The watchwords on board these ships were "Good food and hard work." No cook dare venture on board of them unless he could justify his title. And unless he were clean enough to satisfy those hawk-eyed officers he had better never have been born than have ventured under the Stars and Stripes as cook. I have myself seen a Yankee skipper go into the galley, and, taking up the first saucepan to hand from the rack, wipe it out with a snowy handkerchief brought clean from his drawer on purpose; and if it showed a smear upon inspection, there was at once a sound of revelry in that galley. Another one had a pleasant habit of going around the panelling of the saloon and state-rooms, poking his handkerchief into the mouldings with a piece of pointed stick, and examining it most carefully afterwards for any mark of dust. This, of course, was carrying the Yankee officers' passion for cleanliness to an absurd length, but it may safely be said that nowhere on the sea was freedom from dirt maintained at so high a level as it was on board the now almost extinct American clipper ships. These masters fought their way up to command by sheer merit and force of character, allied to physical prowess, dauntless courage, and, it must be said in the majority of cases, ruthless cruelty. Laws for the protection of the common seaman undoubtedly existed, but it was an unheard-of thing for them to be enforced; and many dark stories are current of men being done to death by incessant brutality, whose murderers, whether officers or master, quietly slipped ashore in the pilot-cutter upon reaching the offing of their home port. Then, if such an unlikely thing happened as the dead man's shipmates taking the matter of his slaying before the authorities, it was hopeless to attempt the murderer's arrest. But brutal and reckless as Yankee masters undoubtedly were, the fact remains that they were unapproachable for seamanship and speedy passages. They skimmed the cream off the Far Eastern trade, and, owing to the generosity with which they were treated by their owners, took no long time to amass comfortable fortunes. The knell of their supremacy was sounded, however, when Britain took to building iron ships. Even before that time, so well had the lessons taught by these dashing Yankee shipmasters and born shipbuilders been learned, that some of our firms had been able to build wooden ships that could hold their own in the swiftest ocean race. Then came the day of the composite (wooden planking with iron frame) ships--the famous tea-clippers of fo'c'sle story, built by such firms as Hall of Aberdeen and Steel of Greenock, against which no Yankee clipper had any chance whatever. And when the iron ship appeared in her turn, in spite of the immense difficulty of keeping the hull under water free from encumbrances of weeds and barnacles, she at once sprang into premier place.