"Although I designed and built the clipper ship _Lightning_, and therefore ought to be the last to praise her, yet such has been her performance _since Englishmen learned to sail her_, that I must confess I feel proud of her. You are aware that she was so sharp and concave forward that one of her stupid captains, who did not comprehend the principle upon which she was built, persuaded the owners to fill in the hollows of her bows. They did so, and according to their Bullish bluff notions, she was not only better for the addition, but would sail faster, and wrote me to that effect. Well, the next passage to Melbourne, Australia, she washed the encumbrance away on one side, and when she returned to Liverpool, the other side was also cleared away. Since then she has been running as I modelled her. As a specimen of her speed I may say that I saw recorded in her log (of 24 hours) 436 nautical miles, a trifle over 18 knots an hour." A few records will give an idea of the profits of the best of the clippers. The _Sovereign of the Seas_ received $84,000 freight money for the passage when she was dismasted, and her owner says she earned $200,000 in the first eleven months. The _Surprise_, Captain Dumaresque, in a voyage from New York to San Francisco and then by way of China home, made a net profit of $50,000 above her cost and all expenses. The _Great Republic_, according to Preble, received $160,000 freight in a passage from New York to San Francisco. It seems worth noting here that the insurance rates on these hard-driven clippers were far lower than can now be obtained by the best of modern sailing ships. The most interesting period in the history of the American merchant marine is the clipper ship era. The story has been told over and again, but the interest never flags. And yet while those ships were sweeping the seas and lying in port where their captains walked the piers in suits of lustrous China silks; and while the newspapers of Europe as well as America were printing in leaded lines the details of their wonderful passages, _the seafaring people of the United States were living in a fool's paradise_. The work that was to drive the American flag from the principal trade routes of the seas had been begun before the keel of the clipper _Rainbow_ was stretched. Our seafaring people saw it, too, and even helped it on, but with but one notable exception, so far as the record shows, they utterly failed to comprehend its significance. The character and effect of that work shall be described in another chapter. It remains to consider here one other interesting fact about the clippers. It is demonstrable that the shapes of the much-lauded clipper hulls had only a trifling, if any, influence upon the speed attained. Indeed the lines upon which the builders of the most famous of them all relied for speed were inferior, as modern designers know, to those of some ordinary ships wholly unknown to the record.