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144 length. She was commanded on her first voyage by Captain Josiah Richardson, and carried a crew of 36 able seamen, 6 ordinary seamen, and 4 boys. When she arrived at New York in tow of the R. B. Forbes, to load for San Francisco, the ship fanciers of South Street were for once in their lives of one mind, and their opinion seems to have been that the Stag-Hound came pretty near being the perfection of the clipper ship type.

Each one of the clippers of 1850 proved a credit to the yard from which she was launched, and nearly all of them made the passage from New York or Boston to San Francisco in less than one hundred and ten days. This is an exceedingly good record, although the passage from New York has been made by two vessels, the Flying Cloud and the Andrew Jackson, in a few hours less than ninety days. In Appendix II. will be found the names of ships that made this passage in one hundred and ten days or less, with the dates of their arrivals at San Francisco, for the years 1850–1860. While this list includes almost all of the extreme clippers, still there were a number of ships that gave proof by their other records of being fast and ably commanded, and yet failed to come within the limit of one hundred and ten days.

As most persons are aware, foreign vessels have never been allowed to engage in the United States coasting trade, also that the voyage between Atlantic and Pacific ports of the United States, has always been regarded as a coasting voyage. The California clippers therefore had no foreign competitors to sail against, but the racing among