Clipper Flying Cloud ~ 1854

In an article that appeared in the Beaufort News on August 31, 1941, Aycock Brown refers to the, "... FLYING CLOUD wrecking on Ocracoke Beach in 1854":

... Jamie Styron, a commercial fisherman and guide, had the figurehead, inherited from his father, which reputedly came from the old FLYING CLOUD -- and that Jamie's brother Lige will still sing the chantey which was composed by an islander about the ship that begins like this:

Oh! I looked to the east'art,

And I looked to the west'are --

And I saw ole Flying Cloud a-comin'

She was loaded with silks,

And the finest of satins,

But now she's gone across Jordan.

According to the article, Mr. Brown was under the impression that the vessel was the fabled clipper ship FLYING CLOUD. Quoting from the same article:

After Cape Stormy in the Post, Wesley Stout, its editor, was embarrassed because I had tied in a FLYING CLOUD with my Ocracoke story. The Clipper ... did not end her career until in the 1870's.
     ... later from some small port on Long Island came a letter to the Post which was forwarded to me from an old timer saying: It could not have been the famous clipper 'Flying Cloud' but perhaps it was a Barkentine by the name of FLYING CLOUD, built in 1853 and presumably lost on a South Atlantic Beach the following year.

Mr. Brown further states that the figurehead was finally sold to a summer resident at Nags Head.