Lightning was a clipper ship

Clipper

A clipper was a very fast sailing ship of the 19th century that had three or more masts and a square rig. They were generally narrow for their length, could carry limited bulk freight, small by later 19th century standards, and had a large total sail area...

, one of the last really large clippers to be built in the USA. She was built by Donald McKay

Donald McKay

Donald McKay was a Canadian-born American designer and builder of sailing ships.He was born in Jordan Falls, Shelburne County on Nova Scotia's South Shore. In 1826 he moved to New York, working for shipbuilders Brown & Bell and Isaac Webb...

 for James Baines of the Black Ball Line

Black Ball Line (trans-Atlantic packet)

The Black Ball Line initially consisted of four packet ships, the Amity, Courier, Pacific and the James Monroe. All of these were running between Liverpool, England and New York City. This first scheduled trans-Atlantic service was founded in 1817...

, Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

, for the Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 trade.

It has been said that the Lightning was the most extreme example of a type of ship classified as an extreme clipper.

Her builder was the famous Donald McKay of Boston, a follower of John Willis Griffiths and his principles of ship design. Lightning is a prime example of a change in thinking that turned builders away from shaping ships' hulls like cod's heads and mackerel tails. She had 16 feet (4.9 m) of concavity in her bows and a beautiful fine run, yet she also had a moderate deadrise

Glossary of nautical terms

This is a glossary of nautical terms; some remain current, many date from the 17th-19th century. See also Wiktionary's nautical terms, :Category:Nautical terms, and Nautical metaphors in English.- A :...

 and a good full midsection with tumblehome

Tumblehome

In ship designing, the tumblehome is the narrowing of a ship's hull with greater distance above the water-line. Expressed more technically, it is present when the beam at the uppermost deck is less than the maximum beam of the vessel....

, allowing her to be fast yet stable with good sail-carrying ability.

History

When Lightning was built in 1854 in Boston, America's clipper boom was on the wane. The Australian gold rush was on, however, and McKay was building ships for James Baines of the "Black Ball Line" (house flag featured a black disk ("ball") on a red background) in Liverpool. Baines needed to transport passengers and cargo to Australia and had been impressed by the huge American ships. Lightning was powerfully and heavily constructed to handle the heavy seas and storms of the Australian run. Only the finest materials went into her construction. She cost ₤30,000 to build, and Baines put in another ₤2,000 in interior decoration, adding fine woods, marble, gilding and stained glass. It is said that her rooms rivaled those of the later Queen Mary

RMS Queen Mary

RMS Queen Mary is a retired ocean liner that sailed primarily in the North Atlantic Ocean from 1936 to 1967 for the Cunard Line...

. An on-ship newspaper called the Lightning Gazette was published for the passengers and crew.

After arriving in England, Lightnings hollow bow was ignorantly filled in by her captain Anthony Enright. McKay called the people who did it "the wood butchers of Liverpool". When her captain was changed to Bully Forbes, who drove her mercilessly, often running with the lee rail underwater, the fillings soon washed out. Lightning began to set records. Some examples of records are: she crossed from New York to Liverpool in 13 days, 19 ½ hours, she sailed 436 miles (701.7 km) in 24 hours, doing 18 to 18 ½ knots. In 1854–55, she made the passage from Melbourne to Liverpool in 65 days, completing a circumnavigation of the world in 5 months, 9 days, which included 20 days spent in port.

Lightning did a brief stint as a troop ship bringing British soldiers to fight an uprising in India.

Lightning caught fire at around 01:00 on 30 October 1869 at Geelong in Australia when fully loaded and ready to sail with 4,300 bales of wool

Wool

Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....

, 200 tons of copper, 35 casks of wine and some tallow

Tallow

Tallow is a rendered form of beef or mutton fat, processed from suet. It is solid at room temperature. Unlike suet, tallow can be stored for extended periods without the need for refrigeration to prevent decomposition, provided it is kept in an airtight container to prevent oxidation.In industry,...

. Attempts to control the fire were unsuccessful, and at around noon the decision was taken to sink her, and she was towed out to the shoals. The initial attempts were by cannon

Cannon

A cannon is any piece of artillery that uses gunpowder or other usually explosive-based propellents to launch a projectile. Cannon vary in caliber, range, mobility, rate of fire, angle of fire, and firepower; different forms of cannon combine and balance these attributes in varying degrees,...

 fire from the shore to try to hole her below the waterline

Waterline

The term "waterline" generally refers to the line where the hull of a ship meets the water surface. It is also the name of a special marking, also known as the national Load Line or Plimsoll Line, to be positioned amidships, that indicates the draft of the ship and the legal limit to which a ship...

, but this was unsuccessful. At about four in the afternoon some of the crew scuttled her by cutting holes on the waterline, and she sank in 27 feet (8.2 m) of water. The shoals became known as "Lightning Shoals".

External links

• Sailing Ships: Lightning
• Voyage of the Clipper Ship Lightning from England to Australia and Back
• Lightning data