Massachusetts

The name is lettered on her bow: Flying Cloud, a clipper launched at East Boston in 1851 from Donald McKay's yard.

The Gold Rush made speed worth money, and she sold it. On her first run from New York to San Francisco, around Cape Horn, she took 89 days and 21 hours under Captain Josiah Perkins Creesy. In 1854 she made it in 89 days and 8 hours, a record that stood for 135 years, until a 60-foot racing sloop beat it in 1989. The navigator on those runs was the captain's wife, Eleanor Creesy.

Massachusetts has lived off salt water since the Bay Colony of 1630, which is where the nickname comes from. The poster's footer reads 'The Bay State: History, Industry, Progress' and borrows the credit line of the Federal Art Project, the 1930s program that put artists to work on posters.

A full-rigged clipper fills the middle of the picture, sails full, a small American flag at her stern and a white wake curling off the bow. A tugboat steams across the foreground at right. Behind her the sun sits low and orange over brick rooftops and a white-spired church, and the state seal, a shield with a standing figure and a star, sits at the lower left of the navy band.