Archive of 8 Autograph Letters and Documents relating to the maritime career of Captain Richard Albert Wamack. (Charleston, South Carolina; New York; Capetown, South Africa; Paris; and Cartagena, Spain, 1845 – 1867) 37 total pages.
Born in Virginia in 1820, in 1853-54 Wamack was Captain of three Vanderbilt steam ships - the Daniel Webster, Prometheus and North Star (the huge former Vanderbilt yacht) – which sailed regularly from New York to Nicaragua and Panama, carrying passengers bound for California via the overland Isthmus route. These papers detail his long career before and after those years, beginning with his “protection” document as a 25 year-old steamship mate in 1845; a decade later, after his Nicaragua runs, a document from the passengers of the North Star in 1855 (including the wife of General Winfield Scott), presenting him with silver plate in “appreciation of high qualities” during the voyage from France to New York; large (18 x 20”) ornate printed and handwritten Articles of Agreement (“no sheath-knives, no grog”) between Wamack and 22 crew members of the Ship Westminster, bound from New Orleans to England, 1856; 3 pg. letter from Wamack’s wife Emma to her husband in New Orleans, May 1857, expressing her grief at his absence and reporting that Commodore Vanderbilt, that “ungentlemanly man”, had remarked that Wamack was the man he most wanted to captain his new ship (named, of course, the Vanderbilt); 2 long 1860 documents written in Capetown about the loss of Wamack’s Ship Westminster, bound on a two year voyage from New York to Rio de Janeiro and Bombay, which had been wrecked after suffering “heavy and extensive damage” in “violent and tempestuous weather” off the coast of South Africa; 2 1867 letters to Wamack (after his wife’s death in Paris) from Spain and a friend in France (“if you left off going to sea, you never would live happy”) about his ill-health on his last voyage to Europe. Wamack died 3 years later.
Born in Virginia in 1820, in 1853-54 Wamack was Captain of three Vanderbilt steam ships - the Daniel Webster, Prometheus and North Star (the huge former Vanderbilt yacht) – which sailed regularly from New York to Nicaragua and Panama, carrying passengers bound for California via the overland Isthmus route. These papers detail his long career before and after those years, beginning with his “protection” document as a 25 year-old steamship mate in 1845; a decade later, after his Nicaragua runs, a document from the passengers of the North Star in 1855 (including the wife of General Winfield Scott), presenting him with silver plate in “appreciation of high qualities” during the voyage from France to New York; large (18 x 20”) ornate printed and handwritten Articles of Agreement (“no sheath-knives, no grog”) between Wamack and 22 crew members of the Ship Westminster, bound from New Orleans to England, 1856; 3 pg. letter from Wamack’s wife Emma to her husband in New Orleans, May 1857, expressing her grief at his absence and reporting that Commodore Vanderbilt, that “ungentlemanly man”, had remarked that Wamack was the man he most wanted to captain his new ship (named, of course, the Vanderbilt); 2 long 1860 documents written in Capetown about the loss of Wamack’s Ship Westminster, bound on a two year voyage from New York to Rio de Janeiro and Bombay, which had been wrecked after suffering “heavy and extensive damage” in “violent and tempestuous weather” off the coast of South Africa; 2 1867 letters to Wamack (after his wife’s death in Paris) from Spain and a friend in France (“if you left off going to sea, you never would live happy”) about his ill-health on his last voyage to Europe. Wamack died 3 years later.