Benoni Lockwood III

Benoni Lockwood III was an American ship captain who set an ocean-crossing speed record during the era of the clipper ships.

Biography

Benoni Lockwood III was the son of sea captain and engineer Benoni Lockwood II and Phebe Greene of Rhode Island and the brother of engineer Amos D. Lockwood. He married Amelia Cooley, with whom he had a son, Benoni Lockwood IV. Their granddaughter Florence Bayard Lockwood married the architect Christopher Grant La Farge and was the mother of writer Christopher La Farge.
Lockwood was a ship captain engaged in the East India trade. In 1845, he sailed the 573-ton Tartar, built in Philadelphia, from Holyhead, Wales, to Bombay, India, in a then-record time of 77 days.
In 1851, he captained the 200-foot-long, 1100-ton fast clipper White Squall from San Francisco to Hong Kong, where he died. Although newly built in 1851, the White Squall only saw two years of service, burning in a fire in New York Harbor in 1853.