Port Holes/Side Lights:

The Flying Cloud had at least some port holes (also called “air ports”). Duncan McLean says so in his Boston Daily Atlas article about the Flying Cloud. He wrote that the Flying Cloud had “air ports below.” But I could not find any documentation as to where and how many port holes the ship might had.

Only one of the contemporary images of the Flying Cloud that I have been able to find shows portholes. The painting by an unknown artist in the Macpherson collection shows portholes on the side of the poop cabin. The following quote from Don Ross’s Era of The Clipper Ship (page 504) confirms that at least the captain’s cabin must have had a port hole:

“The Flying Cloud sailed from Macao on September 7th [1855] down the South China Sea and proceeded on past Java Heads across the Indian Ocean. The Flying Cloud was off the coast of Madagascar one day when Eleanor Creesy from her cabin window saw a man fall overboard who was swept astern.”

Clearly, if Eleanor Creesy (the Captain’s wife) was in her cabin and saw the man fall overboard ‘from her cabin window,” that cabin must have had a “window”. Ships of the period did not have actual square windows, instead they had round port holes with thick glass in them that would not be broken when hit by ocean waves. Thus, the fact that Mrs. Creesy saw the man fall overboard while she was in her cabin meant that her cabin must have had one or more port holes.

Port holes in old sailing ships consisted of a tube that went through the hull and was attached to an external flange and an internal openable ring with a glass insert. On the Flying Cloud, the hull would have been 4” thick at the level where the port holes were, thus the glass in the port hole would have been recessed by 4”. See the following figure for an outside view of a similar port hole.

Outside view of a port hole on a sailing ship

As for size, I did not find any specific information, but it seems to me that the outer bezel of the porthole would not be bigger than a foot in diameter and one or so inches wide.

As for color, I doubt that the portholes would have been polished brass because of the maintenance that would be required. Instead, they could have been tarnished brass or black.

As for the number of port holes, I would think there would have been one for each passenger or officer cabin, along with one in each common area, meaning that there would have been about 8 per side of the hull under the poop deck. I also think that there would have been a few, maybe 3, port holes on each side of the forecastle to provide light and air for the crew that was housed there even though I could not find any mention of them.