278 : The Atlantic 



hulls and the rhythmic masses of their canvas in strong swift mo- 

 tion; the poet saw them as a vehicle of romance or a symbol of man's 

 fate; the designer and engineer saw in them an extreme and success- 

 ful effort to get maximum efficiency out of all the available kinds of 

 wind; the merchant and operator saw them as fast carriers bowling 

 home heavily laden with fat profits. All men praised them, but each 

 for a different reason. 



Perhaps the time has come now when we can see their essential 

 contribution. They were the culmination of 2,000 years of human 

 effort expended on producing the perfect sailing vessel. For the serv- 

 ices they had to perform and the conditions they had to meet, the 

 clipper ships came near to realizing an abstract ideal of beauty and 

 service. In the middle of the nineteenth century technological prog- 

 ress was taking tremendous strides and going forward with great 

 speed yet the sailing ships, decade by decade, were outstripping tech- 

 nology. In speed, in volume, in safety and in beauty they supplied 

 services to trade and travel that exceeded anything that steam and 

 steel were able to provide. 



In terms of social history they carried hundreds of thousands of 

 migrants from Europe to America, and from the eastern seaboard 

 of the United States to its Pacific frontiers, and they carried English 

 pioneers to Australia and New Zealand. 



The decade of the clipper ships was also the period of great immi- 

 gration into the United States. In the year 1852 immigration hit an 

 all-time high. In the decade 1851 to i860 over two and one-half mil- 

 lion people entered the United States. Compared with the then ex- 

 isting population of the country, this is a larger proportion of immi- 

 grants than came at any other time. Proportionately, it exceeds even 

 the period 1900 to 1910 when great superliners were trying to outdo 

 each other in carrying immigrants. Practically all of the new arrivals 

 in 1850 to i860 came to America in sailing vessels. There were, in 

 fact, no steamers to carry them. Even a decade later — that is, in 1870 

 — steam vessels of all kinds made up less than 12^ per cent of the 

 world's shipping. As late as 1880 steam was only up to 25 per cent. 

 The migrants came in the sailing traders, the packets and the clip- 

 pers. Thus, at a formative period in world history, the sailing ves- 

 sels speeded the settlement of continents; they first brought together, 

 in rapid transportation, the nations of a new and expanding world. 



