Flying Cloud

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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.

The Flying Cloud was purchased at launching by Grinnell, Minturn & Co, New York, for $90,000. 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 Cressey. 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 trimaran "Thursday's Child" completed the passage in 80 days, 20 hours.

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. In 1851, however, the Flying Cloud made the same journey in only 89 days, a headline-grabbing world record that the ship itself beat three years later (and that would not then be broken until 1989).

The Flying Cloud's achievement was remarkable under any terms. But, writes David W. Shaw,^{[citation needed]} 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 [235 ft.], sharpness of ends, with proportionate breadth [41 ft.] and depth, conduce to speed, the Flying Cloud must be uncommonly swift, for in all these she is 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."

[edit] See also

• Henry Walton Grinnell
• Flying Cloud, The True Story of America's Most Famous Clipper Ship and the Woman Who Guided Her. by David W. Shaw, 2000 William Morrow publisher, ISBN 0-688-16793-4

[edit] External links

• History of the Flying Cloud