Then another phase began to reshape Dockland. There came a time when
the Americans looked in a fair way, sailing ahead fast with the
wonderful clippers Donald McKay was building at Boston, to show us a
tow rope. The best sailers ever launched were those Yankee ships, and
the Thames building yards were working to create the ideal clipper
which should beat them. This really was the last effort of sails, for
steamers were on the seas, and the Americans were actually making
heroic efforts to smother them with canvas. Mr. Green, of Poplar,
worried over those Boston craft, declared we must be first again, and
first we were. But both Boston and Poplar, in their efforts to perfect
an old idea, did not see a crude but conquering notion taking form to
magnify and hasten both commerce and war.

But they were worth doing, those clippers, and worth remembering. They
sail clear into our day as imperishable memories. They still live, for
they did far more than carry merchandise. When an old mariner speaks
of the days of studding sails it is not the precious freight, the real
purpose of his ships, which animates his face. What we always remember
afterwards is not the thing we did, or tried to do, but the friends who
were about us at the time. But our stately ships themselves, with our
River their home, which gave Poplar's name, wherever they went, a ring
on the counter like a sound guinea, at the most they are now but planks
bearded with sea grass, lost in ocean currents, sighted only by the
albatross.

Long ago nearly every home in Dockland treasured a lithographic
portrait of one of the beauties, framed and hung where visitors could
see it as soon as they entered the door. Each of us knew one of them,
her runs and her records, the skipper and his fads, the owner and his
prejudice about the last pennyworth of tar. She was not a transporter
to us, an earner of freights, something to which was attached a profit
and loss account and an insurance policy. She had a name. She was a
sentient being, perhaps noble, perhaps wilful; she might have any
quality of character, even malice. I have seen hands laid on her with
affection in dock, when those who knew her were telling me of her ways.

To few of the newer homes among the later streets of Dockland is that
beautiful lady's portrait known. Here and there it survives, part of
the flotsam which has drifted through the years with grandmother's
sandalwood chest, the last of the