clipper ship
2 vessels
Cutty Sark
The Cutty Sark was born obsolete. She launched in 1869, the same year the Suez Canal opened and killed the tea clipper trade in a single stroke. Steam ships could use the canal. Sailing ships couldn't. The entire economic logic that justified building a vessel optimized for speed from China to London evaporated before she'd completed her first season. That's either terrible timing or a fitting monument to an era that was already dead. She raced in the tea trade anyway for a few seasons, most famously against the clipper Thermopylae in 1872. Cutty Sark was winning when she lost her rudder in a gale and had to jury-rig a replacement from spare spars. She still finished the voyage, arriving in London only a week behind Thermopylae. That tells you everything about the ship and the men who sailed her. Her second life was in the Australian wool trade, and this is where she finally proved herself. Under Captain Richard Woodget (1885-1895), she became the fastest wool clipper afloat, consistently making the passage from Sydney to London in under 80 days. She'd load over 5,000 bales of wool, drive south into the roaring forties, and run her easting down at speeds that left every other sailing vessel behind. Woodget was the captain she deserved. The name comes from Robert Burns's 1791 poem "Tam o' Shanter." Tam, drunk and riding home, watches witches dance and shouts in admiration at a young witch wearing a cutty sark, a short nightgown. She chases him. He barely escapes. The ship's figurehead is the witch Nannie, reaching forward with arm outstretched. It's a perfect name for a ship that was always chasing something just out of reach. After the wool trade declined, she was sold to a Portuguese company, renamed Ferreira, and spent decades hauling cargo in the South Atlantic. A retired sea captain named Wilfred Dowman found her in a Portuguese port in 1922, recognized what she was, bought her, and brought her home to England. Without Dowman, she would have been broken up. She is the only clipper ship that survives.
Flying Cloud
Flying Cloud was the fastest sailing vessel of her era, and her speed record from New York to San Francisco stood for over 100 years. She made the passage around Cape Horn in 89 days and 8 hours in 1854, a mark no commercial sailing vessel would beat until 1989. To put that in perspective: a record set before the Civil War survived the invention of the telephone, the automobile, both World Wars, and the moon landing. She was built by Donald McKay in East Boston, the best clipper ship designer who ever lived, at the peak of the California Gold Rush. Speed was money. Every day shaved off the passage to San Francisco meant earlier access to cargo rates that could pay for the ship in a single voyage. Owners drove these ships hard, and captains who delivered fast passages became celebrities. Josiah Perkins Creesy commanded Flying Cloud, but the secret weapon was his wife. Eleanor Creesy was the ship's navigator. She plotted the courses, read the currents, and made the decisions about when to press south into the roaring forties and when to hold off. Her work with Matthew Fontaine Maury's wind and current charts was masterful. She found favorable currents and winds that other navigators missed. On the record-setting 1854 voyage, she navigated through a cracked mainmast and a near-mutiny. She never held an official rank, was never paid, and appears in most histories as a footnote to her husband. She was one of the best navigators in the world. The clipper ship era lasted barely 15 years. Steam was already winning when Flying Cloud launched. These ships were profitable only because the Gold Rush created insane demand for fast passage to California, and the tea trade paid premiums for early-season delivery. Once the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869 and the Suez Canal opened the same year, clippers were obsolete overnight. Beautiful, fast, and suddenly pointless. Flying Cloud herself was worked to death. After her glory years on the California run, she was sold to British owners who used her in the timber trade. She was condemned and burned for her copper fastenings at St. John, New Brunswick in 1874. She was 23 years old. Clipper ships were built for speed, not longevity, and hard driving wore them out fast. The hull that could do 18 knots was also a hull that was being slowly torn apart by the forces that made it fast.