a very bad gale generally puts her
considerably off her course. But, on the other hand, she could beat
all her best records under perfect modern conditions of canvas,
scientific metal hull, and crew; and the historic records she actually
has made are quite as surprising as they are little known. Few people
realize that 'ocean records' are a very old affair, even in Canada,
where they begin with Champlain's voyage of {102} eighteen days from
Honfleur to Tadoussac and end with King George V's sixty-seven hours
from land to land, when he speeded home in H.M.S. _Indomitable_ from
Champlain's tercentenary at Quebec in 1908, handling his shovel in the
stokehole by the way.

Here are some purely sailing records worth remembering. A Newfoundland
schooner, the _Grace Carter_, has sailed across to Portugal, sold her
fish there, gone to Cadiz for all the salt that she could carry, and
then reported back in Newfoundland within the month. A Canadian
schooner yacht, the _Lasca_, has crossed easterly, the harder way, in
twelve days from the St Lawrence. In 1860 the Yankee _Dreadnought_
made the Atlantic record by going from Sandy Hook to Liverpool in nine
days and seventeen hours, most of the time on the rim of a hurricane.
Six years later the most wonderful sea race in history was run when
five famous clippers started, almost together, from the Pagoda
Anchorage at Fu-chau for the East India Docks in London. This race was
an all-British one, as the civil war, the progress of steam everywhere
except in the China trade, and the stimulus of competition, had now
given Britishers the lead in the East, while putting them on an even
footing with Yankees in the {103} West. The course was sixteen
thousand miles; the prize was the world's championship in
clipper-racing. Three ships dropped considerably astern. But the
_Ariel_ and _Taeping_ raced up the Channel side by side, took in their
pilots at the same time, and arrived within eight minutes of each
other. The _Ariel_ arrived first; but the _Taeping_ won, as she had
left twenty minutes later. The total time was ninety-nine days. A
very different, but still more striking, record is the longest daily
run ever made entirely under sail. This was, in one sense at least, an
Anglo-American record; for the ship, appropriately called the
_Lightning_, was built by that master craftsman, Donald M'Kay of
Boston, and sailed by a British crew. She made no less than 436 sea
miles, or 502 st