"Take good care ofher, Mister, clipper to that date when she was launched on 15 April 1851. Train was proud of his fin e new ship, but when the N ew York firm of G rinn ell & Minturn offered him $90 ,000 for her on the ways, T rain sold her on the spot. T he pri ce of $90 ,000 gave an 80% p ro fit over th e vessel's buildin g cost of $5 0,000 . But this risk-free coup was one T rain wo uld rue ever afrer. Fo r when theFlyingCloudsetsail from her South Street pi er at M aiden Lane, at 2PM on 2 June 185 1, she sto rmed o n so uth to round Cape H o rn and reach San Francisco in the stunning time of 89 days, 2 1 hours-a reco rd o nl y matched later by the Cloud herself in 1854, and by the medium clipper A ndrew Jackson in 1857. Jam es Go rdo n Bennett, visiting the ship sho rtl y before she sail ed, had praised her clean lines and sumptuo us cabins, and predicred that she was "just the vehicle" fo r a 90-day passage. T he average time of 23 reaso nably fas t sailing ships dri vin g hard for Sa n Francisco and arri vin g in the sam e period a year before had been 199 days, more than twice the time the Cloud had taken, as Carl C utler reminds us in Greyhounds ofthe Sea (1 936). As th e ships arrived in San Francisco Bay, piling up in the hundreds o n the sho refro nt as crews fled to the gold fields up the Sacramento Rive r ac ross the Bay, supWilliam Webb s handsome Young Am erica of1853 sailed in the Cape Horn trade for thirty plies po ured in and th e high prices paid for years. Charles Robert Patterson catches her with skysaif poles swaying over a sunlit patch of such staples as fl our and clothin g rook a the ocean shes traveled, at the end ofher 16, 000-mife run home.from San Francisco. (From precipi to us dro p. T he discovery of gold in Australia gave a renewed fillip to the call for the collection of Quester Gallery, Stonington, Connecticut) fast ships, but this was no t enough to pay the emphasis on fast-sailing ships in th e C hin a trade and the dawning high premiums the clippers needed for their fas t passages, and of the clipper era in the thriving New York shipyards. H e eventu- afrer 1853, the rush was ove r. Biddin g godspeed to th e skipper of ally took his skills and dedi cati o n to Boston, wh ere the first light his lovely and lo ng-lived 196 1-to n Young America as she set sail in of the clipper's day had begun to break. H e built fast packets, and 1853, the m as ter builder W illiam Webb said: "Take good care of then the big 1,543-ton clipper Stag Hound. She was a fairly sharp- her, Mister, for when she's go ne there' ll be no mo re like her. " And, bottomed ship, with a deadri se of 40 inches (this being the rise of indeed, there weren't. By 1857, when fin ancial depressio n set in across America, the th e floor bottom halfway om to the sides of the ship). She also had sharp ends. And she had that "lucky" combin atio n of attributes Cloud herself lay swingin g at her ancho r in the Eas t River, waiting which makes a vessel fas t and seawo rthy in th e righ t hands. in vain fo r cargo, any kind of cargo . But there were no cargoes availabl e fo r th e fin e- lin ed clipper. Don ald M cKay built lucky ships. M cKay went on to build bigger clippers than the Flying Cloud, And when Enoch Train wanted a bi g new clipper for the California Gold Rush trade in th e autumn of 185 0, he went to having fo und a market in England, where the great English McKay to build her. M cKay had p rogressed in his thinking on the shipper James Baines had begun ord erin g big fast-sailing ships for matter of fast ships. His new design was destined to sail into the growing emigrant run from England to Australia. McKay sold immortali ty in the reco rd boo ks as the Flying Cloud. She was him the Lightning, perhaps the sharpest-lined clipper of all his sharper-ended than the Stag Hound, and her deadrise at half floor ships, and the magnificent Sovereign of the Seas, held by many to was 30 inches, as contras ted with the Stags 40. Andher rig too was be th e fas test of all his ships. T hese extrem e clippers were powerful more m ode rate, with shorter ya rds despite her considerably larger vessels, all ove r 2,000 to ns, flat fl oo red and sharp ended, built to size. H er fl atter botto m gave her in creased powe r to stand up to this carry sail in the wind systems of the Roarin g Forties, which blew reduced but still towering rig. At 1782 tons, she was the biggest in the Indi an Ocean somh of the Cape of Good H ope. 12
SEA HISTORY 88 , SPRING 1999