10 BULLETIN 127, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



importance. Builders were called on to study models and rig with 

 reference to the needs of the times, and the result was that after 

 the War of 1812, Americans had the ablest and smartest vessels 

 in the world. Many ideas adopted by our builders were borrowed 

 from the French, among whom naval architecture had been most 

 critically and scientifically studied. The French frigates sent to 

 assist us in the Kevolution were closely studied, and when taken out 

 of the water at Salem and elsewhere for repair, their lines were 

 sometimes copied and frequently imitated in American-built ships. 

 Many men-of-war and merchantmen were built on the models of 

 these frigates, and it is possible that a part of the admiration ex- 

 pressed by the French for American frigates built during the Revo- 

 lution, especially for the Alliance, which was the pride and favorite 

 of our Navy, was due to that fact. Our vessels got rid of much of 

 their old clumsy shape and look and improved materially in speed 

 and beauty and in all other desirable qualities. "^ 



At an early date Baltimore became noted for its clipper vessels, 

 the fame of which extended to nearly all quarters of the globe. But. 

 while the Baltimore clipper had attained world-wide celebrity, and 

 its rakish lofty rig was easily recognized wherever seen, even early 

 in the nineteenth .century, it required the impetus found in the emi- 

 grant travel from Europe to America to bring the American clipper 

 ship to that degree of perfection which it finally attained when it 

 was without a rival on the ocean and was only equalled by the mag- 

 nificent seamanship of those to whom its destinies were entrusted. 



" The era of packet-ships was brought into existence by the de- 

 mands of the increasing trade between the United States and Europe," 

 says a writer in Harpers Magazine for January, 1884, " and the 

 pioneer line, whose vessels, Amity, Courier, Pacific, James Mun- 

 roe, William Thompson, James Cropper, New York, Orbit, Nestor, 

 Albion, Canada, and Columbia, were unrivalled for strength, beauty 

 and speed, and for the regularity of their departure and the proxi- 

 mately uniform time of their passages, was the famous Black Ball 

 Line, founded in 1816, after the War of 1812 had secured the rights 

 of American commerce * * *. During the first nine years the 

 average time for sailing to Liverpool was 23 days and for returning 

 home 40 days, but the Canada once made the outward trip in 15 

 days and 18 hours. The first four vessels of the list — the original 

 Black Bailers — though of only 400 or 500 tons burden, were consid- 

 ered very large, and by the superiority of their cabins and general 

 equipment caused the old merchantmen to seem shabby and unin- 

 habitable." 



Later several other lines were established from New York, among 

 which the Red Star Line, . founded in 1821, the Swallow-tail Line. 



3 Report on the Shipbuilding Industry of the United States, by Henry Hall, pp. 63-64. 



