The image seen here seems appropriately patriotic
for our nation’s 4th of July celebration. EAGLE WING
was a 200 foot long clipper ship built in Boston in 1853. This card was an
advertisement used to attract business for the ship and its owners for passages
to the west coast, as the number of days listed indicates. A mere 106 and 117
days were two of the extremely fast trips she made to San Francisco. She sailed
at various times out of both Boston and New York. Other clipper ship sailing cards can be seen
at:
The patriotic symbolism in this picture is not only
represented by the eagle, but also by the liberty pole it carries in its beak
as well as the liberty cap that surmounts the pole. Both the pole and the cap
represented freedom from tyranny. The use of the liberty cap supposedly dated
back to the assassination of Julius Caesar. The senators involved in the
killing held aloft a pole with the red cap, worn by freed slaves in Rome, to
indicate to the people of Rome that they were now free from Caesar’s tyrannical
rule. Some countries, especially the United States and France, adopted the
use of the cap as an icon of their political independence, and the U.S.
specifically made use of the liberty pole during the infancy of the revolution.
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| EAGLE WING. From Collection 112, Manuscripts Collection, G.W. Blunt White Library, Mystic Seaport. |