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Barons of the Sea: And Their Race to Build the World's Fastest Clipper Ship
For all you clipper ship builders, here is a fascinating historical fiction book. It discusses in detail how clipper ships are built. Discusses the ship Flying Cloud.
Steven Ujifusa tells the story of a handful of cutthroat competitors who raced to build the fastest, finest, most profitable clipper ships to carry their precious cargo to American shores. They were visionary, eccentric shipbuilders, debonair captains, and socially ambitious merchants with names like Forbes and Delano—men whose business interests took them from the cloistered confines of China's expatriate communities to the sin city decadence of Gold Rush-era San Francisco, and from the teeming hubbub of East Boston's shipyards and to the lavish sitting rooms of New York's Hudson Valley estates.
Elegantly written and meticulously researched, Barons of the Sea is a riveting tale of innovation and ingenuity that "takes the reader on a rare and intoxicating journey back in time"
Steven Ujifusa serves on the Advisory Council of the SS United States Conservancy. He received his master's degree in historic preservation and real estate from the University of Pennsylvania and his BA in history from Harvard University.
Publisher : Simon & Schuster
Publication date : July 17, 2018
Edition : Reprint
Language : English
Print length : 449 pages
ISBN-ISBN 978-1-4767-4597-8
Excerpts from the notes:
Sources on the clipper ship era are scattered, and careful detective work is required to separate fact from myth. The scores of mid-nineteenth-century American clipper ships that once sailed the seas are all gone—long since sunk, broken up, or burned for their metal parts. Yet their story is there to be told, in letters, diaries, published reminiscences, business contracts and receipts—not to mention in its enduring impact on American culture and history.
Relied heavily on Captain Arthur Hamilton Clark’s The Clipper Ship Era, published in 1910 and written by one of the great American experts on the sailing ship construction and handling. Clark knew many of the men who sailed the clippers of the 1850s, and he was also a friend of the great naval architect Donald McKay, who built more record-breaking clipper ships than any other shipbuilder of his time. Other invaluable secondary sources include the excellent work of Basil Lubbock, Carl C. Cutler, William C. Crothers, and Howard Irving Chapelle.
While in New York, I also got to visit the Stad Amsterdam. This visiting Dutch-flagged clipper, completed in 2000, is the only square-rigged ship now plying the seas that is built according to original, extreme clipper principles. Despite a steel hull (rather than wood) and modern navigational and safety equipment, Stad Amsterdam illustrates the craft of her ancestors: the high rig, the sharp hull lines, and speeds exceeding fifteen knots. Her first officer Michaël Barbaix, was a wonderful resource for the art of seamanship on a square rigger.
One of the more interesting books I have read. Well researched.
Marcus
For all you clipper ship builders, here is a fascinating historical fiction book. It discusses in detail how clipper ships are built. Discusses the ship Flying Cloud.
Steven Ujifusa tells the story of a handful of cutthroat competitors who raced to build the fastest, finest, most profitable clipper ships to carry their precious cargo to American shores. They were visionary, eccentric shipbuilders, debonair captains, and socially ambitious merchants with names like Forbes and Delano—men whose business interests took them from the cloistered confines of China's expatriate communities to the sin city decadence of Gold Rush-era San Francisco, and from the teeming hubbub of East Boston's shipyards and to the lavish sitting rooms of New York's Hudson Valley estates.
Elegantly written and meticulously researched, Barons of the Sea is a riveting tale of innovation and ingenuity that "takes the reader on a rare and intoxicating journey back in time"
Steven Ujifusa serves on the Advisory Council of the SS United States Conservancy. He received his master's degree in historic preservation and real estate from the University of Pennsylvania and his BA in history from Harvard University.
Publisher : Simon & Schuster
Publication date : July 17, 2018
Edition : Reprint
Language : English
Print length : 449 pages
ISBN-ISBN 978-1-4767-4597-8
Excerpts from the notes:
Sources on the clipper ship era are scattered, and careful detective work is required to separate fact from myth. The scores of mid-nineteenth-century American clipper ships that once sailed the seas are all gone—long since sunk, broken up, or burned for their metal parts. Yet their story is there to be told, in letters, diaries, published reminiscences, business contracts and receipts—not to mention in its enduring impact on American culture and history.
Relied heavily on Captain Arthur Hamilton Clark’s The Clipper Ship Era, published in 1910 and written by one of the great American experts on the sailing ship construction and handling. Clark knew many of the men who sailed the clippers of the 1850s, and he was also a friend of the great naval architect Donald McKay, who built more record-breaking clipper ships than any other shipbuilder of his time. Other invaluable secondary sources include the excellent work of Basil Lubbock, Carl C. Cutler, William C. Crothers, and Howard Irving Chapelle.
While in New York, I also got to visit the Stad Amsterdam. This visiting Dutch-flagged clipper, completed in 2000, is the only square-rigged ship now plying the seas that is built according to original, extreme clipper principles. Despite a steel hull (rather than wood) and modern navigational and safety equipment, Stad Amsterdam illustrates the craft of her ancestors: the high rig, the sharp hull lines, and speeds exceeding fifteen knots. Her first officer Michaël Barbaix, was a wonderful resource for the art of seamanship on a square rigger.
One of the more interesting books I have read. Well researched.
Marcus
