SAMUELS, Samuel, seaman, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 14 March, 1825.
According to his autobiography, works of James Fenimore Cooper and Frederick Marryat inspired him to run away to sea at the age of 11. As a youth Samuels is shanghaied onto a ship bound for Liverpool. He learns the skills of the seaman, becomes an officer, and then a captain by age twenty-one.
He shipped as cabin-boy on a coasting-vessel at the age of eleven, studied navigation on shipboard, and after many voyages became at twenty-one captain of a merchantman, he commanded for several years the ” Dreadnought,” the fastest of the sailing-packets. Captain Samuel Samuels who claimed with authority for the statement that she was never passed in anything over a four-knot breeze.
This ship was employed largely as a packet between New York and Liver- pool, making some sixty to seventy passages across the Atlantic. Her best
run was to the eastward, February 27- March 12, 1859, in thirteen days, eight hours, being within seven hours of the fastest record of a sailing ship, made by the ” Red Jacket ” in 1854. The ” Dreadnought ” has been credited with a much shorter passage but it is difficult to substantiate this claim and in his history of the ship contained in ” From the Forecastle to the Cabin,” Captain Samuels does not mention such a voyage but particularly refers to the above- mentioned run of thirteen days, eight hours.
In 1863-‘4 he was captain of the United States steamship “John Rice.”
In 1864 he was general superintendent of the quartermaster’s department in New York city, having charge of the repairing, victualling, and dispatching of vessels. In 1865 he commanded the “‘McClellan” at the taking of Fort Fisher. He was captain of the “Fulton,” the last of the American packet-steamers between New York and Havre in 1866, and in the winter commanded the ” Henrietta ” yacht in her race from New York to Southampton, in 1870 the yacht ” Dauntless” in her race with the “Cambria” from Queenstown to New York, making the voyage in twenty-one days, and again in 1887 in her race across the Atlantic with the ” Coronet.” Samuels was captain of James Gordon Bennett Jr.‘s yachts Henrietta and Dauntless in famous races in 1866 (Great Ocean Yacht Race), 1870 and 1887. After his 1866 win, Bennett bought the rival yacht, the Fleetwing, for $65,000.
In 1872 he organized the Samana bay company of Santo Domingo with a quasi-understanding that the United States government should acquire a part of the bay as a naval station. He was granted a concession by the Dominican executive, which was confirmed by a plebiscite, and took possession in March 1873, but in 1874 was expelled by the new government. In 1876 he organized the Rousseau electric signal company and introduced the English system of interlocking switches and signals. He was general superintendent in 1878-‘9 of the Pacific mail steamship company at San Francisco, California, and in 1881 he organized the United States steam heating and power company in New York city.
In 1887 he released his autobiography From the Forecastle to the Cabin, published by Harper & Brothers. In the book he described all of the topics one would expect from the golden age of the sailing era: storms, shipwrecks, famine, disease, press-gangs, desertion, piracy, violence, mutiny. He also tells the story of meeting his future wife, Miss Harriet Alice Steele.
He died on 18 May 1908 at age 85 in Brooklyn, New York and is laid to rest at Green-Wood Cemetery.
Reference:
From Forecastle to Cabin by Captain Samuel Samuels, Harper & Brothers (Appleton’s Cyclopedia), New York, 1887.