So the young ship-builder had on that day launched his last ship at Newburyport. He soon closed the pleasant relations which had existed with his partner, and at the age of thirty-four opened his great shipyard at the foot of Border Street, East Boston. There he built in rapid succession, between 1845 and 1850, the packet ships _Washington Irving_, _Anglo-Saxon_, _Ocean Monarch_, _Anglo-American_, and _Daniel Webster_ for Train’s Liverpool Line. These ships carried a black T in their foretopsail below the close reef band, and flew the Enoch Train signal, a red field with white diamond. The ships _New World_ and _Cornelius Grinnell_ were built here for Grinnell, Minturn & Co.’s Swallowtail Line; the _A. Z._, _L. Z._, and _Antarctic_ for Zerega & Co., New York; the _Jenny Lind_ for Fairbank & Wheeler, Boston; the _Parliament_, _Plymouth Rock_, _Reindeer_, and barque _Helicon_ for George B. Upton, Boston; the _Moses Wheeler_ for Wheeler & King, Boston; and the barque _Sultana_ for Edward Lamb & Co., Boston. These vessels were much admired in New York, London, Liverpool, and other seaports, and established the reputation of Donald McKay as a ship-builder equal to the best. CHAPTER IV OPIUM CLIPPERS AND EARLY CLIPPER SHIPS, 1832-1848 The origin of the word clipper is not quite clear, though it seems to be derived from the verb clip, which in former times meant, among other things, to run or fly swiftly. Dryden uses it to describe the flight of a falcon[4]: “Some falcon stoops at what her eye designed, And, with her eagerness the quarry missed, Straight flies at check, and clips it down the wind.” The word survived in the New England slang expression “to clip it,” and “going at a good clip,” or “a fast clip,” are familiar expressions there to this day. It therefore seems reasonable to suppose that when vessels of a new model were built, which were intended, in the language of the times, to clip over the waves rather than plough through them, the improved type of craft became known as clippers because of their speed. It is probable that the swift privateers built at Baltimore during the War of 1812 became known as “Baltimore clippers,” and while the first application of the term in a nautical sense is by no means certain, it seems to have had an American origin.