THE CONQUEST OF TIME AND SPACE 



such a vessel at so recent a period suggests that the 

 day of the sailing ship is by no means over notwith- 

 standing that a full century has elapsed since the com- 

 ing of the steamboat. Here, as so often elsewhere in 

 the history of progress, it has happened that the full 

 development of a type has not been reached until the 

 ultimate doom of that type, except for special purposes, 

 had been irrevocably sealed. Ever since the full devel- 

 opment of the steamboat in the early decades of the 

 nineteenth century, the sailing ship has seemed almost 

 an anachronism; and yet, in point of fact, the steam- 

 ship did not at once outrival its more primitive fore- 

 runner. Even in the matter of speed, the sailing ship 

 more than held its own for a generation or so after the 

 steamship had been placed in commission. In 1851 

 the American clipper Flying Clotul made 427 knots in 

 twenty-four hours ; and The Sovereign of the Seas bet- 

 tered this by averaging over eighteen miles an hour for 

 twenty-four consecutive hours. The Atlantic record for 

 sailing vessels is usually said to have been made in 

 1862 by the clipper ship Dreadnought in a passage be- 

 tween Queenstown and New York, the time of which 

 is stated as nine days and seventeen hours. It should 

 be remarked, however, that the authenticity of this ex- 

 traordinary performance has been challenged. 



Be that as it may, it is certain that the speediest sail- 

 ing ships, granted favorable conditions of wind and 

 wave, more than surpassed the best efforts of the steam- 

 ship until about the closing decades of the nineteenth 

 century. But of course long before this the steamship 

 had proved its supremacy under all ordinary condi- 



[62] 



