clipper, the generic name used very loosely to describe types of very fast sailing ships. The term is said to have been coined because they could clip the time taken on passage by the regular packet ships, themselves very fast in their day.

The term was first applied to the speedy fore-and-aft-rigged schooners built in Virginia and Maryland, known as the Baltimore clippers, though they were not really clippers at all. These became famous during the War of 1812 as blockade runners and privateers, and subsequently notorious in the slave trade carrying human cargoes from Africa to the USA. Their hulls were long and low with a draught deeper aft than forward. They also had a very sharp-raked stem (the true mark of the clipper), and an inclined, overhanging counter stern, which reduced the area of hull in contact with the water. All these improvements in design were later combined with the three-masted square rig to produce the beautiful clipper ships of the mid-19th century, the finest productions of the age of sail.

As early as 1833 an enlarged Baltimore clipper, the Anne McKim, had been given a square rig; and she is now generally acknowledged to be the first true clipper ship, though some hold it to have been the Rainbow built in 1845 at New York. The discovery of gold in California in 1848 and in Australia in 1850, raising a demand for the fastest passages to both places, and the repeal of the British Navigation Acts in 1849, opening the tea trade from China to London to foreign ships, gave a tremendous fillip to the production of American clippers. In this the outstanding shipbuilder Donald McKay (1810–80), of Boston took the lead, producing first the revolutionary Stag Hound, then Flying Fish and Flying Cloud. These were perhaps his most famous clippers, though his Sovereign of the Seas was a record-breaker, so much so that she was immortalized in a shanty. Built in 1852 for the Swallow Tail Line, she made a name for herself through the speed of her voyages on the New York–California run.

As a result of this reputation Sovereign of the Seas was chartered to James Baines's Black Ball Line of Liverpool, and was used in the Australian wool trade, setting a new record of 65 days for the passage from London to Melbourne, a record which remained standing for 30 years until beaten by the famous clipper Thermopylae. She also established the all-time record of 13 days, 14 hours for a sailing passage from New York to Liverpool, being credited with a speed of 22 knots at times. Her performance impressed Baines so much that he ordered another four clippers from McKay, all of which were to become famous in the history of these great sailing ships: the Lightning, Champion of the Seas, James Baines, and Donald McKay, all built in 1854. Other American flyers were the New York-built Challenge (see ‘bucko’ mate), and the Black Ball liner Marco Polo, built at St John's, New Brunswick, which broke all records for passages to and from Australia in 1852–3.

This competition now spurred British shipowners and shipbuilding. Up to this time they had been mainly content with improving the sailing quality of the Blackwall frigates, though schooner-rigged ships had been built since 1839 by Alexander Hall & Sons of Aberdeen for the England to Scotland passenger trade, and one of them, the Scottish Maid, launched in 1847 and now regarded as the first British clipper ship, had reached London from Leith in 33 hours. The same firm now built the first small British clippers, the Stornaway and Chrysolite, for the tea trade, while R. & H. Green of Blackwall produced the Challenger.

The financial depression of 1857 and the American Civil War (1861–5) resulted in a decline in American commercial shipbuilding and in its place led to a revival in Britain which was to result in the golden age of the tea clipper. Tea from China was a very profitable cargo in those days and several clippers were specially built for the trade. The first arrivals in London of the new crop each year commanded the highest prices. The famous British clipper Fiery Cross, built by Chaloner of Liverpool in 1860, was the winner of the premium for the first ship home on no less than four occasions.

Robert Steele (fl. 1840–70), of Greenock, became one of the best known of the builders of tea clippers. Among them were the Taeping, Aerial, Sir Lancelot—said to be the most beautiful of all the clipper ships—and the Serica. All these ships were involved in the most famous of all the annual tea clipper races when the Fiery Cross left Foochow on 29 May 1866, the Aerial, Taeping, and Serica on the 30 May, and the Taitsing on the following day. The Taeping docked in London at 2145 on 6 September, the Aerial half an hour later, and the Serica at 2345 after having sailed the 25,600 km (16,000 mls.) from Foochow. The Fiery Cross and Taitsing both reached London two days later. The Thermopylae and another tea clipper, Cutty Sark, which had been built to rival her, featured in another famous race, starting from Foochow in 1872, but off Cape Province, South Africa, the latter lost her rudder in a gale.

The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 struck at the raison d'être of the tea clippers, making the long trip round the Cape of Good Hope unprofitable for their specialized freight. For a time these ships transferred to carrying wool from Australia, but were soon outmoded in a trade in which large cargoes, small crews, and less speed were more economical; these were better provided by the large, steel-hulled, four- and five-masted barques with which the age of commercial sail finally came to an end.

The literature on clipper ships is extensive, but some of the most authoritative books on the subject were written by Basil Lubbock (1876–1944). His titles include Round the Horn before the Mast: The China Clippers (1919), The Colonial Clippers (1921), The Log of the Cutty Sark (1924), The Down Easters (1929), and The Nitrate Clippers (1933). More recent titles include: B. Bathe, Seven Centuries of Sea Travel (1972), J. Jobé (ed.), The Great Age of Sail (1967), F. Knight, The Clipper Ship (1973), O. Howe and F. Matthews, American Clipper Ships, 1833–1858, 2 vols. (1986), and R. McKay, Donald McKay and his Famous Sailing Ships (1995).

Donald McKay

Donald McKay (1810-1880), American ship builder, designed and constructed many of the world's great clipper ships that set numerous transoceanic speed records.

Donald McKay was born on a farm in Shelburne County, Nova Scotia. He was educated in the common schools there and was apprenticed as a ship carpenter in New York City after emigrating in 1827. After mastering his trade, he was commissioned in 1839 to finish a ship in Wiscasset, Maine. He soon formed a partnership in Newburyport, Mass., where he built a number of packet ships. As his reputation spread, he received other assignments for design and construction. In 1844 he was chosen to build a ship for the transatlantic traffic by Enoch Train, who also induced him to set up a shipyard in East Boston.

This was the dawn of the clipper ship era. There was great demand for ships that could guarantee fast delivery of cargo from China, as well as rapid passage to the goldfields of California and Australia. Great emphasis was placed on the design of these clipper ships so that they could successfully travel long distances at high speed. McKay applied the most advanced theories of design and construction in his yard, personally supervising every step, from the laying of the keel to the final outfitting. He turned out the greatest tonnage of successful clippers in the world.

McKay's name became synonymous with excellence from the first clipper, the Stag Hound in 1850, to the last, the Glory of the Seas, launched in 1869. Among his most famous vessels were the Flying Cloud, Sovereign of the Seas, Lightning, and the Great Republic. His vessels set marks, some of which are still unsurpassed.

The Panic of 1857 adversely affected McKay, but he survived the lean years that followed by building less spectacular ships. Travel and study in Britain convinced him that the day of the armored steamship was at hand, and he made serious efforts to persuade the U.S. government to replace outmoded naval sailing vessels.

During the Civil War, McKay built ships for the U.S. Navy, and in the postwar years, after retooling his yard, he devoted himself to building steamships. His merely moderate success in these endeavors led him to dispose of his yard in 1869. Ill health forced him to retire in 1877. He died at his country estate in Hamilton, Mass.

Further Reading

Richard Cornelius McKay, Some Famous Sailing Ships and Their Builder, Donald McKay (1928), has a good biography. John Robinson, The Sailing Ships of New England (1924), includes a long section on McKay. Alexander Kinnan Laing, Clipper Ship Men (1944), deals with McKay and his contemporaries. William Armstrong Fairburn, Merchant Sail (6 vols., 1945-1955), has extensive material on McKay and his ships.

Additional Sources

McKay, Richard C. (Richard Cornelius), Donald McKay and his famous sailing ships, New York: Dover Publications, 1995.

McKay, Richard C. (Richard Cornelius), Some famous sailing ships and their builder, Donald McKay: a study of the American sailing packet and clipper eras, with biographical sketches of America's foremost designer and master-builder of ships, and a comprehensive history of his many famous ships, Norwalk, Conn.: Easton Press, 1988. □

Donald McKay , 1810-80, American shipbuilder, b. Nova Scotia. He opened his own shipyard in Newburyport, Mass., in 1841, then moved to Boston in 1845. He grew celebrated as designer and builder of the largest ships of his time and sleek, swift clippers, some of the most beautiful ships ever to sail the seas. Some of the vessels he built were the New World, a three-decker, the largest ship known in 1845; the Lightning and the James Baines, clippers which established new speed records for the long England-to-Australia route; and the Glory of the Seas, which in 1869 made a record run of 94 days from New York to San Francisco. He built several ships for the Union navy in the Civil War.

clip·per / ˈklipər/ • n. 1. (usu. clippers) an instrument for cutting or trimming small pieces off things. 2. a person who clips or cuts: a coupon clipper. 3. Electr. another term for limiter. 4. (also clip·per chip) a microchip that inserts an identifying code into encrypted transmissions, allowing them to be deciphered by a third party having access to a government-held key. 5. (also clip·per ship) a fast sailing ship, esp. one of 19th-century design with concave bows and raked masts.

clipper fast-sailing vessel. XIX. f. CLIP 2 in the sense ‘move quickly’; prob. infl. by CUTTER.

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