The _Champion of the Seas_ was closely followed by the _James Baines_, considered by most sailormen to have been the finest and fastest of the great Mackay quartette. When she loaded troops for India in 1857 and was inspected by Queen Victoria at Portsmouth, the Queen remarked that she did not know she possessed such a splendid ship in her Mercantile Marine. When she first arrived in Liverpool a well-known Liverpool shipowner wrote to a Boston paper:—“You want to know what professional men say about the ship _James Baines_? Her unrivalled passage, of course, brought her prominently before the public and she has already been visited by many of the most eminent mechanics in the country. She is so strongly built, so finely finished and is of so beautiful a model that even envy cannot prompt a fault against her. On all hands she has been praised as the most perfect sailing ship that ever entered the river Mersey.” Donald Mackay never built two ships exactly alike, and the _James Baines_ was of slightly fuller design than the _Lightning_ and yet sharper and longer in the bow than the _Champion of the Seas_. Her chief measurements were:— Registered tonnage (American) 2525-85/90 tons. „ „ (British) 2275 „ Length over all 266 feet. „ between perpendiculars 226 „ Beam 44¾ „ Depth of hold 29 „ Dead rise at half-floor 18 inches. The following extracts are taken from an account of the _James Baines_ given in the _Boston Atlas_ at the time of her launch:—“She has a long, rakish, sharp bow with slightly concave lines below, but convex above, and it is ornamented with a bust of her namesake, which was carved in Liverpool and which is said by those who know the original to be an excellent likeness. It is blended with the cut-water, is relieved with gilded carved work and forms a neat and appropriate ornament to the bow. She is planked flush to the covering board, has a bold and buoyant sheer, graduated her whole length, rising gracefully at the ends, particularly forward; and every moulding is fair and harmonises finely with the planking and her general outline. Her stern is rounded, and although she has a full poop deck, her afterbody surpasses in neatness that of any vessel her talented builder has yet produced.