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Modern Sailer Proves Economical BY FRED B. JACOBS HAT a definite place in the mer- chant marine of the world is efficiently filled by sailing ves- sels, no one who follows maritime progress closely will deny. Although the bulk of -the world's commerce has been carried by steam vessels for the last half century, certain conditions are found under which sailing vessels can be made to pay excellent dividends. To understand in- telligently what position can now be occu- pied by sailing 4 vessels /[ calls for a funda- FIVE-MAST AUXILIARY BARK FRANCE, THE mental knowledge of the fast ships of other days, their good and bad 'points, and the reasons why ships of this type cannot be operated with success today. The man who reads of the marvelous sailing qualities of such famous ships as the Rainpow, the Rep JACKET, the SOVEREIGN OF THE Seas, the FLYING CLoup, the Great Repustic and other fast vessels of American clipper ship days sometimes questions why ships of this type are not built today. Surely the qualities of the. tayo natural ele- ments with LARGEST SAILING VESSEL AFLOAT TODAY 381 Running Down Her Easting which a ship contends, wind and water, have not changed--why not revive the clipper ship? Before attempting to answer this question, it may be well to consider a few of these vessels. What is known as the clipper ship is an American. 1n- vention, the initial 3-mast clipper ship being the Rarinpow, a vessel of 750 tons, launched from the Smith & Damon yards, New York, in 1845. Clip- pers were built before this time to be sure. They were called Baltimore clip- pers and' were. generally schooner rigged. Sometimes they were rigged as hermaphrodite brigs and brigantines but they never carried more than two masts so that the Baltimore clipper was not, strictly speaking, a clipper ship. These Baltimore clippers, however, were fast sailers. They had round pumpkin-like bows, carried high with an excessive overhang. From the bows, the lines ran aft gracefully to a long low lying stern. The beam of these ves- sels was all out of proportion to their length, the greatest beam being well forward of the vessel's center. The ex- cessive beam gave these vessels the ability to stand a heavy press of sail but they could not work to windward efficiently. Their underbodies were modeled somewhat after a codfish. And from these prerevolutionary war clip- pers were taken the lines for practical- ly all the merchant ships of this coun- try previously to the advent of the RAINBOW. These oldtime ships were fast as his- tory proves. As an illustration, THE GeorcE, of Salem, Mass., in 1821 made the homeward .run from Calcutta in the remarkable time of 95 days. The following year she made the same pas-