Since the British shipowners already enjoyed a major share of the world's trade, they were not prepared to gamble time or money in developing a new breed of ship. That was left to the younger nation across the sea. America could not compete in terms of money or tonnage with the British ships and so was forced to come up with a revolutionary idea-something so brilliantly new that the only word to fit it is genius.
As Nat Palmer grew up he was obsessed with the idea of sailing a ship faster and closer to the wind than had been thought possible. Most young fellows in Stonington felt the same way, for the town then thought of little else but fast and weatherly ships.
After the War of 1812 it was apparent to every American seaman that there was a need for faster ships that could outrun any combination of enemy naval vessels. Thus was born the idea of speed under sail. And born too, in the mind of young Nat Palmer, was the dream of a new type of ship altogether.
Before he was twenty, Nat Palmer was already a full-fledged captain, in command of the coastal schooner Galena. When no opportunity came for a more adventurous command, he voluntarily demoted himself and signed as second mate on board the Hersilia, a brig bound for the mist-shrouded sealing islands off the top of South America.
He was credited with having the keenest eyesight of anyone on the seven seas. Palmer spied land where no other man had seen it and led the ship to a previously uncharted island.
Palmer was offered the command of a small and elderly boat for the next seal-hunt. He jumped at the chance. Three months later, Palmer's logbook was to disclose that he had become the first sailor since Columbus to discover an entirely new continent.
During a blinding snowstorm, Palmer sought shelter from the furious winds and found it in a most curious harbor. The place was Deception Island, and Palmer, with his astonishing eyesight, saw what no man had ever seen before-a tiny slit in the rocky walls. Without hesitation he sailed his sloop smack into the mouth of the jagged entrance-not much wider than his little ship-and found himself in a beautiful, completely sheltered harbor more than five miles in diameter. What was even more astonishing was the fact that both water and air inside this curious place were warm.
They spent two days there while Palmer made obserrvations and navigational records for his logbook. It was then that he saw a mere smudge on the southern horizon. He thught it might be additional land and at once set sail for it.
It turned out to be the portion of Antarctica now known as Palmer Peninsula. It was not supposed to be there. Nothing was. Palmer had discovered a new continent.
In the years that followed, Palmer commanded a variety of ships in different parts of the world. He continued to think of the various factors that might make for a better ship.
He commanded a packet ship on the New Orleans to New York run. These were meant to carry cotton bales. As a result they were built almost like cotton bales themselves, with a wide, nearly flat bottom. The surprising thing about these packets was that instead of being slow, they were surprisingly fast. Palmer's curiosity was aroused.
Conventional ship design wisdom held that the hull had to be built with a sharp V bottom, in theory the sharper the V, the faster the ship. Palmer began to think otherwise and said so. No one would listen to him.
The New Englanders had already discovered that a long, narrow ship would go faster than a short, fat one. Nat Palmer aimed to marry these regional discoveries together.
Palmer was neither a shipbuilder nor a marine architect. What was necessary now to produce the nearly perfect ship was a coalition of all of these forces, founded on the rock-solid bae of Palmer's vast practical experience. What was necessary also was money, and it was here that the next piece of the puzzle drops into place.
Once Collins was convinced that Palmer's vision of a ship was sound, Palmer drew up the rough lines of what he considered to be the ideal ship.
The problem that remained was to find an architect whose ideas coincided with Palmer's and could convert those rough drawings into the smoothly flowing lines of a real ship.