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The Red Jacket Resorts take their name from the the extreme clipper ship Red Jacket. Under the command of Yarmouth's own Capt. Asa Eldredge, the vessel set a transatlantic sailing record that has never been broken. She remains one of the fastest ships ever built.

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 – 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 – a superb piece of seamanship.

THE RED JACKET FINDS A HOME PORT

From the Yarmouth Register, December 11, 2003
By Bill Barnes. Used with permission.
No ship stands taller in the seafaring lore of Yarmouth Port than the Red Jacket, one of the greatest of the Yankee clippers ever to sail. On her maiden voyage, in 1854, she set a speed record across the Atlantic that has never been broken.

Though the ship itself has long since gone to its grave, the people of the Historical Society of Old Yarmouth are eagerly awaiting its return in the form of 4 foot by 6 foot oil painting, a gift from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

By some estimates it will be the most valuable piece in the entire collection of the Bangs Hallet House, the society´s showplace on Yarmouth Port Green, so valuable that members have begun work on renovating a room to bring the Red Jacket together with the rest of the society´s nautical collection.

"Wow, this is pretty amazing," said Debra Strain of Wellfleet when she came to Yarmouth Port two weeks ago to examine the painting. "It´s fine, very fine, particularly the location among the icebergs and the size of the painting. This will be spectacular."

Strain is a specialist in art restoration and as she spoke she was looking through the grime and yellowed varnish, past the two small tears and badly done repairs to what lies below.

"The painting is quite flat now," Strain said, "but once it is cleaned it will have much more depth. The water will be much more translucent," she said. Pointing to the greenish sky above the grand vessel, she gave assurances that once the yellowed varnish is removed the sky will be blue again.

The painting, by the noted 19 th century nautical painter Axel William Torgerson, shows the Red Jacket sailing past the icebergs at Cape Horn as penguins watch.

Red Jacket was built in Rockland, Maine in 1853. With a length of 250 feet and displacement of 2,305 tons, it was known as an "extreme" clipper, an embodiment of the technology of the era, designed to carry large cargoes quickly over long distances.

Far too large to ever sail in Yarmouth waters, the ship´s local connection comes through its first captain, Asa Eldridge of Yarmouth Port, who took her to sea on its maiden voyage. He sailed it from New York to Liverpool in 13 days, 1 hour and 25 minutes, setting a record for the crossing that no commercial sailing ship has yet broken.

The ship had a long career fro 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.

A painting on the rocks
According to Audrey Harris, chairwoman of the society´s collection management committee, the painting had been given to WHOI and was displayed there. It had been put in storage some years back for lack of wall space, where it languished among a collection of rocks dredged from the sea floor.

When WHOI decided the painting needed a better home, it first went to the Falmouth Historical Society, but was advised that Yarmouth, which already has a portrait of Asa Eldridge and a model of the Red Jacket, would be a more suitable home.

Three members of Yarmouth's historical society, Channing Dupouy, Ted Weissberger and Duncan Oliver, home handymen all, are at work, renovating a second floor room to house the painting and other maritime artifacts, including ship models, paintings, an ancient whale rib and bottles of booze that washed ashore during the rum running era.

An original Currier and Ives print of the Red Jacket that is almost certainly based on Torgerson's painting also will grace the room, courtesy of Oliver, who bought it at a Dennis antique shop - for a dollar.

Since the Asa Eldridge home on Route 6A is a private residence, the Bangs Hallet house is an ideal location. Mrs. Bangs Hallet was Anna Eldridge, the daughter of Asa's uncle Reuben.

The painting of the Red Jacket is now in Wellfleet, undergoing a restoration which Strain estimates will take five months and cost between' $5,000 and $7,500. Besides the obvious damage, she said the canvas itself is dry and brittle and flecks of paint are curling up from the surface.

The society hopes to obtain grants or private gifts to pick up that cost, according to Oliver, its president, but has decided not to wait.

Oliver said the painting needs restoration not only to prevent further deterioration, but to show it in its true colors. "It isn't fair not to do it," he said. "It is too good a painting."