I have quoted the above passages to show the way in which a Black Baller could carry sail either with a fresh favouring gale or in a strong head wind. This is sufficiently astonishing in itself, but what amazes most present day sailors and compels many of them to be incredulous are such statements as the much quoted one concerning _James Baines_—“Ship going 21 knots with main skysail set.”
This and other log book statements have been looked upon by many as far-fetched exaggerations, but, after careful study of the subject, during which I have pricked off the different voyages on a track chart, I have come to the conclusion that these amazing performances were in no way a stretching of the imagination.
To begin with, I will give the main arguments advanced against them by the sceptics.
The late Mr. J. N. Barry, writing in an Australian paper, remarks:—
Where American records are concerned much caution must be observed in taking their feats of speed for granted. Our cousins had a canny fashion of, no matter where they might be sailing, always reckoning 60 miles to a degree of longitude whilst doing their easting, so that a day’s run of, say, 240 miles upon a parallel of 45°, would by this means give the distance covered as exactly 100 miles in excess of what it should be.
The skippers of many of the celebrated Black Ball clippers were not above adopting this mode of calculation, viz., 60 miles to a degree of longitude, but while it gave some wonderful results for a single 24 hours, it did not as a matter of fact make their passages any more rapid.
And I have had letters scoffing at the Black Ball records, remarking that their skippers were a leery lot and provided “palatable pabulum for the proud passengers.”
I will now try and show that these arguments were altogether too sweeping, and if they may possibly have applied to certain individuals, they are by no means fair to the greater number of the skippers.
In the first place, not one of the Black Ball or White Star ships was commanded by an American, and though the accusation was levelled at Americans, it was evidently done in the belief that the American built Australian clippers were commanded by Americans.
In the second place, such men as Anthony Enright, of the _Lightning_, James Nicol Forbes, of the _Marco Polo_, Charles McDonald, of the _James Baines_, Sam Reid, of the _Red Jacket_, Captain Pryce, R.N.R., of the _Donald Mackay_, and Alexander Newlands, of the _Champion of the Seas_, were known and respected all over the world as leading men in their profession, occupying a position in the Mercantile Marine which would correspond with that of Orient and P. & O. commanders nowadays, whilst their performances were very much more widely known, thus such elementary cheating as giving 60 miles to a degree in the roaring forties would have been exposed at once.