The Clippers : 267 



not end his period of usefulness; he continued as a superintendent 

 for the Lows and in other ways led a busy life for an additional 

 quarter of a century. 



Reference to Palmer's career brings to mind another famous ship 

 commander of the period because for a part of the time they fol- 

 lowed parallel courses and were, in a sense, rivals. This was Captain 

 Robert H. Waterman, also known as Bully Waterman or "The 

 Killer." In the 30's, when Palmer was serving in the New Orleans 

 packets and in the Dramatic Line to Liverpool, Waterman was com- 

 manding the Black Ball Line. In the 40's, both of them appeared as 

 commanders in the clippers operating to China; in fact at one time 

 Waterman, then in the employ of Howland & Aspinwall, com- 

 manded the old packet Natchez which was a sister ship of Palmer's 

 Huntsville. In 1843 Waterman drove this old vessel from China to 

 New York in a ninety-two-day passage which was very near to a 

 record for that time. In the same ship in 1845 he brought the record 

 down to seventy-eight days. This prompted Howland & Aspinwall 

 to order a new ship for his command. This was the Sea Witch, de- 

 signed by Griffiths, one of the most beautiful and fastest of the clip- 

 pers. In 1849 Waterman brought the Sea Witch from China to New 

 York in an all-time record of seventy-four days and fourteen hours. 

 The next year Waterman in the Sea Witch took eighty-five days for 

 the China run and Palmer in the Oriental beat him home in eighty- 

 one days. 



Waterman then began operating on the run to Califorria, and it 

 was in this service that he earned the reputation for brutality and 

 hard driving that has always been attached to his name. On one oc- 

 casion his arrival in San Francisco provoked a riot and almost a 

 lynching. In this case, however, the charges of brutality that were 

 made against him were proved to be without foundation. They seem 

 to have had their origin in the stories of a few of his crew who were 

 drunk two days after his arrival in San Francisco and to have been 

 fanned into a pubUc conflagration by an inflammatory newspaper 

 article. The accusations against Waterman were disproved at a trial 

 on evidence supplied by the testimony both of passengers and sea- 

 men from his ship. However that may be, Waterman was a rival of 

 Palmer's only in the sense that they both commanded record- 

 breaking vessels, but he never exhibited any of Palmer's great abilities 

 in other fields. 



Before Waterman and Palmer were racing each other across the 

 broad Pacific other designers and builders were making independent 



