Steven Ujifusa is the author of the new book Barons of the Sea. He also has written A Man and His Ship. He lives in Philadelphia.
Q: How did you first get
interested in the 19th century clipper ships, and why did you end up writing
Barons of the Sea?
A: I have been fascinated by
ships and the sea since early childhood. My first book, A Man and
His Ship: America's Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the SS
United States (Simon & Schuster, 2012), grew out of my love of the
great transatlantic ocean liners of the 20th century.
When considering a topic for
a second book, I decided to go back a century and look at another type of fast
ship that revolutionized global commerce.
Barons of the Sea also is
about a quest to build a transcendently beautiful type of vessel, the American
clipper ship, but it is also the story of dynastic ambition. The clipper ships
were not the end goal, but the means to a goal: American dominance of global
trade and great wealth for the owners.
The American clipper ships
were the perfect balance of beauty and commerce. As naval historian Samuel
Eliot Morison wrote:
With no extraneous ornaments
except a figurehead, a bit of carving and a few lines of gold leaf, their one
purpose of speed over the great ocean routes was achieved by perfect balance of
spars and sails to the curving lines of the smooth black hull; and this harmony
of mass, form and color was practiced to the music of dancing waves and of
brave winds whistling in the rigging.
In the early 19th century,
the American government placed virtually no regulations on ship design and
operation, so profit maximization was the principal design consideration.
By the mid-1840s, American
clippers had cut the sailing time between China and New York almost in half.
American customers got their tea faster and were willing to pay a high price
for the season’s first pickings. High value freight more than made up for
the extra crew cost and reduced cargo capacity. During the California Gold
Rush, clipper ships carried the freight that built the modern city of San
Francisco.
Q: You begin the book with
Warren Delano II, the grandfather of FDR. What intrigued you about Warren
Delano, and why did you start by focusing on him?
A: The men and women in Barons
of the Sea were talented and driven in so many different areas
(shipbuilding, navigation, and trade), but they were all intensely loyal and
ambitious for their families.
FDR's mother, Sara Delano
Roosevelt, who as a young girl traveled to China on the clipper ship Surprise
in 1862, claimed that her son was more a Delano than a Roosevelt. Being a
Delano meant love of risk, grace under pressure, and shrewdness. Her father Warren Delano II (1809-1898) led a
life worthy of a novel.
The son of a whaling captain,
he spent his early years in China, making a fortune in the opium and tea trade.
Upon his return to New York, he reinvested that fortune in clipper ships, coal
and copper mines, and Manhattan real estate.
He was a devoted father who
would do anything for his wife and children, but he also had little shame about
being involved in the drug business or owning fast ships that sacrificed safety
for profit.
As president, Franklin
Roosevelt liked to quote his grandfather Delano’s favorite business
maxim: “Never let your left hand know what your right hand is
doing.”
Q: How did you research the
book, and did you learn anything that particularly surprised you?
A: Eleanor Roosevelt,
President Theodore Roosevelt’s favorite niece, joined Warren Delano’s clan in
1905 upon her marriage to his grandson Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In 1938, after three decades
of living with Delano family drive (both from her husband and mother-in-law)
she wrote, “families are the most interesting thing in the world…for in the
story of every family is the stuff from which novels and eventually history is
written.”
I did plenty of traditional
research, most notably at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library,
the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Mystic Seaport Museum.
And then there’s discovery of
a document from Hong Kong dating from 1867, written in both Chinese and
English, hidden away in the Delano family papers. My jaw dropped when I saw it. To find out
more, read the book!
But the real surprises came
when I got to meet descendants of many of the “barons” about whom I had
written. The Delano descendants proved amazingly helpful.
One provided me with a collection
of mid-19th century family photos that had been stowed away in an attic for
decades. More importantly, family lore backed up much of what I had found hinted
at in the documents I had found.
Thanks to another descendant,
I ended up inside the Delano family mausoleum in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, just
hours before my book talk at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. I never imagined I would end up so close to
my subjects…
Q: What do you see as the
legacy today of Delano and the others who were involved in the trading you write
about?
A: The founders [of the
clipper ship fortunes] and their descendants became the backbone of New York
and Boston’s aristocracy, holding positions of leadership in government, finance,
education, and the arts.
John Murray Forbes took his
clipper ship fortune and plowed it into the Michigan Central Railroad. He gave
liberally to many Boston institutions, including the world-famous Milton
Academy prep school. John’s son William Hathaway Forbes—who married the
philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson’s daughter, Edith—was one of the founders of
the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T).
Incidentally, Warren Buffet’s
famous Berkshire Hathaway also had its origins in whaling and the China trade,
through the Hathaways of New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Members of the Grinnell
family, which had ownership stakes in the famous clipper ship Flying Cloud,
also helped found SimplexGrinnell (now a subsidiary of Tyco) and Wamsutta (now
a subsidiary of Springs Global). Actress Edie Sedgwick, one of Andrew Warhol’s
“superstars,” was a descendant of Moses Grinnell’s business partner Robert
Bowne Minturn.
Another clipper ship magnate,
Abiel Abbot Low, invested his clipper ship earnings in the Baltimore & Ohio
Railroad and the transatlantic cable. His son Seth Low served as president of Columbia
University and the mayor of Brooklyn and New York City. Columbia’s Low Memorial
Library was paid for by the Low family fortune.
And of course, Warren
Delano’s grandson Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United
States, led the nation through the Great Depression and World War II.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am working on a third
book right now. In addition to writing books, I also write histories on
commission for corporate and private clients.
Q: Anything else we should
know?
A: The writing of Barons of
the Sea was not a linear process. For
about a year or so, I was just plain stuck, and I disliked what I had written
up that point.
It took the support and
encouragement of my wife, Alexandra, as well as my editor Megan Hogan at Simon
& Schuster and agent Becky Sweren at Aevitas Creative to help me get over
my funk and press ahead.
Yes, a lot of writing is
solitary, but it can’t be done in an emotional vacuum. Faith and confidence in
you from others makes the creative process all worth it.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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