ourneys of Columbus grew out of it quite naturally.
But in America shipping had its foundation in no such picturesque
beginning. The first vessel made in this country was constructed as a
mere matter of necessity, being built at the mouth of the Kennebec River
to carry back to England a group of disheartened, homesick settlers."

He paused thoughtfully a moment.

"Even the ships of later date had their birth in the same motive--that
of necessity. The early colonists were forced to procure supplies from
England and they had no choice but to build ships for that purpose. At
first these sailing packets were very small, and as one thinks of them
to-day it is to marvel that they ever made so many trips without
foundering. As for our coastwise ships, up to 1812 they were nothing
more than schooner-rigged hulls."

"I wonder where the word _schooner_ came from," commented Steve.

"The legend goes that the term _scoon_ was a colloquialism used when
skipping stones. When a pebble glanced along the top of the water it was
said to _scoon_," answered his father, with a smile. "After the War of
1812 was over and our American vessels were safe from possible attack,
and after the country itself had recovered somewhat from the stress of
this financial burden so that men had more money to invest in commerce,
we began to branch out and build finer vessels; and when it came to
rigging them there seemed to be no name to apply to the arrangement of
the sails. The story goes that one day as one of these new ships sailed
out of Gloucester harbor a fisherman watching her exclaimed with
admiration, 'See her _scoon_!' The phrase not only caught the public
fancy but that of the shipbuilders as well, and the word _schooner_ was
quickly adopted."

"I never knew that before!" announced Steve, when the narrative was
concluded.

"Slowly the models of ships improved," went on his father, without
heeding the interruption. "Vessels became larger, faster, more graceful.
Even the whalers and fishing smacks took on more delicate lines.
Merchants from Salem, Gloucester, New Bedford invested their hard-earned
savings in whalers and trading ships, and many of them made their
fortunes by so doing. The sailing packets that went to Liverpool began
to make excellent time records. Although the English were now using
steamers for trans-Atlantic travel they had not perfected them to a
sufficient extent to make their trips faster than those of sailing
ships."