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. This
record was never lowered and was equaled only twice--by the
Flying Cloud herself and by the Andrew Jackson nine years later.
It was during this memorable voyage that the Flying Cloud sailed
1256 miles in four days while steering to the northward under
topgallantsails after rounding Cape Horn. This was a rate of
speed which, if sustained, would have carried her from New York
to Queenstown in eight days and seventeen hours. This speedy
passage was made in 1851, and only two years earlier the record
for the same voyage of fifteen thousand miles had been one
hundred and twenty days, by the clipper Memnon.

Donald McKay now resolved to build a ship larger and faster than
the Flying Cloud, and his genius neared perfection in the
Sovereign of the Seas, of 2421 tons register, which exceeded in
size all merchant vessels afloat. This Titan of the clipper fleet
was commanded by Donald's brother, Captain Lauchlan McKay, with a
crew of one hundred and five men and boys. During her only voyage
to San Francisco she was partly dismasted, but Lauchlan McKay
rigged her anew at sea in fourteen days and still made port in
one hundred and three days, a record for the season of the year.

It was while running home from Honolulu in 1853 that the
Sovereign of the Seas realized the hopes of her builder. In