A New Maritime List from the Ten Pound Island Book Company
- by Michael Stillman
The speedy clipper ship races past the slow steamship.
Item 20 is a remarkable promotional piece for excursions from Narragansett Bay to Block Island. The trips were operated by the Excursion View Company of Providence. It is a doubled-sided walnut box, measuring 5” x 6” x 13 1/2”. There are viewing windows on each side. Inside are two rolls, 30 feet long, 3 ½ inches high. The rolls contain images of the sights along the way, from Providence to Block Island and back again. Two wooden handles allow the viewer to scroll through the scenes on the roll. Presumably seeing these images of the sights encouraged viewers to purchase tickets for the excursion. $15,000.
Item 14 is a clipper ship sailing card for the WildRover. The Rover was scheduled to sail from New York to San Francisco on April 9, 1859. Arrival times were always iffy in those days. The image, as Ten Pound Island explains, was designed to promote “an increasingly desperate illusion propagated by the clipper ship industry” that sailboats were faster than steamships. In this case, a clipper ship, as represented by a fleet horseman, speeds past a lumbering horse pulling a heavy wagon labeled “coal.” The irony was complete when the ship needed four attempts to make it around Cape Horn, being repeatedly blown back. It took almost 6 months to reach San Francisco. $2,500.
