Northern Light (clipper ship)
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The clipper ship Northern Light was built in Boston, Massachusetts in 1851 and was designed by naval architect Samuel H. Pook. His design for the new Northern Light was radically innovative, being raked very sharply below the waterline and with full and powerful lines topside. The new ship's figurehead was a full length angel, carrying a golden torch ahead.
The new design was controversial and in 1850's America, clipper ship design was debated in homes, taverns, and at social gatherings the way we debate major league baseball strategies today. There was intense competition between schools of design, and regional pride got involved, as Boston and New York vied for leadership in clipper ship technology, with the local communities cheering for their hometown favorites the way the current populations of those cities cheer for their baseball teams, especially when they play each other.
The new design of the Northern Light proved to be a great success. When it came to speed, the clipper ships were a class of champions by themselves, and in this class of champions, the Northern Light was very fast, perhaps the fastest of them all.
In 1853, the Northern Light participated in the only head-to-head race of the clipper ship era, leaving San Francisco under the command of Captain Freeman Hatch [1], in a race with the highly regarded clipper ship Contest, which was of the New York school of clipper ship design. When the Northern Light reached Boston days ahead of the Contest reaching New York, a wild victory celebration was touched of that rocked the streets of Boston for four days.
The record set by the Northern Light for that voyage from San Francisco around Cape Horn to an east coast port of 76 days 5 hours stood until the 1990s when the record was broken by Isabelle Autissier skippering a high-tech catamaran using satellite navigation, modern weather reporting, and being purpose built for speed (the clipper ships were freighters and carried a full load of cargo on every trip).
Much of this material on the Northern Light was taken from a description of the history of the Northern Light. [2]
Also, the history of the Northern Light can be found in the book Greyhounds of the Sea by Carl C. Cutler, 1930, published by Halcyon House. The story of the record setting voyage begins on page 266.