It is not at all easy to build up accounts of our sailing ships from odd conversations we may have with the old master mariners. The information must come at different times, in scraps and oddments; memories fail; and different captains will give different accounts of the same ship. Your own hearing and misapprehension must also be suspect.
For instance, while one old Captain told me that the AI of Porrett Webster was bought second hand, two others tell me that she was a brand new vessel.
Among seamen, Mr Webster seems to have the reputation of having been a queer fellow. The landsman, at this time of day, might do worse than translate this freely into some such language as this - He was a man who thought diligently about the construction of his ships. The difference between a man of this description, and a genius, is often only this - that the genius is lucky.
I am told that Porrett Websters idea for the construction of the AI was :- Iron keel, iron stem post, and iron stern post, with wooden ribs and planks.
Now this is but a development of the practice in building composite ships, which were constructed with iron frames, teak planking, and copper sheathing under the water line. Messrs Bilbe and Perry, of Rotherhithe, seem to have built the first composite ship, the Red Riding Hood, in 1857.
Composite building continued for but a round dozen years, yet it gave us many of the most famous sailing ships in the history of the world. Most of the crack British Tea clippers were built thus; and the 2000 ton Blackwaller, Sabroan, the largest ship ever built under this system was also one of the fastest sailing vessels of all time.
It is also likely that the A.I. was so constructed specially for the Canadian trade. It is reasonable to suppose that stout wooden ribs under the planking would stand ice pressure better than iron ones, since they could spring. Be this as it might the A.I. had a very short life.
A cousin of the owner was appointed master, but the two seem to have had a difference.
A Norwegian was made captain, and when well out towards the Gulf of St Lawrence, the poor A.I. crashed into ice and sank.
Those of who know the affection which a man can bear towards the ships which have evolved out of his dreams, brought into being, life and beauty, by his own enthusiasm and exertions, will think of the A.I. and her owner with true sympathy. They can well understand poor Findlay, the London shipowner, going clean out of mind when the last of his beauties, the tea clipper Spindrift, was wrecked off Dungeness, when almost home again, with another precious freight. Two other fine ships he had in his day - the celebrated Serica and the Taitsing; but that last misfortuine finished old Findlay; and one prefers to think that it was love of his ship which moved him most, since insurance was not unknown, even in those days. One Robin Hood's Bay insurance Asociation had 166 vessels on their books in 1864!
The love of a man for a maid is a very strange thing; but it is not more strange than the love of a man for his ship.
These clippers were prominent in the hard fought tea race of 1866. It is interesting to recall that, on that long race gallop home, over a course of about 14,850 miles, Foo-chow to London, the longest days run was put up by the Ariel, between Anjer, near java Head, and the Cape, running before the south east trade winds she sailed 330 miles in 23 hours.. The Fiery Cross did 328 miles in the same time.
This speaks well for the Scarborough Barque, Mercia, which made approximately the same fine runs in a day. It seems to be admitted that the Mercia was the finest heeler that was ever under Scarborough registry.
The Taeping won that great sea race. Though the Ariel was the moral winner, arriving first in the Downs. Then followed the Serica, on the very same tide; then the Fiery Cross, and the Taesing, two days afterwards.
Comparison of the longest days runs, in such brilliant company, certainly increases our respect for the Hick Flyer.
The London ships would be better manned, and much more hardly driven, than the Mercia ever was. Her master on that voyage was Captain Burlinson Hick. His son, who spent a part of his boyhood on the Mercia, informs me that she was more like a yacht than a cargo carrier.
Captain Gibson, who spent four years on her, going four times the world in the time, tells a very strange story of the Mercia.
Some thirty years or so after he had left her, he was master of a steamer, and she struck mud, coming down the Parana River, after leaving Sante Fe, in the Argentine.
An Italian came on board, and offered to tow off the steamer, by using a barque to see what she was like
There was something made him feel that the vessel was very familiar. He looked round, and saw the ship's bell. On that bell was inscribed the name - Mercia!
And the last service of the gallant old Mercia to her former officer was to pull his steamer off the mud for him. As an instance, of romance in real life that episode would be hard to surpass. One imagines that both Captain Gibson and the Mercia were thinking long long thoughts when they parted. Thoughts of other days, when romping along the morning, south of Cape Leeuwin!