THE DEVELOPMENT OF SAILS
The origin of sails is buried in the darkness of prehistoric days.
Perhaps some hunter, paddling his dugout canoe before the breeze, had
his loose skin cape distended by the wind which continued to propel
him even when he stopped paddling in order to fasten his garment more
closely about him. No doubt something of this kind occurred many times
before some prehistoric observer noticed the cause and related to it
the effect. Perhaps, then, he held the skin up on his paddle or on his
staff, and sat back in comparative comfort while the breeze did his
work for him. Certainly such an origin is possible, and man’s desire
to accomplish certain ends without expending his energy unnecessarily
may, in this as in many other things, have led him to take so important
a step toward civilization. From using a skin held on his staff to
spreading the skin on a stick which in turn was held up by another
stick was but a step, and an excellent means of propelling his canoe
had been developed. The perfection of this method of propulsion,
however, was slow. How many years before the dawn of written history
such sails were in common use we do not know, nor can we guess with any
accuracy. It is probable, however, that the time was long, for the very
first accounts we have of ships tell us, too, of sails.
I have already traced the development of ships from this early time,
and it is not my desire to retrace my steps more than is necessary,
for ships have always progressed as their propulsion progressed, and
consequently the story of ships is also the story of propulsion. But
sails, it would almost seem, had less to do with the early development
of ships than oars, which for many thousand years after the dawn of
history were apparently more important in the eyes of men of the sea
than sails.
Because of this attitude toward oars, and perhaps, too, because of
the comparatively restricted waters in which ships originated, the
inventive genius of early designers seems to have been expended almost
wholly upon the perfection of the use of oars, until, as I have
explained, truly great ships were built in which much thought was given
to the proper seating of hundreds of oarsmen.
[Illustration: AN EGYPTIAN BOAT OF THE 5TH DYNASTY
_The double mast, shown in this drawing, was in common use in Egypt
about 3000 B. C. It is occasionally to be seen on native boats in the
Orient to-day._]
Sails, then, progressed little, save in size, beyond the skin that
first was stretched before the breeze in some remote savage genius’s
canoe, and, until the Crusades began at the end of the 11th Century,
sails and spars remained simple and, from the viewpoint of to-day,
comparatively inefficient. With a favouring wind ships could hoist
their sails and proceed merrily enough, but with a wind even mildly
unfavourable sailors sometimes lay in sheltered harbours for weeks or
got out their oars and proceeded on their way with strenuous labour.
When ships first began to utilize sails to go in directions other than
approximately that in which the wind blew is unknown. Certainly ships
propelled by even the crudest sails could do more than drift before the
wind, and as hulls became longer and deeper, they were, of course, able
to sail more and more to the right and left. When, however, ships first
were able to make headway against the wind is problematical. Certain
it is that for many thousand years after sails were known there seems
to have been no connection in the minds of ship-builders between the
use of sails and the construction of the underbodies of their ships so
as to interpose any especial obstacle to the water in order to prevent
the undue motion of their hulls _sideways_. Naturally enough, the very
earliest of ships was constructed with the idea of ease of propulsion
forward, but, so long as that object was gained, the shape of the
hull, apparently, gave them little thought save in so far as space
was needed for crew and cargo. Designs were brought out, of course,
that were increasingly sturdy and seaworthy, but fin keels, or similar
contrivances, are a development of recent times.
Ships there were, of course, even in ancient times, that were driven
exclusively, or almost exclusively, by sails, but the fact that these
ships, and many that depended largely on oars, were hauled high and dry
and carefully laid up during the less favourable seasons would seem to
prove that except under ideal conditions sails, as they were then, were
highly impractical affairs.
The earliest sails of which there is definite record are those shown in
carvings of ships on ancient Egyptian temples. These were hardly more
complicated than the skins of the theoretical savage who first utilized
the energy of the wind. They were made of cloth and were rectangular
and were stretched between two spars—one at the top and one at the
bottom—and these spars were raised and lowered in the process of making
or taking in sail.
[Illustration: AN EGYPTIAN SHIP OF THE 12TH DYNASTY
_It is possible that ships of this type were able, under ideal
conditions, to make a little headway, while under sail, against the
wind. It was not for many, many centuries, however, that sailing ships
were able definitely to make much headway in that direction._
]
Now this method of stretching a sail is not inefficient. The cloth can
be held more or less flat, and such a sail could, if the hull of the
ship were so constructed as almost to prevent lateral motion, propel
the hull in the direction it was pointed, even though that direction
were at right angles to the wind. If the hull were properly designed,
such a sail might readily be made to propel the hull at a little less
than at right angles, and, once that were done, the ship would actually
be making headway against the wind. It is quite conceivable that the
Egyptians had perfected this art—not, perhaps, with the sail I have
mentioned, but with a later development of this sail when the lower
spar had disappeared and the upper spar had become greatly elongated
and was set at an angle to the mast, so that from it depended a great
triangular sail, called, now, a lateen sail.
But authorities differ, and although there has been much argument as
to whether Roman ships of a much later date—for instance, the one in
which St. Paul was shipwrecked—could sail so as to make good a course
even slightly against the wind, the argument has still remained only
an argument, with neither side definitely able to make its case. And
this, it seems to me, proves that while perhaps under ideal conditions
and with some ships this highly important end was sometimes gained,
nevertheless, the ancients were not, by and large, able to sail any
course save when the wind was blowing from some angle of the half
circle toward the centre of which the ship’s stern was pointed, or, in
the language of the sea, when the wind was “abeam” or “abaft the beam.”
[Illustration: A ROMAN SHIP
_Although this ship was small the Romans built many that were not
surpassed for 1,700 years, and it was not until the 19th Century was
well advanced that the larger Roman ships were greatly surpassed in
size._
]
But while sails were not perfected, and consequently were of particular
use only when the wind was more or less astern, ships grew in size, and
consequently more sail area was required to propel them. This resulted
in the enlarging of the single sail until it grew clumsy and finally
resulted in the use of more than one sail, each spread from a mast of
its own. Later still, in these ships carrying several masts, one would
sometimes carry two sails, one above the other. Occasionally, ships
with but one mast similarly subdivided their great square sails. Roman
ships of the larger sizes—notably the corn-ships that brought food
to the capital from Egypt—developed this subdivision of sails, but
it was hardly more than a subdivision for more than a thousand years
after the time of Christ—in reality, not for 1,500 years, for even the
caravels of the time of Columbus had few actual improvements over the
earliest ships of the Christian Era. It is true that the lateen sail
had been adopted largely for use on the mizzenmast—or third mast from
the bow—and that that sail has more driving power than a square sail
when the ship is heading into the wind. But still ships were weak in
“going to windward”—that is, in making any headway in sailing into that
half of the compass’s circle that is marked by ninety degrees to the
right and to the left of the point directly toward the wind. This is
borne out by the complaints of Columbus’s men, who, when they found
themselves being driven westward day after day with the steady Trade
Winds from behind them, expressed their fear of never again being able
to return to Spain.
But, clumsy as these old sailing ships were, they came and went,
searching farther and farther into the unknown world, proving, beyond
doubt, that men have always been able to get along, even with crude
instruments, and that, in the last analysis, men are more important
than equipment.
So awkward in our eyes were the ships of Columbus’s time that when
replicas of his original ships were built in 1893, for the World’s
Fair at Chicago, and were sailed by Capt. D. U. Concas, an experienced
modern seaman, over the course Columbus took, the feat was looked upon
as extraordinary, despite the fact that Captain Concas’s knowledge
of winds, currents, and navigation was infinitely superior to the
great discoverer’s. So great were the steps taken in 400 years of
ship-building that this feat, far simpler than scores that are recorded
in the stories of the old adventurers, was hailed as heroic. But we
have accustomed ourselves to sailing ships that can be handled with
such marvellous ease that it would take an exceptionally able and
fearless sailor to handle even that replica of the _Santa Maria_ that
still is to be seen anchored in a park lake at Chicago. He would be
a truly fearless or a truly foolish man who would attempt to take
her across Lake Michigan in anything more than the mildest of summer
zephyrs.
But once the voyage of Columbus had taught Europe how little it really
knew of the world there came the insistent demand for better ships,
and as ships had by this time reached the point where far the greater
part were propelled by sails alone, the demand for the perfection of
ships resulted in the perfection of sails as well as the perfection of
hulls. England and Holland, together with the other northern European
countries, are largely responsible for this improvement, although
France for many years built the finest ships that sailed the seas.
Down to the 14th Century the ships of northern Europe showed strongly
the Scandinavian influence. The Vikings had developed ships similar
in shape to the whaleboats of to-day. They were double-ended affairs,
long, low, narrow, and fast, propelled largely by oars, but carrying,
generally, one large square sail set about amidships on a sturdy mast.
[Illustration: A VIKING SHIP
_These ships were developed by the Norse sea rovers for use in war,
and as the seas they sailed were generally rough their ships had to
be seaworthy. The result was a type that still leaves its mark. The
seaworthy whaleboats of to-day are very similar in shape._
]
In these ships the Norsemen regularly sailed the Baltic and the North
seas, where the elements give even the ships of to-day many a vicious
shaking. Yet these sturdy old pirates, for they were hardly more,
ploughed their way through storm and fog, without compasses, without
any method of determining their positions at sea except their instinct
and what guesses they could make—measuring voyages not by miles but by
days—coming, going, bent only on conquest and on pillage. Nor did they
confine themselves to the more or less landlocked seas. They launched
their sturdy boats from the narrow beaches of Norwegian fjords, and
with sturdy backs bent to sturdy oars, and great, colourful square
sails set when the wind was right, drove their ships to Scotland, to
the Orkneys, the Faroes, and to Iceland, and not content with that
drove on to Greenland, to Labrador, to Nova Scotia, and probably drew
up their ships on the shores of the very bay that waited yet another
half a thousand years ere the Pilgrims saw it from the unsteady deck of
the _Mayflower_.
In their open boats that tossed like flotsam among the angry waves,
these hardy mariners lived. Their food must often have been hardly
edible, their supplies of water hardly fit to drink, and comfort
there never could have been. Wet through by boarding seas, all but
unprotected from the cold of long sub-Arctic nights, or scorched by
the sun in breathless summer calms, their beards caked with salt from
the driving spray, or dripping moisture left there by the fogs, these
heroes of the sea swung their oars for days, for weeks, perhaps for
months, and feared the great Atlantic not at all.
They built these ships of theirs from the lumber that covered Norway’s
mountain-sides. They hewed the timbers, and fashioned them, and
made their ships as artists paint their canvases, not by the aid of
mathematics but by the aid of the innate art that was theirs and the
experience of generations of forefathers bred to the sea. They launched
their ships into the slate-gray waters of the stormy north, and stocked
them with rough food and rough implements. They shoved off from the
rocky coast of the land that had bred them and swung their great oars
over the crests of the surging sea, and clear of the land hoisted
their sails and were gone to new worlds far across the ocean.
[Illustration: A 13TH-CENTURY ENGLISH SHIP
_The Viking influence is still easily traceable in this ship, but the
forecastle and the sterncastle have put in their appearance. Also the
hull is heavier than and not so sharp as in the earlier Viking ships._
]
To us who live in a world so supercivilized that the Norseman’s wildest
dreams could not have approached the commonplaces of modern life, it
is difficult to imagine a crew of these stern and brawny men, fifty or
sixty strong, perhaps, with their barbaric helmets temporarily laid
aside, with their shields hung along the gunwales, and with their great
backs bending in unison to the oars. Seated on the heavy thwarts, their
supplies below their feet, their swords and battle-axes strewn about
carelessly, but handy to each calloused palm, they pulled for hours,
chanting their songs of war, roaring their choruses. Pausing now and
then to rest or to fill horn flagons from some supply of ale; tearing
with their teeth at salted fish or haunch of tough dried meat; changing
their positions now and then, perhaps, to keep their hardened muscles
from growing stiff; sleeping in the bow or stern, or down among the
bales and bundles that lined the long, low hull; wrapped in homespun
capes in rain or fog or driving spray—thus did these hardy mariners
sail to the west and home again. Leaving a land where life was hard,
they journeyed far to other lands at least as bleak as theirs, and
journeyed back again, not looking for the land of spice, or summer
seas, or far, romantic Cathay. Of such climes they knew nothing, nor
did they care.
As time passed these ships became heavier and broader, with more draft
and with higher sides, although they still retained the sharp stern
which was somewhat similar to the bow. The sails, however, developed
little and about the only complication was an additional strip of
canvas that could be laced to the foot of the sail, increasing its
area considerably. In light winds this was attached. In heavy winds it
was unlaced. This, by the way, was a common feature before the later
methods of reefing sails came into use.
But now we come to a time when ship designers began consciously to
refine the crude ships with which they were familiar. As a result,
sails from 1450 to 1850 went through a process of development far
exceeding the development that had taken place during those unnumbered
centuries from the time of the first sail up to 1450.
So complicated is the story of this development and so limited is the
space in a single book that I must content myself with utilizing only
the remainder of this chapter for the story of the development of sails
during the first 350 of these 400 memorable years, leaving for the
following chapter the story of the final perfection of sailing ships
which took place in the first half of the 19th Century.
[Illustration: A GALLEON OF THE TIME OF ELIZABETH
_The extremely high stern and the low bow shown in this drawing are
about as extreme as any in use during the period when high bows and
low sterns were thought to be good design._
]
It is not difficult to see what happened to make the development of
sails so slow a process. Not only sails, but also practically every art
and interest of mankind had received a serious setback with the decay
of Rome. The Dark Ages followed with their woeful ignorance, and it
was not until after the Crusades had been followed by the Renaissance,
which brought with it a renewed interest in every subject the people
of Europe knew anything about, that ships—and practically everything
else—began to recover from the fearful retrogression that had taken
place during the better part of ten centuries.
It was not, for instance, until the latter part of the 15th Century
that the bowsprit appeared in common use in northern Europe, although
this feature had, fifteen hundred or more years before, been in common
use on Roman ships, where it was used to carry a small square sail
called the “artemon.” The bowsprit seems to have originated as a sort
of mast that was set far forward in the bow, in order that a sail
spread from it would be in the best position to aid in swinging a ship
from one side to the other. In order to make this sail still more
effective by giving it greater leverage on the hull the mast was tilted
more and more forward until it projected far over the bow. From this
bowsprit a small square sail was spread, called, later, a spritsail,
and this development began to make real sailing ships of ships that
formerly had used sails for little more than auxiliary work.
But the Dark Ages ruined everything, and it was not until the Crusades
later re-introduced the people of northern Europe to those of the
Mediterranean that the northerners, who later became the greatest
seamen the world has ever seen, began to get away from the Viking
influence in the building of ships.
But once the shipwrights of England and Holland and France began to see
the advantages of even the crude ships that were occasionally sailed
by the Venetians and the Genoese to the bleak northern waters, the
improvement in northern ships began.
The single mast with its simple square sail was supplemented by another
mast and by the slanting mast at the bow that became the bowsprit, and
it became the custom in northern waters, as it already was the custom
in southern, to use two or three masts carrying square sails and one
mast carrying the triangular lateen sail.
The bowsprit was a crude affair but was highly important, which was
the reason for its continued use despite the fact that even in ordinary
weather in the open sea the pitching of the dumpy hulls often drove
the spritsail into the waves. Perhaps this troublesome feature of
the spritsail was partially responsible, as the desire for more head
sails certainly was, for the addition at the end of the bowsprit of a
short, vertical spar on which a new sail called the “sprit topsail” was
spread. In heavy weather this sail could be carried without plunging
it into the sea long after the spritsail, which was spread on a spar
mounted below the bowsprit, had to be taken in.
And now the masts of these ships began to undergo an important change.
Hitherto a mast was simply a long sturdy spar made of a single tree,
with a single square sail mounted on a single yard. The desire for
more canvas led at first to the setting of a triangular sail above the
square sail. This new sail was set with its lower corners made fast to
the extremities of the yard and with its apex at the apex of the mast.
Soon, however, a short yard appeared at the top of this sail, which in
the course of later developments became more and more rectangular until
finally it became the highly important topsail of the square-rigged
ships of to-day. As still other sails were added this topsail became
the sail that is carried for a greater part of the time than any other
of the square sails, for in heavy weather it is the last to be taken
in, and continues to hold its place long after its predecessor, the
great square sail below it, has been furled.
So successful was this topsail that ship-builders and sailors began
to think of ways of making it larger. Its size was limited to the
height of the mast above the great square mainsail. At first masts were
cut from taller trees, but soon a practical limit to this method of
securing additional height was reached, because of the limited size of
trees. Then it was that the topmast was invented. Another mast, only
slightly smaller than the first, was lashed with its base overlapping
the top of the mainmast, which, because the upper part was now of no
use, was again shortened. This proved satisfactory, and later another
section and another still was added until the mast had grown from one
simple spar into a structure made up of three or four or even five
rising one above the other until, in the greatest of all square-rigged
ships—the _Great Republic_, built in 1853—the mainmast, surmounted by
the topmast, the topgallant, the royal, and the skysailmasts, towered
almost half as high above her keel as the summit of Washington Monument
stands above its concrete base. But that was long years after the times
we are discussing, and such a ship was far beyond even the imaginations
of the shipwrights and sailors of 1500.
Years before this time, as I have already explained, ships had
developed raised structures at bow and stern, called forecastles and
sterncastles, and by now these had become integral parts of the hull.
But the hulls! It can be said with little fear of contradiction that
they had become the most ridiculous ships, in appearance at least,
that ever sailed the seas. Their sterns were built up and up into huge
structures that contained many decks and many cabins. Forward these
ships, more often than not, ran their ridiculous noses down until it
sometimes seemed as if they were inquisitive to learn what was beneath
the surface of the water. Above these weird hulls were three or four
towering masts, and forward was a long bowsprit that reared itself up
at so steep an angle as to suggest that it feared that the bow, at the
very next moment, would surely go completely beneath the sea.
The mast farthest astern—which in a three-masted northern ship was then
and still is called the mizzenmast—for many years carried only a lateen
sail. Finally, however, the part of this triangular sail that ran
forward of the mast was eliminated, although the spar itself was still
the same. But finally this long spar was cut off where it met the mast,
and it became the gaff of the sail that now is called, on square-rigged
ships, the spanker. On this mast, too, above this lateen sail that,
pollywog-like, was losing its tail in its growth into a spanker, it
slowly became the custom to set sails similar to those which on the
other masts had come into common use above the great square sails that
were set nearest to the deck.
[Illustration: THE _AMARANTHE_
_A British warship of 1654. This ship is an excellent example of
the ships that were in use just before the jib began to put in its
appearance. The lateen sail on the mizzenmast is similar to the one
used on the caravels, but both the rigging and the hull are greatly
refined as compared with the ships of the time of Columbus._
]
This growth, of course, was slow. The life of a single sailor was not
enough to see the general acceptance of more than one or two of these
steps, for seamen are conservative when it comes to changes in their
ships, and are not given to the rapid acceptance of revolutionary
improvements. But by comparison with the slow development of the
preceding thousand years changes were coming with almost breathless
speed.
It was during this period that another important improvement was
introduced. I have explained how, on cruder ships, it was the custom,
when more sail area was needed, to lace a separate strip of cloth to
the foot of the great square sail. This extra piece of sail was called
the “bonnet” and sometimes another similar piece called the “drabbler”
was laced to the foot of the bonnet. If the wind increased until less
sail was desired these two extra sections of the sail were unlaced and
the sail area was reduced by that much. In earlier times the sail was
sometimes puckered up by passing lines over the spar and tying them so
as to make the sail into a bundle more or less loosely tied, depending
on how much or how little the sail area was to be reduced. But now came
the introduction of “reef points” which, down to the present day, are
still the accepted method of reducing sail.
Reef points are short pieces of rope passing through the sail. The ends
are allowed to hang free on opposite sides of the canvas. On square
sails there are two or three rows of these running across the upper
part of the sail. When the captain orders sail reduced the men go into
the rigging, lie out along the yard supporting the sail to be reefed
and pulling the sail up until they reach the first row of reef points,
proceed to tie the two ends of the points together over the top of the
sail. This ties a part of the sail into a small space, reducing by that
much the area spread to the wind.
This great improvement, together with the new arrangement of sails,
began to make sailing ships into structures that, more or less, were
reaching out toward the perfection that led ultimately to such speed
and ease of handling as never before was thought possible.
[Illustration: A 16TH-CENTURY DUTCH BOAT
_It was on boats of this type that the jib seems first to have been
used. To-day in Holland one sees a similar boat, called a schuyl,
which is almost identical with this, except that it utilizes a curved
gaff at the top of the mainsail._
]
The topmasts, topgallantmasts, and others, too, by this time were no
longer being lashed rigidly in place but were being arranged so that
they could be partly lowered by sliding them lengthwise through their
supports.
All this time hulls were improving, and the ridiculous sterncastles
finally reached their climax and began to recede. And then came a
new development that gave the builder of ships the final thing they
needed, so far as the sails themselves were concerned, to make possible
the ultimate perfection of sailing ships. This was the adoption, in
place of the awkward spritsails and sprit topsails, of the triangular
“jibs” and staysails that are a conspicuous part of most modern sailing
vessels.
Perhaps this highly efficient triangular sail did not spring,
Minerva-like, fully formed, from the head of any mediæval
ship-designer. It first appeared in use on small boats, and perhaps
appeared there in triangular form because of the impracticability
of mounting a bowsprit capable of carrying the common but awkward
spritsail. Another reason, perhaps, for its triangular form, was the
fact that the stay leading from the bow to the masthead, while it lent
itself to holding a sail, caused any such sail to be triangular in
shape because of the angle at which the stay was stretched.
Nor was a triangular sail in itself a change from the old order of
things. For more than two thousand years the lateen sail had been in
use, and a lateen sail is much the same shape as a jib or a staysail.
Its principal difference lies in the fact that its direct support is
a spar, while the support of a jib is a rope which serves also as a
support for the mast. And so it is easy to imagine some old Dutch
sailor—for the jib appeared first in Holland—rigging up a kind of
makeshift sail on his fore stay, seeing that, because a lateen sail
worked astern, another sail so similar in shape might work at the bow.
Perhaps he was laughed at for his pains, for sailors are sensitive
to appearances and a triangular sail at the bow of a boat in the
early 16th Century was different from anything to which sailors were
accustomed, and consequently, in their eyes, was, no doubt, ridiculous.
But the “ridiculous” sail proved efficient, as sometimes happens in
other things, and because of its efficiency and its simplicity it began
to take its place as an accepted form.
[Illustration: A CORVETTE OF 1780
_This ship shows the new sail plan overcoming the old. The masts carry
topsails, topgallantsails, and royals, and what was formerly a lateen
sail on the mizzenmast has become a spanker. Furthermore, while the
ship carries jibs, she has not yet parted with her spritsails._
]
All this description of its origin is, of course, purely imaginary.
I have no information as to how it originated, but I offer the
explanation I have given as a plausible surmise. The earliest actual
representation of a ship using this sail is, so far as I can learn,
on a map sent in 1527 from Seville by one M. Robert Thorne to a
Doctor Ley. On this map, like so many of its time, there are numerous
decorations and pictures. One of these is a small craft, Dutch in
appearance, which carries a combination of sails not unlike those of
a simple sloop of to-day. It is somewhat as if a lateen sail had been
cut in two vertically a third of the way back from the forward end, and
the two pieces mounted separately—the triangular section depending from
the fore stay, and the remainder from a spar similar to what we now
call the gaff. This interesting old map was called to my attention by
a mention of it made by E. Keble Chatterton in his “Sailing Ships and
Their Story.”
But this triangular sail, while it was in common use from so early
a date on small boats, did not appear on ships of the larger sizes
until the latter part of the 17th Century and the first part of the
18th. At this time the lateen sail was still in evidence although it
was beginning to undergo the first of the changes I have mentioned,
while the fore and mainmasts now commonly spread two square sails, and
sometimes three; and sometimes, too, this third sail, instead of being
square, was triangular, as the earliest topsails had been.
But the latter part of the 17th Century brought the first real steps in
scientific design. Men began to study the disturbances set up by the
passage through the water of various shaped hulls, and began to replace
rule-of-thumb methods of design with designs based on more or less
scientific conclusions. This also began to show itself in the design
of masts and spars and sails. Long since, the steering oar, which for
centuries was mounted on the starboard or right-hand side of the ship
near the stern, had given way to the rudder, hung astern as rudders are
still hung, and now the science of ship design began the steps that
ultimately resulted in the _Flying Cloud_ and the _Great Republic_ and
those other clipper ships that in the 19th Century set records for
speed that many of our steamships of to-day cannot equal.
Throughout the 18th Century ships were gradually improved along these
scientific lines until, in the merchant service, the beautiful ships
of the British East India Company, with their piles of snowy canvas,
their shining teakwood rails, and their graceful spars, were the
proudest ships that had ever sailed the seas. In the naval services
the greater ships had taken a less beautiful form but had grown into
the impressive if awkward line-of-battle ships of which an excellent
example is still to be seen in the _Victory_, Nelson’s famous flagship,
which the British still proudly, and properly, maintain at Portsmouth.
But now begins the super-perfection of sailing ships—the development of
the clippers, those beautiful structures of wood and iron and canvas
that for a brief time so surpassed every other ship on every sea as to
set them apart in an era of their own. These were ships of such beauty
and speed and spirit that they stand clearly separate and alone.