more systematized, there sprung up a new type of American ship-master.  The older type—­and the more romantic—­was the man who took his ship from Boston or New York, not knowing how many ports he might enter nor in how many markets he might have to chaffer before his return.  But in time there came to be regular trade routes, over which ships went and came with almost the regularity of the great steamships on the Atlantic ferry to-day.  Early in the nineteenth century the movement of both freight and passengers between New York or Boston on this side and London and Liverpool on the other began to demand regular sailings on announced days, and so the era of the American packet-ship began.  Then, too, the trade with China grew to such great proportions that some of the finest fortunes America knew in the days before the “trust magnate” and the “multimillionaire”—­were founded upon it.  The clipper-built ship, designed to bring home the cargoes of tea in season to catch the early market, was the outcome of this trade.  Adventures were still for the old-time trading captain who wandered about from port to port with miscellaneous cargoes; but the new aristocracy of the sea trod the deck of the packets and the clippers.  Their ships were built all along the New England coast; but builders on the shores of Chesapeake Bay soon began to struggle for preeminence in this style of naval architecture.  Thus, even in the days of wooden ships, the center of the ship-building industry began to move toward that point where it now seems definitely located.  By 1815 the name “Baltimore clipper” was taken all over the world to signify the highest type of merchant vessel that man’s skill could design.  It was a Baltimore ship which first, in 1785, displayed the American flag in the Canton River and brought thence the first cargo of silks and teas.  Thereafter, until the decline of American shipping, the Baltimore clippers led in the Chinese trade.  These clippers in model were the outcome of forty years of effort to evade hostile cruisers, privateers, and pirates on the lawless seas.  To be swift, inconspicuous, quick in maneuvering, and to offer a small target to the guns of the enemy, were the fundamental considerations involved in their design.  Mr. Henry Hall, who, as special agent for the United States census, made in 1880 an inquiry into the history of ship-building in the United States, says in his report: 

“A permanent impression has been made upon the form and rig of American vessels by forty years of war and interference.  It was during that period that the shapes and fashions that prevail to-day were substantially attained.  The old high poop-decks and quarter galleries disappeared with the lateen and the lug-sails on brigs, barks, and ships; the sharp stem was permanently abandoned; the curving home of the stem above the house poles went out of vogue, and vessels became longer in proportion to beam.  The round bottoms were much in use, but the tendency toward a straight