minutes before _Ariel_. It was a near thing after racing for three months from one end of the world to the other. _Serica_ docked on the same tide, _Fiery Cross_ was only about a day later, and _Taitsing_ arrived in the river on September 9. And there were plenty more of these races, for the skippers cracked-on and made these clippers do marvellous things through the water. But in 1868 there was built at Aberdeen the famous clipper _Thermopylae_, 947 tons, a bigger and more powerful ship than the Steele clippers, and a veritable witch at sailing, whether on the wind or to windward, and a wonderful sea boat, too. In November 1868 she started on her maiden voyage from Gravesend, and reached Melbourne in sixty-three days. Mr. Downie, already quoted, whilst a midshipman in a Blackwaller, happened to be in Melbourne when _Thermopylae_ came in, and went aboard to look over this new wonder ship. “She had immensely square yards,” he says, “and most beautiful lines, fore and aft. Her apprentices told me her skipper had driven her all the way, carrying on tremendously, but her spars and rigging were all new, and of the best material, and stood the severe strain in splendid fashion.” _Thermopylae_ broke records, and in 1869 got home from Foochow in ninety-one days, though _Sir Lancelot_ less than a fortnight later arrived after a voyage of only eighty-nine days. But then came the splendid _Cutty Sark_. She is the only one of this long line of tea-clippers still afloat and at work. In the autumn of 1921 she came into the London river, and I was able to go all over her. But she had changed her name to _Ferreira_ and was Portuguese-owned and rigged as a barquentine. For all that, and the disappointing way in which she was being kept up, she was in excellent condition, with a yacht-like hull, every line of which suggested grace and speed. Composite-built, this 921-ton vessel was a little bigger than _Thermopylae_, and was launched in 1869. Under Captain Moodie this vessel cracked-on, and she could do her seventeen and a half knots, and anyone who has examined her bow and stern will readily believe this. [Illustration: [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._ AUXILIARY SCREW S.S. “INDOMITABLE.” 1,170 tons. Owned by R. James Brown, Sunderland.]