Barons of the Sea

May 7, 2018
Ujifusa (A Man and His Ship) reconstructs the lavish social milieu of Yankee shipping magnates in this account of how clipper ships unlocked a new world of risk and riches in the mid-19th century. In the aftermath of the First Opium War, American merchants like Warren Delano and Robert Forbes sought to exploit the newly opened China trade by launching swift clipper ships that would bring tea from China to New York in less than 100 days. With their combination of sharp-ended hulls and flat bottoms, ships based on the Baltimore clipper model combined speed and cargo capacity, providing a unique solution to the needs of New York’s merchant elite. Crisscrossing the globe from New York to Hong Kong and California, the clipper ships and their voyages were the threads that bound together families like the Delanos and the Forbeses in complex webs of commerce and matrimony. Ujifusa is adept at evoking both the monotony and danger of sea voyages, where long days subsisting on salted beef and hard tack might be disrupted by “a solid wall of water” bearing down on a ship. Weaving together details of shipboard life, supporting figures, and the revolutionary changes brought about by clipper ships, this tale of industry will appeal to seafaring and commerce enthusiasts. Agent: Becky Sweren, Aevitas Creative Management.

Starred review from May 1, 2018
Fifty years before the robber barons, immense fortunes in the young United States flowed to great shipping firms, a brutal, sometimes lucrative, and technologically creative enterprise brilliantly chronicled by naval historian Ujifusa (A Man and His Ship: America's Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the S.S. United States, 2012).Ujifusa begins at the beginning, Feb. 22, 1784, less than a year after independence, when, free from British mercantile restrictions, the Empress of China sailed from New York to Canton, returning 14 months later laden with cargo that sold for a nice profit. The rush was on as shipping firms, mostly family-run and New England-based, took up the trade. The author delivers lively portraits of half a dozen young American entrepreneurs who, by the 1830s, had established themselves in China and grown rich. Equally significant, after 1840, American shipyards began building sleek, sharp-lined, tall-sparred vessels with a huge sail spread. Sacrificing cargo capacity for speed, clipper ships cut the 6-month voyage to China in half. An admirer but also knowledgeable (readers should keep Wikipedia's glossary of naval terms on hand), Ujifusa emphasizes that they were complex, more fragile, and more expensive to operate than slower, capacious ships. For a decade, they dominated the China trade and carriage to gold fields in California and Australia, but entrepreneurs began preferring reliability and capacity to speed. Steam power and the 1869 opening of the Suez Canal dealt the death blow to clippers, although traditional sailing vessels remained profitable for several decades.A vivid account of larger-than-life if not always attractive characters and a technological marvel that briefly captivated the Victorian world.

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June 1, 2018

Before the Civil War, sailing from America or England to China could take six months. The English had no interest in building a faster ship because they had little competition. In the United States, however, the Delano and Forbes families, among others, were hard at work to build faster ships; clipper ships that could reach China in half the time, three months. Ujifusa (A Man and His Ship) tells their story of engineering, greed, drug dealing, and profit. As Warren Delano built his shipping empire, he learned how to work with Chinese officials. His ships carried and sold opium illegally into Chinese harbors. There, he purchased large amounts of tea to ship back to America. Delano and others, such as Robert Bennet Forbes and John Murray Forbes, funded the production of new clipper ships that could make the run to China in 90 days. Details of the building and sailing of these ships reads like an adventure novel. VERDICT Ujifusa's account is filled with escapades, courage, and deceit. Fans of maritime history, Chinese trade history, and shipbuilding will enjoy.--Jason L. Steagall, Gateway Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI

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