Ahoy Mateys:-), To continue with our 1850s California Clippers Let's now look at the men(SORRY NO NAMES) who sailed those wonderful ships during the goldrush era. We again join Arthur CLARK's "The Clipper Ship Era" where he writes: "The captains and officers of the California clippers were as a class men of integrity, energy, and skill, nearly all of them being the best Pilgrim and Puritan stock of New England, and trained to sea from boyhood. Many of them were the sons of merchants and professsional men, well known and respected in their communities in which they lived. Their ships carried large crews, besides being fitted with every appliance for saving labor...." The demand for California clipper crews during the goldrush brought together a potpourri of men, some were good and some bad. Clark continues: "During the first half of the nineteenth century, American ships trading upon long voyages to China and India carried crews composed chiefly of Scandinavians - splendid sailormen who could do any kind of rigging work or sail-making required on board of a ship at sea and took pride in doing it well, and who also had sufficient sense to know that discipline is necessary on shipboard. These Scandinavians, who were as a rule fine seamen, clean, willing, and obedient, were the first and best class among the men of who the clipper ship crews were composed. A vessel with a whole crew of these strong, honest sailors was a little heaven afloat." Author Clark then descibes the sailors on the smaller, shorter run, packet ships, generally known as "Liverpool Irishmen" as, "a species of wild men, strong, coarse-built, thick-set; their hairy bodies and limbs tattooed with grotesque and often obscene devices in red and blue India ink; men wallowing in the slush of depravity who could be ruled only with a hand of iron." But CLARK sorta softens:-), " With all their moral rottenness, these rascals were splendid fellows to make or shorten sail in heavy weather on the Western Ocean, and to go aloft in a coat or monkey jacket in any kind of weather was regarded by them with derision and contempt. But making and taking in sail was about all that THEY could do, being useless for the hundred and one things on shipboard which deep water sailor was supposed to know...." When the California clippers appeared, these packet sailors were suddenly possessed with the desire to get to the California goldmines. As.Clark reports, "[T]hey, with other adventurers and blacklegs of the vilest sort, who were not sailors but who shipped as able for the same reason, partly composed the crews of the clippper ships." Faced with this mixture, the California Clipper captains, most with their strict New England backgrounds, had their hands full. Rules on American ships varied with those on British ships. On board the American clippers, there was no food allowance - as with the British. According to the ship's company, the Americans estimated how many days a barrel of beef, pork, bread or flour was supposed to last - a little more or less did not matter. The carpenter was in charge of the water, which was "usually carried in an iron tank which rested on the keelson abaft the mainmast and came up to the main deck.This tank was in the form of a cylinder, and held from three or four thousand gallons...Each moning at sea, water equal to one gallon for every person on board was pumped out of the tank and placed in a scuttle-beck on deck.. During the day the crew took the water they needed from the scuttle- butt..., and while there was no stint, woe to the man who wasted fresh water at sea in those days, for if he managed to escape the wrath of the officers, his shipmates were pretty sure to take care of him." Also, American merchant ships differed from other nations in regard to the use of wine and spirits. The British ships regularly served grog and allowed their captains and officers wine money. But nothing of this sort was permitted on American vessels. Maybe, an exception was that on board of some packet ships and other vessels carrying passengers. Generally, wine was on the captain's table; but the captain and officers rarely made use of it. But the American sailors were allowed plenty of hot coffee, night or day, in heavy weather - but no GROG. Let me close with another Clark assessment: "The Clipper ship captains had the reputation for being severe men with their crews, but considering the kind of human beings with whom they had to deal, it is difficult to see how they could have been anything else, and still retain command of their ships. Taken as a class, American sea-captains and mates half a century[1850s?] ago were perhaps the finest body of real sailors that the world has ever seen, and by this is meant captains and officers who had themselves sailed before the mast." Smooth sailing folks:-)), Bob Norris in Dallas <BNorris166aol.com>