William Furlsbury Carter Mission to India Part 9

In the last installment we left William sad to leave India but extremely ill.  From William’s Journal we read:

Monday the 4 [July, 1853]

…I was acompined on board of the ship by Br Miek and he Bid me farewell. I looked around the ship and a dark gloom Came over me and the ship looked more like a tomb than a ship.

I could not a Count for my felings. I had my doubts about ever seing America a gain. The Ship John Gilpin is 11 hundred tons. we had 16 hundred & 50 ton of Freight in her. we had to lay at anchor all the next day, wating for Steem & for the sailers.

The ship would sit at dock for 5 days until it finally left Calcutta.  What can we learn about the ship John Gilpin?

The clipper ship John Gilpin under sail

 The John Gilpin was a medium clipper launched in 1852 at the shipyard of Samuel Hall, Boston, MA. Dimensions: 195'×37'×22' and tonnage 1089 tons old measurement.  (http://www.bruzelius.info/Nautica/Ships/Clippers/John_Gilpin(1852).html)

Clippers were long and narrow ships built for speed.  They carried the maximum sail possible and had a somewhat limited space for cargo.  During the middle third of the 1800’s they were the darlings of the sea.  The John Gilpin was famous for a race it had with the Flying Fish.  It sailed from New York to San Francisco in 93 days and 20 hours from port to pilot under command of Captain Justine Doane. The best day's run during the voyage was 315 miles. The Flying Fish which had left New York on November 1 arrived at San Francisco in 92 days and 4 hours. 

After the John Gilpin arrived in San Francisco on January 31, 1853, she must have sailed to the Orient as she was in port in Calcutta on July 4, 1853.  So when William stepped foot on it on July 4 he was boarding a very new and extremely fast ship.  For the next 4 months and 7 days, until 11 November 1853, the John Gilpin would be his home.

As a side light, the John Gilpin had a short life and had a sad end just 5 years later.  On 29 Jan 1858 it struck an iceberg while sailing from Honolulu to New Bedford, MA with 15 passengers and a cargo of 7500 barrels of whale oil. This incident occurred 150 nautical miles off the Falkland Islands in the south Atlantic.  The ship was abandoned the following day with 15 feet of water in the hold. The entire crew was picked up by the British ship Hertfordshire on voyage from Callao to Cork and were landed at Bahia. Part of the crew arrived in New York on April 14 in the clipper ship Sunny South.

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