gn mail-carriage according to the
actual service rendered, with a proviso, however, favoring American
ships, such to receive the inland-postage plus the sea postage, while
foreign ships were to have the sea postage only.[GR]

This was the final blow. The last voyage of the Collins Line was made
in January, 1859. Then it perished. In April following, the ships were
seized by the mortgagees and sold. So closed the career of the pioneer
United States ship company in the transatlantic service. The splendid
_Adriatic_ passed to English ownership and the American flag gave way to
the British. For several years this ship "held the transatlantic record
with a passage of five days nineteen hours from Galway to St.
John's."[GS]

Of the other subsidized lines, the ships of the Bremen service were
withdrawn and laid up after the subsidy ceased. The Havre line continued
a while longer with two ships that had replaced the _Humboldt_ and the
_Franklin_, both of which had been lost,--the _Humboldt_ wrecked at
Halifax on December 5, 1853; the _Franklin_ stranded on Montauk Point on
July 17, 1854. Then with the charter of the two new steamers by the
Government in 1861 for use in the Civil War, the Havre line also
disappeared.

The cost to the Government of this first steamship subsidy venture,
covering the thirteen years between 1845 and 1858, was approximately
fourteen and a half million dollars.[GT]

Meanwhile, within this period, the American wooden sailing-ships
continued to be the glory of the seas, and the American clippers reached
their highest development. The appearance of steamships on the North
Atlantic and the Pacific had inspired the producers of the "wonderful
American sailing-ships" to greater efforts for their perfection; and the
clipper, surpassing all other types of sailers in size, sea-qualities,
and speed, was the result of the intensified rivalry of canvas and
steam.[GU] The American clipper-ship era fairly opened with the advent
of the Collins Steamship Line.[GV] Between 1850 and 1855 clipper-ships
were built for nearly every trade,[GW] and they were on every sea. Some
of the first were employed in the transatlantic packet service. More
became engaged particularly in the "booming" trade to California, in the
long-voyage traffic to China and India.[GX] "When John Bull came
floating into San Francisco, or Sydney, or Melbourne, he used to find
Uncle Sam sitting carelessly, with his legs dangling over the wharf,
sm