But it was highly uncommon for a captain’s wife, or any woman, to perform one of the most demanding and crucial jobs on a ship: navigating.īorn in Marblehead, Mass., Ellen Creesy learned how to pilot a vessel from her father, who also taught her the rudiments of navigation: dead reckoning and how to read a nautical chart. It was not uncommon for captains’ wives to accompany their husbands on voyages. Also on board was a 36-year-old woman named Eleanor Creesy, Josiah’s wife. Aboard was its captain, Josiah Perkins Creesy, a veteran skipper known for squeezing every bit of speed out of the ships he commanded. After the masts were assembled, it was towed to New York for the maiden voyage to San Francisco. On April 15, 1851, the Flying Cloud slid down the ways of McKay’s yard and into Boston Harbor. Its figurehead was a beautifully carved angel blowing a trumpet. It was 235 feet longand weighed 1,783 tons, and the three 100-foot-plus masts carried an extraordinary 30,000 square feet of sails. The Flying Cloud was known as an “extreme clipper” because of its narrow, streamlined bow. Shaw writes in “Flying Cloud: The True Story of America’s Most Famous Clipper Ship and the Woman Who Guided Her,” it was made up of more than 1 million board feet of oak and held together with 50 tons of copper fittings and thousands of “treenails” made of locust, which swelled after being driven and created an ironclad bond. The Flying Cloud was designed and built by the Canadian-born Boston shipbuilder Donald McKay. But it also deserves to be known for an equally remarkable fact: Its navigator was a woman. This magnificent ship will forever be known for setting the record for the fastest voyage from New York to San Francisco. Of all the clipper ships, the most famous was the Flying Cloud. This week's question: What was the tallest and most celebrated skyscraper in San Francisco when it was built in 1897? See More Collapse In 1966, $15,000 in quarters alone was stolen by employees. Mint on Duboce Street belatedly do in 1967?Īnswer: Install metal detectors. “Clippers carried expensive items and previously unavailable perishables from the East,” James Delgado wrote in “To California by Sea: A Maritime History of the California Gold Rush.” “The speed and relatively predictable nature of clipper arrivals led to the beginning of regular supply-and-demand trade with California.” The clippers shortened the time to get from New York to California from 200 days to less than half that.Ĭlippers carried a few passengers, but they mostly carried high-value freight. But the discovery of gold in California, and the profits to be made by shipping cargos there as speedily as possible, spurred an unprecedented boom in clipper construction. They were initially developed in response to the China trade. Everything about them was built for speed, from their sleek and streamlined hulls to their extra-large sail areas. But while they did, they represented the pinnacle of the sail-driven vessel in history.Ĭlipper ships were the greyhounds of the seas. These fine-lined, graceful wooden ships with their billowing masses of sail ruled the seas for only a short time.
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