McCorkell Line Sailing Ship Minnehaha

Today, the large blue house flag, initialled Wm McC & Co. Ltd, of Derry merchants William McCorkell & Co, together with nameplate, figurehead (of a woman with golden hair and green dress with red trim) and bell of their flagship the Minnehaha are on display in Derry’s Harbour Museum.

Minnehaha

The Minnehaha, built in New Brunswick, Canada at a cost of $72,000, was acquired by William McCorkell & Co, in 1860, for the North American passenger trade. For the next twelve years this fine clipper, known in its New York, East River berth as the “the green yacht from Derry”, carried emigrants to New York, usually making two voyages per year, in an average of twenty-seven days; the spring voyage of 1869 taking just twenty days, and nineteen days back. The Minnehaha maintained a passenger service from Derry to New York throughout the American Civil War.

In the 1860s the McCorkell Line demonstrated that first-class sailing ships could compete with steam on the North American passenger run. They had five ships plying between Derry and the US cities of New York and Philadelphia: the Mohongo; Minnehaha, Stadacona, Village Belle and Lady Emily Peel. The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wandsworth Longfellow was a source of inspiration in the naming of many of the McCorkell ships, including their flagship the Minnehaha.

By the 1870s sailing ships could no longer compete with the speed, comfort and reliability of the transatlantic passenger steamers. In 1873 the Minnehaha made the last passenger voyage by a Derry-owned ship to New York. The Minnehaha then became, for the next fourteen years, a Baltimore grain carrier. Indeed, from 1873 to 1889 the McCorkell Line bought seven ships, principally for the Baltimore grain trade and, by 1881, they had a fleet of eight ships constantly employed in the Baltimore grain run.

Derry Quay 1881

With increasing competition from steamers and foreign sail in the late 1880s, together with the loss of three of their ships through shipwreck, including the Osseo in 1894, it was only a matter of time before the McCorkell Line withdrew from the Atlantic trade. The Minnehaha finished her days as a timber drogher until she was sold in 1895; and the sale of the Hiawatha in 1897 marked the end of the company’s involvement in the shipping trade.

The McCorkell family commissioned oil paintings of many, but not all, ships which sailed under the McCorkell flag from 1834 to 1897. Oil paintings were produced of the following McCorkell Line ships: Caroline, Erin, Harvester, Hiawatha, Minnehaha, Mohongo, Osseo, Oweenee, Village Belle and Wenonah.

Two of the McCorkell commissions were painted by Joseph Joshua Sempill.  Sempill painted the Minnehaha and Village Belle, “in full sail with the main ‘course’ in the process of being furled”, as they entered Belfast Lough, off Whitehead, even though they operated out of Derry on Lough Foyle. He painted the Minnehaha in its full glory as a passenger carrying clipper, with three sets of full sails (see picture at top of page).

At least 65 ship portraits, painted by marine artist Joseph Joshua Sempill, have been identified in private and museum collections on both sides of the Atlantic which include museums in Canada such as Yarmouth County Museum, Nova Scotia and Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax and institutions in USA such as Maine Maritime Museum and Camden Public Library, Maine. These paintings have now been catalogued by Sam Davidson, honorary consultant (marine pictures) to the Maritime Museum, Liverpool and published in Marine Art & Ulster A Chronicle of Sail, Steam & Flag Codes (Jones-Sands Publishing, 2005).