For British shipowners the difficulty was that there was but little accommodation in most ships, so they thought of the American clippers, which had been doing such fine work. James Baines & Co. of Liverpool therefore had the clipper _Marco Polo_ built at St. John’s, New Brunswick. She was a very handsome ship of 1622 tons, with considerable rise of floor, very fine aft, and she carried a very large spread of canvas. This was the pioneer of the clipper ships for the Australian trade and the first of the Australian Black Ball Line, her passenger accommodation being a great improvement on the ships usually trading to Australia. She left Liverpool in July 1851, and made a record passage in sixty-eight days to Melbourne, and during the ensuing years of the gold rush was a very popular and successful ship. The British lines running out to Australia at this time were the White Star (twenty years before they entered the Atlantic steam competition) and James Baines & Co.’s Australia Black Ball Line, just mentioned. These two firms both had clippers which were built in New England, and one of these, the _Red Jacket_, was for the White Star Line. Named after a noted Indian chief, with a full-length figure-head of him at her bow, this fine ship was one of the most famous of the clippers, and made a fine passage from New York to Liverpool in thirteen days, one hour, when she first came out in February 1854, and on one of the days made 413 miles. During that same year she sailed from Liverpool to Melbourne in sixty-nine days. In his recently published _Reminiscences of a Liverpool Shipowner_, Sir William B. Forwood has left an interesting account of a voyage he made in this magnificent sailing ship of 2006 tons, three years after she came out. “On the morning of the 20th November, 1857,” he says, “I embarked by a tender from the Liverpool pierhead. It was nearly the top of high water. The crew were mustered on the forecastle, under the 1st Mate, Mr. Taylor. An order comes from the quarter-deck. ‘Heave up the anchor and get away.’ ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ ‘Now then, my boys, man the windlass,’ shouts the Mate, and to a merry chantie: “‘In 1847 Paddy Murphy went to Heaven To work on the railway, the railway, the railway, Oh, poor Paddy works upon the railway.’ “‘The anchor is away, sir,’ shouts the Chief Officer. ‘Heave it a-peak and cathead it,’ comes from the quarter-deck, and the tug _Retriever_ forges ahead and tightens the tow-rope as we gather way. Bang, bang went the guns, and twice more, for we were carrying the mails, and goodbye to old Liverpool, and the crowds which lined the pierhead cheered, for the _Red Jacket_ was already a famous ship, and it was hoped she would make a record passage.