the footsteps of their fathers because deep-water voyages were
still "adventures" and a career 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