The packet ships had held on too long. It had been a stirring
episode for the passengers to cheer in mid-ocean when the lofty
pyramids of canvas swept grandly by some wallowing steamer and
left her far astern, but in the fifties this gallant picture
became less frequent, and a sooty banner of smoke on the horizon
proclaimed the new era and the obliteration of all the rushing
life and beauty of the tall ship under sail. Slow to realize and
acknowledge defeat, persisting after the steamers were capturing
the cabin passenger and express freight traffic, the American
ship-owners could not visualize this profound transformation.
Their majestic clippers still surpassed all rivals in the East
India and China trade and were racing around the Horn, making new
records for speed and winning fresh nautical triumphs for the
Stars and Stripes.

This reluctance to change the industrial and commercial habits of
generations of American shipowners was one of several causes for
the decadence which was hastened by the Civil War. For once the
astute American was caught napping by his British cousin, who was
swayed by no sentimental values and showed greater adaptability
in adopting the iron steamer with the screw propeller as the
inevitable successor of the wooden ship with arching topsails.

The golden age of the American merchant marine was that of the
square-rigged ship, intricate, capricious, and feminine in her
beauty, with forty nimble seamen in the forecastle, not that of
the metal trough with an engine in the middle and mechanics
sweating in her depths. When the Atlantic packet was compelled to
abdicate, it was the beginning of the end. After all, her master