Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [517]
The Arrival of the Great Western Steam Ship off New York on Monday 23rd April 1838, artist unknown. Once again, the opening of new connections between the city and the world beyond became an occasion for delirious celebrating. (I. N. Phelps Stokes Collection. Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs. The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations)
But Collins never made money. His costs were higher than Cunard’s, in part because English wages were lower, and he was hammered by disasters. In 1854 his Arctic collided with a French steamer off Cape Race and sank with a loss of 318 passengers and crew, including Collins’s own wife and children. In 1858 Congress scuttled the mail subsidy program, largely at the behest of Jefferson Davis and other southerners at odds with New York. Once the federal government left the private enterprise to sink or swim on its own, it promptly sank. The last Collins sailing, in February 1858, marked the end of New York’s bid to establish itself in transatlantic steam shipping. The field—and the future—were left to Cunard and newer British or German entrants. For the present, however, the decision of foreign steamers to make Manhattan their primary port of call, along with a spectacular efflorescence of New York’s sailing fleet, sustained the city’s commanding position as the nation’s premier port.
New York’s trim, square-rigged packets—products of the East River’s thirty-odd yards—had been steadily growing in speed, agility, and size. By 1850 New York shipbuilders routinely constructed packets three times larger than the pioneer Black Bailers. Whenever one of these leviathans slid down the ways, thousands of spectators converged on the scene to watch and applaud. They were the city’s pride and glory, bulwarks of its wealth, instruments of its power. But now they were superseded by still more awesome vessels: the breathtaking “clippers” for which the East River yards gained fame in these years.
The first true clippers were promoted by the city’s traders in China tea, a fragile commodity that fetched exorbitant prices only if brought to market quickly after harvest. In 1844, hoping to shorten the voyage from Canton, which normally took more than a hundred days via the Cape of Good Hope, the firm of A. A. Low and Brothers invested forty-five thousand dollars in a packet-like vessel designed specifically for speed. Named the Houqua after a highly regarded Chinese merchant, she was slender and heavily sparred and canvassed, with a bow that cut rather than butted the waves. Inspired by her example, the South Street firm of Howland and Aspinwall ordered the Rainbow and the black-hulled Sea Witch from the yard of Smith and Dimon. In 1849 Sea Witch completed the run from Canton, a distance of fourteen thousand miles, in an astonishing seventy-four days, fourteen hours.
The production of clippers increased steadily over the next decade, and the enormous expense of constructing them led to further consolidation of the trade in a handful of wealthy firms. By the late fifties, with some fifty ships returning to port from China every year, half a dozen New York companies dominated the business completely. After the repeal of the British Navigation Acts, New York clippers managed as well to capture a large share of the carrying trade between China and London. In 1850 one of the Low clippers, Oriental, brought a cargo of tea from Hong Kong to the Thames in a record-breaking ninety-seven days; the proceeds nearly covered her original cost of construction.
The discovery of gold in California in 1848 gave the clippers their most lucrative mission. Inflamed