History | |
---|---|
United States | |
Name | Thatcher Magoun |
Owner | Thatcher Magoun and Sons, Boston |
Builder | Hayden & Cudworth, Medford, MA |
Norway | |
Renamed | Hercules |
Fate | Reported lost off the coast of Africa in the early 1880s. [1] Listed in 1882 RAFS. Not listed 1884. [2] |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | Extreme clipper |
Tons burthen | 1248 tons OM, 1155 tons NM [3] |
Length | 200 ft. OA |
Beam | 40 ft. |
Draft | 24 ft. [2] |
The Thatcher Magoun was an extreme clipper launched in 1855. She was built in shipyards on the Mystic River at Medford, Massachusetts by shipbuilder Thatcher Magoun. Magoun died the year she was launched, and the ship was named after him.
Noting that the ship's figurehead resembled Magoun, in his book published in 1937, Hall Gleason described the ship, saying "Her figurehead was a life-like image of the father of ship building on the Mystic". [1]
According to Hall Gleason, Thatcher Magoun made five passages from Boston to San Francisco. For this route, the clipper's fastest journey was completed in 113 days, and its slowest in 152 days. Moreover, in 1869, Thatcher Magoun made seven passages from New York to San Francisco, averaging 96 days per voyage. [1]
On one of its voyages from New York to San Francisco, Thatcher Magoun carried locomotives CP 88, 89, and 95 for the Central Pacific Railroad company. This voyage began July 10, 1868, and lasted 117 days. [4]
Robert Bennet Forbes, was an American sea captain, China merchant and ship owner. He was active in ship construction, maritime safety, the opium trade, and charitable activities, including food aid to Ireland, which became known as America's first major disaster relief effort.
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Thatcher Magoun was a shipbuilder who specialized in large ships and brigs, 250-tons and larger, built for the China trade. His reputation, according to the maritime historian Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison, was "second to none among American shipbuilders." He was also called the "Father of Shipbuilding on the Mystic River."
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