‘bucko’ mate

‘bucko’ mate, the term applied to the mate of a sailing trading ship of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who drove his crew by the power of his fists, and his general brutality which made life a hell on board for the crew. ‘Bucko’ mates were notably prevalent in the American square-rigged ships on the New York or Boston to California run after the discovery of the goldfields there and before the railway to California was built. The competition to make quick passage round Cape Horn was always very fierce among these ships, and many owners appointed masters and mates on whom they could rely to drive their crews to the limit, and sometimes beyond, in their search for speed. These men did not spare their voices, fists, or rope-ends to keep their crews at work whatever the weather. Many seamen in these ships went to their deaths in the seas around Cape Horn, mainly because exhaustion from being driven too hard caused them to miss their footing on the yards when working the sails in a gale.

A typical ship of this type was the 800-ton American clipper ship Challenge. Built in 1850 by William H. Webb of New York, she was commanded by the murderous ‘Bully’ Waterman, with the equally notorious ‘bucko’ mate Douglas, and she held the record for many years for the fastest passages from New York to California around Cape Horn.