It required an unusual combination of qualities to command these Western Ocean packet ships successfully. Above all things it was necessary that the captains should be thorough seamen and navigators; also that they should be men of robust health and great physical endurance, as their duties often kept them on deck for days and nights together in storm, cold, and fog. Then there were frequently desperate characters among the crew and steerage passengers, who required to be handled with moral courage and physical force, while the cabin passengers were usually gentlemen and gentlewomen of good breeding, accustomed to courtesy and politeness, which they expected to find in the captains with whom they sailed. These requirements evolved a remarkable type of men, hearty, bluff, and jovial, without coarseness, who would never be mistaken for anything but gentlemen. The packet mates, having no social duties on shipboard to distract their attention, were able to devote their time and energies to improving the morals and manners of the crew, and it was on board the Black Ball liners that “belaying pin soup” and “handspike hash,” so stimulating to honest toil, were first introduced for the benefit of mutinous or slothful mariners. Plenty of sail was carried by the packet ships [Illustration: The “Montezuma”] of this period--square lower, topmast and topgallant studding sails, skysails set on sliding gunter masts which were struck in the winter time, with three reefs in the topsails and single reefs in the topgallantsails. The racing was fast and furious. In 1837 a match was made between the Black Ball liner _Columbus_, 597 tons, Captain De Peyster, and the _Sheridan_, Captain Russell, of the Dramatic Line, then on her first voyage, for a stake of $10,000 a side, from New York to Liverpool, play or pay. The _Sheridan_, though only 895 tons, carried a crew of forty picked men before the mast, with regular pay of $25 a month, and the promise of a bonus of $50 each, provided their ship won the race. The ships sailed together from New York on Thursday, February 2, 1837, and the _Columbus_ won the race in sixteen days, followed two days later by the _Sheridan_. This is the first ocean match across the Atlantic of which any record has been preserved, though, of course, there had been many informal races long before.