Invincible, Witch of the Wave, Blue Jacket, Charmer, Sovereign of the Seas, Lightning, and Andrew Jackson which should not be mistaken for the famous clippers after which they were named.
One may well ask what became of all the splendid clipper ships? The fate of some of them has already been told in these pages, others have disappeared from one cause or another, as time went on, until now scarcely one is left. During the Civil War many of them were sold and sailed under foreign flags, their names were changed and their identity all but lost.
Of the more famous early clippers, the Houqua foundered in a typhoon in the China seas in 1865 while under command of Captain McKenzie. The Sea Witch made her last voyage to San Francisco in 1852 and then returned to the China trade for which she had been built. On her voyage to China in 1855 Captain Fraser was murdered at sea by his chief mate, and the vessel put into Rio Janeiro, where Captain Lang took command. On the homeward voyage from Amoy to Havana with a cargo of coolies, the Sea Witch was wrecked and became a total loss on the eastern coast of Cuba, March 26, 1856. The Samuel Russell was wrecked in the Caspar Straits in 1870, under command of Captain Frederick Lucas.
The Stag-Hound was burnt off the coast of Brazil in 1863, her United States ensign, which the captain brought off and returned to the owners in Boston, being the sole relic. The Surprise, under command of Captain Charles Ranlett, struck a sunken rock while beating into Yokohama Bay and became a
