1794 - Nonsuch, the Epitome of a Baltimore Schooner

Nonsuch has been launched in Baltimore. This is an outstanding model of a sort of swift merchant vessels built lately on the East coast of the United States of America. She is meant to fast trade travels between Maryland and the West Indies.

She displays a long bowsprit fit for multiple jibs, raked masts carrying large gaff sails, a stem and a stern both raked, and a V-shaped hull. She is 90-foot long and 29-foot broad. Her tonnage is likely a bit over 200 tons.

She is not the prototype of this new merchant vessel class, simply one of the first ones built. They are based on an imported tradition. Fourteen years ago, the British navy acquired a ship built in the Bermuda islands, the fast schooner Berbice, which already showed the features of Nonsuch as for her hull shape and for her rig. Berbice was a model of the fast vessels built there for a long time.

In the Bermuda islands, there has been a long tradition of building fine V-shaped sharp-bow hulls and of a sloop rig on a raked mast with a large gaff sail. It results in fast, weatherly and agile ships. This design is of Dutch descent : it originates in the bezaan jacht that appeared in the first quarter of the 17th century, a fast ketch, the aft mast carrying a bezaan, that is a mizzen, in lieu of the then usual triangular lateen sail.

¤ Bezaan stems from Portuguese mezzana, which itself likely descends from the Arabic mazzän. It has given our mizzen in English. Strange enough, the French misaine applies to the foremast not to the aft one, which they call artimon. The reason is that, in Italy, mezzana, descending from the same arabic word as the Portuguese homonym, originally, around 1200, referred to the large sail carried by the usual single mas of the navet. It became the mesaine in french, and it moved to the foremast when masts multiplied around 1400 as the foremast was the main one. For the Dutchmen, it was the aft sail of a ketch from the beginning.

¤ The bezaan jacht was meant to acting as a dispatch vessel, especially useful in the Netherlands, still a piecemeal country made of islands, marshes and dunes, thanks to her agility. As early as 1630, some were built for being pleasure crafts. Two were offered in 1660 by the Dutch East India company, the famous VOC, to King Charles II and to his brother James, duke of York. They easily defeated the former crown race yachts, so they became the attraction of the day.

Samuel Pepys, diary dated 14 September 1661

¤ This type of vessel, meant for race, scattered in the West Indies, first in the Bermuda islands then in Jamaica. A Dutch frigate happened to wreck somewhere in the archipelago around 1621, which brought by chance a Dutch shipbuilder who settled there. He developed an artcraft of building fast ships endowed with two raked masts and leg-of-mutton sails. They were especially useful in an archipelago counting some 180 islands and lying at 600 miles from the nearest British colony. They have incubated there to become the Bermuda sloop and the Bermuda ketch. They scattered in the West Indies, becoming the Jamaican sloop, ketch or schooner by a new mutation of her rig. They were highly valued by pirates for her speed and agility, and also by the merchants gambling on speed to escape them.

These Baltimore schooners are meant to performing very fast trade rotations between the West Indies and Baltimore, carrying flour and cotton to the West Indies and bringing back tobacco, rum, coffee, sugar, and dyes to Maryland. They are said to near ten knots on average conditions, where traditional merchant ships sail at three or four knots.

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IN RETROSPECT FROM TODAY

Note A - on Nonsuch's fate

She sails under the American flag during her thirty first years. She is captained in 1803 by John Boyle who will become a famous privateer during the war of 1812. As many Baltimore schooners, she may have participated in smuggling slaves after the act prohibiting importation of slaves (1807), the slaves becoming a high-value trade item more profitable than rum, tobacco or sugar. For sure, she is a blocus breaker during the war against Britain, one of those which are not captured by the British navy in 1812-15.

She is sold in 1824 to Denmark which renames her Vigilant and uses it as a coast guard ship in the Danish West Indies, also known as the Danish virgin islands. After her duty of coast guars, she becomes a packet ship within the virgin islands. She sinks in a hurricane in 1876 but she is refloated and resumes service until 1916, when she sinks once again in a hurricane and is once again refloated. A third hurricane destroys her in 1928. She has been a robust ship, surviving a war, two shipwrecks and a 134-year sailing activity.

Note B - on the future of Baltimore schooners

The Baltimore schooner evolves under the constraints of the war of 1812 in the form of larger ships, as the 360-ton Chasseur and the 330-ton Prince de Neuchâtel. The Baltimore schooner becomes referred to as the Baltimore clipper in 1824.

If the term "clipper" is used as early as 1824, the real clipper appears in 1833 with the 490-ton Ann McKim, built for the purpose of fast trading with China. It will form the matter of another chronicle.

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SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Helen La Grange - clipper Ships of America and Great Britain, 1833-1869 - New York, 1936 - available on the Internet