China Jewel by Thomas Hollyday Page B

her eyes excited like Cutter had seen them so many times when she was deep in the middle of one of her research projects. “On the other hand, I don’t know how much I can do for you.” She began looking through some of the volumes at her massive bookcase. As she took down books, she told him more about the early Chesapeake brigs.
    She said, “They were called ‘pilot boat built’ or ‘Baltimore clippers’ and sailed fast for their time. Many of them never got registered. The craft often used several names depending on what kind of business they were involved in.”
    “Like what?” asked Cutter.
    “Most of them beat up national laws in one way or another. Their captains smuggled, ran slaves from Africa to the Caribbean. They traded opium in China. Boats like the Peregrine relied on speed to outrun the police. You have to remember these Chesapeake boats were unique. This type had certain high-speed sailing characteristics. They rode low to the water, with sharp ends from deadrise or empty dead space where the boards slant upward. They had raked masts to change the angle of moment so the bows would stay in the water without the buoyancy they lost from the sharpness. They carried lots of sail area.” She added, “The best ones were built in and near River Sunday in small hidden harbors.”
    Cutter said, “From the records we have, this ship was always used in something legal. Her Quaker owners would not have stood for anything crooked.”
    “May be true, assuming the merchants knew for sure what their captains did when they weren’t looking.”
    She went on, “Some of the faster brigs carried legal cargoes, perishables such as fruit. The tea had to be carried back fast too. The importers had Federal regulations that allowed them to put off paying their import duties for up to eighteen months. They could bank and leverage their tax funds to buy more tea, then pay off the earlier taxes with additional profits. The faster the boat could make the trip, the more money made. Also, the fast boats demanded higher freight rates.”
    “Time is money,” said Cutter. “So how do we find out what the Peregrine was up to?”
    “First let’s make sure we didn’t miss anything in the regular sources.” She went back to the shelf. She lifted down a gray-jacketed book and carried it to her desk, pushing aside other documents.
    “Well worn. You use it a lot?”
    “A history of the clipper ships of the early period,” she said as she opened it, and began thumbing. “It’s one of the few copies still available. I love touching it.” He noticed the pages were brown with age.
    “What’s the difference between early and later period?” asked Cutter.
    “Later period was after 1850. It started when the shipbuilders learned how to make the big three-masted clippers, the ones most people call clipper ships.”
    “I wondered about that because our boat only has two masts.”
    She added, “The later vessels had a different hull design, more rounded to carry more freight. They got speed because of size and amount of sail, not so much from the knifelike Chesapeake lines.”
    “So we’re looking for only the two-masted ones, the brigs.”
    “Yes. Some two-mast topsail schooners, not brigs, sailed in the China Trade too, but mostly brigs because their square sails allowed the boat to perform better. You see, the trade winds pushed the boat in the right direction but the boat had to have them blow from behind to get real speed. The square sails were good at doing that. The schooners mostly sailed across the wind and so had to tack and maneuver a lot.”
    “The bigger clippers had huge square sails.”
    “You got that right. They also had large hulls and with all the sails they really moved fast. Of course they needed more sailors to set all those sails. So, the steamers with smaller, less expensive crews won out and the use of sailing clippers died.”
    She thumbed through the index. “Nothing on your Osprey. Let’s find