. He had bought her, so it was believed, with the intention at the back of his mind of winning the China tea race; but the tea trade petering out, he put her into the wool fleet instead. Broughton had seen the dainty little ship many a time: a regular picture she used to look, beating up to the Heads just as old Captain Winter had painted her. Rare hand with a paint-brush that old chap was, and no mistake! Give him one good look at a ship, and he’d get her likeness to a gantline ... notice things about her, too, sometimes, that even her own skipper hadn’t found out....

There was the “Manfred”—the unluckiest ship, surely, that ever left the ways! The “Young Tamlin” was the name she used to go by, in the days when she used to kill two or three men every trip. That was before Old Featherstone got hold of her, of course: and her owners—she belonged to a little one-ship company—got the jumps about it and sold her. Sold her cheap, too ... but, bless you, that stopped her gallop all right! She drowned no more men afterwards.

And—last of all—the “Maid of Athens.” ...

Broughton’s own ship—the pride of his heart, the apple of his eye, the guiding motive, the absorbing interest of his life for more than twenty-five years.

Broughton didn’t care much about that picture—never had done, though he didn’t trouble to tell the old man so. No use asking for trouble: and he was a contrary old devil if you crossed him! A Chinese ship-chandler’s affair, it was, and moreover it showed the “Maid” with a spencer at the main which she never carried: at least, not in Broughton’s time. A good long time that meant, too ... ah well! They had grown old together, his ship and he!

He remembered the day he got command of her as clearly as if it were yesterday. He was chief officer of the “Haidée” at the time—getting along in years, too, and beginning to wonder if he would ever have the luck to get a ship of his own. She was a nice little ship, the “Haidée,” the last of Daly’s fleet, and Featherstone bought her after old Daly, who had given him a stool in his office years before, shot himself in that very office in Fenchurch Street when the news came of the wreck of the “Allan-a-Dale,” his favourite ship, on the Calf of Man. Quite a nice little ship, but nothing out of the common about her: nothing a man could take to particularly, somehow. And yet at the time he had wanted nothing better than to be her skipper.

Old Captain Philpot had been queerish all that voyage; he used to nip brandy on the quiet a lot, and take drugs when he could get them as well. Soon after they left the Coromandel coast he went out of his mind altogether, and Broughton found him one day, when he went down to dinner, crawling round the cabin on all fours and complaining that he was King Nebuchadnezzar and couldn’t find any grass to eat.

Good Lord! that was a time, too ... made a man sweat to think of it, even after all these years! Hurricane after hurricane right through the Indian Ocean: on deck most of the time, and sitting on the Old Man’s head when he got rumbustious during the watch below. However, the poor old chap died as quiet as a child, when he smelt the Western Islands, and Broughton as chief officer took the vessel into port.