Everything about Flying Cloud totally explained
The
Flying Cloud of
1851 was the most famous of the extreme
clippers built by
Donald McKay in
East Boston, Massachusetts, intended for
Enoch Train of
Boston, who paid $50,000 for her construction.
The
Flying Cloud was purchased at launching by
Grinnell, Minturn & Co., of New York, for $90,000, which represented a huge profit for Train & Co. Within six weeks she sailed from
New York and made
San Francisco 'round
Cape Horn in 89
days, 21
hours under the command of Captain
Josiah Perkins Creesy. On
July 31, during the trip, she made 374
miles in 24 hours. In
1853 she beat her own record by 13 hours, a record that stood until
1989 when the breakthrough-designed
sailboat Thursday's Child completed the passage in 80 days, 20 hours. The record was once again broken
2008 by the French racing yacht
Gitana with a time of 43 days and 38 minutes.
In the early days of the
California Gold Rush, it took more than 200 days for a ship to travel from New York to San Francisco, a voyage of more than 16,000 miles. The
Flying Cloud's more-than-halving that time (only 89 days) was a headline-grabbing world record that the ship itself beat three years later, setting a record that lasted for 136 years.
The
Flying Cloud's achievement was remarkable under any terms. But, writes
David W. Shaw, it was all the more unusual because its navigator was a woman,
Eleanor Creesy, who had been studying oceanic currents, weather phenomena, and astronomy since her girlhood in
Marblehead, Massachusetts. She was one of the first navigators to exploit the insights of
Matthew Fontaine Maury, most notably the course recommended in his
Sailing Directions. With her husband, ship captain
Josiah Perkins Creesy, she logged many thousands of miles on the ocean, traveling around the world carrying passengers and goods. In the wake of their record-setting transit from New York to California, Eleanor and Josiah became instant celebrities. But their fame was short-lived and their story quickly forgotten. Josiah died in
1871 and Eleanor lived far from the sea until her death in
1900.
On
June 19,
1874 the
Flying Cloud went ashore on the
Beacon Island bar,
St. John's, Newfoundland, and was condemned and sold. The
following June she was burned for the scrap metal value of her
copper and metal fastenings.
A reporter for the Boston
Daily Atlas of
April 25,
1851 wrote, "If great length [235ft.], sharpness of ends, with proportionate breadth [41ft.] and depth, conduce to speed, the
Flying Cloud must be uncommonly swift, for in all these she's great. Her length on the
keel is 208 feet, on deck 225, and over all, from the
knight heads to the
taffrail, 235 — extreme breadth of
beam 41 feet, depth of hold 21½, including 7 feet 8 inches height of between-decks, sea-rise at half floor 20 inches, rounding of sides 6 inches, and
sheer about 3 feet."
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