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Rh Baltimore, Mystic, Medford, Newburyport, Portsmouth, Portland, Rockland, Bath, and other ports, contributing to the fleet. These splendid ships—the swiftest sailing vessels that the world has even seen or is likely ever to see—sailed their great ocean matches for the stake of commercial supremacy and the championship of the seas, over courses encircling the globe, and their records, made more than half a century ago, still stand unsurpassed.

After carrying their cargoes to California at the enormous rates we have given, these ships would return round Cape Horn in ballast for another cargo at the same rate, as they could well afford to do, or would cross the Pacific in ballast and load tea for London or New York. Many of them more than cleared their original cost in less than one year, during a voyage round the globe, after deducting all expenses.

The central points about which the great ship-owning interests collected were New York and Boston. Here, too, were the most famous shipyards. All along the harbor front at East Boston and the water-front of the East River from Pike Street to the foot of Tenth Street, New York, were to be seen splendid clipper ships in every stage of construction; and beside the ship-building yards, there were rigging-lofts, sail-lofts, the shops of boat-builders, block and pump-makers, painters, carvers, and gilders, iron, brass, and copper workers, mast and spar-makers, and ship stores of all kinds, where everything required on shipboard, from a palm and needle, a marlinspike or a ball of spun yarn, to