There is a gracious lightness in the outline of this beautiful vessel, which makes her a sailor's favorite at the first glance and this feeling improves the more closely she is inspected. She registers about 912 tons, has rounded lines and fine ends, with just sheer enough to impart ease and neatness to the bow. She is 170 feet long on deck, has 35½ feet extreme breadth of beam and 22 feet depth of hold, including 8 feet height between decks. Her bow is quite sharp and clippery, with a fair inclination or forerake, and is ornamented with a gilded eagle on the wing, for a figure head. The stern is nearly oval in outline, is very light, and in the wake of the monkey rail it is rounded at the quarter. It is spanned by an arch of gilded carved work, in the span of which is a gilded eagle, and carved into the archboard are her name and port of hail. Her run, like her bow, is long and clean, her sides true at the curve of a circle, and they are planked smooth to the covering board. She is yellow metalled up to 18 feet draught, and above there is painted black. Inside she is buff color, relieved with white, and her waterways are blue. The bulwarks are about 5 feet high, and the monkey rail stanchions and gangway boards are of mahogany.
Like other clippers she has a topgallant forecastle, a house abaft the foremast for her galley, &c., and aft, a half-poop deck, with a house in front. The house contains a pantry, staterooms for the officers, and an apartment suitable for a dining room for the mates. It has also a staircase, which leads to the poop. The cabin is entered from the house by a staircase, and is most beautifully finished. We have seen cabins more expensively fitted up, but we have rarely seen one more consistently neat as a whole. It has gothic-arched panels, of satin wood, relieved with mahogany and rosewood pilasters, delicately lined and flowered with gold. She has a transom sofa, a splendid table with settees, rich carpeting and other furniture to match. The cabin contains 7 staterooms and other apartments, is well lighted and ventilated, and is most admirably adapted for the accommodation of passengers.
The ship herself, for excellence of material and workmanship, will compare favorably with any vessel of her size that her builder has ever produced. Indeed, the details of her timber and fastening nearly correspond with those of several crack 1500 tons ships which we have described. Her frame is of white oak, also all her hooks and pointers, the knees in the hold, stanchions, &c., and her ceiling, planking and deck frames of hard pine. Her keel is of rock maple, sided 15 inches and moulded 24; her floor timbers 12 by 17, and she has three depths of keelsons, each 15 inches square; double bilge keelsons over the floor heads, a stringer for the lower ends of her hanging knees to rest upon, 8 inches thickness of clamps, 15 inches square waterways, a thick strake inside of these, two over them, and the ceiling above is 6 inches thick. The upper deck waterways are 12 by 14 inches and the planksheer and main rail are each 6 inches thick. Her garboards are 8 inches, the next strake 7, and so on to 5 inches, the substance of her bottom planking, and her wales are 6 by 8 inches. She is square fastened inside and outside, has heavy hooks and pointers which span the angles of her ends completely, and her lodging and hanging knees are also very stout and closely bolted. These details, imperfect as they are, show that she is a very superior vessel.
She is also liberally found in all her outfits, has an excellent set of spars, good Russia hemp rigging, and is not overmasted. Her mainmast is 75 feet long, and the main yard 68 feet square, and the others in like proportions. She carries a main skysail, but nothing above a royal on either of the other masts. She has long mast-heads, crowned with gilded balls and altogether aloft she looks light and airy. Her lower masts are of single spars which makes them appear lighter than if they were built; but they are well secured, have good diameters, and may wear as well as built masts of the same size.
She has three boats stowed on a gallows-frame over the quarter deck, their after ends resting on the house in front of the poop; and also has a patent windlass, two capstans, Crane's self-acting chain stoppers, which are now used in almost every ship of any note, a patent forcepump on the forecastle, for wetting sails, or extinguishing fire, should such a calamity befal her; and the good old fashioned guntackle steering apparatus. Below she has an iron water tank; in a word, she has everything of importance, which is now in use on board of any ship.
This fine vessel was built by Messrs. Hayden & Cudworth, and is owned by Messrs. Crowell, Brooks & Co., of this city. Capt. Laban Howes, one of the best sailors, command her. She is now lying at the South side of Long wharf, near the end, and, is loading with despatch in Timothy Davis & Co.'s line of California clippers. Passengers as well as shippers, will find her all that a ship of her size ought to be. Call soon and see her, for she is two-thirds loaded and will be off in a few days.
Transcribed by Lars Bruzelius.
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Copyright © 1999 Lars Bruzelius.