Designed by shipbuilder Donald McKay for the California trade, she was briefly the largest merchant ship in the world.

Merchant firms such as Boston's Sampson & Tappan were able to venture the capital necessary to build extreme clippers, a type of vessel longer, with taller masts, more heavily sparred, and with sharper lines than any built before this time.

Enoch Train contracted McKay to build Stag Hound for himself, but sold it to Grinnell, Minturn & Co of New York for $90,000 before its launch.

The "Boston Atlas" of 1851 described Stag Hound as follows: "Her model may be said to be the original of a new idea in naval architecture ... She is longer and sharper than any other vessel of the merchant service in the world, while her breadth of beam and depth of hold are designed with special reference to stability.

Almost all of the manufactured goods consumed in the California gold fields had to be carried from the United States East Coast.

"When she was launched, the Stag Hound was the largest merchant ship ever built, being 215 feet long, and having a register of 1,535 tons.

No less than 15,000 people gathered to see her launched despite the cold, and, as the tallow froze, boiling whale oil was poured upon the ways.

"[3]: 16 Jane Lyon wrote this description of the launch in 1962, based on contemporary journalistic accounts: The bells of Boston pealing noon were echoed by the sound of hammers knocking away the blocks.

True, she lost spars on her first voyage, but so did most all the early clippers and her after record shows that the underwriters were seldom called on ... She had one mutiny on board, at Anjer, in 1860, where the first and second mate were reported stabbed by members of the crew.