him.

Even the Rainbow however, was eclipsed when not long afterward
Howland and Aspinwall, now converted to the clipper, ordered the
Sea Witch to be built for Captain Bob Waterman. Among all the
splendid skippers of the time he was the most dashing figure.
About his briny memory cluster a hundred yarns, some of them
true, others legendary. It has been argued that the speed of the
clippers was due more to the men who commanded them than to their
hulls and rigging, and to support the theory the career of
Captain Bob Waterman is quoted. He was first known to fame in the
old Natchez, which was not a clipper at all and was even rated as
slow while carrying cotton from New Orleans to New York. But
Captain Bob took this full-pooped old packet ship around the Horn
and employed her in the China tea trade. The voyages which he
made in her were all fast, and he crowned them with the amazing
run of seventy-eight days from Canton to New York, just one day
behind the swiftest clipper passage ever sailed and which he
himself performed in the Sea Witch. Incredulous mariners simply
could not explain this feat of the Natchez and suggested that Bob
Waterman must have brought the old hooker home by some new route
of his own discovery.

Captain Bob had won a reputation for discipline as the mate of a
Black Ball liner, a rough school, and he was not a mild man.
Ashore his personality was said to have been a most attractive
one, but there is no doubt that afloat he worked the very souls
out of his sailors. The rumors that he frightfully abused them
were not current, however, until he took the Sea Witch and showed
the world the fastest ship under canvas. Low in the water, with