The American clipper Flying Cloud cracking along in an ocean breeze

The American extreme clipper Flying Cloud was built by the great Donald McKay at East Boston in 1851 and purchased by Grinnell, Mintern & Co. of New York for $90,000. With a 225 foot deck length and a tonnage of 1,782 (American measurement), she spent her early years on the New York to San Francisco trade via Cape Horn, her maiden voyage setting a record for the run which her fourth voyage improved to 89 days and 8 hours, anchor to anchor, a time never bettered and still standing for that route. Despite consistently good passage times to California, she had to be laid up in New York for lack of cargo for over 2½ years until sold to new owners in the autumn of 1859. Thereafter trading out of London, including one tea voyage in 1860, she was chartered to carry troops home from Hong Kong in 1861-62 and, after arriving back in London, was then sold to British owners. Employed on a variety of routes in the 1860s, she spent her final years in the timber trade until being wrecked on Beacon Island bar, outside St. John's, Newfoundland, in 1874.