{"id":2759,"date":"2010-07-16T06:40:58","date_gmt":"2010-07-16T13:40:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=2759"},"modified":"2013-06-14T13:48:28","modified_gmt":"2013-06-14T20:48:28","slug":"not-so-lucky-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/not-so-lucky-star\/","title":{"rendered":"Not So Lucky Star"},"content":{"rendered":"

July \/ August 2010<\/p>\n

\"colin08\"If Ripley\u2019s Believe It Or Not!<\/em> ever treated us to the lore and legends of the Kennebunk River, they\u2019d lead with the strange case of the Ocean King<\/em>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Launched for Nathaniel Lord Thompson at the present site of Federal Jack\u2019s in 1874, the 215.5-foot clipper was an eye-popper at 2,510.5 gross tons, \u201cthe largest ship afloat,\u201d according to the New York Times<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The largest vessel in the world was built here, near Shipyard Brewery? Where\u2019s the catch?<\/span><\/p>\n

Though it\u2019s hardly a proper tidbit for today\u2019s restaurant place mats, she had bad luck of the Drag Me To Hell<\/em> variety.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the streamers and fireworks of her debut, things were lovely, though she was as much an anachronism as a curiosity. Consider this August 29, 1877 blip in the New York Times<\/em>: \u201cThe clipper-ship Ocean King<\/em>, owned by J. H. Sears of Boston, and now lying at Pier No. 19 East River, receiving cargo for San Francisco, is one of six sailing vessels of the world that carry four masts. This additional mast, which is rigged after the style of a bark\u2019s mizzen mast, is called the \u2018spanker mast.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The spanks are just beginning. Let\u2019s follow her out to San Francisco via The Deseret Evening News<\/em>, September 22, 1877: \u201cFive sailors of the ship Ocean King<\/em>, from this port for San Francisco, have been arrested for mutiny.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

These happy campers might have been enough to give her a black eye, but seven years later, a fresh gust of ill wind filled her sails as J. H. Sears & Co. went out of business and was forced to sell her to William P. Ellison.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s long been a superstition that appearing prematurely on the cover of Sports Illustrated<\/em> is a guarantee of snuffed fame, but you tell me the Ocean King<\/em> wasn\u2019t the Mark \u201cThe Bird\u201d Fidrych of clipper ships after you catch a glimpse of her in 1887, during the last chapter of her weird, wild afterlife, hauling coal out of Nanaimo, British Columbia, for her new port of Coos Bay, Oregon, in a horrible gale. The rakish clipper crashed into the rocks and \u201ccaught fire, it is thought, from the galley stove,\u201d the Port Townsend, Washington, newspaper reported. \u201cEvery attempt was made to quench the flames\u201d before her crew deserted her, and she went down! <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMommy, the scary ship on my place mat is sinking straight to hell in a fiery inferno!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019re missing the Broadway dactyl. According to devils familiar with the matter, one \u201cSpecial Agent Tingle, of the Treasury Department\u201d seized the $1,000 check the Ocean King<\/em>\u2019s captain had generously given (mistakenly, the Ocean King<\/em>\u2019s agent Capt. Knowles claimed later) to Charles Soderstrum of the schooner Angel Dolly<\/em>, in payment for rescuing him and his crew. Bad ship, no tip.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

July \/ August 2010 If Ripley\u2019s Believe It Or Not! ever treated us to the lore and legends of the Kennebunk River, they\u2019d lead with the strange case of the Ocean King. Launched for Nathaniel Lord Thompson at the present site of Federal Jack\u2019s in 1874, the 215.5-foot clipper was an eye-popper at 2,510.5 gross […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":247,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[55],"class_list":["post-2759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editor","tag-july-august-2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2759"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8178,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2759\/revisions\/8178"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}