Museum AND ArT NOTES 103

Gone are the gallant clipper and graceful liner. A few ocean wanderers still woo the
winds as they roam the deep-sea highways like ghosts seeking a place to rest. The
power which displaced their class is passing in turn.

Sea-going craft are changing so in appearance that even the simple formula for
direction finding which Paddy West supplied to his pupils will soon no longer apply:

“The for-ad end is p’inted, ’tis the one that leads the way,

The after end is blunted ’cause it drags along the say.”

Thermopylae’s cargoes were lumber from Puget Sound and British Columbia
ports to China, returning with rice for the Victoria mills. In the China trade she
carried an armament consisting of two cannons, 24 rifles and a stack of cutlasses and
boarding-pikes as some measure of defense against pirates infesting the Chinese
coasts. On one occasion at least the old clipper dropped anchor in Burrard Inlet,
loading a part cargo of lumber at Barnet and finishing (with canned salmon likely) at
Steveston. But she was getting old and out of date; her upkeep swallowed the
profits, so her owners decided to give her up. In 1895 she was sold to the Portuguese
Government, and went to the Columbia River, where she loaded a cargo of lumber
for Leith, the delivery of which ended her career under the British flag and her
service as a merchant ship.

There are masters of vessels out of British Columbia ports wha have been officers
or have served their time in the Thermopylae. When they talk about the characteristics
of their old ship it is as of a living thing. A master boat-builder of Vancouver, who in
his ’prentice days in Victoria helped to cut her down, pays tribute to the work of those
craftsmen of his trade who built her. There was no dumping sling-loads of freight
in the square of Thermopylae’s hatches longshoremen will tell you, it took stevedores
to load her. Towboat men recall how, on taking her out to sea, when she felt the
pull of the breeze in her topsails she would act like some proud beauty ashamed of
the arm of a humble escort, and would make them hustle to get clear.

And here and there along the beaches are a few than whom none are better
qualified to praise or condemn—men who have held her wheel and toiled to keep her
in trim. Growl at times they must have, being sailors, but in their yarns they are
boastful—“No galley on the waters with our galley could compare.”

One of Thermopylae’s most outstanding features seems to have been her ability
to make fast passages under any conditions of wind. Some ships, mostly double or
treble her size, have piled up bigger runs, a few have beaten some of her passages,
but none so consistent as she. Close-hauled or running free the great spread of sail
for her size gave plenty of driving force, while, owing to her fine lines and perfect
balance, she would ghost along in the lightest airs where other ships would have to
lie waiting for a breeze. The great clipper, James Baines, credited with the fastest
speed ever made in sail—21 knots—was once the cause of considerable anxiety in Mel-
bourne so long was she over her expected arrival. A newspaper commenting on it
tried to allay the fears by citing instances of lengthy passages by other ships, the
famous Lightning amongst them, due to light winds and calms, which proved on
arrival to have been the only cause of the James Baines’ delay.