❖ CLIPPER SHIP ❖

Fifty South to Fifty South by Lieut. U.S.N.R. Warwick M. Tompkins, is a 1938 classic featuring the track of the well-known German built Schooner WANDERBIRD, published in 1938 by W. W. Norton and Co. A well-known vessel and a well known sailor/author; a number of the same book, with wind in her sails, kept disappearing from S. P. H. S. members bookshelves. Innocently sailing off.
      So with another copy warmly welcomed home, we'll celebrate with a quote from Tompkins' glossary from his book, pg 256.

CLIPPER SHIP
"A term properly applied to the very beautiful, very fine, fast and over-sparred ships built in the U. S. between 1850 and 1859 and some of their British prototypes of later date (like CUTTY SARK, built in 1869) that carried the rarest cargoes at the high freights demanded by high speed. Such square-rigged ships as survive today are rather floating warehouses supplying long-term storage as well as transportation, and are loosely termed clippers only by very unpoetic license."

Clipper GLORY OF THE SEAS.
Endpaper from book Clipper Ship Captain
Daniel McLaughlin and the GLORY OF THE SEAS
by Michael Jay Mjelde. 

An example of a medium clipper ship sailing Puget Sound was the GLORY OF THE SEAS, 240.2 x 44.1 x 28.3 feet and 2,102.57 gross tons, the last full-rigged ship built by Donald McKay of East Boston, registered at Boston.

Ron R. Burke, cartographer.

      The above artwork by Ronald R. Burke, editor of The Sea Chest, published by Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, along with Michael Jay Mjelde, an honorary life-member, accompanies Mjelde's most recent article on GLORY OF THE SEAS. 
      A cover painting of the clipper GLORY by Mark Myers RSMA, F/ASMA, with 16 pages of her last voyage under sail is featured in the Sept. 2014 issue of the members quarterly journal. P.S.M.H.S. site has information on signing on as a member, and an index for purchasing past issues of The Sea Chest.

What Michael Mjelde doesn't know about this clipper ship is not worth knowing. 
His published books are: 

Glory of the Seas,
Book search here

Sequel to the Glory of the Seas.
Clipper Ship Captain 
Book search here 


 The clipper ship GLORY OF THE SEAS ended her days burned for her metal fittings on a gravel beach, just south of Seattle, 13 May 1923.