So also the crews were constantly drilled at their guns and trained to handle cutlass, musket, and boarding pike. There were two men to every job, there was plenty of food, and there was no cause for grumbling at overwork. There was plenty of rum, there were good quarters and good prospects. And yet for all that there were reckless fellows who could not realise their good fortune. When they had offended they were brought before the ship’s court-martial in true naval fashion and sentenced to the cat-o’-nine-tails. And no man could complain that the commander was “driving” his ship; for every evening, no matter how fine the weather looked, the royals and all light sails such as studding-sails were stowed, and the royal yards sent down on deck. No risks were run unnecessarily, and if the weather looked at all threatening the t’gallant sails and mainsail were stowed and a single reef tucked into the topsails. The aim was to combine safety with comfort, and so they snugged down every night, and by day whenever there was the least temptation. But the East India was a fine service and a splendid school for British seamanship, a calling that has so considerably died out during the last forty years. In the year 1832 the valuable monopoly which the East India Company had enjoyed for so long a time was put an end to. Commerce was thrown open, competition entirely altered the previous conditions, and at last this fine fleet was sold and disbanded. [Illustration: A FRIGATE UNDER ALL SAIL.] [Illustration: MAN IN THE CHAINS HEAVING THE LEAD ON AN OLD WOODEN SAILING SHIP. (From a contemporary lithograph.)] But it was the period of the clipper which simultaneously brought seamanship to unheard-of attainment, and chanted its swan-song. The period is covered roughly by the years 1840 to 1870. It was introduced owing to a demand for the more rapid delivery of goods, especially tea, which does not improve by remaining in a ship’s hold. It was given a strong impetus by the discovery of gold in California, and the eager rush of prospectors to reach that part quickly. The rush to Australia in like manner was a still further impetus to the development of the clipper ship at the middle of the nineteenth century. The China tea trade in the ’fifties and ’sixties caused these ships to be improved and developed and handled to the utmost limits, until the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 gave it its death-blow. For a time it lingered, yet the collateral encouragement of the steamship made it impossible for the sailing ship to pay her way across the ocean. But there never have been such smart ocean passages so continuously maintained as by the China clippers of the ’sixties. There never were better sailing ships built of wood, and there never were captains who “cracked on” or crews who could work such big canvas-propelled craft with such distinction. This was the period when a ship was not content with t’gallants and royals, but must needs set sky sails and moonrakers.