Many people, even those identified with affairs nautical, will be surprised to learn that there are still fully half a dozen of our ships which make a regular practice of carrying stunsails whenever they will draw. Those vessels which I am certain follow this plan are the “Paul Revere,” the “Judas Dowes,” and the “Indiana.” The sail which the “Dowes” carried this afternoon probably doesn’t add half a knot to her speed; but some of the ships mentioned carry such an extra spread of canvas as to very decidedly augment their sailing powers. For instance, Mr. Rarx said, “While I was second mate of the ‘Paul Revere’ awhile ago, we had stuns’ls that added a thousand square yards to the ship’s canvas and put two knots on her speed.” Some seafaring people of the present day do not believe that fifty years ago our famous clippers carried royal-stunsails, a leading maritime publication in New York saying a year ago, “We never heard of a ship-master foolish enough to carry royal-stunsails.” Now this is a mistake, for Mr. Goggins has positively asserted that about thirty years ago he was in a bark for some months that set these auxiliary sails, the vessel’s name, according to the mate, being the “Chickloa,” so called after a large coffee plantation in Guatemala. Far more conclusive proof, however, is to be found in “Two Years before the Mast,” in which Dana, always minutely accurate, mentioned the royal-stunsails set on the ship “Alert,” in which he returned to Boston from California. Last evening at the pumps I had some interesting yarns from Murphy, who is a round, jolly, chubby individual, very active and good-natured. The second mate says that this fellow is not at all a bad lot, and that his only fault lies in his inclination to be a little “fresh.” Murphy commenced about the American bark “St. James,” in which he went out from New York to Shanghai in ninety-seven days three years ago. “Oh, but she’s just a daisy, she is! Why, she’s a square-rigged yacht. And go, I tell you honest, I saw her log fifteen knots on that voyage under the tops’ls and fores’l between Tristan d’Acunha and the Cape; and if ever you want to sail with a nice man, you ship with Cap’n Banfield; there’s no better.” As a matter of fact, the “St. James,” which is a very large vessel to be bark-rigged, being of fifteen hundred tons, is the most yacht-like square-rigger under the stars and stripes, and a friend of mine who went out to Shanghai in her on this very voyage which Murphy mentioned, in speaking from a passenger’s stand-point, corroborated every word of the sailor’s, and said that it would be impossible to find a more agreeable man to sail with than Captain Banfield, who for some time was in the large Boston schooner yacht “Alert.”