Great Republic (1853 clipper)
Clipper barque Great Republic, painting by James E. Buttersworth
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History | |
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United States | |
Name | Great Republic |
Namesake | Poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
Owner |
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Ordered | 1852 |
Builder | Donald McKay (designer & builder) |
Cost | $ 450,000.00 (1853) |
Laid down | 1852 |
Launched | October 4, 1853 |
Christened | October 4, 1853 by Capt. A. Gifford |
Maiden voyage | February 24, 1855 to Liverpool, England |
In service | 1854 |
Out of service | 1872 |
Renamed | Denmark in 1869 |
Homeport | Boston (1853); New York (1855); Yarmouth, Nova Scotia (1866), Liverpool (1868) |
Identification | |
Fate | Sunk in storm off Bermuda on March 5, 1872 |
Badge | figurehead: gilded eagle and a second gilded eagle with outstretched wings across the stern board |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | |
Tonnage |
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Displacement | ~6,600 tons (5,000 tons cargo plus 1,600 tons ship's mass)[citation needed] |
Length | |
Beam | 53 ft (16 m) |
Height |
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Draught | 25 ft (7.6 m) |
Decks | 4 continuous wooden decks, after rebuilt: 3 (with additional poop and forecastle decks) |
Deck clearance | 8 ft |
Propulsion | Sails |
Sail plan |
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Speed | 19 kn (35.2 km/h) |
Capacity | 5,000 tons max. |
Complement | 60; originally planned: 120 |
When launched in 1853, Great Republic was the largest wooden ship in the world. She shared this title with another American-built ship, the steamship
Just as she was completing loading in New York for her first commercial trip, she was involved in a disastrous fire. She was scuttled to try to save the hull, with only limited success. McKay decided to abandon the wreck to his insurers, who sold the damaged hull to new owners, who rebuilt her with three decks instead of four. She was employed on trans-Atlantic and California routes, with a period under contract to the French government for the Crimean War. She was never used on Australian routes.[3]: 124–129
Even in her rebuilt form, Great Republic had difficulty accessing many ports when fully loaded, due to her great size. She regularly had to partially unload into lighters so that she could then enter locked basins to finish unloading. She did make the fast passages expected of her by McKay – so vindicating the design concept.[3]: 124–129
Construction
Designed by naval architect and shipbuilder
Great Republic required "1,500,000 feet of pine ... 2,056 tons of white oak, 336½ tons of iron, and 56 tons of copper" - about three times as much pine as was typically required for a large clipper ship.[6]
The Essex Institute Historical Collections provide a very detailed description of Great Republic in Volume LXIII, published in 1927.[2]
Fire and re-building
On December 26, 1853
Voyages
Still the largest clipper ship in the world at 3,357 tons registry, Great Republic, under command of Captain Joseph Lymburner, started back in merchant service on February 24, 1855. Her maiden voyage brought her to Liverpool in 13 days.
Great Republic was "chartered by the French Government to bring munitions and troops to the Crimea," and served in the general cargo and guano trades.[11] In 1862 the fourth mast was removed and the others re-rigged, and the clipper became a three-masted full-rigged ship, a so-called three-skysail-yarder. In 1864 Captain Lymburner retired and the ship's registry moved to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. In 1869 she was sold to the Merchants' Trading Company of Liverpool and renamed Denmark. She continued sailing until March 5, 1872 when a hurricane off Bermuda caused the ship to leak badly and she was abandoned.
Records set
During her 19-year merchant career, Great Republic proved to be very fast under leading breeze conditions and often out-distanced the fastest merchant steamers on Mediterranean routes. Sailing around Cape Horn, Great Republic averaged 17 knots (31 km/h) to set a record by logging 413 nautical miles (765 km) in a single day.
Comparison to other large wooden sailing ships
A
Great Republic was the largest, but not the longest wooden sailing ship ever built. Despite her 400 ft length overall, the record of being the longest wooden ship is held by the six-masted schooner Wyoming built at the Percy & Small shipyard, Bath, Maine, in 1909. Her overall length including her 86 ft (26 m)-long jibboom and her protruding spanker boom was 450 ft (140 m), 334 ft (102 m) on deck.
Further reading
- Francis B. C. Bradlee: The Ship Great Republic and Donald McKay Her Builder. The Essex Institute, Salem, MA, 1927. Reprint of the Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, Vol. LXIII.
- Octavius T. Howe & Frederick C. Matthews: American Clipper Ships 1833–1858. New York 1926, pp. 33–35
- Lubbock, Basil: The Down Easters. Brown, Son & Ferguson, Ltd., Nautical Publishers, Glasgow (1929); Reprinted 1953; pp. 49–53; p. 253
- Richard McKay: Some Famous Sailing Ships and Their Builder Donald McKay. New York 1928, pp. 210–225
- Duncan MacLean: Description of the largest ship in the world, the new clipper Great Republic, of Boston, designed, built and owned by Donald McKay and commanded by Capt. L. McKay. Illustrated with Designs of her Construction. Written by a sailor. Eastburn's Press, Boston 1853. Available online.
- "Barons of the Sea: And Their Race to Build the World's Fastest Clipper Ship" Book by Steven Ujifusa, Published July 17, 2018 by Simon Schuster
Notes
- ^ Great Republic
- ^ OCLC 6140167.
- ^ ISBN 0-85177-588-8.
- GRTmeasurement
- ^ J. Ernest Kerr, Imprint of the Maritimes, 1959, Boston: Christopher Publishing, p. 135
- ISBN 0-07-014501-6.
- ^ a b c d Jennings, John (1952). Clipper Ship Days: The Golden Age of American Sailing Ships. New York: Random House. p. 162., accessed May 30, 2018.
- ^ "GREAT CONFLAGRATION!; SEVERAL BUILDINGS AND SHIPS ON FIRE. Ship Great Republic in Flames. Over $1,000,000 worth of Property Destroyed". The New York Times. New York. December 27, 1853. p. 1. Retrieved March 15, 2010.
- ^ "The Great Conflagration. Three Clipper-Ships Destroyed. Total Loss of the Great Republic. Burning of the White Squall, and Joseph Walker. Nine Buidings [sic] Destroyed on Front-St. Loss, $1,500,000. Insurance, $500,000 to $700,000. Additional Fire--Incendiarism, & c." The New York Times. New York. December 28, 1853. p. 1. Retrieved March 15, 2010.
- ^ The American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge, for the year 1855. 1855. pp. 345–. Retrieved 31 March 2013.
- ^ "SEA AND SHIP NEWS.; Voyage of the Clipper-ship Great Republic. THE FALKLAND ISLANDS--PORT STANLEY AND OTHER HARBORS-THE PEOPLE, SOIL AND CLIMATE--TRADE OF THE ISLANDS--THE PATAGONIAN MISSION". The New York Times. New York. July 6, 1858. p. 3. Retrieved March 15, 2010.
References
- Great Republic on Nautica[self-published source] , checked 2009-01-29
- Clipper ship history by Lars Bruzelius[self-published source] , checked 2007-08-22
External links
- Figurehead from clipper ship Great Republic, Mystic Seaport
- Model of Great Republic
- "Description Of The Largest Ship In The World, The New Clipper, Great Republic, of Boston. Designed, built, and owned by Donald McKay. (From The Novascotian)". The Newfoundland Express. St. John's, Newfoundland. January 7, 1854. p. 3. Retrieved March 15, 2010.
- Winchester, Clarence, ed. (1937), "The biggest sailing ship of her time", Shipping Wonders of the World, pp. 491–494 illustrated description of Great Republic
- Pacific Marine Review (1921). "Our Greatest Wooden Ship". Pacific Marine Review. Consolidated 1921 issues (December). 'Official Organ: Pacific American Steamship Association/Shipowners' Association of the Pacific Coast: 706. Retrieved 24 September 2014.
- Matthews, F. C. (1921). "The Clipper Ship Great Republic". Pacific Marine Review. Consolidated 1921 issues (December). 'Official Organ: Pacific American Steamship Association/Shipowners' Association of the Pacific Coast: 707–710. Retrieved 24 September 2014.