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Motoring in for Dinner, On the Bay
San Francisco was built on shipping, literally. Hundreds of abandoned Gold Rush ships make up the land fill of its waterfront and dozens of ships rest under the Financial District including the Niantic at the base of the Transamerica Pyramid. But a larger fleet of sailing ships would gather in the Bay thirty years later when the San Joaquin Valley became the bread basket for Northern Europe. In 1881, 559 sailing ships assembled in San Francisco's harbor to load a season's grain harvest for the long sail to Europe.

While most of these vessels were English deep-watermen a number of them were a new type of vessel of great size and with enormous sails. These fast newer ships, "virtually the creation of San Francisco" were named, Clipper Ships and sparked a race to design faster ships. When one of these Clipper ships, the Flying Cloud, raced around the Horn in 89 days instead of the usual 182 they captured the imagination of the public as well.
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