The shipyards of New York and Boston were crowded with them, and they graced the keel blocks of the historic old ports of New England--Medford, Mystic, Newburyport, Portsmouth, Portland, Rockland, and Bath--wherever the timber and the shipwrights could be assembled.
Until that time there had been few ships afloat as large as a thousand tons.

These were of a new type, rapidly increased to fifteen hundred, two thousand tons, and over.

They presented new and difficult problems in spars and rigging able to withstand the strain of immense areas of canvas which climbed two hundred feet to the skysail pole and which, with lower studdingsails set, spread one hundred and sixty feet from boom-end to boom-end.

There had to be the strength to battle with the furious tempests of Cape Horn and at the same time the driving power to sweep before the sweet and steadfast tradewinds.

Such a queenly clipper was the Flying Cloud, the achievement of that master builder, Donald McKay, which sailed from New York to San Francisco in eighty-nine days, with Captain Josiah Creesy in command.