Under Full Sail Read online

  Yet Joshua was unaware that he was suffering from an advanced stage of tuberculosis (then known as ‘brain fever’), and collapsed through exhaustion while Neptune’s Car was battling her way around Cape Horn in extremely rough seas and high winds. The ship’s problems were exacerbated by the fact that he had been forced to confine the first officer to his cabin for the duration of the voyage: he had become a troublemaker among the crew, and been found asleep while standing a watch. Patten had then been without an immediate assistant, and been forced to rely on his second officer – illiterate and thus unable to navigate – for support.

  Mary immediately adopted the role of nurse for her seriously ill husband, whom she had to tie to his bunk so that he would not be thrown out in rough weather. But her most urgent dilemma when her husband took ill was that the ship now had no navigator – until she realised there was still one person on board with that expertise: herself.

  The troublesome first officer pleaded with Mary to be released from his cabin so he could assist with the running of Neptune’s Car, but, fearing he might instigate a mutiny among the crew and take control of the ship, she stood her ground. She would become the navigator and he would remain confined to his cabin.

  For the next fifty-two days, during which time her husband slipped into a coma, Mary commanded the 1600-ton ship and navigated her north from Cape Horn to San Francisco. It was an achievement that sees her recognised today as the first female commander of an American merchant vessel.

  Within days of arriving in San Francisco, Mary and her gravely ill husband boarded a steamship bound for New York, and on arrival there she took him home to Boston. Sadly, he remained unconscious, so was unaware that Mary gave birth to a son on 10 March 1857.

  On hearing of Mary’s remarkable effort in guiding Neptune’s Car safely to San Francisco, the ship’s insurers awarded her $1000 in recognition of saving the ship and the valuable cargo. Responding to this unexpected reward, Mary said, ‘I have endeavoured to perform that which seemed to me, under the circumstances, only the plain duty of a wife towards a good husband, stricken down by what we now fear to be a hopeless disease.’

  Joshua died in July 1857, while Mary, tragically, contracted his tuberculosis and passed away in 1861 at the age of twenty-four.

  *

  By the year of Joshua’s death, the brief but glorious era of the American clippers was already in decline.

  The facts are in the figures. While not precise, they are accurate enough to show the impact the clippers had on maritime transport.

  The vast majority of the estimated total of 455 clippers came from some 100 shipyards in America’s north-east, and north of the border in Canada. It is thought that twenty-four clippers were launched in 1850, all from the north-east coast of America. The majority of these were extreme clippers – the largest, sleekest, fastest and most powerful vessels.

  The number of launchings rose rapidly over the next two years, until 1853 – the year of Marco Polo’s great achievements on the Australian run – saw the construction and launching of these ocean greyhounds at its zenith. That year, no fewer than 120 extreme clippers slid down the ways and into the water after a bottle of either red wine or Champagne was smashed on the bow and the ship’s name revealed to the world.

  But as gold supplies dried up in California, the number of launchings dropped dramatically over the next few years. By 1858, the boom time for clipper building had come to an abrupt end, due mainly to what became known as the Panic of 1857, which spread from America to Britain and is regarded by many as the first worldwide economic crisis.

  With land values declining and migration rates falling on the west coast as the flood of gold dwindled to a trickle, speculators could no longer finance the railroads intended to connect the goldfields with the east. Then in August 1857 the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company’s New York branch shut its doors amid rumours that the bank’s entire assets had been embezzled by its cashier. With no central banking system to provide security, the panic that ensued saw other banks shut down within hours and stock values on Wall Street go into a rapid decline.

  The chaos was exacerbated by the sinking of a ship. The steamship Central America – which sailed out of San Francisco in September, bound for New York with a cargo of California gold worth $2 million – was meant to be the economy’s saviour. The $2 million cache was designed to bolster the rapidly dwindling gold reserves of banks on the east coast. But Central America sank in a hurricane off North Carolina, taking the lifeline with it.

  The Panic of 1857 would have far-reaching effects beyond the decline of the shipping industry. The crisis also heightened the simmering tensions between the north and south over the issue of slavery, which would boil over into civil war just four years later.

  But the heyday of the clippers didn’t end there: more great maritime achievements and historic moments were already occurring on the other side of the world. The focus of fortune hunters had turned away from California towards immense fields of gold in Australia.

  While the tentacles of the 1857 financial crisis did reach Australia, the impact on the economy was minimal, due in no small way to the gold rush and its associated mass migration. Instead of being a financial storm for Australia, it was a mere gale.

  News of discoveries in New South Wales and then the new colony of Victoria brought the desired – and some not-so-desired – results. Many men’s dreams would end in ruin, but the hoped-for benefits were there for all to appreciate: the gold rush helped fill the colonies’ coffers while generating great wealth for many individuals. It also delivered tens of thousands of migrants who might otherwise never have considered venturing to Australia. Moreover, it proved to be the birthplace of a national identity for an emerging nation.

  CHAPTER 2

  ‘The El Dorado of the World’

  The gold rush comes to Australia

  In 1849, the spontaneous departure of thousands of men, certain that instant wealth awaited them in the Sierra Nevadas, presented wide-ranging problems for colonial officials in Australia. The reversal of the shift in migration to Australia, small as it was at that stage, had the potential to cause long-term damage to the program that had seen the arrival of a steady stream of migrants, particularly from Britain. With the colony of New South Wales barely six decades old, any significant loss in population could easily jeopardise its future.

  For much of the first half of the nineteenth century the colonial government, with the full support of the British Colonial Office, did everything it could to deter the search for gold. It was believed that this was in the best interests of the nation’s fragile economy. Should payable gold be discovered in any quantity, there would be massive upheavals: they were certain that farm workers would abandon their income-producing livestock and crops and rush to the goldfields, and, worse still, convicts would be tempted to escape at any opportunity and head in the same direction.

  However, by the time gold was discovered in California, the members of the legislature were changing their thinking. It was nearly a decade since legislation had been introduced to abolish transportation to New South Wales: a move that had been welcomed by the ever-increasing number of free settlers, who had a distinct distaste for the ‘convict stain’ the country had borne since the First Fleet arrived in 1788.

  It was now believed that gold discoveries could be a good thing for the fledgling colony. As early as 1845, the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London printed an article that read, in part:

  Our colonies in Australia are now in a condition which would render the discovery of valuable minerals of the very highest importance. The amount of agricultural produce raised in these colonies is considerably above that required for the consumption of the inhabitants, who are now anxiously looking about the world for a market for their surplus produce, and such a market would be afforded by a population employed in mining operations.

  After closely monitoring the favourable consequences of the Californian gold rus
h, in 1849 the powers that be decided that there was just one way to turn the tide back in Australia’s favour: a similar gold discovery. It was already known that gold deposits did exist in New South Wales, so there was little doubt that should they be unearthed in similar quantities to the finds in California, the prosperity of the colony would be guaranteed.

  Governor Charles FitzRoy applied to the Colonial Office for a change of policy on mineral exploration; a geologist, Samuel Stutchbury, was appointed to survey the colony, and permission was granted to develop any valuable mineral resources he might find. Such finds, FitzRoy concluded, would bring a double benefit to the fledgling colony: the lure of gold would deliver not just untold wealth, but also countless thousands of emigrants from across the world, just as it had done in California – and hopefully the majority would stay.

  *

  Much debate still surrounds the question of who was the first person to discover payable gold in Australia. For decades, students were taught that Englishman Edward Hammond Hargraves held that honour. This is now strongly questioned – even though the New South Wales Government awarded him a rich prize.

  Today it is agreed by historians that no individual can be identified beyond doubt as the first to find gold in Australia. However, the most likely candidate is James McBrien, who, while surveying an area along the banks of the Fish River between Bathurst and Rydal, 80 miles west-north-west of Sydney, noted in his survey book on 15 February 1823: ‘At E. [end of survey line] 1 chain 50 links to river and marked a gum tree. At this place I found numerous particles of gold convenient to river.’

  Subsequently there were many other claimed discoveries, but none of them was of commercial importance. For instance, in 1846, a small amount of gold was found at Castambul in South Australia and a mine was immediately established there. But it failed to produce gold in significant quantities.

  No doubt the most controversial individual who held a desire to discover gold was Paul Edmund de Strzelecki. Born in Prussia in 1797, after spending his early years educating himself in geology, he sailed on commercial ships throughout the Pacific. He visited New Zealand, then arrived in Sydney in April 1839, and soon undertook a geological survey that led him to the Bathurst region of New South Wales. On his return to Sydney he described the mineralogy of the area as being ‘very tame’: an assessment that would later prove to be far from correct.

  In a subsequent geological survey – during which he climbed to the top of Australia’s highest peak and named it Mount Kosciuszko in honour of noted Polish military leader Tadeusz Kosciuszko – it is thought that he found some gold-bearing rocks near Hartley, about 37 miles east of Bathurst. In a letter written to an associate on 26 October 1839, he claimed he had uncovered ‘a specimen of native silver in horneblende rock and gold specks in silicate, both serving as strong indications of the existence of these precious metals in New South Wales’.

  However, Strzelecki made no mention of such a discovery in an account he wrote of his travels, published in 1845. Eventually, though, he would declare that his silence was due to a threat from the Governor of New South Wales, Major Sir George Gipps. Strzelecki wrote:

  I was warned of the responsibility I should incur if I gave publicity to the discovery, since, as the Governor argued, by proclaiming the colonies to be gold regions, the maintenance of discipline among forty-five thousand convicts . . . would become almost impossible . . . These reasons of state policy had great weight with me, and I willingly deferred to the representations of the Governor-General, notwithstanding that they were opposed to my private interests.

  Strezlecki’s note certainly confirms what would eventually become common knowledge: the news of these early discoveries of gold was deliberately suppressed. As mentioned, it would not be until 1849, after word of the Californian gold rush had spread, that this attitude changed. Much to the delight of FitzRoy’s government, the new policy brought immediate results, and the long-term benefits were immense.

  It was at this point that Edward Hammond Hargraves – the man who eventually claimed the prize – entered the picture. Born in Gosport, Hampshire, in 1816, Hargraves arrived in Sydney in 1832. He worked initially as a farmer beyond the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, and later as an itinerant collector of tortoiseshell and sea cucumber in Torres Strait. He married in 1836 and became a hotelier in East Gosford, north of Sydney. Both the marriage and the business venture failed, so he moved further north and returned to farming then ran a store while he contemplated his future.

  When news of the Californian gold rush filtered across Australia, Hargraves immediately knew where he was headed. He quickly sold up and set sail for San Francisco, determined, like everyone with him, to become a wealthy man.

  Once at the diggings, Hargraves met with little success in finding gold. In his book Australia and Its Gold Fields, published in 1855, he would write:

  My attention was naturally drawn to the form and geological structure of the surrounding country, and it soon struck me that I had, some eighteen years before, travelled through a country very similar to the one I was now in, in New South Wales. I said to myself, there are the same class of rocks, slates, quartz, granite, red soil, and everything else that appears necessary to constitute a gold field.

  In the book he went on to quote a letter he had written on 5 March 1850 to a friend in Sydney:

  I am very forcibly impressed that I have been in a gold region in New South Wales, within 300 miles of Sydney; and unless you knew how to find it you might live a century in the region and know nothing of its existence.

  According to his account, this idea came to obsess him more and more. Come November, ‘I set sail for Port Jackson . . . bent on making that discovery which had so long occupied my thoughts’.

  Hargraves joined the first wave of miners to sail from San Francisco to Sydney, a voyage that took more than two months to complete. When the barque Emma arrived back in Sydney in January 1851, Hargraves had been absent for just eighteen months. He, and the gold diggers of numerous nationalities who had travelled with him, brought the latest knowledge in practical mining methods, in particular sluicing-box and panning techniques. But for Hargraves, there was much more to this endeavour than having acquired the knowledge of how to unearth gold: it was a race in which being the first to find it in New South Wales was all that mattered.

  It is now widely believed that when Hargraves was living as a small-time squatter near Bathurst not long after he first arrived in Australia, he became aware of the discovery of small amounts of gold nearby, especially by a geologist from Sydney, Rev. William Branwhite Clarke, in 1841. On 9 May 1844, Clarke had displayed a sample of this gold to Governor Gipps, who had exclaimed: ‘Put it away, Mr Clarke, or we shall all have our throats cut!’ Besides, there was no evidence that the gold existed in any substantial quantity.

  Here the question must be asked: was Hargraves planning a fraud from the time in California when he first became aware of the colonial government’s decision to promote the discovery of payable gold in Australia – hoping to pass off Rev. Clarke’s discovery as his own and negotiate a rich reward?

  This appears distinctly possible, and Rev. Clarke himself would later state he believed Hargraves was helped by ‘a series of fortunate accidents’ and a liberal dose of fiction. Clarke would reject Hargraves’s explanation for his ‘discovery’ and declare emphatically that there was no similarity at all between the land forms of the Californian goldfields and the region near Bathurst where Hargraves went on to ‘discover’ gold.

  On 5 February 1851, not long after he had arrived back in Sydney, the heavily bearded Hargraves threw his 114-kilogram bulk onto the back of a horse and commenced a three-day ride to Bathurst, then continued for another two days over 30 miles west along rough bush tracks to Guyong. His book states that there he enlisted an eighteen-year-old local lad named John Lister as a guide and assistant – a disputed fact. He said the pair then rode some 11 miles north to Lewis Ponds Creek, where Hargraves announced to a
supposedly stunned Lister ‘that we were now in the gold fields, and that the gold was under his feet’. Hargraves would write:

  He stared with incredulous amazement, and, on my telling him that I would now find some gold, watched my movements with the most intense interest. My own excitement, probably, was far more intense than his. I took the pick and scratched the gravel off a schistose dyke, which ran across the creek at right angles with its side; and, with the trowel, I dug a panful of earth, which I washed in the water-hole. The first trial produced a little piece of gold. ‘Here it is!’ I exclaimed; and then I washed five panfuls in succession, obtaining gold from all but one. No further proof was necessary.

  Yet Hargraves’s recollection of events is in direct contrast to those of Lister and also of William, James and (to a lesser extent) Henry Tom, locals who later claimed they agreed to work with Hargraves in an effort to find gold in the area of Lewis Ponds Creek. They said that after a week of unsuccessful searching using the pans and sluicing-cradle techniques that he had brought back to Australia, Hargraves gave up on the search and returned to Sydney to visit family and friends.