SNAPDRAGON (1853)
The U.S. bark SNAPDRAGON was a medium clipper, built at New York by William H. Webb (hull #82), for the New York firm of Wakeman & Dimon, and launched on 1 October 1853. 618 tons; 140 ft x 29 ft 4 in x 18 ft (length x beam x depth of hold). She appears to have been a transient trader: on 16 April 1854, Sherwood, master, she arrived at New York, from Antwerp 12 March, with 212 steerage passengers [passenger list, dated 19 April 1854, published in Germans to America, vol. 6, pp. 395-396, where the vessel is incorrectly given as the DRAGON]. On 4 June 1855, she cleared Philadelphia for San Francisco, where she arrived on 8 October 1855, after a passage of 126 days. She sailed from the Gulf of California for Hamburg early in 1856, and was in the South Atlantic, at lat 31 40 S, lon 27 35 W, when on 21 February 1856, she spoke with the whaler SPLENDID. In 1858, she sailed from China to Britain in 104 days with a cargo of tea. I have no information on the later history of the SNAPDRAGON.
Source; William Armstrong Fairburn, Merchant Sail (Center Lovell, Maine: Fairburn Marine Educational Foundation, [1945-55]), II.1517, 1536 III.1881; IV.2229, V.2803, 2808, 2815; VI.3891, 3933, 3938; Edwin L. Dunbaugh and William duBarry Thomas, William H. Webb: Shipbuilder (Glen Cove, New York: Webb Institute of Naval Architecture, 1989), p. 197; New York Times, 5 April 1856, p. 8e.
[13 Aug 1997]