Coastal packet boats, the first commercial vessels on Cape Cod, flourished in the first half of the 19th century carrying mail, passengers, salt, and other cargo to Boston and New York. These boats were built in local yards from local lumber and captained by local men. The rivalry and pride among the various Cape towns for the fastest and most seaworthy packets stood the Cape men in good stead when the new Republic began to engage in international trade. Cape Codders, in fact, were among the first to sail the American flag into many foreign ports and uncharted seas. Captain John Kendrick of Harwich sailed from Boston in 1787 in the _Columbia_, the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe. A Brewster captain, Elijah Cobb, was captured by a French frigate during the French Revolution and made a successful appeal to Robespierre for release. After the War of 1812, many Cape Codders captained the first of the transatlantic Liverpool packets. But their true glory awaited them on the decks of the clipper ships, those majestic sailing vessels of the 1840s and ’50s. With their sleek hulls and tapered sterns, towering masts and double courses of sails, their speed and maneuverability in sailing into the wind, the “Yankee clippers” were generally regarded as the finest wooden ships ever made. They counted scores of Cape Codders among their captains, many of whom set transoceanic sailing records that still stand today. To cite only one, and not the most modest example, the following gravestone for Freeman Hatch, 1820-89, can be found in an Eastham cemetery: “He became famous making the astonishing passage in the clipper ship _Northern Light_ from San Francisco in 76 days 6 hours—an achievement won by no mortal before or since.” _This waterfront pass was issued to lighthouse keeper C. E. Turner of Wellfleet._ _This sailing card is for a clipper ship named after its owner, Osborn Howes, a Dennis native who with his brother-in-law ran an international shipping fleet out of Boston in the 1800s. He managed or owned 43 vessels in his 87 years._ _Decked out in top hats about 1855, Brewster sea captains Charles Crosby (left) and James Edwin Crosby flank an unidentified English captain._ _Asa Eldridge (right) of Yarmouth served as captain of the clipper ship_ Red Jacket _(above) when it set a record crossing from New York to Liverpool of 13 days, 1 hour. Eldridge was lost in the North Atlantic in February 1856 with the steamer_ Pacific. _Sailors in the 19th century used octants to determine their latitude by measuring the sun’s angle above the horizon at noon. Tables converted that figure for the day, month, and year into distance north or south of the equator._ ############################################# Fisheries [Illustration: (Fish drying on a wharf in Provincetown. Fisherman with quahog rake. Small boat raising a trap. Loading quahogs into a wagon in shallow water. Collecting quahogs with a net.)]