Donald McKay (September 4, 1810 – September 20, 1880) was a Canadian-born American designer and builder of sailing ships, famed for his record-setting clippers. Early life He was born in Jordan Falls, Shelburne County, on Nova Scotia's South Shore. He was the oldest son and one of eighteen children of Hugh McKay, a fisherman and a farmer, and Ann McPherson McKay. Both of his parents were of Scottish descent. He was named after his grandfather, Captain Donald McKay, a British officer, who after the Revolutionary war moved to Nova Scotia from the Scottish Highlands. Early years as a shipbuilder In 1826 McKay moved to New York, where he served his apprenticeship under Isaac Webb in the Webb & Allen shipyard from 1827 to 1831. He then returned briefly to Nova Scotia and built a boat with his uncle, but after they were swindled from the proceeds he returned to New York and took a job in the Brown & Bell shipyard, working for Jacob Bell. In 1840, following a recommendation from Bell, he was taken on as a supervisor at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but stayed only briefly because of the ant-immigrant sentiment towards him (as a Canadian) from the men he was supervising. Bell came to the rescue and found him an assignment to work on a packet ship in a shipyard in Wiscasset, Maine. Returning south when that assignment was complete, he stopped in Newburyport and took a job as a foreman in the yard of John Currier, Jr., where he supervised the construction of the 427-ton Delia Walker. Currier was very impressed with McKay and offered him a five-year contract, which McKay refused driven by desire to own his own business. In 1841, William Currier (no relation to John) offered McKay the chance to become a partner in what would become the Currier & McKay shipyard in Newburyport. Two years later, with McKay now designing ships on his own, he and Currier parted ways and McKay went into business with a man named William Picket, building the packet ships St. George and John R. Skiddy. The partnership with Picket was "pleasant and profitable", but after McKay built the Joshua Bates for Enoch Train's new packet line to Liverpool in 1844, Train persuaded him to move to East Boston and start his own shipyard there. Train not only provided the financing for McKay to do this but then