e James Baines and the
Lightning were no discredit to the stanch, unconquerable packet ships
which, year in and year out, held their own with the steamer lines until
just before the Civil War. It was the boast of Captain Samuels that
on her first voyage in 1853 the Dreadnought reached Sandy Hook as
the Cunarder Canada, which had left Liverpool a day ahead of her, was
passing in by Boston Light. Twice she carried the latest news to Europe,
and many seasoned travelers preferred her to the mail steamers.

The masters and officers who handled these ships with such magnificent
success were true-blue American seamen, inspired by the finest
traditions, successors of the privateersmen of 1812. The forecastles,
however, were filled with English, Irish, and Scandinavians. American
lads shunned these ships and, in fact, the ambitious youngster of the
coastwise towns began to cease following the sea almost a century ago.
It is sometimes forgotten that the period during which the best American
manhood sought a maritime career lay between the Revolution and the War
of 1812. Thereafter the story became more and more one of American ships
and less of American sailors, excepting on the quarter-deck.

In later years the Yankee crews were to be found in the ports where the
old customs survived, the long trading voyage, the community of interest
in cabin and forecastle, all friends and neighbors together, with
opportunities for profit and advancement. Such an instance was that of
the Salem ship George, built at Salem in 1814 and owned by the great
merchant, Joseph Peabody. For twenty-two years she sailed in the East
India trade, making twenty-one round voyages, with an astonishing
regularity which would be creditable for a modern cargo tramp. Her
sailors were native-born, seldom more than twenty-one years old,
and most of them were studying navigation. Forty-five of them became
shipmasters, twenty of them chief mates, and six second mates. This
reliable George was, in short, a nautical training-school of the best
kind and any young seaman with the right stuff in him was sure of
advancement.

Seven thousand sailors signed articles in the counting-room of Joseph
Peabody and went to sea in his eighty ships which flew the house-flag
in Calcutta, Canton, Sumatra, and the ports of Europe until 1844. These
were mostly New England boys who followed in the footsteps of their
fathers because deep-water voyages were still "adventures" and a career