There is a rumor that John Greenleaf Whittier, a Quaker Abolitionist, put a curse on the City of Newburyport. When the city rudely expelled him during a anti-slavery rally, he wrote in the Haverhill Gazette that he was making the town to suffer under a great taboo. It would not be lifted until the community was welcoming to strangers and open to new ideas.
That curse has held that no one would ever hear about Newburyport in the world and that we would be forgotten in history. This definitely holds true when it comes to it holding the proud claim of being the birthplace of the very first clipper ship.
Publishing houses in North America and in Europe insist producing textbooks for higher education that claim that the Ann McKim, out of Baltimore was the very first ship of that design.
Other textbooks do get it right and say the first clipper ship is, ‘The Currier,’ but they claim it was built in Wiscasset, Maine. A little strange since the Currier shipyard is in Newburyport and no Curriers are known to have lived in Maine or had a shipyard there. It was true that Donald McKay briefly worked there as an apprentice but that is the only claim to fame for that Maine community.
Basically the problem lies in an ignorance of marine architecture and design. It was also compounded by the term, “Clipper”.
Baltimore clippers were world famous for being fast swift vessels heavily favored by privateers as the ship can swifty approach larger, more cumbersome ships and often safely were able to outmaneuver the guns.
H.L. Mencken said, “Define, define, define”. In other words, if one speaker is defining a certain word and the other speaker is taking that same word and applying a totally different meaning to it – this is called, “miscommunication”. The former is frustrated because he can’t get his message across, and the listener? Well, he comes to a different conclusion and the message is corrupted.
With proper defining, Newburyport’s claim to fame all depends on the meaning of “clipper”.
Everyone has used at some time the common expression, “_____ is going at quite a clip.” Unknowingly, the reader is actually using a seamen’s term “to move rapidly”. This was often extended to “clipper” to describe any ship that moved rapidly through the water. The City of Baltimore was the official home of the Baltimore Clipper, a fast, small vessel that was often used for privateering because it was far swifter than the typical merchant ship that plied the oceans’ waters. In Newburyport’s privateering heyday, many of this style of clipper were often built here and of which, caused such alarm to the British. Later, the English used the term “clipper” to refer to any fast ship that was used to ply the highly competitive tea trade from India and the Southwest Pacific. Many were two-masted and even some early steamships (that had sails too) were also called tea clippers as they sped to get to market in Liverpool.
It is this confusion that has some textbooks** assigning the ‘Ann McKim’ as being the first clipper ship with a full three-mast setup. But anyone familiar with what engineers, general public and even seamen know of a clipper ship – would immediately recognize that all the Ann McKim was in design translated into being just an extended Baltimore Clipper. Its sail configuration was more akin to a hybridized barque and certainly did not have the capacity to be an intercontinental merchant ship.
This left a great demand for a true, high-speed vessel that could ply the oceans’ waters. Investors and merchants desperately sought a solution to this problem. This left a vacuum that was filled by the team of the McKay’s. Donald had worked in the epicenter of world shipping in New York and had labored in the shipyards, building and maintaining the globe-trekking ships. He would often visit the South Street Seaport with the bows hanging over the street examining and inspecting the American and British designs. Albenia, his wife, was the daughter of a shipyard master and had intimate knowledge of the ins and outs of handling a shipyard. Her father refused to follow the trends of the day which discouraged teaching engineering, mathematics and science to women; and insisted she be schooled in these skills. Donald’s brother, Lauchlan, had intimate day-to-day knowledge on how to manage crews and materials to make sure the ships were built at maximum profit.
No one knows exactly when they came up with the design but Donald had been picking up bits and pieces from some of the leading shipbuilders of the day; but by the time he came to Newburyport, he had an idea for a revolutionary new design and knew how to implement it into reality.
Donald McKay liked what he saw in this shipbuilding community and found work in the shipyard of John Currier, Jr., then one of the foremost shipbuilders in Newburyport. The ship builder became impressed with the unusual mechanical ability of McKay as the work progressed and how fast the work got done. John Currier, Jr. made McKay an advantageous offer to work for him and to bind him for five years of service, but the offer was refused. McKay wanted to open his own yard. William Currier (no relation to John Currier, Jr.), offered Donald McKay a partnership, and the new firm of Currier & McKay was born on the banks of the Merrimack.
It was the first prodigious window of opportunity that opened up for the McKay’s.
At the new shipyard, he went about to build the experimental ship, The Courier, specifically for the coffee trade coming out of Brazil. He created the first, ‘true’ clipper ship – that same design that can cause such a wonder and joy to the eye when seen in a painting in the full ‘Sail’ position. It was small compared to the monster ‘Extreme Clippers’ that he would make later but it caused such a ripple in the shipbuilding industry that word spread from London to New York to Baltimore and other ports about this ‘new’ design. More importantly, the investors and merchants took notice and invitations to build at their shipyards began to pour in from up and down the eastern seaboard.
Enoch Train, A well-known merchant and ship owner from Boston, wanted to establish a White Diamond Line of Boston-Liverpool packets. He had heard all the talk about the Currier and offered to Donald McKay, his own shipyard in East Boston and the freedom to build based on his designs.
This counted as the second prodigious window of opportunity for the McKay’s.
Donald took up the offer and the rest is history.
It wasn’t long as competitors wanted to outdo Donald McKay, clipper ships started to be built from Maine to Georgia. The English began to copy the design too and combining with the British thirst for new technologies, even began to improve on the design. Newburyport, like other ports, made a handful of clipper ships though most of the work done along the Merrimack focused on building slow, but high cargo-carrying- capacity vessels.
So, why are we called Clipper City?
Excerpt taken from The Clipper Ship Era.
Courier, 380 tons, and Ashburton, 449 tons. The firm then dissolved, the models and moulds being equally divided—with a saw. (Page 53 talks about the construction of the Courier at the [William] Currier & McKay Shipyard.) After the Ashburton was completed, the partnership dissolved and a new shipyard firm, the McKay & Pickett, was formed.)
The little ship Courier was the first vessel designed by Mr. McKay. She was owned by W. Wolfe & A. Foster, Jr., of New York, who employed her in the Rio coffee trade. She proved a wonder for speed, and outsailed everything, big and little, that she fell in with at sea. No one at that time believed that such a vessel could be built outside of New York or Baltimore. She not only made a great deal of money for her owners, but at once brought her designer prominently before the maritime public.
In 1843 the firm of McKay & Pickett was formed, and the New York packet ships St. George, 845 tons, in 1843, and John R. Skiddy, 930 tons, in 1844, were built by them at Newburyport. In this year Enoch Train, a well-known ship-owner and merchant of Boston, engaged in the South American trade and who had already sent the ships Cairo, St. Patrick, and Dorchester to England, decided to put on a regular line of packets between Liverpool and Boston. While crossing the Atlantic on board one of the early Cunarders, for the purpose of establishing his European agencies, it happened that he found himself a fellow-passenger with Dennis Condry, owner of the Delia Walker, the gentleman who had been so much impressed during his visits to Newburyport, by the energy and skill of Donald McKay. Mr. Train and Mr. Condry soon became acquainted and naturally talked a good deal about shipping. Mr. Train was in doubt as to whom he should entrust the building of his ships; he did not like to
This excerpt comes from the book, The Clipper Ship Era, by Arthur H. Clark The Clipper Ship Era, by Arthur Hamilton Clark, 7 C’s Press, Riverside, Connecticut, 1910.
The Clipper Ship Era.
The answer is obvious! Just as the Coast Guard was born in Newburyport – the Clipper Ship was invented right here through the open-minded, entrepreneurial spirit of the Curriers and their ship builder, Donald McKay.
We can, properly defined, proudly proclaim, “THE CLIPPER SHIP WAS BORN HERE!”*
Donald McKay, though he went on to gain his fame in East Boston, never forgot that Newburyport gave him that Entrepreneural start. He purchased a family plot in Oak Hill Cemetery and chose to be buried with all his family.
References:
Clark, Arthur C. / The Clipper Ship Era: Riverside CT: 7 C’s Press, 1910.
Crothers, William L. / The American-Built Clipper Ship / An International Marine/McGraw-Hill Companies Book, Camden, Maine, 1997 / (Actual engineering drawings for building a clipper ship!)
Cutler, Carl C. / Greyhounds of the Sea: The Story of the American Clipper Ship. New York: Halcyon House, 1930.
Duncan McLean: The New Clipper James Baines. The Boston Daily Atlas, Vol. XXIII, No. 53, Friday, September 1, 1854. Reprinted in NRJ Vol. 25, pp 33–35.
Helen & Jacques La Grange: Clipper Ships of America and Great Britain: 1833-1869. G. P. Putnam’s & Sons, New York, 1936.
Lubbock, Basil (1921). The Colonial Clippers (2nd ed.). Glasgow: James Brown & Son. p. 77.
Mary Ellen Chase: Donald McKay and the Clipper Ships. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1959.
Octavius T. Howe & Fredric C. Matthews : American Clipper Ships 1833-1858. Argosy Antiquarian, New York, 1967
Richard C. McKay: Donald McKay and His Famous Sailing Ships. Dover Publications Inc., 1995 (reprint of the 1928 edition); ISBN 0-486-28820-X