Clipper ship Berlin, north from the Dry Tortugas

 Irish Wilderness, On the Mission and Fifty Years Ago  No Responses »
Dec 062023
 

A brick lighthouse replaced the original in 1858 – about the time Hogan was making land claims in the Ozarks. The Dry Tortugas lighthouse, along with the Garden Key lighthouse at Fort Jefferson, were the only lights on the Gulf coast that stayed in full operation throughout the American Civil War. It was decommissioned in December 2015.

Having passed Key West, the next landmark was the Tortugas. In 1825, a lighthouse had been constructed at Garden Key (one of seven Keys included in the “Dry Tortugas”) to warn incoming vessels of the dangerous reefs. All eyes on board the clipper ship Berlin searched the night’s horizon for that light.

In the early hours of the night of December 11th, as we were sailing westward of Key West, a sailor was sent aloft into the rigging, having orders to look out northwest to starboard for a lighthouse, which he was to report as soon as seen. …  Later on I thought I saw a light glimmer; again I saw it, and again and again I saw it at short intervals. I reported so quietly to the ship’s officer on duty on deck at the time. He looked in the direction that I did and affirmed my observation that the glimmer on the surface of the sea was from the lighthouse we were looking for. …The Tortugas light having been sighted, orders were given to change the ship’s course to northwest for the mouths of the Mississippi.

Today, 70 miles west of Key West, lies the Dry Tortugas National Park. Per Wikipedia: Fort Jefferson National Monument was designated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt under the Antiquities Act on January 4, 1935. (Comprising 47,125 acres (19,071 ha) The monument was expanded in 1983 and re-designated as Dry Tortugas National Park on October 26, 1992 by an act of Congress.

The National Park Service webpage describes it:

The seven keys (Garden, Loggerhead, Bush, Long, East, Hospital, and Middle) collectively known as the Dry Tortugas, are situated on the edge of the main shipping channel between the Gulf of Mexico, the western Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean. The strategic location of the Dry Tortugas brought a large number of vessels through its surrounding waters as they connect the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Early on, the shipping channel was used among Spanish explorers and merchants traveling along the Gulf Coast.

With the key landmark sighted, and the ship’s course changed, they continued for several days:

After that we had fair skies and good sailing across the Gulf of Mexico … The distance between Key West and the mouths of the Mississippi, 550 miles, was sailed in 72 hours, at average speed of 7.1 miles an hour. The whole distance, from Liverpool to the mouths of the Mississippi, 5,250 miles, was sailed in 5 weeks and 1 day, at the rate of 146 miles per day, or 6.1 miles per hour.

I recently acquired an ex-libris copy of Hogan’s Nautical Distances. Despite his hopes in making this information available for schools that “it would lead many talented, aspiring young men to enter naval schools and academies, to prepare themselves for brilliant careers as practical seamen …” it had  been checked out of the Library of St. Paul’s College, Concordia, Mo. only once, Nov. 3 – but no year noted.

 

 

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Bishop Hogan recounted his childhood memories and his voyage to America and to the priesthood in Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir, written in 1898 and published in 1907.  Our companion volume to Mystery of the Irish Wilderness contains both those memoirs plus additional biographical information I was able to learn from the archives of both the Kansas City-St. Joseph and St. Louis dioceses.

On the Mission in Missouri and Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir is available on our website for $10.50, postage paid at www.beautifulozarks.com    Companion volume, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness: Land and Legend of Father John Joseph Hogan’s Lost Irish Colony in the Ozark Wilderness, is also available for $9.50, postpaid.

 

 

John Hogan’s Journey to America – Part 2: Liverpool to the Florida Keys

 Irish Wilderness, Lens & Pen Press, On the Mission and Fifty Years Ago, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Nov 092023
 

We left young John Hogan in Liverpool a week (and 175 years) ago. After his arrival from Dublin, he walked the docks and scanned the ships waiting for cargo and preparing to sail. There among them was the Forfarshire, on which he had already engaged his passage to New Orleans. The sight of it was a let-down:

She was a wide, large, dirty, heavy-looking ship. Her sails were anything but snow white, with plenty of pitch and tar splashed on her decks, bulwarks, and rigging; besides, she looked very deep in the water, and near her, on the wharf, there was a whole cargo yet waiting to be stowed in her between decks. I was greatly discouraged, and still more so when I had learned, upon inquiry; that the Forfarshire was a slow ship, her usual voyages between Liverpool and New Orleans being from seven to nine weeks.

Time to rethink that plan. He went to the office of the shipping line where he had his ticket and inquired (politely, of course) as to the possibility of changing his plan. Unlike today’s reservation system, they were amenable to the change (no change fees or separate charges) and recommended another of their ships:

“…the Berlin, an American clipper ship, commanded by Captain Smith, a Boston Yankee. The Berlin is a good ship and a fast sailor.”

This is a public domain image of a three masted clipper ship. I could not find an image of the Berlin itself.

Clipper ships were the sleek, fast, nimble ships of the era, plying the trade routes to China and India and the Americas. Pirates loved them too. They were three-masted vessels (though rarely four-masted) and were fully square-rigged on all masts. Speedy contemporary vessels with other sail plans, such as barques, were also sometimes called clippers. They dominated the seas in the middle third of the nineteenth century, before being phased out by the advent of more modern iron-hulled sailing ships, which eventually gave way to steamships.

Wikipedia has a long list of ships but the Berlin was not among them. Newspapers.com had no mention of the arrival of the Berlin in New Orleans that I could find. Nor did Hogan name the Boston company that owned the two ships. Better researchers than I could probably dig this information out!

Hogan does not mention how he passed his time in Liverpool for the week between the two launch dates, other than one activity, watching the Forfarshire up anchor and head to sea:

The Forfarshire sailed on her appointed day, November 1st. When I saw her leaving port, her dirty sails unloosed in the wind, I considered myself fortunate to be waiting for the Berlin.

John Hogan’s account of crossing the Atlantic is remarkable in its detail. Somewhere in the archives there may be a journal of his early years. It’s hard to imagine he could recall with such detail the days of passage, the sightings of land (the Azores, the Bahamas, weather and climate changes, the change in the night skies), the speed and course of the ship without some personal record. As they rounded the tip of the Florida peninsula, Hogan noted this: “The course we had sailed from Abaco to Key West … was about 300 miles. Time, from 6 P. M. Friday to 10 A. M. Monday, 40 hours; average sailing per hour, 7 ½ miles.”

In later years as Bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph, he published a small book, Nautical Distances and How to Compute Them for the Use of Schools, dedicated to Teddy Roosevelt. It is a small book, a copy of which is in the archives of the diocese. Interestingly, amazon.com has a listing for this book (published 120 years ago – 1903)…  currently listed as unavailable.

At this point, he was one month from Liverpool and nearing New Orleans, his first destination.

 

 

 

Bishop Hogan recounted his childhood memories and his voyage to America and to the priesthood in Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir, written in 1898 and published in 1907.  Our companion volume to Mystery of the Irish Wilderness contains both those memoirs plus additional biographical information I was able to learn from the archives of both the Kansas City-St. Joseph and St. Louis dioceses.

On the Mission in Missouri and Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir is available on our website for $10.50, postage paid at www.beautifulozarks.com    Companion volume, Mystery of the Irish Wilderness: Land and Legend of Father John Joseph Hogan’s Lost Irish Colony in the Ozark Wilderness, is also available for $9.50, postpaid.