Enoch Train

Enoch Train (1801–1868) was an American shipowner and merchant. He is known for establishing a successful packet service between Boston and Liverpool that later became known as the White Diamond Line.

Early life Enoch Train was born on May 2, 1801, in Weston, Massachusetts to Enoch Train and Hannah Ewing Train, daughter of a Scotch chaplain in British army. He was the fourth of five children but only the second one living, because his oldest sister, Harriette, had died in her fourth year and his older brother, also named Enoch, had died in his second year.

After the death of his father, Enoch's mother married Captain Levi Bishop in 1807 and they moved to Halifax, Vermont to be closer to her parents. Around this time, Enoch and his two surviving sisters apparently went to live with their uncle, Ephraim Train (their late father's brother), in Hillsborough, New Hampshire.

Personal life On November 3, 1823, Enoch Train married Adeline C. Dutton in Hillsborough, New Hampshire. By 1824 they were living in Boston where their first child, Adeline, was born on September 15. She was followed by four more children, Theodore (1826–1847), George (1828-1828), Caroline (1830–1908), and Enoch (1833–1854). Adeline died on August 25, 1834, at the age of 31.

Train married Almira Cheever in 1835. They had one boy who died shortly after his birth in 1838. Almira lived until 1881.

Train was an active member of the Whig Party and was elected to public office twice: first, to the Boston Common Council in 1840, and second, to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1848.

On January 23, 1855, Leon Lewis, a newspaper editor whom Train had once loaned money to, visited Train at his home in Dorchester. Lewis informed Train he was armed with a Bowie knife and a revolver and demanded money from him. Train was able to summon help from two servants who grabbed Lewis and after a violent struggle subdued him and tied him up with bed-cord until the police arrived.

Train spent his later years in his wife's hometown of Saugus, Massachusetts.

Early years as a ship owner By the time Enoch joined his firm, Samuel Train was already operating a small brig to trade with the Cape Verde islands for the raw hides and skins important for his leather-goods business. In the late 1820s, several years after he became a partner, Enoch added two more brigs to the shipping operation so that he could trade with Russia and other European countries. In 1834 Samuel retired from the firm, which then became known as Enoch Train & Co.

White Diamond Line / Enoch Train & Co. / Train & Co. In 1844 Enoch Train established what later became known as the White Diamond Line —although it was not called that during the period he owned it

Enoch Train and Donald McKay

During a visit to England at the start of 1844 to make arrangements for his new packet line, Train chanced to meet a captain named Dennis Condry whose own ship, the Delia Walker, had been built in Newburyport, MA under the supervision of a young shipbuilder called Donald McKay. Condry had been highly impressed with McKay's work, and when he learned Train would soon be commissioning new ships for his packet line, he urged Train to meet with McKay before giving his business to any other builder. Upon his return to Boston, Train followed Condry's advice and sought out McKay, and according to Captain Clark, ″it was the swift contact of flint and steel″; less than an hour after the two men met, Train placed an order with McKay for a 620-ton packet ship, subsequently named the Joshua Bates. Train was so delighted with this ship when she was launched that he invited McKay to move to Boston and establish his own shipyard there, for which Train would provide the financial backing. Thus began a relationship that produced eleven ships between 1844 and 1853.

At the end of 1856 Train ceded control of his packet line to his two junior partners, Frederick W. Thayer and George Warren, and in February 1857 he declared insolvency. The demise of his business has sometimes been mistakenly attributed to the Panic of 1857, but that did not begin until six months later, in August of that year.

Ships built by Donald McKay for Enoch Train

Date Name Size Notes 1844 Joshua Bates 620 tons 1845 Washington Irving 751 tons Launched 15 September 1845. Sold to England in 1852 1846 Anglo Saxon 894 tons Launched 5 September 1846. Lost off the coast of Nova Scotia in 1847. 1847 Ocean Monarch 1,301 tons Lost to fire off the coast of Wales, 1848. 1848 Anglo American 704 tons Built to replace Anglo Saxon1849Plymouth Rock960 tonsOwned by two of Train's captains, Upton and Caldwell. 1850 Daniel Webster 1187 tons 1851 Flying Cloud 1782 tons Clipper ship built for California Gold Rush. Sold by Train while still on stocks. Established new records for the voyage from New York to San Francisco that stood until 1989, when they were finally beaten by a modern racing yacht. 1853 Chariot of Fame 2050 tons OM Identical to Star of Empire - the only two ships McKay ever built that were identical. Sold in 1862 and came to her end in January, 1876, being abandoned or lost at sea en route from Chincha Islands to Cork.

Other Ships owned Enoch Train & Co.

Boston & European Steamship Company Enoch Train saw the future of steam-powered ships and in 1855, along with James Bebee, Andrew Hall, Donald McKay, and George Upton, formed the Boston & European Steamship Company, ″for the purpose of navigating the ocean by steam″ . The venture never came to fruition, however, because it was unable to raise the substantial capital required to build its steamships,