Sad enough, no doubt, to the captain of a clipper ship bound round Cape Horn, compelled to stand by and see his canvas slatting to pieces in the first bit of a blow outside Sandy Hook, because he was cursed with a crew unable or unwilling to handle it. But this seldom happened more than once aboard of an American clipper in the fifties, for such a crew was taken in hand and soon knocked into shape by the mates, carpenter, sailmaker, cook, steward, and boatswain. Belaying pins, capstan-bars, and heavers began to fly about the deck, and when the next gale came along the crew found that they could get aloft and make some kind of show at stowing sails, and by the time the ship got down to the line, they were usually pretty smart at handling canvas. As the clipper winged her way southward, and the days grew shorter, and the nights colder, belaying pins, capstan bars, and heavers were all back in their places, for system, order, and discipline had been established. When the snow-squalls began to gather on the horizon, and the old-time clipper lifted her forefoot to the first long, gray Cape Horn roller, with albatross and Cape pigeons wheeling and screaming in her wake, the mate, as he stood at the break of the quarter-deck in his long pilot-cloth watch-coat, woollen mittens, sea boots, and sou’wester, and sung out to the boatswain to get his men along for a pull on the weather braces, felt with pride that he had something under him that the “old man” could handle in almost any kind of weather--a well-manned ship. In those days of carrying canvas as long and sometimes longer than spars and rigging would stand, with only brawn, capstans and watch tackles to handle it, the crew was a far more important factor on board a sailing ship than in the present era of steel spars, wire rigging, double topsail, and topgallant yards, donkey engines and steam winches. Indeed, all the conditions were quite different from anything known at the present time and required a type of men, both forward and aft, that do not sail upon the ocean to-day. CHAPTER IX CALIFORNIA CLIPPERS OF 1850 AND THEIR COMMANDERS--MAURY’S WIND AND CURRENT CHARTS