Background
He was born on March 14, 1823 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States and at eleven, after a disagreement with his step-mother, ran away.
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From the Forecastle to the Cabin
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Samuel Samuels
Edit ProfileCareer
early in his life he become a cabin boy on a coasting schooner. This was the beginning of a lively series of maritime adventures later recounted in his memoirs, From the Forecastle to the Cabin (1887).
He was shipwrecked on the Florida coast; was sentenced to be flogged while serving on a revenue cutter at Mobile; was shanghaied aboard a Baltimore cotton ship for Liverpool; was chased by West Indian pirates; served on the Texas frigate Houston; sailed around the world, fighting cannibals in the Pacific; became an officer at seventeen.
At twenty-one he was given the command of a ship bound for the Mediterranean. There he declined a proffered post of admiral in the Turkish navy and rescued from a Constantinople harem a Swedish lady who had been enslaved in Egypt. He survived attacks of banditti near Pisa, pirates near Leghorn, and cholera at Hamburg, and was rescued when washed overboard off the Cape of Good Hope.
For three years he commanded Schuchardt & Gebhard's packet Angelique between New York and Amsterdam.
Samuels was a great driver, keeping full sail on his heavily sparred ship long after most others were under reefed topsails. He drove her night and day and always used the short northern passage in spite of the extra danger from gales and ice.
During the Civil War, Samuels commanded the John Rice in 1863, was general superintendent of the Quartermaster's Department at New York in 1864, and commanded the G. B. McClellan at the taking of Fort Fisher in 1865. In 1866, he was captain of the steamship Fulton, the last of the American liners to Havre, and in December won the first transatlantic yacht race, driving James Gordon Bennett's Henrietta from "Sandy Hook to the Needles" just ahead of the Fleetwing and Vesta.
In 1870, in the Dauntless, he was beaten by the British yacht Cambria in a race from Head of Kinsale to Sandy Hook and in 1887, the Coronet beat him in the old Dauntless.
He served as general superintendent of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. He died at his home in Brooklyn.
Achievements
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He has been called the greatest of American transatlantic packet commanders. His chief fame came from his seventy-eight fast voyages between New York and Liverpool as commander of the packet Dreadnought. He established a packet speed record in 1859, reaching Liverpool in thirteen days and eight hours from New York. Samuels maintained a remarkable regularity of fast voyages between 1854 and 1862, his first eight averaging twenty-four and a half days. Because of the combination of speed and safety, the Dreadnought's staterooms were booked a year in advance. He organized the Rousseau Electric Signal Company and the United States Steam Heating & Power Company, was president of the Marine Journal Company.
Works
book
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From the Forecastle to the Cabin
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
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From the Forecastle to the Cabin
Personality
He was a firm disciplinarian.
Connections
He married a girl who was a passenger on a trip from New Orleans to New York. At 21 he was already a father.
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Born
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Died
May 18, 1908 (aged 85) -
Nationality
American