The bad news is not all that bad. To my dismay, there is no clipper ship-related museum in the United States, Fortunately, the British had the foresight to make sure this genre did not pass from the scene unmarked by tribute.
More good news. While the U.S. does not have a vintage clipper ship on display, perhaps we have something better. A look at Baltimore, Maryland will give you a taste of clippers, modern-style.
The following is taken from a book, entitled The Oxford Companion to Ships & The Sea, 1976, edited by Peter Kemp, Oxford University Press and P.K. Kemp, Oxford University Press, Ely House, London W.1, pp 172-173
Clipper, the generic name used very loosely to describe types of very fast sailing ships. It was applied first to the speedy schooners built in Virginia and Maryland, known as the Baltimore clippers (though in fact they were not really clippers) which became famous during the War of 1812 as blockade runners and privateers, and subsequently notorious as slave ships carrying human cargoes from Africa to the U.S.A.
Their hull design, long and low, with a draught deeper aft than forward, a very sharp-raked stem (the true mark of the clipper), and an inclined, overhanging counter stern, thus reducing the area of hull in contact with the water, was later combined with the three-masted square rig in the beautiful clipper ships of the mid-19th century, the finest productions of the age of sail.
As early as 1832 an enlarged Baltimore clipper, the Ann McKim, had been given square rig; but the first true clipper ship is generally held to have been the Rainbow built in 1845 at New York.
The discovery of gold in California in 1848 and in australia in 1850, raising a demand for the fastest passages to both, and the repeal of the British Navigation Acts in 1849, opening the tea trade from China to London to foreign ships, gave a tremendous fillip to the production of American clippers in which the shipbuilder Donald McKay, of Boston, took the lead.
His Flying Fish and Flying Cloud were perhaps the most famous of McKay's clippers, though the Lightning, Champion Of The Seas, James Baines, and Donald McKay, which he built for James Baine's Black Ball Line of Liverpool, were equally successful.
The American clipper ship Sovereign of the Seas made the all-time record for a sailing ship for the voyage from New York to Liverpool of 13 days, 14 hours, being credited with a speed of 22 knots at times. Another American flyer which broke records was the Challenge. The Black Ball liner Marco Polo, built at St. John's, New Brunswick, broke all records for passages to and from Australia in 1852-3.
This foreign competition, almost entirely from the U.S.A., now spurred British shipowners and shipbuilders who up to this time had been mainly content with improving the sailing quality of the Blackwell frigates, though schooner-rigged ships had been built since 1839 by Alexaner Hall & Sons of Aberdeen for the England to Scotland passenger trade and one of them, the Scottish Maid, had reached London from Leith in 33 hours.
The same firm now built the first small British clippers, the Stornoway and Chrysolite for the tea trade, while R. & H. Green of Blackwell produced the Challenger.
Other British ship yards, chiefly Scottish, also began to build clipper ships, notably Robert Steele & Co. of Greenock, who between 1855 and 1859 completed a number of small but very successful ships. The financial depression of 1857 and the American civil war (1861-65) resulted in a decline in American commercial shipbuilding and in its place led to a revival in Britain which was to result in the golden age of the tea-clipper.
Tea from China was a very profitable cargo in those days and several clippers were specially built for the trade. The first arrival in London of the new crop each year commanded the highest prices.
Robert Steele built such famous ships for this trade as the Taeping, Ariel, and Sir Lancelot. In 1866 occurred the most famous of all the annual tea-clipper races when the Fiery Cross left Foochow on 29 May, the Ariel, Taeping, and Serica on the 30th, and the Taitsing on the 31st.
The Taeping docked in London at 9:45 p.m. on 6 September, the Ariel half an hour later, and the Serica at 11:45 p.m., after having sailed the 16,000 miles from Foochow. The Fiery Cross and Taitsing both reached London two days later.
Two other tea-clippers featured in another famous race from Foochow in 1872. They were the Thermopylae and the Cutty Sark, both completed in 1868, which were lying approximately level when the latter lost her rudder in a gale off Cape Province, South Africa.
The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 struck at the raison d'etre of the tea-clippers, making the long trip round the Cape of Good Hope unprofitable for their specialized freight. The ships transferred to carrying wool from Australia for a time, but were soon outmoded in a trade in which large cargoes, small crews, and less speed were more economical; these were better provided by the large, steel-hulled, four and five masted barques with which the age of sail came finally to an end.
The term itself is said to have been coined because these very fast ships could clip the time taken on passage by the regular packet ships, themselves very fast in their day.