d and fevered, which saw
the roaring days of the Yankee clipper and which was familiar with
racing surpassing in thrill and intensity that of the packet ships of
the Western Ocean. In 1851, for instance, the Raven, Sea Witch, and
Typhoon sailed for San Francisco within the same week. They crossed the
Equator a day apart and stood away to the southward for three thousand
miles of the southeast trades and the piping westerly winds which
prevailed farther south. At fifty degrees south latitude the Raven and
the Sea Witch were abeam of each other with the Typhoon only two days
astern.

Now they stripped for the tussle to windward around Cape Horn, sending
down studdingsail booms and skysail yards, making all secure with extra
lashings, plunging into the incessant head seas of the desolate ocean,
fighting it out tack for tack, reefing topsails and shaking them out
again, the vigilant commanders going below only to change their clothes,
the exhausted seamen stubbornly, heroically handling with frozen,
bleeding fingers the icy sheets and canvas. A fortnight of this inferno
and the Sea Witch and the Raven gained the Pacific, still within sight
of each other, and the Typhoon only one day behind. Then they swept
northward, blown by the booming tradewinds, spreading studdingsails,
skysails, and above them, like mere handkerchiefs, the water-sails and
ring-tails. Again the three clippers crossed the Equator. Close-hauled
on the starboard tack, their bowsprits were pointed for the last stage
of the journey to the Golden Gate. The Typhoon now overhauled her rivals
and was the first to signal her arrival, but the victory was earned
by the Raven, which had set her departure from Boston Light while the
others had sailed from New York. The Typhoon and the Raven were only a
day apart, with the Sea Witch five days behind the leader.

Clipper ship crews included men of many nations. In the average
forecastle there would be two or three Americans, a majority of English
and Norwegians, and perhaps a few Portuguese and Italians. The hardiest
seamen, and the most unmanageable, were the Liverpool packet rats who
were lured from their accustomed haunts to join the clippers by the
magical call of the gold-diggings. There were not enough deep-water
sailors to man half the ships that were built in these few years, and
the crimps and boarding-house runners decoyed or flung aboard on sailing
day as many men as were demanded, and any drunken, broken l