264 : The Atlantic 



port on the other side o£ the world — California, Honolulu, the East 

 Indies, China, Australia or where you will. 



In a way the clipper was the daughter of the packet. They had a 

 certain resemblance, but the beauty and distinction of the clipper 

 form depended essentially on the way in which her Unes were slender 

 and sweet just where those of the packet were full and complacent. 



However much they differed in appearance and behavior, it was 

 still a case where the younger generation benefited by the work the 

 older generation had accomplished. The earliest clippers were de- 

 signed by men who also designed packets and were built in the yards 

 that built the packets and were often commanded by men who had 

 received their trainings in the packet lines. It follows, therefore, that 

 both the packet and the clipper were American developments. At 

 the time that each of them emerged, each burst upon the shipmasters 

 of the world, including the British, as a new and surprising develop- 

 ment. 



No one can say with any certainty just when the first clipper was 

 built. Experts have spent years writing about the clipper ships and 

 have not yet come to an agreement. There had been a growing opin- 

 ion that faster ships could be built. There were men waiting with 

 novel ideas of design; what they needed was an opportunity to try 

 them out. When the opportunity arrived, in the booming years of 

 the 40's and 50's these ideas emerged in practice. Designers borrowed 

 freely from each other — new features of design and rig were blended; 

 the lines of a new type of ship structure flowed together and the 

 clipper was born. 



The name "clipper" was old. Just as the term "packet" was used 

 loosely before the packet line services were invented, so the term 

 "clipper" had been applied loosely to a variety of ships before the ves- 

 sel that we now know as a clipper came into existence. It was used 

 for any vessel that was supposed to have speed, or as the language of 

 that time had it, "to go along at a good clip." The name appeared 

 particularly in connection with a number of vessels built in Balti- 

 more and referred to as Baltimore CUppers. The basic ideas of the 

 Baltimore shipbuilders seem to have been derived from small French 

 vessels of the eighteenth century, but these grew up and went 

 through a number of changes along the shores of the Chesapeake. 

 The Baltimore vessels specialized in speed; they were relatively small 

 and light and thus formed a sharp contrast with the New York 

 packets which specialized in strength, reliability and -cargo carrying 

 capacity. The Baltimore vessels had light, pointed bows, whereas the 



