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Launched on October 4, 1853 the Great Republic is noteworthy as the largest wooden clipper ship ever constructed.

The biggest "down easter"^[2] was planned to be launched on September 4, 1853鈥攂uilder Donald McKay's birthday, but the launch had to be postponed to October 4 due to problems with the timber supplies which ran out and became extremely expensive.

Great Republic required 1,500,000 feet of pine ... 2,056 tons of white oak, 336 1/2 tons of iron, and 56 tons of copper"-- about three times as much pine as was typically required for a large clipper ship.^[3]

Designed by naval architect/shipbuilder Donald McKay as a four-deck four-masted medium clipper barque, the Great Republic鈥攁t 4,555 tons registry ^[4]鈥攚as intended to be the most profitable wooden sailing ship ever to ply the Australian gold rush and southern oceans merchant trade. The City of Boston made Great Republic's launch day into a holiday.^[5] Between 30,000 and 50,000 spectators attended, among them Ferdinand Laeisz of the famous Flying P-Line of Hamburg. After being launched with a bottle of pure Cochituate water, and christened by Capt. Alden Gifford after the eponymous poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and finally outfitted, the Great Republic sailed in ballast from Boston to New York, where in December 1853 her first cargo was loaded.

On December 27, 1853 a fire broke out in the buildings of the Novelty Baking Company near the piers where the Great Republic and several other wooden merchant vessels were moored.^[6] The fire quickly spread to the merchant vessels White Squall, Joseph Walker and Great Republic. The former two ships were destroyed, the Great Republic to near the waterline.^[7] The ship was declared a total loss, and Donald McKay, who never got over the loss, was compensated by insurers. The sunken hulk was sold by the insurance underwriters to Captain Nathaniel Palmer who salvaged and rebuilt it as a three-deck vessel with reduced masts.

Still the largest clipper ship in the world at 3,357 tons registry, the Great Republic, under command of Captain Joseph Limeburner, started back in merchant service on February 24, 1855. Her maiden voyage brought her to Liverpool in 13 days.

Great Republic was "chartered by the French Government to bring munitions and troops to the Crimea," and served in the general cargo and guano trades.^[8] In 1862 the fourth mast was removed and the others re-rigged, and the clipper became a three-masted full-rigged ship, a so-called three-skysail-yarder. In 1864 Captain Limeburner retired and the ship's registry moved to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. In 1869 she was sold to the Merchants' Trading Company of Liverpool and renamed Denmark. She continued sailing until March 5, 1872 when a hurricane off Bermuda caused the ship to leak badly and she was abandoned.

During her 19-year merchant career, the Great Republic proved to be very fast under leading breeze conditions and often out-distanced the fastest merchant steamers on Mediterranean routes. Sailing around the horn of South America, the Great Republic averaged 17 knots (31 km/h) to set a record by logging 413 nautical miles (765 km) in a single day.

A wooden sailing vessel larger than the Great Republic was launched nearly three decades earlier in June 1825; however the 5,294-ton crudely built Baron of Renfrew鈥攁 so-called disposable ship鈥攚as never intended for the merchant trade but for just a single voyage from Quebec to London, there to be dismantled and sold piecemeal to English shipbuilders at premium prices since large timbers were in short supply. The vessel itself was exempt from British taxes imposed on "oak and square pine timber cargoes" and thus gained an economic advantage. Unfortunately, the Baron of Renfrew was wrecked as it was being towed toward London in a storm. Although reports differ, most indicate the timbers were recovered and sold, and the venture was ultimately successful. Nevertheless, when the British tax on timber cargoes was changed shortly afterwards, the economic advantage disappeared and disposable ship construction ceased.

The Great Republic was the largest, but not the longest wooden sailing ship ever built. Despite her 400 ft length over all, the record of being the longest wooden ship is held by the six-masted schooner Wyoming built at the Percy & Small shipyard, Bath, Maine, in 1909. Her overall length including her 86 ft (26 m)-long jibboom and her protruding spanker boom was 450 ft (140 m), 334 ft (102 m) on deck.

Caligula's Giant Ship 路 Nemi ships 路 Isis 路 Syracusia 路 Tessarakonteres 路 Hatshepsut's barge 路 Thalamegos

Peter von Danzig 路 G枚theborg 路 Tenacious 路 Orient 路 Grace Dieu 路 Victory 路 Vasa 路 Zheng He's Treasure Ships 路 Sovereign of the Seas 路 Adler von L眉beck 路 Baron of Renfrew 路 Great Republic 路 Pretoria 路 Wyoming 路 Michael 路 Columbus 路 Roanoke

Great Western 路 Jylland 路 Eureka 路 Appomattox 路 Santiago 路 Orlando 路 Mersey 路 Dunderberg 路 Frank O'Connor

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