Tradewinds
Page
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Sovereign of the Seas
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The Boston History Collaborative
sponsored a special afternoon of events on Monday, June 17, 2002
to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the launching of the
Sovereign of the Seas. They had a special showing of their
"Boston by Sea" show on the Mass Bay Lines, speeches
and festivities in Piers Park, East Boston. A tour of the McKay
family house on "Eagle Hill," White Street, also took
place. Three branches of the extended family of Donald McKay were
in attendance. ECS coverage of this event is on this special link.
Go to: Sovereign of the Seas
150th Anniversary
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Go to: Great
Republic 150th Anniversary
May 31
- June 1, 2003
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Schooner
Thomas E. Lannon
Gloucester,
Massachusetts
www.schooner.org
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Yankee
Clipper Inn
A Spectacular
Vacation Experience
www.yankeeclipperinn.com
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The Era of
the Clipper Ships
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www.tallshipsinternational.com
3rd edition of
Tall ships: The Fleet for the 21st Century
by Thad Koza
Reviewed 12/16/02
Maritime
Book Review 2
Over 210 tall ships,
275+ color photographs.
Revised text entries and
30 new ships
Released by TIDE-MARK PRESS, June 2002
Contact: Eric Norgaard, VP for Sales and Marketing
1.800.338-2508, ext 22
e-mail: eric@tide-mark.com
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Directory
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Go to: Great Republic
150th Anniversary
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The Great Massachusetts
Clipper
Flying Cloud
Henry A. Lachance
Limited edition of 975 Signed
and numbered reproductions / 24" x 36"
Now Available
For further information,
go to www.seaportraits.com
or call: (781) 396-5942
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A century and a half
ago, on April 15, 1851, the great American clipper ship Flying
Cloud was launched in East Boston. Over the summer of that
year, she made her momentous and record-breaking voyage from New
York around Cape Horn to San Francisco, arriving there on August
31, after a passage of 89 days, 21 hours. three years later, the
Flying Cloud bested herself by sailing to San Francisco
in 89 days, 8 hours, a sailing ship record that stands unbroken
to this day.
Notwithstanding that
sailing ships continued driving around Cape Horn untill the Panama
Canal opened in 1914-many of them much bigger and more powerful
vessels than the Flying Cloud-her time to San Francisco
has never been excelled by another sailing ship. It stands to
this day, as a tribute to the vision and the daring of her designer
and builder Donald McKay of East Boston, to the shipbuilding skills
of Boston artisans and to the ruggedness and ambitions of her
master, Captain Josiah Creesy.
The discovery of
gold in California in 1848 was the event that launched the clipper
ship era in the United States. The necessity of getting people
and supplies out to California in the shortest time inspired the
shipbuilders and designers in Boston and New York to create a
new class of vessel, built for maximum speed and capable of hard
driving through the stormiest waters in the world around the dreaded
Cape Horn, where hurricane winds, freezing rain, blinding snowstorms
and ship-drowning seas are everyday occurrences that had to be
mastered by the sailormen of those days.
And not just
sailormen. It deserves to be remembered that the Flying
Cloud's navigator on this epic voyage was Eleanor Prentiss
Creesy, the wife of her captain, Josiah Creesy. It was Eleanor
Creesy's skill with the sextant, her mathematical ability, her
acquired knowledge of the winds and currents of the Cape Horn
passage and her skill at dead reckoning on the many days when
there was no sun to shoot, that kept Flying Cloud on her
course, and kept Captain Creesy advised as to where he was at
all times. And so in these 150th anniversary years of the clipper
ship era, we also remember the sturdy seagoing character of the
woman who guided the great ship through dangerous waters to its
destination, Eleanor Prentiss Creesy.
The clipper ships were the aristocrats of the American
Merchant fleet in the 1850s, and with their beautiful lines, tall
rigs and dashing speed, they came to be called "greyhounds
of the sea." The greatest of them all was the Flying Cloud.
She continued sailing as a working merchant vessel for the next
23 years in both the Atlantic and Pacific trades and continued
to make smart passages, on one voyage sailing 402 nautical miles
in one day. She met her end, still working, in 1874, when she
was driven ashore by a heavy gale at St. John's, New Brunswick.
Henry A. Lachance
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