United States Merchant Marine Academy - Midships Yearbook (Kings Point, NY)

Page 23 text:

VBEAST I The Tea Clipper “Golden State”—one of the many American clippers that established our flag in the China trade. A Journal of the Transactions and Remarkable Events on board the 1 4- 2 jJh 3 6 % :?■ 8 1 I !° n ll fJ I h m 4 tfl 6 J? T f -I li 19 f. 3FF Courses. Winds. L.W 4 Lav byD.fi Lot- by 01aI TAtL L o . ft. I d •' ✓ r.U u • It (ft) Jfe . S. f jr . ■ ' Lttf t . ‘ Tfi.T , j. 3 . v TjTHS $. A ■ Ji . 7°‘ Su ( frt.J t .l dfyu. . 3 3. di.t y«-. it j stt.i] . (1 0 ■ f- ■ ft J r £ 3 Or .. 1: yjLi'j £3 U JO ■ii. y fir. J' . j-tJl.fy.K J j 64 f 6'[••■■■ ,(j. 2fi .£ 31 6 SJ-i£ O tr ot' P IV n 1 Loo , in. Loo , par L. ■ par CfirJ IfiI V- ■'tv as jdj ew l “Houqua”—best known of the Chinese tea merchants. Page of the log of the “Sovereign of the Seas” on a record run from China homeward showing a speed of 19 knots for three consecutive hours. Shanghai harbor in 1850.

Page 22 text:

 ON TO THE O’, fair she was to look on, as some spirit of the sea, When she raced from China home™ with her freight of fragrant tea; And the shining, swift bonito or the wide- winged albatross Claimed kinship with the clipper beneath the Southern Cross. It was the China trade that started the demand for fast ships, and with the Cali- fornia market gone it was the China trade that kept the clippers alive. It became com- mon practice for owners to send their vessels out to the Far East by way of Cali- fornia and the Hawaiian Islands. At ports such as Hong Kong, Canton, and Whampoa they would load chests of fragrant tea and race off to the west around the Cape of Good Hope for England, completing the round-the-world voyage by returning to I New York or Boston. I Actively engaged in competition with the I British tea clippers, the American clippers I again and again showed their overwhelm- 9 ing superiority'. Yankee skippers and their | “Flying Fish Sailors,” as the sailors in the China trade were called, captured and held the cream of that trade for nearly a decade. But a new breed of sailors was being bom at about this time, the “Steamboat Sailor,” J and war clouds were gathering on the hor- j izon in the United States. Under the Southern Cross. 10

Page 24 text:

PASSING OP THE CLIPPERS Those were the days when the Boston-built Clippers With huge white wings spread to the breeze. When Lauchlan McKay and his type of “Skippers” Won prestige for America upon the seas. When Donald McKay, the peerless builder, Added lustre to the Stars and Stripes; It is enough this old mariners mind to bewilder. To think that now they are all “Vanished Types.” The coming of the age of the steamship coupled with the Civil War sounded the death knell of the clipper. By 1865 the American clipper was a rare sight in- deed. Within the short space of a decade the clipper had flourished and was gone. Yes, the clippers have passed—but what they accomplished and what they stood for has not been forgotten. In their day they established the United States as a first rate Maritime nation. They helped to build the proud tradition upon which our Merchant Marine of today is founded. “Vanished Types” they are—but the proud flag they sailed under is still carried on the gaffs of fine merchant ships—ships of the United States Merchant Marine. 12 McKay’s proud clipper the “Glory of the Seas” as she ended her days on a beach near Seattle in 1923.