Captain Asa, 2nd Eldredge

The 251' Red Jacket, built in Maine and launched in November, 1853, was named for the Seneca Indian chief Red Jacket (Sagoyewatha, or "he that keeps them awake") who habitually wore a red jacket given to him by the British. The Red Jacket's figurehead was a life-size carving of Sagoyewatha presented in a magnificent fashion with beaded buckskins, a red jacket, and a feather head-dress. To the end of her sailing days, Red Jacket was considered the most handsome of the large American clippers.

The maiden voyage of the Red Jacket is one of the most famous in clipper ship annals. Captain Asa Eldridge, a Yarmouth, Cape Cod skipper and navigator of worldwide reputation, was in command and she left New York on January 11, 1854, bound for Liverpool. Through the fearsome winter gales of the North Atlantic with snow, hail or rain every day, the Red Jacket tore along carrying every bit of canvas she could wear. Exactly 13 days, 1 hour and 25 minutes later she dropped her hook in Liverpool Harbor, a record-smashing run that remains unbroken. She thus became one of the seven fastest sailing ships in history.

THE RED JACKET THRILLS LIVERPOOL

The following account, taken from the archives of The Yarmouth Register, tells of the heroic arrival of the Red Jacket in Liverpool Jan. 23, 1854, setting the speed record for the crossing by a commercial sailing ship that still stands:

"This passage was of significant interest in that stirring contest between the fastest ships of sail and the early ships of steam.

A Collins Line steamer, which left New York two days before the Red Jacket, arrived in Liverpool on Sunday afternoon and brought news that a Yankee clipper was just astern.

Those were sporting days. There was an intense interest in the performance of ships. When the news sped along the Liverpool waterfront people rushed in thousands to the docks, every point of vantage was black with spectators awaiting the arrival of this incredible racer.

Outside the port tugs had offered to tow the clipper, but she was going so fast they never could have kept their hawsers taut. She shot ahead, leaving them wallowing in her wake. The Red Jacket swept into the Mersey with everything drawing, presenting a spectacle of surpassing grandeur. Cheers burst from the thousands on shore.

Then Captain Asa Eldridge gave them a thrill they least expected \endash he took in his kites, his skysails, royals and topgallants, hung his courses or lower sails, in their gear, ignored the tugs that caught up, and, throwing the Red Jacket into the wind, helm hard down, he backed her long side of the berth without aid, while the crew took in sail with a celerity that seemed like magic to the spectators \endash a superb piece of seamanship."

The ship had a long career for those dangerous times, spending most of it on the long run from England to Australia, hence the icebergs of Cape Horn in the painting. It was hulked in the Cape Verde Islands in 1886. In 1856, Eldridge was lost at sea when his new ship, the steamship Pacific, disappeared with all hands on an Atlantic crossing. It was probably the victim of an iceberg, according to an account by Charles Swift, the late publisher of The Register.
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Barnstable Patriot, James Coogan A Message From the Sea Contributed by Jim Coogan A beachcomber on a lonely beach on the remote Hebrides island of Uist likely provided the answer to one of the great mysteries of the sea and the fate of Captain Asa Eldridge of Yarmouth Port. Icebergs sealed their fate, a found bottle revealed it A beachcomber on a lonely beach on the remote Hebrides island of Uist likely provided the answer to one of the great mysteries of the sea and the fate of Captain Asa Eldridge of Yarmouth Port. Plucking a sea-worn bottle from the kelp-strewn shore in the summer of 1861, the man noticed a small piece of paper inside. When he examined the penciled note, he could see that it was a description of the final minutes of a ship in distress. The note said it was from the Pacific, a steamer on the Collins Line that had disappeared in the Atlantic more than five years earlier in January of 1856. The paper was signed by a William Graham: "On board the Pacific, from Liverpool to N. York. Ship going down. Great confusion on board -- icebergs all around us on every side. I know I cannot escape. I write the cause of our loss that friends may not live in suspense. The finder of this will please get it published." Captain Asa Eldridge was one of the most prominent and respected sea captains of Cape Cod. He had commanded the Liverpool packet Roscius in the 1840s and later moved up to the extreme clipper Red Jacket in 1853. A year later, he took that ship from New York to Liverpool in 13 days and one hour from dock to dock, an incredible record for a sailing ship. In that passage, Captain Eldridge logged a 24-hour run of over 400 miles. As a reward for his seamanship, Captain Eldridge was given command of the steamer Pacific, a magnificent vessel and the flagship of the Collins Line. On January 23, 1856, the Pacific sailed from Liverpool bound for New York. She was never heard from again. Conjecture centered around the ship perhaps striking an iceberg, or encountering a fierce winter storm that may have caused her to go down. In an age when there was no communication beyond line of sight, the circumstance of what happened to the ship could only be guessed at. When the London Shipping & Mercantile Gazette got the note in the bottle, they were at first skeptical of its authenticity. It seemed incredible that a person could have remained calm in the face of certain death and set down what was happening. No ordinary person could have written the note. "It is difficult to understand how any person whose nerves had not been hardened by the presence of frequent and appalling dangers, could have written with such manifest coolness in the immediate presence of death. " The newspaper surmised that William Graham, the signer of the note, could not have been a stranger to the sea. "This self-possession at once negatives [sic] the idea that the person who could exhibit it in a moment of such supreme peril could possibly have mistaken the name of the vessel whose loss he has recorded."

Checking to see if any other ships with the same name Pacific had been lost in the Atlantic since the bottle had supposedly been launched, the Gazette could find none. And when the passenger list of the ill-fated steamer was examined, it contained the name William Graham, a British sea captain headed for New York as a passenger to take command there of another vessel. The chain of evidence was complete and the mystery solved.

The sinking of the Pacific not only spelled the end of the illustrious career of Captain Asa Eldridge, but it also led to the bankruptcy of the Collins Line, a shipping company started by another Cape Codder – Edward Knight Collins of Truro. Only two years after the loss of the Pacific, the once bright with promise Collins Line went out of business, leaving Great Britain and the company of Samuel Cunard supreme in the Atlantic.

http://capecodhistory.us/genealogy/lost/i37.htm#i21877