"I wonder where the word schooner came from," commented Steve.
"The legend goes that the term scoon was a colloquialism used when skipping stones. When a pebble glanced along the top of the water it was said to scoon," answered his father, with a smile. "After the War of 1812 was over and our American vessels were safe from possible attack, and after the country itself had recovered somewhat from the stress of this financial burden so that men had more money to invest in commerce, we began to branch out and build finer vessels; and when it came to rigging them there seemed to be no name to apply to the arrangement of the sails. The story goes that one day as one of these new ships sailed out of Gloucester harbor a fisherman watching her exclaimed with admiration, 'See her scoon!' The phrase not only caught the public fancy but that of the shipbuilders as well, and the word schooner was quickly adopted."
"I never knew that before!" announced Steve, when the narrative was concluded.
"Slowly the models of ships improved," went on his father, without heeding the interruption. "Vessels became larger, faster, more graceful. Even the whalers and fishing smacks took on more delicate lines. Merchants from Salem, Gloucester, New Bedford invested their hard-earned savings in whalers and trading ships, and many of them made their fortunes by so doing. The sailing packets that went to Liverpool began to make excellent time records. Although the English were now using steamers for trans-Atlantic travel they had not perfected them to a sufficient extent to make their trips faster than those of sailing ships."
"About how long did it take them to cross?" inquired Stephen.
"The average time to Liverpool was from nineteen to twenty-one days," was the answer. "And for the return voyage from thirty to thirty-five."
"Whew, Dad! Why, one could walk it in that time!" exclaimed the lad.
"It was a long time," his father agreed. "But it is not fair to measure it by present-day standards. Think how novel a thing it was to cross the ocean at all!"
"I suppose so," came reflectively from Stephen.
"It was not long," continued his father, "before the English improved their engines so that their steamers made better time, and then our American sailing packets were left far behind. This, as you can imagine, did not please our proud and ambitious colonists who were anxious to increase their commerce and build up their young and growing country. Something must be done! As yet they had not mastered the enigma of steam but they could make their sailing ships swifter and finer and this they set to work to do. Out of this impetus for prosperity came the remarkable clipper-ship era.