New Blog 2: Tall Ships Baltimore

Thursday 8 November 2012

Tall Ships Baltimore

The Pride of Baltimore was an authentic reproduction of a 19th-century Baltimore clipper topsail schooner commissioned by citizens of Baltimore, Maryland. It was lost at sea with four of its twelve crew on May 14, 1986. The Pride of Baltimore II, a replica vessel of more modern design commissioned to replace the Pride in 1988, now sails as a Goodwill Ambassador from Baltimore and the State of Maryland.The Pride was originally built as an authentic reproduction of a 19th-century Baltimore clipper schooner. She was not patterned after any particular vessel, but rather she was designed as a typical Baltimore Clipper as they were in their heyday. Named, in a round-about way, for the legendary Baltimore-built topsail schooner Chasseur sailed by the privateer Thomas Boyle. The Chasseur was known as the "Pride of Baltimore" and participated in the War of 1812.One of the most famous of the American privateers, Captain Thomas Boyle sailed his Baltimore clipper, Chasseur, out of Fells Point, where she had been launched from Thomas Kemp's shipyard in 1812. On his first voyage as master of Chasseur in 1814, Boyle sailed east to the British Isles, where he harassed the British merchant fleet and sent a notice to George III, by way of a captured merchant vessel, ng that the entire British Isles were under naval blockade by Chasseur alone! Despite its implausibility, this used the British Admiralty to call vessels home from the American war to guard merchant ships sailing in convoys.