was possible under a system which was both congenial and paternal.
Brutal treatment was the rare exception. Flogging still survived in the
merchant service and was defended by captains otherwise humane, but
a skipper, no matter how short-tempered, would be unlikely to abuse a
youth whose parents might live on the same street with him and attend
the same church.

The Atlantic packets brought a different order of things, which was to
be continued through the clipper era. Yankee sailors showed no love for
the cold and storms of the Western Ocean in these foaming packets which
were remorselessly driven for speed. The masters therefore took
what they could get. All the work of rigging, sail-making, scraping,
painting, and keeping a ship in perfect repair was done in port instead
of at sea, as was the habit in the China and California clippers, and
the lore and training of the real deep-water sailor became superfluous.
The crew of a packet made sail or took it in with the two-fisted mates
to show them how.

From these conditions was evolved the "Liverpool packet rat," hairy and
wild and drunken, the prey of crimps and dive-keepers ashore, brave and
toughened to every hardship afloat, climbing aloft in his red shirt,
dungaree breeches, and sea-boots, with a snow-squall whistling, the
rigging sheathed with ice, and the old ship burying her bows in the
thundering combers. It was the doctrine of his officers that he could
not be ruled by anything short of violence, and the man to tame and
hammer him was the "bucko" second mate, the test of whose fitness was
that he could whip his weight in wild cats. When he became unable to
maintain discipline with fists and belaying-pins, he was deposed for a
better man.

Your seasoned packet rat sought the ship with a hard name by choice.
His chief ambition was to kick in the ribs or pound senseless some
invincible bucko mate. There was provocation enough on both sides.
Officers had to take their ships to sea and strain every nerve to make
a safe and rapid passage with crews which were drunk and useless when
herded aboard, half of them greenhorns, perhaps, who could neither
reef nor steer. Brutality was the one argument able to enforce instant
obedience among men who respected nothing else. As a class the packet
sailors became more and more degraded because their life was intolerable
to decent men. It followed therefore that the quarterdeck employed
increasing severity, and, as the officer