The Revelation of Ships

Rio

3 / 3 / 11

“Never, in these United States, has the brain of a man conceived, or the hand of man fashioned, as perfect as a thing the clipper ship.”  Said a historian named Samuel Eliot Morison (American History Blog, website).

Ships have been used throughout history.  From modern day, back to as early as the Viking age.  But for American history, clipper ships were important.  Because after all, clipper ships revolutionized the American way of sailing.

A new type of merchant ship called clipper ships was designed in the late 1840’s.  It was named a clipper ship because the word clip literally meant to clip through something, which was just what a clipper ship would do to the water.  There were plenty of qualities that set this ship apart from other ships.  Unlike ships that were made to carry large shipments of items, these ships were created to carry small objects at high speeds for a large price.

There were usually two or three masts on a clipper ship that could be as tall as a 20 story building, and sometimes had more than 20 sails, which was more than any other vessel built at that time.  These very large sails made it possible for clipper’s to be one of the fastest ships the world had ever seen.  a clipper ship could go anywhere from 250-400 miles in a single day, which was considered many miles because an average ship at that time could only go about 150 miles on a good day.  For a clipper ship, speed was everything because the faster you could get a shipment to where it was going, the more you would get paid, which was good for the owners of the ship and the crew members.

John W. Griffiths was an American naval architect who designed the first true clipper ship.  He set out to make clipper ships to be used as blockade runners or privateers for the War of 1812.  To be considered a clipper ship, the boat would need to have a thin hull, which was usually made of wood, be very tall, have large sail poles, and giant sails.  The reason for the large sails was because clipper ships didn't have engines, so they would have to harness the wind power if they wanted to go anywhere.  They would have to have large sail poles to hold the sails when there were strong winds pushing against them.  A clipper ship would have a thin hull because they needed to clip through the water, and having a thin hull would help with that.

          At first, clipper ships were made for the same purpose as ships, to carry goods to and from China, and also for the War of 1812.  Later on, they carried prospectors and their equipment to California when gold was discovered in 1848.  Before clippers were used, this 15,000 mile trip from the East Coast, down and around Cape Horn, to California would take up to 5 months.  By the early 1850’s, with a clipper ship like the Flying Cloud, you could cut this trip to about 3 months. 

          Clipper ships set many records for their time. For example, the Sea Witch sailed from Hong Kong to New York in 74 days in 1840. In the year of 1852, the Challenger went from Japan to California in 18 days.  And in 1860, the Andrew Jackson sailed from New York to Liverpool, England, in 15 days.

          In the time of the Gold Rush, miners would pay lots of money to get a ticket on a speedy clipper.  They would pay lots of money because they wanted to get themselves and their equipment to San Francisco as possible to try to strike it rich.  Captains and owners of a speedy clipper ship would make large amounts of money because of all of the people who wanted to get a ride on their ship.  The owners and captains of the faster clipper ships would usually make more money than the miners they carried to San Francisco, California.

          Clipper ships were a big part of American sailing and trading until steam boats came along.  Steam boats were the end of most clipper ships because they could carry more goods than a clipper ship could.  But some people still use the clipper ship.