s their failings. Across the intervening years, with
a pathos indefinable, come the lovely strains of

Shenandoah, I'll ne'er forget you,
Away, ye rolling river,
Till the day I die I'll love you ever,
Ah, ha, we're bound away.

CHAPTER IX. THE STATELY CLIPPER AND HER GLORY

The American clipper ship was the result of an evolution which can be
traced back to the swift privateers which were built during the War of
1812. In this type of vessel the shipyards of Chesapeake Bay excelled
and their handiwork was known as the "Baltimore clipper," the name
suggested by the old English verb which Dryden uses to describe the
flight of the falcon that "clips it down the wind." The essential
difference between the clipper ship and other kinds of merchant craft
was that speed and not capacity became the chief consideration. This was
a radical departure for large vessels, which in all maritime history had
been designed with an eye to the number of tons they were able to
carry. More finely molded lines had hitherto been found only in the much
smaller French lugger, the Mediterranean galley, the American schooner.

To borrow the lines of these fleet and graceful models and apply them
to the design of a deepwater ship was a bold conception. It was first
attempted by Isaac McKim, a Baltimore merchant, who ordered his builders
in 1832 to reproduce as closely as possible the superior sailing
qualities of the renowned clipper brigs and schooners of their own port.
The result was the Ann McKim, of nearly five hundred tons, the first
Yankee clipper ship, and distinguished as such by her long, easy
water-lines, low free-board, and raking stem. She was built and finished
without regard to cost, copper-sheathed, the decks gleaming with
brasswork and mahogany fittings. But though she was a very fast and
handsome ship and the pride of her owner, the Ann McKim could stow so
little cargo that shipping men regarded her as unprofitable and swore by
their full-bodied vessels a few years longer.

That the Ann McKim, however, influenced the ideas of the most
progressive builders is very probable, for she was later owned by the
New York firm of Howland and Aspinwall, who placed an order for the
first extremely sharp clipper ship of the era. This vessel, the Rainbow,
was designed by John W. Griffeths, a marine architect, who was a pioneer
in that he studied shipbuilding as a science instead of working by
rule-of-thumb. The Rainb