Page:The Clipper Ship Era.djvu/205

Rh Canton, and the bronzed mariner was to him a being quite apart from other mortals.

At that time Salem retained much of the spicy, maritime flavor of the olden days, and these pleasant summer cruises to the old seaport naturally captivated the boy's imagination, until he yearned for the time when he, too, might stand upon the quarter-deck in command of a noble ship. It would, of course, have been sinful to keep a boy like this on land, so he was permitted to follow his inclination and ship before the mast on board of a vessel bound for the East Indies. He advanced steadily through all the grades on shipboard, and became a captain at twenty-three.

When Captain Creesy was appointed to command the Flying Cloud, he was well known in New York, as he had commanded the ship Oneida, for a number of years in the China and East India trade, and bore a high reputation among ship-owners and underwriters, many of whom were his personal friends and associates.

The Flying Fish was owned by Sampson & Tappan, who, with George B. Upton, were the leading Boston ship-owners of their day, and between them owned the largest and finest clipper ships belonging to that port. These firms were composed of men in the prime of life, who enjoyed owning fast and handsome vessels. They cared for nothing but the best in design, construction, and equipment, and fitted out their ships with spare gear, stores, and provisions upon a most generous scale. The Flying Fish was 1505 tons register and measured: length 198 feet 6 inches, breadth 38 feet 2 inches, depth