Modeler: Andes, Gene

Flying Cloud, the most famous of the clippers built by Donald McKay, set the world’s sailing record for the fastest passage between New York and San Francisco. The trip took 89 days and 8 hours. a record that held for over 130 years, from 1854 to 1989.

Race from New Orleans to St. Louis against another Mississippi paddle steamer, the Robert E. Lee, was immortalized in a lithograph by Currier and Ives.

A sidewheeler that worked lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire where the modeler used to live.

Daisy is best known for a 1912-13 voyage to South Georgia Island. On that voyage, the American Natural History Museum paid for a naturalist, Robert Cushman Murphy, to sail aboard “Daisy” to document the marine animals, especially the birds, in the Antarctic. Murphy wrote extensively about the voyage and took many photos.

The schooner Benjamin W. Latham was a fishing schooner designed by Thomas F. McManus and built by Tarr & James shipyard at Essex, Massachusetts, in 1902.

Mississippi River steam powered sternwheel towboat built in 1921 by the Charles Ward company in Charleston, West Virginia for the Pan American Petroleum company of New Orleans

A whaleboat diorama showing the harpooner in action.

A conjectural design of a typical 1880’s steam packet of the Mississippi River tributaries. Built from plans by James Haley, which are an adaptation of a larger vessel.

Sloop of War, 1828

“DynamiteCruiser” of 1888