point out that the Flying Cloud arrived at San Francisco on August 31, 1851, after her famous passage of 89 days from New York; it is therefore difficult to understand how she could have sailed from Wampoa on the Canton River on or about September 1st of that year, as stated by Mr. Cowper; while the Bald Eagle was not launched until 1852.
On January 3, 1852, the Illustrated London News, which then, as now, had many readers in the United States, published a portrait of the Chrysolite accompanying an article in which it was stated that both the Chrysolite and the Stornoway had beaten the Oriental and the Surprise, and that the Chrysolite had completely beaten the Memnon during a race in the Caspar Straits. This article excited a good deal of interest in the United States, and it caused the formation by a number of high-spirited young merchants and ship-owners at Boston of a society called the American Navigation Club, which consisted of Daniel C. Bacon, President; Thomas H. Perkins, John P. Cushing, William H. Bordman, John M. Forbes, Warren Delano, and Edward King. In due time they issued the following challenge, which was published in all the leading shipping papers of Great Britain in September, 1852, and was copied into Bell's Life, at that period the great sporting publication of England:
"The American Navigation Club challenges the ship-builders of Great Britain to a ship-race, with cargo on board, from a port in England to a port in China and back. One ship to be entered by each
