Page:The Clipper Ship Era.djvu/30

10 especial expectation of speed have proven fliers. It would seem, after ages of experience and evolution, that man should be able at last to build a sailing ship superior in every respect to every other sailing ship, but this is exactly what he cannot and never has been able to accomplish. A true sailor loves a fine ship and all her foibles; he revels in the hope that if he takes care of her and treats her fairly, she will not fail him in the hour of danger, and he is rarely disappointed.

While all this is true in the abstract, yet it is not difficult to account for the performance of ships in retrospect, and in this particular matter, the superior speed of American frigates during the two wars with the mother country, it is quite easy to do so.

In the first place, British men-of-war and merchantmen were at that time built with massive oak frames, knees, and planking, the timber of which had lain at dockyards seasoning in salt water for many years, and was as hard and almost as heavy as iron, while they were fastened with weighty through-and-through copper bolts; so that the ships themselves became rigid, dead structures—sluggish in moderate winds, and in gales and a seaway, wallowing brutes—whereas the American frigates and privateers were built of material barely seasoned in the sun and wind, and were put together as lightly as possible consistent with the strength needed to carry their batteries and to hold on to their canvas in heavy weather. Also, the British ships were heavy aloft—spars, rigging, and blocks—yet their masts and yards were not so long as