A little project I'm working on:
Baltimore Clippers: A design evolution.
Basically I'm tracing examples of the type of ship broadly classed as Baltimore Clippers, their roots and how they influenced sailing ship designs for speed under sail. It covers a period from the mid 1700's all the way through to the early 20th century. If the need was for fast movement of perishables, commanding the best market price, evading pirates, blockade running, smuggling, racing, or just being faster than everybody else, thank these ships.
They got their start in the Americas, via sloops down in the Caribbean to avoid pirates, from the Main Schooners for the schooner sailing rigs. In between by the late 1760's , the basics all came together in the Baltimore region where shipbuilders took the best traits, stretched the hull for capacity and speed and the ship type was born.
They started off small, as pilot boats and freighters of under 80' (waterline)...nobody was manufacturing enough for larger hulls then. The hull form developed a reputation for speed and was copied by all the major European powers. After 1815 they started to grow in size. By the 1830's they influence the design of the Atlantic Packets and ultimately the famous Clippers. The sharp hulls also lead to the speedier naval vessels, etc.
What killed them off for general cargo hauling was hull capacity...with the industrial revolution and the ability to create iron in quantity, ships suddenly could be built large enough to blend the Baltimore Clippers sharp ends with the bulky midsections needed to move stuff in quantity.
Bermuda Sloop (1740)
Virginia Built Privateer "Swift" (1770's)
HMS Flying Fish (1806)
American Built
CraigH