The Packets : 233 



ican whalers consistently made better time in passages to and from 

 Europe than even the government ships that carried the mails. This 

 was remarkable, for the whaling vessels were not designed to be fast 

 sailers. Franklin discovered that the whalers had learned to use the 

 Gulf Stream, sailing with it when they went eastward and keeping 

 north of its northern edge on their return, and this way they bene- 

 fited by the current in one direction and avoided its retarding effects 

 in the other direction. With the war approaching Franklin kept this 

 information to himself — afterward he imparted it as information that 

 would benefit American traders. Franklin produced one of the first 

 descriptions of the Gulf Stream together with a chart embodying his 

 ideas of its course. At a later date Maury repeatedly expressed the idea 

 that the utilization of the Gulf Stream by vessels operating out of 

 New York gave them a distinct advantage over those sailing from 

 Charleston or other southern ports in establishing trade with north- 

 ern Europe. The Gulf Stream assisted them with its current;- it pro- 

 vided fair weather and warmer waters; it set a boundary that could 

 be used in navigation. Those who followed the Gulf Stream were 

 induced in a natural way to sail a great circle course rather than a 

 compass course. 



The second idea that utilized natural resources was Clinton's de- 

 velopment of the Erie Canal, which was begun in 1817. The Hudson 

 Valley opened up a natural highway into a large hinterland, but this 

 was greatly extended and the Erie Canal opened the pathway into 

 the heart of a developing continent. 



The idea referred to as a sheer management invention was the 

 "packet" ship. There were two separate applications of this inven- 

 tion, both of which centered in New York. The first application was 

 the development of "packet" service to the southern or cotton ports, 

 such as Savannah, Charleston and New Orleans. The combined serv- 

 ices gave New York an outstanding advantage as the great trading 

 port of the Atlantic seaboard. R. G. Albion, who has studied the his- 

 tory of the port of New York, says the packet service was even 

 more responsible than the Erie Canal in establishing New York's 

 leadership. 



In the beginning the packet was not so much a type of vessel as 

 she was an idea of management. To make this clear, we will suppose 

 that you have been living in Hartford, Connecticut in the summer 

 of 1 816. Your father, who came from England when he was a young 

 man, died in the midst of the recent war, and now you have received 

 an invitation from your uncle, who hves near Oxford, to visit him 



