The waters of the harbors were shallow. In England deep-water ports had favored deep hulls, but the American designer who wished to increase the capacity of a hull had to make it wider instead of deeper. Wide beam gave greater stability; a wide ship could carry wide sails and yet "stand up like a church" in a heavy wind. Of course stout masts were needed for wide sails, but the forests were full of enormous pines that could be had, at first, for the cutting. Wide hulls of shoal draft, with wide sails spread upon stout spars, made speedy ships, a fact that even now is not as well understood as it should be. The speedy ships invited their masters to "carry on"--to keep their sails spread full breadth while the gale increased to a weight that would "take the sticks out of" vessels of inferior design. The swift ship, well driven, soon brought fame as well as additional profit to crew and owners, and the pride in the ship which was thus developed led all who were in any way connected with her to look for still further improvements. The short distances between harbors also had some influence upon the forms of ships. For one thing, short passages favored small vessels with small crews. The greater the number of vessels, the greater the number of captains accustomed to responsibility, a matter of no small importance in its effect upon the formation of the sea habit among a people. Then the short passage naturally led the crew into taking chances; they would risk a growing gale in a short run. Once out of port in "dirty weather," the manifest dangers set all hands thinking of improved ways of shortening sail in an emergency, and of improved shapes of hull and cut of canvas to help a vessel to "claw off" a lee shore. The men who worked in the shipyard building for themselves, and then went afloat, were particularly observant at such times. One of the most common statements to be found in the stories of perils at sea, as related by American shipmasters of other days, is this: "Every dollar I owned in the world was in that ship, and" for that reason every hardship was endured and every effort made to bring her to port.