[Illustration: A BLACK BALL PACKET _Ships of this type carried the transatlantic passengers of the early part of the 19th Century. Because of the demand of the owners of the Black Ball Line and of its competitors, America, where these lines were owned and where their ships were built, developed the designers who ultimately gave the world the clipper ships._ ] But the conservatism of the sea is strong, and, while other lines took advantage of the opportunity to send their ships to the East they patterned them more or less after the ships of the East India Company, and little effort was made to secure speed. But later, in 1849, the Navigation Laws which limited trade between Great Britain and her colonies to British ships, were repealed, and foreign carriers were, for the first time, permitted to enter this lucrative field. This was the end of one act and the beginning of another, for the repeal of these laws gave the opportunity it needed to that new country, now a nation, that for two hundred years had been teaching itself to build ships of the trees from the rocky soil of New England. But a little more is needed to understand just why the ship-builders of the United States of America were in a position to leap so suddenly into prominence among the carriers of ocean freight. For two hundred years, as I have said, Americans had been building ships, and in that time the industry had had its ups and downs. British legislation, in colonial days, had had its adverse effect. The Revolutionary War, and, later, the War of 1812, had dealt disastrous blows at American shipowners, but these people were of sea-going stock, and each time they recovered. Then, after the War of 1812, and particularly after the long Napoleonic struggle was brought to an end in 1815, trade between the new American nation and Europe, and particularly between America and Britain, developed by leaps and bounds. International commerce grew as it had never grown before, and, shortly, lines of “packets”—that is, passenger ships running regularly between two ports—went into service between Britain and America. The Black Ball Line was the first of these. Its ships were distinguished by a large black circle on the foretopsail below the close reef-band, where it would be visible as long as the ship carried even a shred of sail. The earlier ships of this line were from three hundred to five hundred tons, and before long more than a dozen were in service. They sailed regularly and for the first ten years of the line’s existence averaged, according to Arthur H. Clark, twenty-three days for the voyage east, and forty days for the return, the discrepancy between these two being due to the prevailing winds of the North Atlantic which, on the route these ships sailed, are from the southwest. The Gulf Stream, too, or rather the continuation of the Gulf Stream, sometimes known as the Gulf Stream Drift, aided them on their eastward voyages. [Illustration: A WHALING BARK