SAIL AND THE STREAM 287 



anything previously on record. But the authorities who might 

 have forwarded the adoption of this improved type of vessel 

 did nothing; they left it to the Yankees. Basil Lubbock writes: 

 ''The merchantmen of Napoleon's wars were what the sailors 

 call a heavy-working ship . . . this was entirely owing to two 

 pet theories of British seamen, that weight meant strength 

 and that big, clumsy looking blocks took away from a vessels 

 smartness. The Americans fell into neither of these mistakes. 

 Their ships could be worked by half the men required on the 

 English vessels owing to the fact that they used smaller ropes 

 and bigger blocks so that their running gear worked easily.'' 

 The wide Atlantic horizons and the challenge of a New 

 World had already begun reacting on men. Oversea Britons, 

 sharpened by a new climate and fresh opportunity, were 

 developing experimental, mobile, and curious minds. No- 

 where was this better illustrated than in the race during the 

 first part of the nineteenth century for mastery of the sea, 

 first with the American schooner, then the packets on the 

 New York-Liverpool run, and finally the crowning triumph of 

 men against the sea, the Yankee clippers. 



About 1835 the British Parliament, worried over the mani- 

 fest loss of trade to the Americans, set up a commission which 

 reported in part as follows: 'The committee cannot con- 

 clude its labor without calling attention to the fact, that the 

 ships of the United States of America, frequenting the ports 

 of England, are stated by several witnesses to be superior to 

 those of similar class amongst the ships of Great Britain, 

 the commanders and officers being generally considered to be 

 more competent as seamen and navigators, and more uni- 

 formly persons of education, . . . while the seamen of the 

 United States are considered to be more carefully selected 

 and more efficient, that American ships sailing from Liverpool 

 to New York have preference over English vessels both as to 

 freight and to rate of insurance, and higher wages being given 



