He tapped the glass one last time. “So what’s a clipper ship? It’s what we built when we cared more about the next horizon than the next harbor. And when steam came, we didn’t retire them because they were obsolete. We retired them because they made us feel too much.”
When gold was discovered in California (1848) and Australia (1851), thousands of miners were willing to pay a premium to get to the goldfields as fast as humanly possible. what is a clipper ship
Elias pointed at the model’s hull. “See how it’s long and narrow? A fat ship is a slow ship. A clipper is all backbone and hunger. They started in Baltimore, small and fierce—opium runners, slave-chasers. But the real clippers came with gold. California gold, Australian gold. In 1849, the world went mad. Suddenly, getting there a week before the other fellow meant you bought the hotel, the mine, the city.” He tapped the glass one last time
“Was it safe?” Leo asked.