eleven days she sailed 3562 miles, with four days logged for a
total of 1478 knots. Making allowance for the longitudes and
difference in time, this was an average daily run of 378 sea
miles or 435 land miles. Using the same comparison, the distance
from Sandy Hook to Queenstown would have been covered in seven
days and nine hours. Figures are arid reading, perhaps, but these
are wet by the spray and swept by the salt winds of romance.
During one of these four days the Sovereign of the Seas reeled
off 424 nautical miles, during which her average speed was
seventeen and two-thirds knots and at times reached nineteen and
twenty. The only sailing ship which ever exceeded this day's work
was the Lightning, built later by the same Donald McKay, which
ran 436 knots in the Atlantic passage already referred to. The
Sovereign of the Seas could also boast of a sensational feat upon
the Western Ocean, for between New York and Liverpool she
outsailed the Cunard liner Canada by 325 miles in five days.

It is curiously interesting to notice that the California clipper
era is almost generally ignored by the foremost English writers
of maritime history. For one thing, it was a trade in which their
own ships were not directly concerned, and partizan bias is apt
to color the views of the best of us when national prestige is
involved. American historians themselves have dispensed with many
unpleasant facts when engaged with the War of 1812. With regard
to the speed of clipper ships, however, involving a rivalry far
more thrilling and important than all the races ever sailed for
the America's cup, the evidence is available in concrete form.

Lindsay's "History of Merchant Shipping" is the most elaborate
English work of the kind. Heavily ballasted with facts and rather