The _Howqua's_ best work was the run from Shanghai to New York in 88 days. The _Water Witch_, called "the swiftest ship of her day," was commanded by Captain Robert H. Waterman ("Captain Bob"). She set the pace when she sailed from New York on December 23, 1846. In 25 days she hove to off Rio Janeiro long enough to send mail ashore on an inbound ship, and in 104 days she reached Hongkong. Her return run from Canton was made in 81 days. In the next voyage she returned from Canton in 77 days, her best day's run being 358 sea miles, something then unheard of. There were a number of other celebrated clippers in the China trade, but none of them was swifter than the _Shooting Star_, with a passage record of 88 days from Canton, and the _Atlanta_ with a record of 84; none equalled Waterman's passage of 77 days. When the captains of these clippers, dressed in "lustrous, straw-colored, raw-silk suits," paraded the water front of New York, they were more admired and envied by the loungers than any prince or potentate on earth. They were the kings of the sea by right of conquest. Imagine what Captain Waterman would have done if told that he reigned by grace of "a system of national protection deliberately initiated in 1789!" In 1849 the British government, in a desperate determination to place British shipping ahead of American in quality as well as quantity, repealed the old navigation laws. British merchants were not only permitted to buy American ships, but American ships were permitted to enter all trades to the United Kingdom. The British ship-builders declared their business would be ruined; and the building of the old-style wooden ships was ruined. The ship-owners, too, saw disaster staring them in the face, and, for a time, there was reason for their fears. For where the British ships in the tea trade received from £3 to £4 per ton (50 cubic feet) from Canton to London, the American clippers received six and even more. The little Baltimore clipper _Architect_, having made a run from Canton to London in 107 days, beating the fleet by about a week, she was paid £8 a ton when next she applied for a cargo of new-crop teas. The ordinary ships were glad to get the common £4. In the meantime the California territory was acquired from Mexico by the treaty proclaimed July 4, 1848. Placer gold had already been discovered in El Dorado county (January 24), and when official reports confirmed the wide-spread rumors of the "find," a migration of gold-seekers such as the world had never seen was begun. The growth of population in the territory was phenomenal, and the growth at once created an insistent demand for many products of civilization, especially for such things as were needed by miners and town-builders; for the whole region was a wilderness. This demand was backed by gold washed from the placers, and the prices seem now almost beyond belief.