Dreadnought's her name.
She is bound to the west'ard
Where the stormy winds blow.
Bound away to the west'ard,
Good Lord, let her go.

There were never more than fifty of these ships afloat, a trifling
fraction of the American deep-water tonnage of that day, but the laurels
they won were immortal. Not only did the English mariner doff his hat to
them, but a Parliamentary committee reported in 1837 that "the American
ships frequenting the ports of England are stated by several witnesses
to be superior to those of a similar class among the ships of Great
Britain, the commanders and officers being generally considered to be
more competent as seamen and navigators and more uniformly persons of
education than the commanders and officers of British ships of a similar
size and class trading from England to America."

It was no longer a rivalry with the flags of other nations but an
unceasing series of contests among the packets of the several lines, and
their records aroused far more popular excitement than when the great
steamers of this century were chipping off the minutes, at an enormous
coal consumption, toward a five-day passage. Theirs were tests of real
seamanship, and there were few disasters. The packet captain scorned a
towboat to haul him into the stream if the wind served fair to set all
plain sail as his ship lay at her wharf. Driving her stern foremost,
he braced his yards and swung her head to sea, clothing the masts with
soaring canvas amid the farewell cheers of the crowds which lined the
waterfront.

A typical match race was sailed between the Black Ball liner Columbus,
Captain De Peyster, and the Sheridan, Captain Russell, of the splendid
Dramatic fleet, in 1837. The stake was $10,000 a side, put up by the
owners and their friends. The crews were picked men who were promised a
bonus of fifty dollars each for winning. The ships sailed side by side
in February, facing the wild winter passage, and the Columbus reached
Liverpool in the remarkable time of sixteen days, two days ahead of the
Sheridan.

The crack packets were never able to reel off more than twelve or
fourteen knots under the most favorable conditions, but they were kept
going night and day, and some of them maintained their schedules almost
with the regularity of the early steamers. The Montezuma, the Patrick
Henry, and the Southampton crossed from New York to Liverpool in fifteen
days, and for years the Independence he