On June 9, 1798, the _Neptune_ sailed for Canton, where she sold her skins for $2 each, and used the proceeds in buying China goods. This cargo, on reaching New York, paid customs duties amounting to $55,438.71, and sold for $260,000. The foremast hands received a "lay" of $1200 each. A paragraph in one of Purser Townsend's letters regarding these foremast hands is worth quoting:-- "Many of our crew were very smart, ambitious young men.... In our voyage across the Pacific they exerted themselves to be qualified for commanding ships, and the captain gave them as much indulgence as he could for that object, allowing them time and giving them instruction. It was quite a regular good school on board, and the progress was even greater than in some literary institutions on shore. Some men that could not do a sum in addition when we left America could now work lunar observations." By 1825 the seals were so nearly exterminated that the hunt for skins gave no profit, but the amount of sea-lion oil that could be secured was sufficient to keep a fleet cruising in southern seas until 1870, when three vessels fitted once more for a skin hunt and secured 8000. The next year eight vessels obtained 15,000 good fur seals, and in 1876 Captain Athearn, in the schooner _Florence_, took a cargo that sold for $100,000. Between 1871 and 1880 the number of skins taken was 92,756. After that date the hunt again became unprofitable, but the sea-lion oil kept a few vessels busy for some years. The year 1880 may be called the last of the employment of the American seal-hunting fleet. CHAPTER XII THE PACKET LINES AND THE CLIPPERS Two results of the War of 1812 are of especial interest here. Through good fighting the American ship was at last free to sail upon the high seas unmolested by any power upon earth, and the seafaring people had become aggressive to a degree that was little short of bumptious. In the weary years that had passed since the _Trial_ sailed from Boston, our sailors had been engaged in a struggle for mere existence; now they were to enter with eager zest into a contest for the supremacy of the seas. The first work done to this end was the establishment of a packet line (1816) from New York to Liverpool, by Jeremiah Thompson, Isaac Wright, Benjamin Marshal, and other capitalists of New York under the name of the Black Ball Line. It may interest students of psychology to know that the Quaker religious element prevailed among the stockholders. The word "packet" had been used theretofore at sea only in connection with certain small but swift vessels (usually brigs) that the British government employed to carry the mail to foreign countries. These vessels sailed from the home port at regular intervals, and the weather was bad indeed when one of them failed to get away at the advertised hour.