All of this is to say that while only twenty-one years had elapsed since the American sailor had won, by good fighting, the right to cross the seas unmolested by foreign war-ships, his chief competitors openly acknowledged that in the trade between New York and Liverpool (the most important trade route in the world) he had won unquestioned and even uncontested supremacy. The American packets received cordial praise in Liverpool because no British ship-owner so much as thought about entering into competition with them, and this, too, at a time when the British tonnage, in the aggregate, was far greater than that of the United States. In the meantime the American whalemen had won supremacy, as already noted, in the work of gathering the harvest of the deep seas, and the most splendid conquest of all, the supremacy of the sea in the trade of the Far East, was at hand. The most interesting feature of this contest was the evolution of a class of ships called clippers. Curiously enough, it appears that one aggressive naval architect, John W. Griffiths, of New York, was responsible for the introduction of this remarkable type of ships. Griffiths was of the opinion that a ship having "hollow" or concave water-lines, especially at the bow,--"hollow entrance lines,"--would sail more swiftly than one with ordinary convex lines, no matter how fine the convex lines might be. In 1841 Griffiths exhibited a model of a ship shaped according to his ideas, at the American Institute, and he also delivered a number of lectures on the subject. The nautical world became greatly interested, and in 1843 William H. Aspinwall ordered a ship of 750 tons built to designs by Griffiths. She was named the _Rainbow_, and when sent, under Captain John Land, to Canton on her maiden voyage, she arrived back at the end of 6 months and 14 days. In another voyage she sailed to Canton in 92 days and made the passage home in 88, breaking the record each way. The _Howqua_, the _Samuel Russell_, and the _Sea Witch_ were also built to the new designs,--the clipper model, as it soon came to be called,--and all made swift passages. The _Russell_ is of special interest because she was commanded by Captain N. B. Palmer, who now left the packet service to engage in that of the Far East. His first run was made to Hongkong in 114 days, which was slow time for a racer, but in the course of the voyage he covered 318 miles in a day; and in 30 consecutive days he sailed 6722 miles. To complete Palmer's record it may be said here that in his last ship, the _Orient_, he covered 328 sea miles in a day, and made the run home from Canton in 81 days.