The _Flying Cloud_ was originally contracted for by Enoch Train, the good friend of Donald McKay, but while on the stocks she was sold to Grinnell, Minturn & Co., under whose flag she sailed for a number of years. Mr. Train used to say that there were few things in his life that he regretted more than parting with this ship. She was 1783 tons register, and measured: length 225 feet, breadth 40 feet 8 inches, depth 21 feet 6 inches, with 20 inches dead-rise at half floor. Her main-yard was 82 feet and her mainmast 88 feet in length, and like all the large clippers of her day, she carried three standing skysail yards; royal, topgallant and topmast studdingsails at the fore and main, square lower studdingsails with swinging booms at the fore; single topsail yards, with four reef bands in the topsails; single reefs in the topgallant sails, and topsail and topgallant bowlines. She was commanded by Captain Josiah Perkins Creesy, who was born at Marblehead in 1814. Like most boys who were brought up along the coast of Massachusetts Bay, he began his career by being skipper and all hands of a borrowed thirteen-foot dory, with the usual leg-o’-mutton sail, and steered by an oar over her lee gunwale. In these dories water was carried in a strong earthen jug with a stout handle to which a tin drinking-cup was usually attached, while a wooden dinner-pail, such as the Gloucester fishermen used in those days, contained provisions. When the rode line was coiled down clear with the killick stowed away forward, and the dinner-pail, wooden bailer, and water jug had been made fast with a lanyard to the becket in the stern sheets, the famous Cape Ann dory was about ready for sea. Joe Creesy was a genuine boy, large and strong for his age, freckled, good-tempered, and fond of rowing, sailing, and fishing. When he got to be thirteen or fourteen years old, he used to get some one to lend him a dory, and in this, during his summer vacation, he would make short cruises to Beverly and sometimes to the neighboring port of Salem. Here he would loiter about the wharves, watching an Indiaman discharge her fragrant cargo, or perhaps some ship fitting out for another voyage to India or China; and he would gaze up in wonder and admiration at the long tapering masts, with their lofty yards and studdingsail booms, and what appeared to him to be a labyrinth of blocks and slender threads. The ships’ figureheads, especially those representing warriors and wild animals, pleased Joe mightily, and the spare spars, gratings, capstans, boats, guns, and shining brass work, all delighted his heart. Occasionally he would behold a sea-captain who had really sailed to Calcutta and Canton, and the bronzed mariner was to him a being quite apart from other mortals.