kept going night and day, and some of them maintained their
schedules almost with the regularity of the early steamers. The
Montezuma, the Patrick Henry, and the Southampton crossed from
New York to Liverpool in fifteen days, and for years the
Independence held the record of fourteen days and six hours. It
remained for the Dreadnought, Captain Samuel Samuels, in 1859, to
set the mark for packet ships to Liverpool at thirteen days and
eight hours.

Meanwhile the era of the matchless clipper had arrived and it was
one of these ships which achieved the fastest Atlantic passage
ever made by a vessel under sail. The James Baines was built for
English owners to be used in the Australian trade. She was a full
clipper of 2515 tons, twice the size of the ablest packets, and
was praised as "the most perfect sailing ship that ever entered
the river Mersey." Bound out from Boston to Liverpool, she
anchored after twelve days and six hours at sea.

There was no lucky chance in this extraordinary voyage, for this
clipper was the work of the greatest American builder, Donald
McKay, who at the same time designed the Lightning for the same
owners. This clipper, sent across the Atlantic on her maiden
trip, left in her foaming wake a twenty-four hour run which no
steamer had even approached and which was not equaled by the
fastest express steamers until twenty-five years later when the
greyhound Arizona ran eighteen knots in one hour on her trial
trip. This is a rather startling statement when one reflects that
the Arizona of the Guion line seems to a generation still living
a modern steamer and record-holder. It is even more impressive
when coupled with the fact that, of the innumerable passenger