CLIPPER SHIPS

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 49, 27 February 1934, Page 12

CLIPPER SHIPS

A FEW STILL REMAIN

Romantic survivors of a long-past era, forty Yankee clipper ships still sail the seas from American ports to many distant lands, says the "Christian Science Monitor."

The Commerco Department's Bureau of Navigation and Steamboat Inspection has found also, that no fewer than 1227 sailing ships, including the forty clipper-rigged vessels, are still operating under tho American flag, manned by hardy salts who prefer the sail to steam.

These sailing ships, masted schooners and sloops form but a tiny fleet, however, in comparison with the more than 20,000 vessels of more than 4,500,000 gross tons that comprised the American sailing fleet of 1860, the peak of the clipper-ship era. . In the files of the bureau are. hundreds of faded "'marine documents that tell the story of famous clipper ships of the years preceding Rteam—fleet, graceful vessels which, with lofty_ spars and clouds of spreading sail, vied with each other in "clipping days" off the run to regular ports of trade. There may be found records of the famous clippers built by Donald McKay, whom the bureau calls America's master clipper shipbuilder—the Plying Cloud, the Plying Fish, the Sovereign of the Seas, Westward Ho!, Great Sepublic, Lightning, Glory of the Seas, and many others which pointed the way for the American Merchant Marine. According to Mr. A. J. Tryrer, assistant director of the bureau, the old clippers often exceeded the speed of the early steamships, with passages of 300 and 400 miles a day common achievements during the nineteenth century. Charges of being found drunk in a public place, of assaulting a taxi-driver, and of stealing about 6s 9d, were' made in the Magistrate's Court yesterday afternoon against Edward Peko, aged 38, \ labourer. The charge of theft was dismissed as trivial, subject to Peko restoring the 6s 9d. The assault charge was dismissed, and for drunkenness he was convicted and discharged^