Bunker Hill Clipper Ships for San Francisco Poster

These vintage natuical advertisements created between 1850 and 1860, were originally distributed in playing card sizes. They were issued by dispatch lines to advertise specific voyages of clipper ships from one port to another. Mostly New York or Boston to San Francisco. This historic image features a clipper ship at sea with a lighthouse on the left and marching soldiers on the right. It reads, "Merchant's Express Line of Clipper Ships for San Francisco. Dispatching more vessels than any other line! None but first class clippers loaded!! BUNKER HILL, DAVIS, Commander, is now receiving the last of her Cargo at Pier 10 East River and will have immediate and unusual dispatch. As this vessel is an extreme Clipper, very popular, a small carrior, and comes to the berth over one-quarter full, there cannot possibley be any delay in loading." "RANDOLPH M. COOLEY, 88 Wall St., Tontine Building. Agents in San Francisco, Messrs. DE WITT, KITTLE & CO." "A clipper was technically a sailing ship with three masts on which sat a large expanse of square sails. It was designed to carry a small, highly profitable cargo over long distances at high speeds. The clipper's masts, which could reach as high as a twenty story building, carried more sails and more kinds of sails than any other ship that had been built by that time. This cloud of sails controlled by a complicated web of rigging rose above a sharp bow and a sleek narrow hull. The long lines of the ship combined with the enormous driving power of the sails allowed the ships to "clip" along at speeds that earlier generations of sailors never dreamed of, and later generations never matched." Source: History of Clipper Ships http://library.thinkquest.org/6169/hist.htm Presented by timelessprintsonline.com