The decade of the 1850s could well be called the"Age of the Clipper." They were the sleekest and swiftest of merchant sailing vessels. The Carrier Pigeon measured 175 feet long and just 34 feet wide. She was rated at about 845 tons burden and had a beautiful gilded pigeon as a figurehead. Launched from the shipyards at Bath, Maine, in the fall of 1852, the Carrier Pigeon departed Boston on her maiden voyage January 28, 1853. The ship took the waves with ease as she rounded Cape Horn and sailed north along the western edge of the Americas toward San Francisco. On the morning of June 6 she was sighted off Santa Cruz. The ship then continued northward as a thick fog blanketed the water, concealing the shoreline. By nightfall Captain Azariah Doane, believing he had veered far from shore, steered the vessel towards the coastline, hoping to catch sight of land. Suddenly, there was the sound of splintering timbers as the ship's hull drifted into the grasp of the jagged sea bottom.
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