Ed Vebell (American, 1921 - 2018) "Flying Cloud Sailing Ship" Signed lower right. Original Acrylic painting on Illustration Board. Provenance: Collection of James A. Helzer (1946-2008), Founder of Unicover Corporation. This artwork was originally published on the Fleetwood Commemorative Cover for Epic Events in American History series issued in 1985. The clipper ship had a short but glorious life, from the mid-1840s to the 1860s, when steamboats and railroads took over. The greatest of ship designers and builders was Donald McKay, who in 1850 launched the Stag Hound, the first of many clipper ships he built. In 1851 he built what was called the noblest and most beautiful ship ever built: the Flying Cloud -- 229 feet in length, forty in breadth, and with her sky-sail rising 200 feet from the deck. She was not only a thing of beauty, she was also the fastest ship afloat. On her maiden voyage she logged 374 nautical miles the first day out; she rounded Cape Horn and made San Francisco in eighty-nine days, a record never surpassed by a sailboat. The Flying Cloud, whose birth coincided with the discovery of gold in California, played a role in the history of that state. It was faster -- and safer -- to sail around Cape Horn than to go overland from the Mississippi. The Flying Cloud wrote a chapter, too, in the history of maritime Massachusetts, for it continued the famous China Trade inaugurated by Captain Gray in 1782, and brought both wealth and the Chinese culture to that most cosmopolitan of American cities, Boston. Image Size: 20 x 21 in. Overall Size: 26.75 x 27 in. Unframed. (B06178)