The proudest seafaring man in the world at that period was the master of a Liverpool packet. When the wind served at the hour of sailing, he set all plain sail on his vessel as she lay at her pier, laid all flat aback, drove her stern first into the stream, turned her around, and then, while the spectators cheered themselves hoarse, he sent her rippling down to the sea. And when he returned he sometimes arrived in the river with royals set and sailed her into her berth with less fuss and jar than the ferryboat in the near-by slip was making. Indeed, tugs were used before 1835 only when the wind was foul or wholly lacking, and for years after that it was a matter of pride as well as profit to save the tug bill ($140) whenever possible.
Most of the newspapers that have been quoted in this chapter were printed in England. It is a significant fact that the English papers, which represented the attitude of the English merchants of the day, gave the American packets unstinted praise. The acrid jealousy that English merchants had shown during all the long years before the War of 1812 was silenced. How did it happen that these "Yankee" seamen were treated so well?
The British House of Commons having appointed a committee in 1835 "to inquire into the cause of shipwrecks in the British merchant service," the London Courier, on August 18 and 20, 1836, printed a number of extracts from the committee's report. One of the paragraphs in that report is of special interest:—
"45. American Shipping.—That the committee cannot conclude its labor without calling attention to the fact, that the ships of the United States of America, frequenting the ports of England, are stated by several witnesses to be superior to those of a similar class amongst the ships of Great Britain, the commanders and officers being generally considered to be more competent as seamen and navigators, and more uniformly persons of education, than the commanders and officers of British ships of a similar size and class, trading from England to America; while the seamen of the United States are considered to be more carefully selected and more efficient; that American ships sailing from Liverpool to New York, have preference over English vessels sailing to the same port, both as to freight and to rate of insurance; and higher wages being given, their whole equipment is maintained in a higher state of perfection, so that fewer losses occur; and as the American shipping have increased of late years in the proportion of 12¾ per cent per annum while the British shipping have increased within the same period 1½ per cent per annum," the superior growth of the American merchant marine, as well as the higher wages paid, was taking the best of the British sailors into the service of the American ships.
All of this is to say that while only twenty-one years had elapsed since the American sailor had won, by good fighting, the right to cross the seas unmolested by foreign war-ships, his chief competitors openly acknowledged that in the trade between New York and Liverpool (the most important trade route in the world) he had won unquestioned and even uncontested supremacy. The American packets received cordial praise in Liverpool because no British ship-owner so much as thought about entering into competition with them, and this, too, at a time when the British tonnage, in the aggregate, was far greater than that of the United States.
In the meantime the American whalemen had won supremacy, as already noted, in the work of gathering the harvest of the deep seas, and the most splendid conquest of all, the supremacy of the sea in the trade of the Far East, was at hand.
The most interesting feature of this contest was the evolution of a class of ships called clippers. Curiously enough, it appears that one aggressive naval architect, John W. Griffiths, of New York, was responsible for the introduction of this remarkable type of ships. Griffiths was of the opinion that a ship having "hollow" or concave water-lines, especially at the bow,—"hollow entrance lines,"—would sail more swiftly than one with ordinary convex lines, no matter how fine the convex lines might be. In 1841 Griffiths exhibited a model of a ship shaped according to his ideas, at the American Institute, and he also delivered a number of lectures on the subject. The nautical world became greatly interested, and in 1843 William H. Aspinwall ordered a ship of 750 tons built to designs by Griffiths. She was named the Rainbow, and when sent, under Captain John Land, to Canton on her maiden voyage, she arrived back at the end of 6 months and 14 days. In another voyage she sailed to Canton in 92 days and made the passage home in 88, breaking the record each way.
The Howqua, the Samuel Russell, and the Sea Witch were also built to the new designs,—the clipper model, as it soon came to be called,—and all made swift passages. The Russell is of special interest because she was commanded by Captain N. B. Palmer, who now left the packet service to engage in that of the Far East. His first run was made to Hongkong in 114 days, which was slow time for a racer, but in the course of the voyage he covered 318 miles in a day; and in 30 consecutive days he sailed 6722 miles. To complete Palmer's record it may be said here that in his last ship, the Orient, he covered 328 sea miles in a day, and made the run home from Canton in 81 days.
The Howqua's best work was the run from Shanghai to New York in 88 days. The Water Witch, called "the swiftest ship of her day," was commanded by Captain Robert H. Waterman ("Captain Bob"). She set the pace when she sailed from New York on December 23, 1846. In 25 days she hove to off Rio Janeiro long enough to send mail ashore on an inbound ship, and in 104 days she reached Hongkong. Her return run from Canton was made in 81 days. In the next voyage she returned from Canton in 77 days, her best day's run being 358 sea miles, something then unheard of.
There were a number of other celebrated clippers in the China trade, but none of them was swifter than the Shooting Star, with a passage record of 88 days from Canton, and the Atlanta with a record of 84; none equalled Waterman's passage of 77 days.