Excerpt from
Chapter Two:
early shipowners and
building.
Dr. Charles Carroll of Annapolis entered the West
Indies trade in 1731 when he collected a debt for an heir
in sugar, rum and molasses.8
His fleet would eventually include baycraft, sizable
cargo ships, and two large Maryland-built schooners,
Annapolis9 and
Baltimore.10 Carroll
and his partners in the Baltimore Iron Works built
Baltimore in anticipation of iron shipments to London.
John Casdorp, a shipwright of Annapolis, received the
contract to build her on 10 September
1733.11 The shipwright's
contract specified a delivery date of 1 June 1734. Her
register is dated October 8th of that year and states
that she measured 60 tons burden, making her the largest
schooner built in Maryland up to that time.
Baltimore's contract included general
specifications, some details of her design, and her
dimensions. Dr. Carroll specified a "scooner" with keel
measuring 38', straight rabbet, beam of 17', and depth of
hold 8 or 8-1/2'. The contract expressed in general terms
a requirement that she should have "sufficient rake fore
and aft." As the amount of rake is not specified, it is
not possible to calculate her length overall.
...
The earliest ship plan of a Chesapeake craft is of
Mediator, a sloop built about 1744, ten years
after Baltimore. Her plan is reproduced below.
Baltimore's contract and Mediator's plan
provide the base for a comparison of Chesapeake Bay
offshore schooners as they developed over the decades.
Early Chesapeake craft were deep and wide compared to
length. Bows were short, high and full. Heavy short
masts, bulky quarterdecks, and high bulwarks combined
with the wide and deep hull, are features shared by
Baltimore and Mediator. Their voyages
probably took at least twice the sailing time as the next
generation of vessels launched from Chesapeake
shipyards.
Mediator's place of construction is not noted
on the draft.12 Her keel,
with its varying thicknesses, suggests that she was
Bermuda-built, and is proof enough that she was not built
in Maryland. Since Virginia's plantation fleet consisted
of Bermuda sloops and sloops built in Virginia by slaves
taught by their counterparts in that island, it is not
unusual for a Virginia-built sloop of this period to be
similar to the Bermuda model.
Mediator's lines are of a vessel somewhat
larger than Baltimore. She measured 61'4" x 21'2"
x 9'9". Her keel length for tonnage measurement is given
as 44 feet. The sloop's extremely wide beam, almost half
her keel length, and her deep hold produce proportions
not very different from Baltimore. It is
reasonable to conclude that, in spite of different rigs,
shipwrights in this period emphasized similar features,
whether they were building vessels in Maryland, Virginia,
or Bermuda.
There are major components of Mediator's design
that are repeated in the designs of later
Chesapeake-built craft. Her keel drags somewhat and her
sternpost rakes significantly. Mediator's builder
gave her more than customary deadrise and her beam is
widest forward of amidships. Her mast rakes, she has two
or more jibs, and at least two square topsails, features
found in post-Revolutionary offshore schooners. This
Virginia or Bermuda-built sloop has a low quarterdeck to
afford more headroom in the after cabin.
[ A plan of Mediator
can be found in Chapelle's The Search for Speed
Under Sail. ]
Baltimore's contract called for a quarterdeck
and a two-and-one-half-foot waist amidships. The contract
specified a flush deck fore and aft. According to
Falconer's Universal Dictionary of the Marine,
published in the eighteenth century, a deck, flush fore
and aft, "implies a continued floor laid from stem to
stern upon one line, without any stops or
intervals."13 To be able to
reconstruct the actual deck configuration of
Baltimore with this definition, it is necessary to
assume that Dr. Carroll's schooner had a waist amidships
created by a raised cabin top, and possibly a raised
forecastle. The cabin top aft served as her quarterdeck.
Entrance to the cabin was through a passageway leading
from the waist amidships.
While an exact interpretation of the contract is
impossible, Dr. Carroll's specification of a schooner
with a single deck, end to end, is of note. A single
deck, end to end, was a feature of all Chesapeake
schooners including pilot schooners. Baltimore,
like other sailing vessels of the eighteenth century, had
galleries and badges, customary details built into the
sterns of vessels with quarterdecks.
Under the terms of the Baltimore contract,
Casdorp used two-inch oak planking in her construction
and ceiled her inside with oak planks an inch and a half
thick. He fastened her with locust treenails, and
constructed her deck with two-inch pine planks. This was
customary, substantial, eighteenth-century
construction.
...
While it is not possible to recreate
Baltimore's spars, rig or sail plan, she, unlike
Mediator, probably had no rake to her masts. This
conclusion is drawn from the knowledge that 30 years
later the Maryland schooners' masts shown in the Gray's
Inn Creek painting had no rake. Baltimore's sails
included one or more jibs, gaff-rigged main and foresail,
and probably gaff- or gunter-rigged topsail or top
sails.
[ The Gray's Inn Creek
shipyard was in Kent County, near Rock
Hall. ]
...
A number of schooners were launched by Somerset County
shipwrights, beginning with Sarah in 1731. That
county and Worcester County, carved out of it in 1742,
launched more schooners than any other part of Maryland.
Information on 15 such vessels built before 1748
survives. Records include Mary and
John,14 four tons
burden, and Peggy,15
ten tons, probably built for trading with Accomac County,
and Charming Esther registered but with no tonnage
listed. The remaining 12 range from
Providence16 at 20
tons to Industry,17
registered at 80 tons, measurements that suggest vessels
burdensome enough to have been employed outside the
limits of Chesapeake Bay
That merchants of Somerset and Worcester counties
owned most of Maryland's first schooners sheds light on
that isolated part of the lower Eastern Shore. While
Virginia shipping records from this early period have not
survived, Maryland registers reveal that the lower
Eastern Shore counties of the two colonies conducted
active trade before 1700 in grain, meat and wood
products.18 Colonel Levin
Gale owned the largest merchant fleet in Somerset County
in 1734. His vessels included several brigs and at least
two of the earliest schooners,
Sarah19 and
Bladen.20 The Gale
family of Somerset traded in partnership with the Gales
of Whitehaven, England, a powerful merchant group. As
tobacco shipments ceased completely in Somerset County in
1730, it is likely that other commodities such as grain
and meat were traded for decades before that year... and
in vessels built on the Chesapeake for trading
commodities other than tobacco.
Maryland ships, sailing to New England, the Carolinas,
and the West Indies, faced capture by the enemies of
Great Britain through most of the eighteenth century, a
time of almost continuous war at sea that sometimes
spread into Chesapeake Bay. Maryland merchants favored
the fast, nimble schooner as their best hope of survival.
The West Indies trade required aggressive owners and
clever masters. Levin Gale of Somerset led his region
just as Dr. Charles Carroll provided leadership on the
Western Shore. On the upper Eastern Shore, Thomas Marsh,
planter and merchant of Queen Anne's County, and one of
the first of that region to ship grain to the West
Indies, became an early schooner owner. Colony records
reveal that Thomas Marsh IV owned the schooner
Nancy, 20 tons, registered in 1734 and built in
Talbot County in 1733.21 He
purchased a second schooner, Swallow, 30 tons,
built on the Wye River in
1734.22 When Richard Bennett
III, the richest planter in Talbot County, entered the
West Indies trade his fleet included Hopewell, a
schooner of 40 tons burden, built in Talbot County in
1736.23 Bennett owned her
jointly with John Bartlett. While trading in the
Caribbean in 1742 Hopewell, captained by Samuel
Martin, was captured by the Spanish and then retaken by
HMS Rose.24
...
Virginia began to increase her external trade about
1730, too, but her merchant marine differed in
composition as most Virginia vessels were offshore
sloops. Norfolk, a transshipment port for North
Carolina's tobacco, pork and other products, developed
during the 1730s.25
Virginia's tidewater plantations increased direct trade
in grain with Bermuda and the West Indies at the same
time. Virginia's fleet grew at the expense of New England
traders who had dominated the trade of the lower Bay
since the Dutch departed at the end of the seventeenth
century.26
Although agricultural diversification in tidewater
Virginia resulted in larger harvests of grain in the
eighteenth century, there were fewer independent
merchants than there were in Maryland. The entrenched
planters of Virginia dominated a commercial and political
structure that continued to keep a firm grip on the
colony. Replacement of white indentured servants and free
men with slave labor, and low prices for tobacco, forced
many farmers to abandon tidewater Virginia. Their
holdings were absorbed by the larger plantations. William
Byrd, Robert Carter and other large planters controlled
vast holdings and intermittent communities, and to a
large extent they controlled the lives of the surviving
small farmers, dependent on the big operators for
supplies and to purchase their crops of tobacco. The
large planters also absolutely controlled the lives of
their slaves. Thirty thousand slaves served Virginia
masters in 1730, a figure that represented 26 percent of
the colony's
population.27
Plantation vessels, many of them built by slaves who
were sometimes trained by black Bermudian ship
carpenters, carried much of Virginia's
commerce.28 As tobacco
production fell in the tidewater region, Virginia's
planters increased grain acreage in response to demand
from Bermuda and the West Indies, and these cargoes were
carried in Bermuda-model sloops. Tidewater Virginia's
location on the wider lower Chesapeake Bay, nearer the
open sea and the West Indies, with broad reaches, may
have been better adapted to the sloop rig. As Maryland's
shipwrights experimented with new ideas, Virginia's
plantation carpenters routinely followed the models of
their predecessors. Sloops continued to carry the
commerce of the lower Bay. Much of Virginia's exported
grain went to Bermuda in sloops built in that island,
another reason for the significant presence of sloops in
Virginia's portion of Chesapeake Bay. Between 3 September
and 31 December 1737, 38 sloops entered or cleared
Norfolk, and of this total 25 were registered in
Bermuda.29
...
Swedish naval architect Fredrik Henrik af Chapman
devoted extensive research to the vessels of the
eighteenth century. His book of plans, which included the
lines of a Bermuda sloop, was published in
1768.30 His plan of the
Bermuda model confirms that those sloops had significant
influence on Bay sloops such as Mediator, and less
direct influence on schooner models. Subtle
characteristics of rigging and hull, and the use of
materials common to Bermuda-built vessels, reappear in
Chesapeake Bay craft. The Bermuda sloop's hull, with
significant deadrise, combined with low freeboard, less
superstructure and lighter spars than other contemporary
craft, increased its speed and stability. Strong, light
cedar found in abundance in Bermuda, and used for framing
as well as planking, reduced vessel weight, and the
common sail plan, with raked mast and square topsails,
made Bermuda sloops good sailers with speed under fair
conditions. Reduced weight above the waterline, light
construction and raked masts reappear as important
characteristics of Chesapeake Bay craft.
Wars with France, King George's War (1744-48) and the
Seven Years War ending in 1763, resulted in heavy losses
to Bermuda's fleet, and Maryland and Virginia ships
trading to the West Indies were frequently captured or
lost in the 1740s and 1750s. Nothing influenced the
evolving Chesapeake schooner to a greater degree than the
continuing war at sea. Hulls became sharper at the
expense of cargo space. Builders improved masts, rigging
and sails. Topsails gave Chesapeake schooners greater
speed in light air, and their sharp hulls and simple sail
plans made them fast, maneuverable and capable of sailing
close to the wind, features that allowed them to sail out
of danger. But for all of these characteristics, by the
end of the Seven Years' War the number of Maryland's
schooners had been reduced by half while the fleets of
Virginia and Bermuda were virtually
destroyed.31
Chesapeake-built schooner design kept evolving, as
observed in the vessels pictured in the painting of
Gray's Inn Creek Shipyard. The overmantel painting,
reproduced in Chapter 1, depicts typical Chesapeake Bay
vessels of about 1760. This was 25 years after John
Casdorp launched Baltimore. Shown in the painting
are big tobacco ships on the left side of the painting; a
snow, a brig, and a Bermuda sloop in the center; then a
sloop and two schooners on the right side of the
panel.
The Maryland offshore schooners pictured on the right
side are vessels for in coastwise trade and West Indies
trade as well as carrying grain to southern Europe. They
retain high freeboard and quarterdecks. Their sternposts
are raked, and their bows, though convex, have somewhat
raked stems and relatively sharp entrances. Schooner
masts are still without rake and gaff topsails prevail.
However, the two schooners, painted side by side, are
different. The one to the left is fuller-bodied than the
one on the right, which has a handsome profile because of
a shallower curve of sheerline and a lower quarterdeck.
It illustrates the changes as schooners became sharper
and more graceful and lost the extreme curve of sheerline
characteristic of earlier times. The model on the right
represents advanced design circa 1760.
The sloop in the painting is rigged Bermuda-fashion
with a pronounced rake to her mast, three jibs, and
square topsails, much like Mediator of 20 years
earlier. She retains the extreme sheer associated with
early sloops and shows little change in design over the
years.
With the start of the Revolutionary War, the Dutch
island of St. Eustatius became the port of destination
for many of Maryland's blockade runners. The Chesapeake
fleet, still somewhat traditional in design and small in
size, had difficulty outsailing the Royal Navy and losses
were high. Captain Jeremiah Yellott lost his
Maryland-owned sloop Rising Sun, but he got
himself to Statia, the popular name of the island,
according to a report by Maryland's representative,
Abraham van Bibber. Agent van Bibber wrote that Captain
Yellott reported that his vessel with "every other vessel
from Maryland and Virginia had been
lost."32
Little is known of Jeremiah Yellott prior to his
arrival at Baltimore except that he was born in
Yorkshire, England. After the loss of Rising Sun
he returned to Maryland and became one of Baltimore's
leading maritime figures. He is credited with the design
of the topsail schooner Antelope, built by John
Pearce of North Point in 1780. Owners of Antelope
were John Sterett, Jesse Hollingsworth, Charles Ridgely
and Yellott.33 With
Antelope, Yellott is believed to have incorporated
several new features of design for larger schooners,
including raked masts and square topsails.
Antelope made several voyages under Captain
Yellott's command. She became Baltimore's most successful
private armed schooner, and completed trading voyages to
France and to Guadeloupe in the Leeward Islands. She
measured 130 tons burden -- large for that time, and
apparently exceeded only by the schooner Somerset,
142 tons. Antelope's keel measured 62' compared to
56' for Somerset. Antelope, with a longer
keel and less capacity than Somerset, had
increased deadrise, resulting in a sharper
hull.34 She mounted 14 guns
and carried sweeps, but no plan of her hull or deck
layout exists. Although Captain Yellott's schooner was
the latest in offshore Chesapeake schooner design, she
was not a pilot schooner. She was instead a cargo
schooner of a type that would soon be replaced by the
Baltimore schooner of the nineteenth century....