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 whip his weight in wild cats.When he became unable to maintain discipline with fists and belaying-pins, he was deposed for a better man.
Your seasoned packet rat sought the ship with a hard name by choice.His chief ambition was to kick in the ribs or pound senseless some invincible bucko mate.There was provocation enough on both sides.Officers had to take their ships to sea and strain every nerve to make a safe and rapid passage with crews which were drunk and useless when herded aboard, half of them greenhorns, perhaps, who could neither reef nor steer.Brutality was the one argument able to enforce instant obedience among men who respected nothing else.As a class the packet sailors became more and more degraded because their life was intolerable to decent men.It followed therefore that the quarterdeck employed increasing severity, and, as the officer's authority in this respect was unchecked and unlimited, it was easy to mistake the harshest tyranny for wholesome discipline.
Reenforcing the bucko mate was the tradition that the sailor was a dog, a different human species from the landsman, without laws and usages to protect him.This was a tradition which, for centuries, had been fostered in the naval service, and it survived among merchant sailors as an unhappy anachronism even into the twentieth century, when an American Congress was reluctant to bestow upon a seaman the decencies of existence enjoyed by the poorest laborer ashore.
It is in the nature of a paradox that the brilliant success of the packet ships in dominating the North Atlantic trade should have been a factor in the decline of the nation's maritime prestige and resources.Through a period of forty years the pride and confidence in these ships, their builders, and the men who sailed them, was intense and universal.They were a superlative product of the American genius, which still displayed the energies of a maritime race.On other oceans the situation was no less gratifying.American ships were the best and cheapest in the world.The business held the confidence of investors and commanded an abundance of capital.It was assumed, as late as 1840, that the wooden sailing ship would continue to be the supreme type of deep-water vessel because the United States possessed the greatest stores of timber, the most skillful builders and mechanics, and the ablest merchant navigators.No industry was ever more efficiently organized and conducted.
American ships were most in demand and commanded the highest freights.The tonnage in foreign trade increased to a maximum of 904,476 in 1845.There was no doubt in the minds of the shrewdest merchants and owners and builders of the time that Great Britain would soon cease to be the mistress of the seas and must content herself with second place.
It was not considered ominous when, in 1838, the Admiralty had requested proposals for a steam service to America.This demand was prompted by the voyages of the Sirius and Great Western, wooden-hulled sidewheelers which thrashed along at ten knots'
speed and crossed the Atlantic in fourteen to seventeen days.
This was a much faster rate than the average time of the Yankee packets, but America was unperturbed and showed no interest in steam.In 1839 the British Government awarded an Atlantic mail contract, with an annual subsidy of $425,000 to Samuel Cunard and his associates, and thereby created the most famous of the Atlantic steamship companies.
