276 : The Atlantic 



1852 fourteen American ships sailed from New York for ports in 

 China. One of these was an extremely small vessel and one vessel 

 was overloaded. Despite this, the average time of all vessels was only 

 112 days and two of the vessels completed the passage in ninety-four 

 days. 



The records are full of the beautiful, the incredible and the tragic, 

 but here are the stories of four ships that were on passages around 

 the Horn at about the same time, their records supplied in Cutler's 

 Year by Year Analysis of the Activity of the Clippers. 



1856 was a stormy year about the Horn. Captain Phineas Winsor, 

 trying to reach San Francisco with his heavily laden cUpper Rapid 

 found it so. He had made a good run down the Adantic, but the 

 nearer he got to the Horn the worse the weather became, building 

 up into a crescendo of gales from the west. Week after week he 

 tried to battle his way westward while the great graybacks swept his 

 deck and the ice accumulated on his spars and sails. Every week of 

 struggle and every mile gained for the vessel to the westward was 

 paid for with infinite fatigue, with sickness and with death. At the 

 end, out of a total crew of twenty-four aboard when he sailed, ten 

 were dead, ten were helpless with sickness and fatigue, while the cap- 

 tain, his mates and four men tried desperately to work the ship. At 

 this point, after months of struggle, he had to give up and run for 

 Rio to refit and reman. At one point he was within signal distance 

 of another clipper that was taking up the struggle just when he was 

 preparing to abandon it. Winsor thought it was the Intrepid under 

 Captain Gardener but it was proved later that at the time Gardener, 

 who had sailed on July ist, was many miles away. It might have 

 been Neptune's Car that had also sailed on July ist and which should 

 have been under the command of Captain Joshua Patten, a young 

 and brilliant officer, but Neptune's Car was having her own troubles 

 in addition to the endless heavy weather. 



Captain Patten had been taken ill with some fever that affected 

 his brain. He was in the cabin with his hearing and sight gone, in- 

 capable of responding to any signal. Before he had been taken ill the 

 mate had made trouble and was now in chains. The person who 

 commanded Neptune's Car through these bitter days was Patten's 

 wife, nineteen years of age, but trained to the sea and already prov- 

 ing her competence as a navigator. She divided her time between 

 supplying care and comfort to her sick husband and shoving her big 

 ship forward against the western gales. She did it so successfully that 

 she brought her ship into San Francisco ten days before Gardener 



