Old Smith 19 Frenchy 26 Deck Plan of Ship _A. J. Fuller_ 31 Jimmy Marshall 41 Fred 49 Joe 61 Skouse 70 Martin 108 Cape Horn 114 At Brewer's Wharf 175 Charlie Horse 196 Watching the Shore When In the Stream 235 Brenden Reading Letter 265 Jack Hitchen 270 Australia 343 Sketches of Diego Ramirez 357 Axel 382 Watching Shore at Delaware Breakwater 405 INTRODUCTION THE SQUARE RIGGERS America is again facing forward to the sea. The ancient thrill of the wide salt spaces, of the broad horizon beyond which adventure beckons us, appeals once more to the youth of America. We are living in times when the great importance of the sea as a career comes home to us at every turn. The sea is the great bulwark of our liberty, and by the sea we must persevere or perish in the world struggle of Anglo-Saxon democracy against the powers of autocratic might. When America returns to her own, she builds upon foundations of tradition that have their footings on the solid bed rock of the republic. One glorious era of our sea history was followed by another, and as times progressed the breed of seamen ever rose capable and triumphant to the necessities that called them forth. The Revolutionary sailors, and those of 1812, were followed by the great commercial seamen of the clippers. The mighty fleets of the Civil War astonished the world, and in the period just previous to our seafaring decline of a score of years past, the great sailers flying the Stars and Stripes spread their white cotton canvas on every sea. Their story has never been adequately told. They are not to be measured in terms of tonnage, or in the annals of swift passages from port to port. Their contribution to the legends of the sea remains obscure. They carried a tradition of hard driving, and were a phase of our sea life that formed and forged the link between the old and the new, between the last days of sail and the great new present of the America of steam and steel. Men who go to sea today in our merchant marine, in positions of command, are, in many instances, graduates of the ships of these latter days of sail.