speed was important, carrying capacity was a basic 

 necessity, due to the type of cargoes accepted. A 

 merely fast ship without high order of cargo-carrying 

 ability would have been a commercial failure in the 

 trans-Atlantic packet trade throughout most of its 

 existence. To resist the strains of hard sailing, which 

 could be destructive to large wooden ships, their 

 structure was necessarily always massive and sti^ong. 

 Thus construction weight as well as cargo capacity 

 made the packet ship a very heavy displacement 

 vessel for her length. 



The earliest packet ships were regular traders 

 selected because they sailed well. Such vessels had 

 some rise in the floor amidships, rather firm, rounded 

 bilges, and some tumble-home in the topsides. The 

 bow was very full at the rail, but below the entrance 

 became very fine, though quite short. The run was 

 likewise short but rather easy. The sides were carried 

 well fore-and-aft and almost parallel, so that there 

 was a long, full body. These first ships were rela- 

 tively small, about 500 tons register or less, approxi- 

 mately 110 to 115 feet along on deck, and 28 to 31 

 feet beam. 



The changes in form necessary to make such ships 

 sail well were known at the time; an increase in the 

 length of run and in the length of the entrance, 

 combined with greater fineness at the ends, would 

 produce more speed but at the cost of a loss in capac- 

 ity in a short ship. There was also a practical limit 

 to the depth a ship of about 500 tons should have. It 

 was belie\ed that to sail fast, a ship required dead 

 rise in her floors amidships, and the greater the dead 

 rise the faster she would be. Because of these factors 

 and the belief as to the need for dead rise, little change 

 took place in the hull form of packets ships built 

 before 1835, though between 1816 and 1832 the ships 

 increased in overall size. 



For reasons of trade, the New York merchants 

 found it necessary in the 1820's to employ ships of 

 some size in the coastal packet trade with Charleston, 

 Savannah, Mobile, and New Orleans (the first line 

 to New Orleans was established in 1821). A necessary 

 hull feature in these coastal packets, a majority of 

 which were ship rigged, was a rather flat bottom in 

 order to keep the loaded draft at a minimum, so that 

 the ship could cross the bar at the mouth of the Mis- 

 sissippi. This change had been accepted as a neces- 

 sity, as was the supposed loss of speed that was 

 expected to result, but it was noticed that some of 

 these flat-floored coastal packets were very fast ships, 

 of great capacity for their size. 



This discovery led to the adoption of the flat-floored 

 hull form in the trans-Atlantic packets, and by 1838 

 the fashionable packet-ship model had become 

 a vessel with straight sheer, rather straight sided for 

 most of her length, with a very full bow at the rail, 

 sharp and easy in the entrance below the load line, 

 and with a fairly long and fine run. The cutwater 

 was short and deep, naval fashion, a style that had 

 become almost universal in America at the end of the 

 War of 1812; even the Chesapeake Bay builders had 

 given up their simple gammon-knee head and were 

 supplying all their schooners except the small pilot 

 boats with "naval heads."' At the same time the 

 rake of stem and post was gradually reduced until, in 

 some of the packets built at Philadelphia for the Cope 

 Line, the stem rabbets and sternposts became up- 

 right. The early ships were commonly flush decked, 

 but as the vessels grew in size a long quarterdeck 

 came to be employed and this was utilized for accom- 

 modation of the cabin passengers, the steerage passen- 

 gers being placed in the 'tween decks amidships, or 

 in a deckhouse, and the crew in a forecastle space 

 forward below the main deck. These ships were 

 2-decked until into the 1840's when 3-decked packets 

 were built. In appearance the packet often resembled 

 a naval frigate, her sheer often being flush, or un- 

 broken, as in the warship. The quarter galleries 

 of the naval ships were omitted in the packets as 

 these ornaments would be damaged in a hard-driven 

 vessel. 



Out of the gradual development of the North .At- 

 lantic packet-ship hull form came the ship design 

 practices that helped produce the best of the clipper 

 ships of the 1850's: A full midship section and good 

 length of body, combined with fine ends; a strongly 

 built and heavily sparred vessel that could be driven 

 hard without coming apart or losing her spars. As 

 the packets grew in length, improved construction 

 details were introduced until it became possible to 

 build wooden ships of great length without their 

 becoming weak longitudinally. By 1843 packet ships 

 180 feet long on deck were being built, diagonally 

 strapped (see p. 115). 



After the introduction of the clipper ship, in 1850, 

 packets were built that also could be reasonably called 

 true clippers, so fine were they at the ends; the Racer 

 and the Dreadnought, both built in Massachusetts, 

 were examples. But no ship of really extreme hull 

 design was long employed as a regular North Atlantic 

 packet. 



28 



