But now begins the super-perfection of sailing ships—the development of the clippers, those beautiful structures of wood and iron and canvas that for a brief time so surpassed every other ship on every sea as to set them apart in an era of their own. These were ships of such beauty and speed and spirit that they stand clearly separate and alone. CHAPTER III THE PERFECTION OF SAILS—THE CLIPPER SHIPS In the 17th Century a new people began to make their mark in the world of the sea. Formerly the development of ships had been almost exclusively, at least for two thousand years, in the hands of Europeans—the Mediterranean peoples first, and later, the peoples of northern Europe. One of the important reasons for the north European interest in ships had come about as a result of the discovery of the New World and, with that, the discovery that the world was actually round. That dynamic age now often called the age of discovery opened up new lands that lent themselves to colonization, and because Europe was filled with energy and was in a proper frame of mind to take advantage of the opportunity, important colonies sprang up in the Americas, in the Pacific, and in Africa. From the point of view, however, of influences on the development of ships these colonies, in themselves, had, with one exception, little effect. This one exception was the row of British colonies that lined the Atlantic Coast of North America from the Bay of Fundy to Florida. Here there began to grow up a people whose forebears had known the boisterous seas of northern Europe, and who were scattered along a narrow coastline where they found ready and at hand the best timber in the world from which to build ships. Furthermore, the fisheries of this coast were rich, and, too, traffic between these colonies soon sprang up and demanded ships to carry it, for roads were either bad or were non-existent and the great boulevard of the sea lay outside the entrances to the numerous fine harbours that indented the coast. [Illustration: A BRITISH EAST INDIAMAN _These merchant ships, which sailed from England to the Far East, were almost as much like warships as they were like merchantmen. They were finely built, but they took their time on their voyages out and back._ ]