Clipper ship, classic sailing ship of the 19th century, renowned for its beauty, grace, and speed. Apparently starting from the small, swift coastal packet known as the Baltimore clipper, the true clipper evolved first in American and later in British yards. In its ultimate form it was a long, slim, graceful vessel with a projecting bow and radically streamlined hull, carrying an exceptionally large spread of sail on three tall masts.
“Clipper” does not refer to a specific sail plan; clippers may be schooners, brigs, brigs, brigantines, etc., as well as full-rigged ships. Clippers were mostly constructed in British and American shipyards, although France, Brazil, the Netherlands, and other nations also produced some.
According to a comprehensive book published in 1911, The Clipper Ship Era by Arthur H. Clark, the term clipper was originally derived from slang in the early 19th century. To “clip it” or to go “at a fast clip” meant to travel fast. So it is reasonable to assume the word was simply attached to ships which had been built for speed, and as Clark put it, seemed to “clip over the waves rather than plough through them.”
Historians differ on when the first true clipper ships were built, but there is general agreement that they became well established in the 1840s. The typical clipper had three masts, was square-rigged, and had a hull designed to slice through the water.
Clipper ships became economically useful because they could deliver very valuable material faster than more ordinary packet ships. During the California Gold Rush, for instance, clippers were seen to be very useful as supplies, ranging from lumber to prospecting equipment, could be rushed to San Francisco.
And people who booked passage on clippers could expect to get to their destination faster than those who sailed on ordinary ships. During the Gold Rush, when fortune hunters wanted to race to the California gold fields, the clippers became extremely popular.
Clippers became especially important for international tea trade, as tea from China could be transported to England or America in record time. Clippers were also used to transport easterners to California during the Gold Rush, and to transport Australian wool to England.
Clipper ships had some serious disadvantages. Because of their sleek designs, they could not carry as much cargo as a wider ship could. And sailing a clipper took extraordinary skill. They were the most complicated sailing ships of their time, and their captains needed to possess excellent seamanship to handle them, especially in high winds.
Clipper ships were eventually made obsolete by steam ships, and also by the opening of the Suez Canal, which dramatically cut sailing time from Europe to Asia and made speedy sailing ships less necessary.
The most important aspect of a clipper ship was speed, and it was built to enhance a streamlined design and enable cargo owners to maximize revenue while keeping costs down.
A clipper ship had three masts with square sails covering every feasible coverable area on the mast.
Characteristics of a Clipper Ship
A clipper ship offered its captain and crew a sailing speed of over 250 miles a day, whereas the routine ships travelled at an average speed of 150 miles per day. In earlier times, covering 250 nautical miles in a day was a long journey.
The origin of a clipper ship was spurred by that time’s predominant slow-moving water transportation.
With competition to bring Chinese tea into the goldfields of California before the first tea leaves of the season were sold out, competent shipbuilders and innovative naval architects created the sleek signature design of a clipper ship.
Clippers are broadly recognized as belonging to one of three categories based on their design:
- High deadrise clippers
- Medium deadrise and entire mid-section clippers
- Combinations of a sharp deadrise with a fuller mid-section
Some of the important terms used to define clipper designs are as follows:
- Deadrise angle – The angle between a horizontal plane through the keel and a plane passing through the hull bottom from the keel to a point where a radius of curvature is first introduced.
- Mid-section – The area enclosed by a ship’s hull on a transverse plane passing through the midship region of a vessel.
To assess the hull design, the “fullness” of the hull is often used to measure hydrodynamic performance. Fullness measures how close a hull shape is to an enclosing rectangular cuboid of dimensions equal to a ship’s longest dimension (length, beam, draft).
By using the draft, we compare the underwater volumes of these types of ships. The technical factors used by naval architects during the design phase are the “prismatic coefficient” and “block coefficient”. The prismatic coefficient is more widely used since it compares the underwater volume with an equivalent prism rather than a rectangular cuboid.
Size-wise, each clipper ship varied. But their cargo was anywhere between a few hundred to 4000 tons. Tons, in the case of a ship’s weight, meant the number of tons of wine a ship could carry rather than a ship’s equivalent weight in pounds.
And in the case of a clipper ship, the tonnage is significant because even if the ship was designed for speed and mobility, piling extra cargo loads meant the owner losing out on not just precious cargo but also an entire ship during a capsize.
Another set of definitions used to classify clippers are as follows:
- Extreme clipper – Extremely sharp hull forms but with reduced under-deck tonnage capacity. The primary source of income is the speed and promise of multiple voyages at a fraction of the time of similar sea-going vessels.
- Medium clipper – Mid-Lesser hull sharpness but better under-deck tonnage than an extreme variant. These clippers are fast and allow more oversized cargo to be shipped. They were favored for voyages that were not urgent and had flexible schedules.
- Standard clipper – These variants were a cross between extreme and medium clippers. They came with the speed of powerful clippers but also had sizeable under-deck tonnage.
Major Contributing Marine Architects:
The Actual Design Plans composed by Donald McKay:
Ship designs attributed to but not clipperships:
References:
The American-Built Clipper Ship, by Crothers, William L. Crothers, An International Marine/McGraw-Hill Companies Book, Camden, Maine, 1997. / Cover Painting of the Red Jacket by Percy A. Sutton, courtesy the Penobscot Marine Museum, Searsport, Maine. www.penobscotmarinemuseum.org / Whenever the American people decide to build clipper ships again, this is the book that will tell them how to do it.
https://www.marineinsight.com/maritime-history/what-is-a-clipper-ship-2/#Characteristics_of_a_Clipper_Ship, By Shilavadra Bhattacharjee, June 18, 2022
The Clipper Ship Era: an epitome of famous American and British clipper ships, their owners, builders, commanders, and crews, 1843-1869 by Arthur H. Clark, Putnam Collections, New York, 1911