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Launched October 4, 1853

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I am a member of the large extended family of Donald McKay and have grown up looking at pictures of lofty clipper ships on museum walls and in maritime history books as have all the rest of the McKays. Most of us have taken great pride in the heritage bestowed upon us by Donald McKay. Yet, we have all grown up without ever seeing an actual American clipper ship in our lifetimes. Often we have wondered why this is so for many of us live in the United States of America, the greatest county in the world where great fortunes were founded around the time of the California Gold Rush when lofty clipper ships sailed the Seven Seas. And yet today there is not one single American clipper ship that we can call our own.

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As a member of the McKay Clan, I just do not understand this sad irony of life and lost clipper ship heritage and why this should be so. Many other McKays feel the same way. We have all been scratching our heads with dumbfound incredulity for the longest time over this perplexing dilemma. A whole century just went by and not one single clipper ship was built in that time. We all realize, of course, that to build a clipper ship today would be a very expensive proposition. We have even inquired as to the approximate costs and time required for such a venture. It would cost somewhere around 25 million dollars and take around two years to complete. Then it would cost another 25 million dollars to sail a clipper ship around the world for the next decade.

There are noble efforts afoot by organizations to do this very thing such as Project Sea Witch and we support them wholeheartedly. Yet, we also realize that there are many other worthy maritime heritage preservation efforts afoot all asking for support, many of them deserving projects to rescue vessels that have been languishing away for years. Then again, we see vast sums of money going into the America's Cup Race. For that same amount of money, around 300 million dollars, you could build a fleet of a dozen clipper ships and have Deep Sea Derby clipper ship races around the Horn. Something to think about.

We all have high hopes that this Web site and book will rekindle the spark to build such lofty clipper ships again. That certainly is our intention and purpose. We invite you all aboard in support for this noble undertaking.

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Up till now the only thing we McKays could do to try and get close to our clipper ship heritage was to drive up the coast highway in Yankee New England and stay at the Clipper Ship Motor Lodge, or the Flying Cloud Motel. We could eat our breakfasts at family restaurants with paper table mats featuring Currier & Ives clipper ship prints, and open sugar packets with clipper ship pictures on them, to pour sugar into our cups of coffee or tea, or over our bowls of Cheerios and that's about it. Just kidding, of course, but this just doesn't cut it for us anymore.

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All that is left of our clipper ship heritage.

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We hope that perhaps someday someone in the United States government will figure out a way to come up with the funding of taxpayers to build clipper ships for the Coast Guard Academy, Naval Academy, and the Merchant Marine Academy. Just a thought.

Our Coast Guard in the meantime will just have to make due with the Eagle as "America's Tall Ship" even though the Eagle is actually a bark and was acquired from Germany as war reparations following World War II. We are sure that the Eagle is a fine vessel for the Germans have historically had a good reputation for shipbuilding. The Coast Guard can be proud of her. But the Eagle is not a "ship" and was not built in the United States. So we have to ask the question: Is this really the best we can do for the United States Coast Guard and the American people as far as our maritime heritage is concerned?

It just seems to us that the United States of America ought to provide American built clipper ships to all three academies and encourage competition between the three as part of their sail training. Perhaps someday I will get the chance to ask some Coast Guard Cadets, as well as those of the Naval and Merchant Marine academies, if they had the choice of taking their sail training aboard an American clipper ship just what they would think of this.

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Time to change tack back to the private sector again. It seems to me that we can draw some lessons from the past as to the conditions that led to the building of clipper ships in the first place. This was the promise of a fortune to the shipowner who could provide the fastest sailing ship to deliver a cargo to a hungry market more than willing to pay top dollars for the goods. A single clipper voyage around Cape Horn to San Francisco during the Gold Rush, or a round voyage to China and home with a cargo of tea ahead of the clipper fleet could pay for the cost of building a clipper with a single voyage.

Today, one has to look beyond the ocean mists for another way to come up with the money to accomplish the task of building a lofty clipper ship such as those that were built in the clipper ship era. As stated, we McKays are rather dumbfound by the fact that there are no American clipper ships around today and somewhat embarrassed, too. One would think that a clipper ship would be the ultimate rich man's toy and that wealthy powerful men would want to own them. So it would seem. We are still waiting for a millionaire - billionaire with the imagination to want to build a clipper ship to come along. Or perhaps a company or corporation that first established its fortune thanks to swift sailing clipper ships around the time of the California Gold Rush. No such luck so far, nor would we want to fathom a guess why.

We just want the American people to realize that they have all been somehow shortchanged out of our clipper ship heritage, and that we as a people are all the poorer for it. We should certainly expect more from our leaders and start to seriously question historical priorities as far as our national maritime heritage is concerned. An American clipper ship would do more to enhance the prestige of the USA around the world than anything else we can think of. So why can't the United States of America afford to have a few clipper ships around? The cost would only be a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of appropriations within the federal budget, and certainly the building of a few clipper ships would be a lot more worthy of consideration than most of the pork barrel projects out there. Think about that. The American people would actually get something for their money that they could all point to with a renewed sense of national pride and purpose.

We'd like to remind our political leaders of both parties that in the early years following the American Revolution that it was the tax on tea brought back from China aboard swift sailing tea packets that kept the fledgling American government afloat. A debt is therefore owed to this packet-clipper ship legacy and we think that it should be more than just to issue a few commemorative clipper ship stamps every other decade or so. The time has come to wake up Uncle Sam to finally actually do something to reclaim our national clipper ship maritime heritage.

In fact, the United States actually owes the family of Donald McKay a clipper ship. Or more precisely, enough money to build one. Read all about the "McKay Claims" on Web page72 of The Era of the Clipper Ships about Donald McKay and other Boston shipbuilders being fleeced by the small print on a government contract hurriedly drawn up at the time of the Civil War. We invite everyone to surf on into this page for a more detailed look at this matter. Or take a look at the Congressional Record. An injustice was done here and we want the world to know about it. We also want to point the way as to just how the American government can redeem itself, and that is to see to it that clipper ships are built again. Build the first one and give it to the United States Coast Guard.

Right around now would be a very appropriate time to start, so we hereby petition our leaders to respond to this request and to simply get on with it right away and restore national pride in our clipper ship maritime heritage.

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Support Our Site!

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We welcome you all aboard in support of the lofty goals that we have set for ourselves. We will continue to do everything we can think of in 2005 to try and bring clipper ships into existance again and keep the world informed as to our progress on this Web site. We would also appreciate all the philanthropic support that we can muster for the task ahead is a challenging one.

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America needs a fleet of clippers now more than ever. So I'll run with this a bit back to the private sector again. It seems to us that much of the Yankee ingenuity and boat building skills are still very much alive, especially along the New England Coast, and could be called upon in the event that the funding for such lofty clipper ship ventures should they take place. Others will have to figure out how to finance such ventures. Perhaps on a regional, coastal city, state, or investor-stockholder ship shares basis like they did in the old days.

Its time to run likely scenarios up the flagpole. Coastal cities could sponsor the building of different clipper ships, most of them for sure to be replicas, or more precise, new historic interpretations of the clippers of long ago. Names such as Red Jacket, Surprise, Nightingale, Oriental, Dauntless, White Squall and Flying Fish could take on fresh significance once again. The shipbuilding communities would prosper, as would tourism. The promise of supreme sailing adventures to come would soon take hold among the populace of the maritime world.

Ten-Year Plan

The large amount of money required for such a venture has been a stumbling block for a very long time.
The latest tack in our thinking leads us to the conclusion that it is time to look at this from the perspective of a Ten-Year Plan for it look a lot more doable that way.

The Ten-Year Plan in figuring out the costs of building a clipper ship today, and sailing her around the world for the next decade, comes out to 25 million dollars to build a clipper ship, and 25 million dollars to sail her for the next ten years - 50 million dollars total - five million dollars a year.

We believe that any coastal community that built a clipper ship could expect a significient increase in the tourist trade that would more than cover the costs of building the ship in the long run. And if several coastal communities do the same thing, the possibilities of exciting clipper ship races between ports of call would certainly be a catalyst to greater prosperity in the years to come for all New England. Try and imagine what it would be like, say, if Mystic, Portsmouth, and Camden went ahead and did it. Clipper ship races around Cape Cod!

All clippers could participate in a Deep Sea Derby around Cape Horn to San Francisco that would take place around the most favorable time of the year for such a sailing event to happen. It would start sometime in late October or early November from an eastern port, say Boston or New York, perhaps off Sandy Hook. At the sound of the cannon, the race begins and the crews aboard the clipper fleet hoist their sails and catch the winds for the voyage around Cape Horn, where they would arrive in late December - early January. That being the most opportune time to make the passage around the Horn and the least dangerous for all sailors concerned and by far the most exciting. For the winds off Cape Horn at that time of the year turn the other way around just like Maury says in his Wind and Current Charts.

One can imagine the boon for the world-wide maritime tourist industry if such a Deep Sea Derby event were to take place. Sailing vessels could be chartered to take spectators out to vantage points at sea to witness these exciting sailing races. The entire world could watch these sailing events with awe on the Internet and TV. The revenues drummed up by such a sailing event could make the competition a profitable one for the fastest sailing clippers in the fleet with a chest of gold waiting in San Francisco for the winner.

Another source of possible income for potential clipper ship owners could come from the silver screen. There has never been a movie made about the clipper ship era that we are aware of and we are dumbfounded as usual over this fact.

Is it too much of a stretch of the imagination to realize that a movie about the clipper ship era would make a really great movie? We McKays certainly think that perhaps now the time is right to get people spinning their wheels about all this and somehow make it all happen. If we succeed then we as a people would be all the richer for it.

A good place to start is with the building of a new historic interpretation of the Sea Witch, the clipper that was built in New York City and pointed the way for other shipbuilders to follow back in the 1840s. We would like New Yorkers and people everywhere to take the American Clipper Ship Trust - Project Sea Witch seriously at this time of national crisis for such a worthy endeavor could do much to raise the spirits of New York City and the nation.

Plan B

In the meantime we should say that we are all rather bored just waiting around for 60 years for all this to happen. Therefore, we have decided to change tack and to take a "Little Red Hen" approach to shipbuilding, in that, if you really want to get something done you just have to do it yourself. We are also going to borrow the game plan of "The Little Engine that Could." See the Monnehaha Press Web page for details.

Don Ross

1st-cousin-4-times-removed to Donald McKay.

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www.seawitchrediviva.com

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