Excerpt from Fair Winds and Foul: A Narrative of Daily Life Aboard an American Clipper ShipA period in the commerce of the United States remains unrecorded except in the official annals. It is a most important period because it records the pioneer develop ment of the deep sea trading that today places this country so high in active competition with the open markets of the world.Prior to 1866 the Packet Ships carried passengers and merchandise from port to port on the Atlantic Ocean. A few years later the Clipper Ship Service was started, these sailing ships were specially built and rigged for speed and they followed the deep sea routes between the Atlantic ports, the East Indies, China and California and the seaboard cities of South America. They operated until about the year 1884, when the lower wages of Great Britain and Germany made competition too keen for them to survive. Just following this period the trans continental railroads were developed to transport freight to the west coast, and a little later the steam vessel became a factor in the oceanic trade.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.