The Original Fables of La Fontaine / Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney

als until the coming of the age of steam made them obsolete. Their era antedated that of the clipper and was wholly distinct. The Atlantic packet was

and seasons than any other ships that sailed. In such battering service as this the lines of the clipper were too extremely fine, her spars too tall and slender. The packet was by no means slow an

Europe and were entrusted with the mails, specie, government dispatches, and the lives of eminent personages. Blow high, blow low, one of the Black Ball packets sailed from New York for Liverpool on the first and sixteenth of every month. Other lines were soon competing-the Red Star and

rican enterprise, and British merchantmen sought their gains in other waters. The Navigation Laws still protected their commerce in the Far East and they were content to jog at a more sedate gait

as presumed to have no other duties on deck than to give the proper orders to his first officer and work out his daily reckoning. It was an exacting, nerve-racking ordeal, however, demanding a sleepless vigilance, courage, and cool judgment of the first order. The compensations were large. As a rule, he owned

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liamentary committee reported in 1837 that "the American ships frequenting the ports of England are stated by several witnesses to be superior to those of a similar class among the ships of Great Britain, the commanders and offi

chipping off the minutes, at an enormous coal consumption, toward a five-day passage. Theirs were tests of real seamanship, and there were few disasters. The packet captain scorned a towboat to haul him into the stream if the wind served

he stake was $10,000 a side, put up by the owners and their friends. The crews were picked men who were promised a bonus of fifty dollars each for winning. The ships sa

hedules almost with the regularity of the early steamers. The Montezuma, the Patrick Henry, and the Southampton crossed from New York to Liverpool in fifteen days, and for years the Independence

e James Baines was built for English owners to be used in the Australian trade. She was a full clipper of 2515 tons, twice the size of the ablest packets, and was pr

twenty-four hour run which no steamer had even approached and which was not equaled by the fastest express steamers until twenty-five years later when the greyhound Arizona ran eighteen knots in one hour on her trial trip. This is a rather startling statement when one reflects that th

h Channel, carrying away the foretopsail and lost jib; hove the log several times and found the ship going through the water at the rate of 18 to 18 1/2 knots; lee rail under water and rigging slack. Distance run in twenty-four hours, 436 miles." The passage was re

which, year in and year out, held their own with the steamer lines until just before the Civil War. It was the boast of Captain Samuels that on her first voyage in 1853 the Dreadnought reached Sandy Hook a

nglish, Irish, and Scandinavians. American lads shunned these ships and, in fact, the ambitious youngster of the coastwise towns began to cease following the sea almost a century ago. It is sometimes forgotten that the period durin

ge, built at Salem in 1814 and owned by the great merchant, Joseph Peabody. For twenty-two years she sailed in the East India trade, making twenty-one round voyages, with an astonishing regularity which would be creditable for a modern cargo tramp. Her sailors were native-born, seldom more than twent

ys who followed in the footsteps of their fathers because deep-water voyages were still "adventures" and a career was possible under a system which was both congenial and paternal. Brutal treatment was the rare exception. Flogging still s

ere remorselessly driven for speed. The masters therefore took what they could get. All the work of rigging, sail-making, scraping, painting, and keeping a ship in perfect repair was done in port instead of at sea, a

sea-boots, with a snow-squall whistling, the rigging sheathed with ice, and the old ship burying her bows in the thundering combers. It was the doctrine of his officers that he could not be ruled by anything short of violence, and the m

apid passage with crews which were drunk and useless when herded aboard, half of them greenhorns, perhaps, who could neither reef nor steer. Brutality was the one argument able to enforce instant obedience among men who respected nothing else. As a class the packet sailors became more

. This was a tradition which, for centuries, had been fostered in the naval service, and it survived among merchant sailors as an unhappy anachronism even

of a maritime race. On other oceans the situation was no less gratifying. American ships were the best and cheapest in the world. The business held the confidence of investors and commanded an abundance of capital. It was assumed, as late as 1840, that the wooden sailing ship would continue to be the supreme type of deep-water vessel because the United States possessed the greatest stores of timber, the most skillful builders and mechanics,

ch thrashed along at ten knots' speed and crossed the Atlantic in fourteen to seventeen days. This was a much faster rate than the average time of the Yankee packets, but America was unperturbed and showed no interest

blishing a new packet line to Liverpool with the largest, finest ships built up to that time, the Washington Irving, Anglo-American, Ocean Monarch, Anglo-Saxon, and Daniel Webster. Other prominent s

, which were a day faster than the Cunarders in crossing, and reduced the voyage to nine and ten days. The Collins line, so auspiciously begun in 1850, and promising to give the United States the supremacy in steam which it had won under sail, was singularly unfortunate and short-lived. The Arctic and the Pacific were lost at sea,

oty banner of smoke on the horizon proclaimed the new era and the obliteration of all the rushing life and beauty of the tall ship under sail. Slow to realize and acknowledge defeat, persisting after the steamers were capturing the cabin passenger and express freight traffic, the

h was hastened by the Civil War. For once the astute American was caught napping by his British cousin, who was swayed by no sentimental values and s

led to abdicate, it was the beginning of the end. After all, her master was the fickle wind, for a slashing outward passage might be followed by weeks of beating home to the westward. Steadily forging ahead to the beat of her paddles or the thrash of her screw, the steamer even of that day was far more depen

by the tars of this Western Ocean before the chanteyman perched upon a capstan and led the r

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the valor of the Viking and the fortitude of the Spartan. Outcasts ashore-which meant to them only the dance halls of Cherry Street and the grog-shops of

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