Antonio Nicolo Gasparo Jacobsen (1850-1921)

The Black Ball Line, one of America's most famous packet ship company, started sending transatlantic sailing ships on schedule about 1817 between New York and Liverpool. Robert G. Albion, the line's historian and author of Square Riggers on Schedule states: "It constituted a landmark in Maritime history...the beginning of the practical application of the 'line' to ocean navigation...with several vessels under coorditnated private management in regular succession on specificied dates."
The line lasted until 1878 a little after Antonio Jacobsen began working as a marine artist. The line's fleet of ships during the sixty-one years of operation numbered some forty ships, which included the Montezuma. The ship sailed with the line for eleven years after which she was sold as an emigrant ship. The Montezuma wrecked on Island Beach, New Jersey on 21 December 1856.