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Jean-Louis Cheverus, the Catholic Priest Even the Puritans Liked

Boston, today that most Catholic of American cities, had no Catholic church within 300 miles when Father Jean-Louis Lefebvre Cheverus arrived in 1796.

Jean-Louis Lefebvre Cheverus

The 600 or so Catholics living in Massachusetts were mostly poor Irish and a few French. They were viewed as ‘an impure assemblage of idolators’ and priests were widely regarded as ‘vile imposters.’ Catholic teachings were ‘a hideous collection of impieties, absurdities and errors.’

Cheverus softened some of the anti-Catholicism that had possessed puritanical Massachusetts since the colony’s founding. The Puritans had fought Catholic influence in England for decades, and early colonists fought the Catholic French throughout the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

Cheverus spent 27 years in New England, during which time he impressed people with his learning, with his tact, with his sermons, with his simplicity and with his kindness toward the sick and the poor.

Cheverus left quite a mark on New England: in Cheverus High School in Portland, Maine; in Cheverus Hall, a dorm at Boston College, Cheverus Centennial School, in Malden, Mass., in the Archdiocese of Boston Cheverus Awards and in a book that rests on the shelves of the Boston Athenaeum, A memorial to Bishop Cheverus, with a catalogue of the books given by him to the Boston Athenaeum, by Walter Muir Whitehill.

Cheverus Arrives in New England

The priests who preceded Cheverus gave Puritan Boston good reason to look down on Catholics.

The first resident Catholic priest Boston was a disreputable French naval chaplain, l’abbe de la Poterie, who deserted when the French fleet left Boston Harbor at the end of the American Revolution. De la Poterie celebrated the first Catholic Mass in Boston in 1788. But he had been suspended from the priesthood in France, ran up debt in Boston and was relieved of his duties by Father John Carroll, who had begun to organize the Catholic church in America from Maryland.

The second resident Catholic priest in Boston was Father Rousselet, who had also been suspended from the priesthood in France. During Christmas Eve Mass in 1789, de la Poterie insisted on participating in the service, which sparked fisticuffs among the parishioners. The brawlers broke all the church’s furniture.

Then John Thayer arrived on his own accord. He was a wealthy Congregationalist minister who converted to Catholicism and was ordained a priest. He tried to take over from Rousselet. The Irish supported Thayer, the French supported Rousselet. As a result, only a few Catholics actually attended Sunday Mass.

Finally, the highly respected Father Francis Anthony Matignon arrived in Boston in 1792 and began to put things right. He wrote to his friend Father Cheverus and asked him to join him as a Catholic missionary.

Cheverus was 28 when he arrived in 1796. For four years he had been living in England, a refugee from the French Revolution.

Groaning in Spirit

Shortly after arriving in Boston, he began to travel New England to search out Catholics. In Massachusetts he went to Newburyport, Plymouth and Salem. In New Hampshire he traveled to Portsmouth, Claremont and Bedford.

He traveled by canoe and horseback to Maine, where he ‘groaned in spirit’ at the condition of the Catholics, according to his biographer, Andre Jean Marie Hamon. Cheverus dedicated the first Catholic church in Newcastle, and ministered to the Penobscot Indians in Old Town, who had been converted to Christianity but hadn’t seen a Catholic priest in 50 years. During his time in New England, Cheverus visited the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Indians for three months every year.

Cheverus began to win over the Catholic haters. His delivered short, sweet and therefore popular sermons. He took care of the sick and buried the dead when yellow fever broke out in Boston.

Most Virtuous

Cheverus lived simply and read widely in English classic literature. He advised John Adams’ nephew, William Smith Shaw, on the founding of the Boston Athenaeum and donated some of his books to it.

After he’d been in Boston a year a Protestant came to him. “I did not believe that a minister of your religion could be a good man,” he said. “I declare to you, that I esteem and venerate you, as the most virtuous man that I have ever known.”

Protestant women of high social standing shared their troubles with him. He handled the financial affairs of widows, orphans, servants, the infirm and people naive about business. Cheverus invested their money judiciously and then brought them the interest.

John Adams

During a dinner in Boston honoring President John Adams, Cheverus sat next to him. “What most astonishes me, on this occasion, is, to see myself here, and to see you here,” Adams said.

When Cheverus started raising money for a church, John Adams made the first donation. In the fall of 1803, Baltimore Bishop John Carroll came to the dedication of Holy Cross, attended by both Catholics and Protestants.

Carroll named Cheverus the first Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Boston, and he was ordained on Nov. 1, 1810. There were three Catholic churches with priests in New England then: in Boston, in Damariscotta Mills, Maine, and in Pleasant Point, Maine.

Catholics revered him so much they named their children John after him. Even Protestants invited him to speak in their churches. In 1809, he went to New York City to dedicate St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Anti-Catholic Prejudice

Cheverus wasn’t beloved everywhere, nor were Catholics even liked. When he traveled to Northampton, Mass., he had a hard time finding a place to stay because of prejudice against Catholics.

Holy Cross Cathedral, designed by Charles Bulfinch and torn down in 1862.

He had gone to Northampton because two young Irish Catholic men were convicted of murder and condemned to death. They wrote to Cheverus, protesting their innocence and asked him to come give the funeral service for them. He ministered to them, and then stood in front of the mob that came to watch them hanged. He then scolded the horde.

Father Thayer, the Yankee priest, died in Ireland in 1810. He left his estate to Father Matignon, who told Cheverus to establish an Ursuline convent with the money. Cheverus brought 12 Ursuline nuns to Boston to educate Boston’s Catholic girls. In 1834, a mob of Know Nothings burned the convent to the ground.

Cheverus Returns to France

When John Carroll died in 1815, his successor asked Cheverus to come to Baltimore to serve as an auxiliary. He refused.

Then Father Matignon died three years later. By then Cheverus’ health was failing, and in 1823 Louis XVIII of France insisted he return to his native country. Though his parishioners protested, Cheverus decided to go back to France. He was named cardinal in 1836 but died shortly thereafter, aged 68.

William Ellery Channing, the foremost Unitarian minister of his age, held up Cheverus as an argument against anti-Catholicism.:

Who among our religious teachers would solicit a comparison between himself and the devoted Cheverus? . . . How can we shut our hearts against this proof of the Catholic religion to form good and great men? . . . It is time that greater justice were done to this ancient and widespread community.

This story was updated in 2022.

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How the Real Miss Rumphius Decorated Maine With Lupines

There was a real Miss Rumphius who lived in Christmas Cove and secretly planted lupine seeds to adorn Maine’s roadsides and meadows.

The fake Miss Rumphius was the subject of a 1982 children’s book written by Barbara Cooney.

The real Miss Rumphius is at least partly responsible for the gorgeous show of lupines throughout Maine’s countryside in early summer. The wildflowers thrive in Maine, but they aren’t native to the state. How they got there and spread in such profusion is a mystery explained only by – well, an old lady who was the real Miss Rumphius.

Lupines in Maine

The Real Miss Rumphius

Hilda Edwards arrived in South Bristol, Maine, from Bristol, England, in 1904, at the age of 15.

There were no roads to Christmas Cove. Hilda Edwards had to take a train to Newcastle and then a mail launch down the Damariscotta River.

Her uncle, Smith College professor Harry Norman Gardiner, had invited her to stay in his remote cottage on Jupiter Knoll at Christmas Cove. Explorer John Smith had named the inlet after discovering it on Christmas Day.

Christmas Cove in 1906

Hilda Edwards graduated from Smith in 1912 and in 1915 married Talbot Faulkner Hamlin. He was a professor and librarian at Columbia University and winner of a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Benjamin Henry Latrobe.

Like Miss Rumphius, Hilda Hamlin traveled widely, though with her husband and three sons.

After leaving her husband in Paris in 1926, she audited courses at Smith, but still came to the little cottage on Christmas Cove in summertime. She began planting lupine seeds imported from her native England. Every August she cut bundles of lupine stalks and shook out their seeds over a wider space.

Then she began putting seeds in her pocket when she walked to the post office and strewing them along the roadside. She did it in secret, rarely telling anyone about her lupine obsession. Some friends knew. The real Miss Rumphius didn’t drive, and when friends gave her a ride they’d catch her tossing lupine seeds out the window. They called her ‘Hilda Lupina’ or the ‘Lupine Lady.’

Lupine Lady

More lupines

Lupinus polyphyllus are three to six feet tall and stand erect, with leaves below the flower stalk. Their two-foot-long, spiky flowers are blue, purple, rose and white. Lupines were planted in Europe to stabilize soils and to feed animals, but they’re considered a problem in Lithuania because they crowd out forest herbs. Bears like to eat their roots.

Researchers say they arrived in Maine sometime around 1950 – when the real Miss Rumphius entered her 60s — and spread along the Maine coast.

“Many a motorist with a botanical eye pulls into a gas station for an explanation of the display,” wrote W. Storrs Lee in a 1971 article for Yankee magazine. He had visited Hilda Hamlin for an interview, noting the spectacular display of lupines along Route 129. He also noted a handwritten sign next to a woodpile: “If friends of Hilda Hamlin would tote a few sticks of wood to her cottage, they would be doubly welcome.”

Secret Garden

Hamlin, not yet immortalized as Miss Rumphius, kept her gardening a secret from the world. There’d been one exception, wrote Lee. She was on her way to the post office when a ‘regular old-time school marm’ stopped her Model T and asked her to explain the origin of the lupines.

Hamlin replied,

At the end of the road lives a queer old bird who has so many hundreds of lupines on her land that she has acquired the habit of cultivating the seed when it opens.

The old schoolmarm said she’d like to shake her hand. “Shake,” said Hamlin. “I am Hilda Lupina.”

Yankee , in a subsequent edition, published an editor’s note: “Mrs. Hamlin was overwhelmed with hundreds of letters and almost as many visitors following publication of the original article in the June, 1971, Yankee; most of the correspondents and callers begged for sample seeds. Out of deference for Mrs. Hamlin’s advanced years, the editor feels called upon to remind would-be roadside gardeners that “Hilda Lupina” is not in competition with Burpee and other seed suppliers, and, happy as Hilda is with her fan mail, she is no longer up to distributing souvenir seeds of receiving and entertaining hordes of callers at Jupiter Knoll.”

Barbara Cooney

Barbara Cooney was an award-winning children’s book writer who lived in Damariscotta, Maine, about 20 miles from Christmas Cove. In 1982 she wrote and illustrated the book, Miss Rumphius, about a fictional woman named Alice Rumphius who lived a life of travel and adventure before retiring to her cottage. The story begins,

“Miss Rumphius, The Lupine Lady lives in a small house overlooking the sea. In between the rocks around her house grow blue and purple and rose-colored flowers. The Lupine Lady is little and old. But she has not always been that way.”

Miss Rumphius shared the 1983 National Book Award for Children’s Books. The National Education Association named the book one of its “Teachers’ Top 100 Books for Children” in 2007. Spellbound Productions made the book into an 18-minute film in 2000, and the Maine Library Association named its Lupine Award after Miss Rumphius.

Part of the book’s appeal lies in one of its last paragraphs, in which Miss Rumphius tells her niece: “You must do something to make the world more beautiful.”

Images: Miss Rumphius book cover By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2629786; Lupines By Theendofforever at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6755546. This story was updated in 2023.

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To Discover the Real Bambi, Walt Disney Goes to Maine

When Walt Disney told his artists to model Bambi on a California mule deer, Jake Day insisted the real Bambi had to come from Maine.

Still from the trailer of Bambi

Maurice ‘Jake’ Day was one of Disney’s earliest and best known animators and an avid outdoorsman from Damariscotta, Maine.

Edmund Ware Smith’s stories of the outdoors often featured Jake Day and a band of friends back home. They called themselves ‘Jake’s Rangers. Day illustrated Ware’s books, as well as books by Henry Beston and articles in the Atlantic Monthly magazine. He also worked as an editorial cartoonist for the Maine Sunday Telegram before joining Disney’s studio in California.

Disney had obtained the film rights to the timeless story of a young deer’s coming of age. It was originally a novel, Bambi, A Life in the Woods, written in 1923 by Viennese author Felix Salten. Whittaker Chambers, a former Soviet spy, translated the book into English. (Chambers famously testified against Alger Hiss in his perjury trial, compared with the Salem witch trials.)

The book is considered one of the first environmental novels. The Library of Congress placed Bambi on its National Film Registry because of its eloquent message of nature conservation.

Bambi, The Deer

The Bambi who appeared in the novel was a roe deer who lived in a European forest. But roe deer don’t live in the North American wilds. So Disney decided to use a mule deer from Arrowhead, Calif., as a model for Bambi.

Jake Day

Jake Day would have none of it.

To get the right deer and the right forests, Disney would have to go to Maine, he said, and find a white-tailed deer.

Disney challenged him to prove his point.

Jake Day returned to his Maine home, which his family had owned since 1798.

Day took his camera, his backpack and his friend Lester Hall to the Mt. Katahdin region. They then spent months shooting more than a thousand photos of Bambi country.

A white-tailed deer fawn

Disney had given Jake Day a list of things he wanted photographed. The list included hazel nuts, marsh grass, oak leaves, pine cones, birch bark, low-bush and high-bush blueberries, red maple and speckled alder trees.

Jake Day shot trees glittering with ice, snowy beaver dams and trees charred by fire. He photographed the details of the forest floor: the lichen, leaves, ferns, pools, rotting logs, pitcher plants, autumn leaves, a bear cub’s footprints in the mud. He shot at all hours of the day – sometimes at 4 a.m.

Day and Hill studied the script for Bambi in their tent at night to decide what to shoot the next day. What kind of log should Bambi trip over? What was the right setting for Thumper?

Bambi, The Film

Jake Day and the white-tailed deer prevailed. He helped arrange for two four-month-old Maine fawns to model Bambi and his sweetheart Faline. The fawns took a four-day train ride from Maine to Hollywood.

The Disney artists didn’t know how to draw deer, and were given special instruction by an animal anatomist. For nine months they sat in a circle around the real Bambi and Faline and sketched them as they lost their spots and grew into adulthood. A few of the drawings became deer fodder.

Artists study the real Bambi in this photo from a Collier’s Magazine Article promoting the film.

Disney was particular about the movie’s images. The artists drew 2 million drawings for the film. Only 400,000 were used. When an artist heard Disney coming down the hallway to nitpick their work, he used code words to warn the others: “Man is in the forest.”

A boy was chosen for Bambi’s voice, but it took so long to create the film his voice changed in the middle of it. They found another boy, Donnie Dunagan, who later joined the Marines. Dunagan didn’t tell anyone about his role in the film because he feared being nicknamed ‘Bambi.’

Back To Maine

Bambi premiered in London on Aug. 8, 1942, then in New York, and had its first public showing – appropriately – in Portland, Maine.

By 1944, Jake Day was tired of California and returned with his family to Damariscotta for six months every year. In a wooden shed behind his house he carved birds and animals for sale, painted, photographed and hiked. He designed the Baxter State Park logo, where he was named ‘Artist in Residence.’

He climbed Mt. Katahdin on his 75^th birthday and would have done the same on his 80^th but the black flies were too bad. He died at 90 years old in 1983 at home in Damariscotta.

In 2011, Bambi was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. The American Film Institute ranked as third on the list of the Top 10 animated movies.

Images: Bambi movie poster By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3891543. Still from the film: By Walt Disney Company – Original trailer (1942)https://archive.org/details/BambiTrailer, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72320508.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Legend of Faneuil Hall’s Golden Grasshopper Weathervane

The truth is more interesting than the legend about the golden grasshopper perched above Faneuil Hall since 1742.

The real story links the golden grasshopper to tracts of land in Maine, includes a secret within its belly and a tale of theft and recovery.

The golden grasshopper

According to the legend, the golden grasshopper weathervane was a gift from coppersmith Shem Drowne to Peter Faneuil. Faneuil, a wealthy merchant and slave trader, donated Faneuil Hall to Boston.

Legend further has it that Shem Drowne got discouraged by his many failures in colonial New England. He lay down in an open field, and upon waking saw a boy chasing a grasshopper. Shem watched and talked with the boy, who took him home to his wealthy parents. They gave him dinner and later adopted him. The golden grasshopper weathervane commemorated that turning point in his life.

The Real Story

The real story? Above London’s Royal Exchange a grasshopper weathervane perched, recognized around the world as a symbol of commerce. (It’s still there.) Peter Faneuil Hall built his hall on Boston’s then-shoreline, and he no doubt intended it as a symbol of commerce, a beacon to ships that put into Boston Harbor.

Peter Faneuil

Faneuil Hall became a hub of commercial activity, a launching pad for independence from Britain and a center of abolitionism. As one historian put it,

In old Faneuil, that guild temple of traders and aldermen, butchers and clerks, hucksters and civic magistrates, the spirit of the people conceived an embryonic nation.

Shem Drowne

Shem Drowne was born Dec. 4, 1683 in Eliot, Maine. His father, Leonard Drowne, was a shipbuilder from England. The family left Maine for Boston in 1699 to escape violence following King William’s War.

Cover of souvenir album of historic sites of Boston, shaped as beanpot, with illus. of Faneuil Hall. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Shem Drowne married Katherine Clark on Sept. 18, 1712 in Boston. She inherited tracts of land in Maine known as the Pemaquid Patents. Shem gained power of attorney from the other heirs. He then went to court to eventually control what became known as the Drowne Claim, which encompassed Bristol, Bremen, Damariscotta, and parts of Newcastle and Nobleboro. In 1746, he bought Monhegan Island in Maine for 10 pounds, 13 shillings.

He was also a coppersmith and Boston’s first tinplate worker, with a shop in the North End.

In 1716, Shem Drowne made America’s first documented weathervane, a gilded archer on top of the royal governor’s house. He created a rooster weathervane for the New Brick Church on Hanover Street. (It now sits on top of First Church in Cambridge.) He also made the copper swallowtail banner vane atop Old North Church in Boston.

In 1742, he made the copper grasshopper weathervane with glass eyes for Faneuil Hall. It was later gilded.

‘I shall vary as the wind’

In 1755, an earthquake threw the golden grasshopper to the ground, severing a leg. Boston selectmen voted to pay Shem Drowne’s son Thomas to repair it. Thomas made a time capsule with the words ‘food for the grasshopper’ on it. He placed it in the grasshopper’s belly with a note:

To my brethren and fellow grasshoppers, Fell in ye year 1753 (1755) Nov. 13, early in ye morning by a great earthquake by my old Master above. Again, like to have met with Utter Ruin by Fire, by hopping Timely from my Public Station, came of the broken bones and much Bruised. Cured and Fixed. Old Master’s son Thomas Drowne June 28, 1768, and Though I will promise to Discharge my office, yet I shall vary as ye wind.

Messages From Mayors

Since then, the golden grasshopper has been periodically refurbished, and new items placed in the time capsule, including historical newspapers, coins, and messages from mayors.

Faneuil Hall 1789

The golden grasshopper became a symbol of Boston. According to another legend, three men who said they came from Boston asked for aid from Samuel Cooper, American consul in Glasgow. Cooper, a Bostonian, asked them what was on top of Faneuil Hall. One said a fish, one said a horse, the third said a grasshopper. He is alleged to have said to the third, “I will give you all the assistance you need, but the other men will have to walk to Boston.”

Shem Drowne died January 13, 1774.

The Golden Grasshopper Heist

Almost exactly 200 years later, someone stole the golden grasshopper. Paul Revere Carroll, a direct descendant of Paul Revere, was the police detective in charge of the case. He got a phone call from Plymouth County’s district attorney saying he had part of the grasshopper.

They met in Boston’s Park Square and the DA handed him a paper bag with the spire in it. He led police to the Faneuil Hall tower, where rags covered the rest of the golden grasshopper.

It turned out a steeplejeack who’d been arrested on drug charges had stolen it, but confessed to the crime in hopes of getting a plea bargain in his drug case. The grasshopper was regilded and replaced, but with a locking device so it couldn’t be stolen again.

With thanks to Faneuil Hall and Faneuil Hall Market: Or, Peter Faneuil and His Gift by Abram English Brown. Color image of Faneuil Hall: By Tony Fischer. This story was updated in 2020.

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Frances Perkins Works for God, FDR and the Common Workingman

Frances Perkins was having tea with her friend, Mrs. Gordon Norris, in New York City, on the afternoon of March 25, 1911, when they heard fire engines screaming by. As the sirens kept coming, Frances Perkins followed them, and what she saw changed her life.

Frances Perkins

Smoke and flames engulfed a 10-story factory. Young men and women were jumping from the windows on the top floors as the fire pressed in on them. Onlookers screamed, ‘Help is coming,’ but they were beyond help.

In the end, 146 people – 123 women and 23 men – died in one of the worst industrial disasters in history, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.

Frances Perkins would never forget.

Frances Perkins

She was born on April 10, 1880 in Boston, Mass., as Fannie Coralie Perkins. Her parents, natives of Maine, owned a stationers’ store. Fannie changed her name to Frances after she graduated from college.

Fannie Perkins grew up in Worcester, Mass., and graduated from Mount Holyoke College committed to social change. She taught for a while, volunteered at settlement houses and at 30 received an M.A. in political science from Columbia University.

On the day of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, Frances Perkins headed the New York Consumers League. She lobbied for better hours and conditions for workers. Then came the afternoon when she witnessed the horror of dozens of young men and women flinging themselves to their deaths in front of her. Of that day she said,

I shall never forget that frozen horror which came over us as we stood with our hands on our throats watching that horrible sight, knowing there was no help.

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

She knew about the dangers of New York’s factories because she was taking a crash course in fire safety. After she witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist disaster, she left her job at the Consumers League. She then got a job as executive secretary for the Committee on Safety of the City of New York.

When Franklin Roosevelt was elected governor in 1929, he appointed her as New York’s first Commissioner of Labor. In that post, she fought for minimum wage and unemployment insurance laws. She also fought against child labor and dangerous workplaces.

As a close ally of Governor Roosevelt, Frances Perkins reduced the work week for women and expanded factory investigations.

Brahmin Reformer

Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., described her:

Brisk and articulate, with vivid dark eyes, a broad forehead and a pointed chin, usually wearing a felt tricorn hart, she remained a Brahmin reformer, proud of her New England background . . . and intent on beating sense into the heads of those foolish people who resisted progress. She had pungency of character, a dry wit, an inner gaiety, an instinct for practicality, a profound vein of religious feeling, and a compulsion to instruct . . .

Roosevelt was elected president of the United States in November 1932. He then appointed Frances Perkins Secretary of Labor, the first woman ever to serve in a United States cabinet position on Feb. 28, 1933. When he asked her to take the job, she told him she had a long list of programs she’d fight for, including a minimum wage and Social Security. “Nothing like this has ever been done in the United States before,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”

She then served as Secretary of Labor for 12 years, longer than anyone. In that job she played a key role in writing New Deal legislation and helping to create Social Security. She also helped oversee the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Social Security

Perkins persuaded Franklin Roosevelt to ride the wave of Townsend clubs to support a federal retirement program for workers. California physician Francis Townsend started the clubs after he saw three elderly women rooting through a garbage can for food. During the Great Depression, more than half of older Americans lived in poverty.

Thousands of Townsend clubs pressured Congress to pass an old age pension plan. Sensing the opportunity, Roosevelt agreed to Perkins’ demand. He assigned her to run the committee that would craft the legislation.

As soon as the Social Security Act passed, conservatives in Congress began to attack it as unconstitutional. Frances Perkins had made sure it would withstand judicial scrutiny. Months before Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act on Aug. 14, 1935, she had consulted with Supreme Court Justice Harlan Stone, a native of Chesterfield, N.H. He assured her the high court would support the government’s taxing power. It did.

Of her time in Washington, she said,

I came to Washington to work for God, FDR, and the millions of forgotten, plain common workingmen.

With thanks to The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life and Legacy of Frances Perkins–Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, and the Minimum Wage by Kirstin Downey. You can learn more about Frances Perkins at the Frances Perkins Center in Damariscotta, Maine, where she spent her summers. This story was updated in 2022.

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The Sea Serpent: China to New York in 101 Days

Clipper ships, the ‘greyhounds of the sea,’ are considered the most magnificent sailing ships ever built. They were designed to sail to China and back quickly because their cargo – tea – was so fragile.

Controversy surrounded the first clipper ship, the Rainbow, when she launched in 1845. Some said she’d be swamped because she was too sharp up front; others said she’d lose her rigging in the first stiff gale because her masts were too high and the yards too wide.

The Rainbow on her second voyage sailed to China and back in an astounding six months, 16 days – half the time of the typical voyage. Four years later, the California gold rush created an almost insatiable demand for clipper ships to sail.

The Sea Serpent

Shipyards began building clipper ships in New York, Boston, Baltimore, Newburyport, Mass., Mystic, Conn., Bath and Damariscotta, Maine, and Portsmouth, N.H.

The Sea Serpent slid down the ways on Nov. 20, 1850. She set the season’s record for speed in 1853, sailing from Canton, China to Indonesia in 29 days.

The Sea Serpent would also sail to San Francisco and China. Her owners, Grinnel & Minturn of New York, said, “We do not own a ship that has given us more satisfaction.”

She raced the Crest of the Wave from Shanghai to London in a contest that foretold Boston Marathon cheater Rosie Ruiz. Approaching England, the American captain left the Sea Serpent in the hands of the mate, went ashore in the boat that carried his pilot, took a steamer to Southampton, a train to Waterloo and a cab to the Custom House, where he announced the Sea Serpent had arrived.

The Sea Serpent had a service life of 36 years and 5 months, one of the longest lived clippers ever. Her crew abandoned her in 1891 on a voyage from Dublin to Quebec. The crew was rescued. The Sea Serpent drifted 1,120 miles in 93 days, and sighted 19 times before disappearing.

This story about the Sea Serpent was updated in 2018.

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