The Donald McKay built extreme clipper FLYING FISH in Southern latitudes, circa 1853. The work seeks to convey expressions of conflict with the elements, held in balance by the strength, speed and great beauty of the clipper. The elegant profile of her sweeping and graceful lines is broken violently by spindrift and spume as yet another Southern Ocean roller is crested. Her way hardly checked; her flying jib boom nears the edge of the composition, illustrating swift and fluid motion. Close-reefed with only short sail bent, bare poles aloft stretch toward the sky as if in defiance of it. The American-built clipper ship was a revolution of her time - and fairly exceeded the culmination of centuries of design doctrine prior. The trade these ships plied in the great Southern Ocean posed a formidable challenge; but they were masters of it, taking American commerce to the farthest reaches of the world.