Harvey — Baltimore Clipper Schooner Model, Painted | Captain Line

The Baltimore clipper in painted finish — black topsides over a sharp, deeply raked hull, which is roughly how these schooners looked to the merchant captains who spotted them too late.

Hand-built in hardwood, hand-painted, rigged and finished before it ships. Fully assembled.

Details

• Hand-built hull, hand-painted, with the sharp deadrise and extreme mast rake of the Baltimore type
• Two masts, schooner-rigged, with hand-knotted standing and running rigging
• Hand-stitched linen sails
• Deck fittings, guns, ship's boat, wheel and rails
• Metal anchors and wooden rudder
• Solid wood base with brass nameplate

The type

Baltimore clippers were built to one specification: outrun everything. Narrow, deep-drafted, and rigged with masts raked so far aft they look like a construction error, they carried almost no cargo and could not stand and fight. What they could do was catch a merchantman and lose a frigate. During the War of 1812 American privateers on these lines took hundreds of British prizes and forced Lloyd's insurance rates to triple.

The same qualities later made the hull form popular with slavers and smugglers, and it was hunted out of existence by the navies that had once commissioned it — which is why almost none survive.