The Pride of Baltimore was a reproduction of a typical early 19th-century "Baltimore clipper" topsail schooner, commissioned to represent Baltimore, Maryland. This was a style of vessel made famous by its success as a privateer commerce raider, a small warship in the War of 1812 (1812–1815) against British merchant shipping and the world-wide British Royal Navy. After the end of the war, Baltimore Clippers did not have sufficient cargo capacity for normal merchant trade, so some were used in the illegal opium trade into China and vessels of the same type were used in the transatlantic slave trade from Africa.
Pride of Baltimore was commissioned on 1 May 1977 by the 44th Mayor of Baltimore, William Donald Schaefer, in an elaborate public ceremony in the historic Inner Harbor watched by thousands of Baltimoreans and Marylanders. She spent nine years at sea logging over 150,000 miles, equivalent to traveling six times around the globe. On 14 May 1986, the first Pride of Baltimore was lost at sea in the Caribbean, and her captain and three of the crew died.
The Pride of Baltimore II was commissioned as the successor and memorial to the Pride in 1988, sailing in the same Goodwill Ambassador role for the city of Baltimore, but its role has now expanded to also representing the State of Maryland and the "Land of Pleasant Living" in the Chesapeake Bay region. Pride II has sailed nearly 200,000 miles and visited over 200 ports in 40 countries in its now near three decades of voyages.
Chasseur: The inspiration for the Pride of Baltimore
The Pride of Baltimore was built as an authentic reproduction of an early nineteenth-century "Baltimore clipper" topsail schooner. It was not patterned after any particular vessel, but was rather designed as a typical "Baltimore Clipper" of the type in its heyday. It was indirectly named for the Baltimore-built topsail schooner Chasseur sailed by the privateer captain Thomas Boyle; Chasseur was known as the "Pride of Baltimore" and participated in the War of 1812 (1812–1815).
One of the most famous of the American privateers, Captain Thomas Boyle sailed Chasseur out of Baltimore's waterfront historic neighborhood of Fells Point, where she had been launched from Thomas Kemp's shipyard in 1812. On his first voyage as master of Chasseur in 1814, Boyle sailed east to the British Isles, where he harassed British shipping and sent a notice to King George III by way of a captured merchant vessel declaring that the entire British Isles were under naval blockade by Chasseur alone. Despite its implausibility, this boast caused the British Admiralty to recall many warships of the Royal Navy back to the home waters from the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and more intense real blockade on the American east coast to guard merchant shipping in convoys. Chasseur captured or sank 17 vessels before returning home to Baltimore on 25 March 1815, three months after a peace treaty in Ghent, United Netherlands had been signed ending the War of 1812. Perhaps its most famous accomplishment was the capture of the schooner HMS St Lawrence.
On the Chasseur'''s return to Baltimore, the national newspaper published in the city, Niles Weekly Register dubbed the vessel, her captain, and crew the "pride of Baltimore" for their achievement.
After the end of the War of 1812, Chasseur was engaged in the China trade. Baltimore clippers were one of the types of clippers used to smuggle opium into China —- a trade which was both illegal and highly lucrative. Other Baltimore Clippers, made redundant by the end of the war and of limited cargo carrying capacity, became engaged in the slave trade from Africa.