Word: clipper
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Edwin Atkins Grozier, son of a sea captain, was born aboard his father's clipper ship in San Francisco. Before going to college he spent several years before the mast. Following college he served on the staffs of several Boston papers, then became private secretary of a Governor of Massachusetts. From that post he went to another similar one, became private secretary to one of the great examples of aggressive journalism, Joseph Pulitzer...
Three quarters of a century ago, when Boston was one of the leading seaports of the United States, scarcely a day passed that did not see at least one clipper ship beating into the harbor with cargoes out of India and the far east. Spices and silks came from China, minerals and cocoanuts from South America...
Nowadays, however, the scene has changed. The clipper ships have disappeared and the only sailing craft that have increased in numbers are the fishing boats which are slowly drawing from Cape Ann all the glory that in former years was Gloucester's. Even though the sail has given way to the funnel, however, and cargoes are now coal and lumber instead of silk and spice, Boston's sea commerce is rapidly decreasing; freight differentials and a lack of American vessels, it would seem, are responsible for the removal of many shippers to New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, where no such...
...marine built under the stress of war would bring back the heyday of American ocean commerce have been severely shaken by the recurrent deficits of the Shipping Board budgets. The experience of the past few years seems to prophesy all too plainly that with the passing of the famous clipper ships went forever American mercantile supremacy. Various explanations have been offered which characteristically center in an abuse of government management, but the almost obvious reason is the same that prevented the development of a merchant marine before the war--the fact that Americans cannot compete profitably with English shippers...
...furrows through all the seven seas; the spirit and solidity that existed, as Mr. Pulsifer rather neatly and metaphorically puts it, "before the coming of King Gasoline". To illustrate his point, the author has taken as his example the old seaport of Middlehaven, one time builder and guardian of clipper ships and salt-water heroes; and he has arrayed on one side Caleb Gurney, a character who, but for the pathos of his position and the understanding of the author, would be simply a type "wind-and-rigging" sailor; and on the other the men of country clubs and golf...