If you set aside the forty years from 1837 to 1877 you cover the period which is unsurpassed for the glories of the sea. It is a period when the Mercantile Marine in every ocean rose to such a standard of seamanship as was never seen before nor will ever be witnessed again. It is a time when the triumph of the shipwright and the skill of the sailor combined to bring about the golden age. Every log-book, ship-illustration or reminiscence that bears on this epoch should be regarded with the utmost care and preserved for the wonderment of posterity, for at present we are living so close to this epoch that we hardly appreciate its worth. Those who come after us will rightly envy us for having seen at least some of the ships and spoken with those who handled them. For it was a time when wooden ships were run by men of iron. The traditions inherited from the old East India Company after the latter had lost its monopoly in India and China were too noble and inspiring to be dissipated at once. The high grade of officers and men remained for a long time a standard, especially when the captain of an East Indiaman even as late as about 1830 was making anything between £6000 and £10,000 a voyage. So, too, the Blackwall yard still retained its name for building the best ships. And though they had ceased to construct the stately but slow vessels which had been good enough as long as the monopoly lasted, a big advance came in the year 1837, when Richard Green launched the 818-ton _Seringapatam_. She was, in fact, the first of a new order of things. In her the double stern and galleries were abandoned, and owing to her finer lines she became famous for her quick and regular passages to the East, and was destined to be the model for many vessels to follow. It was such men as Green, Wigram, Somes, Dunbar, Baines and others who built up the Mercantile Marine after the East India Company left the sea; for these men saw their grand opportunity, and seized it. Most of these purchased some of the best of the company’s ships. The _Earl of Balcarres_, for instance, was sold for £10,700, and she voyaged for fifty-two years before she became a hulk. The same price was paid for that fine ship the _Thames_; the _Lady Melville_ fetched £10,000, the _Buckinghamshire_ £10,550 and others realised between £4000 and £10,000. In certain cases the company, seeing their approaching fate, began to sell as far back as 1830.