This was a remarkable passage considering the percentage of easterly winds, though its memorable incident is, of course, the phenomenal run of 436 miles in twenty-four hours, an average of 18½ knots, which entitles the Lightning to the proud distinction of being the swiftest ship that ever sailed the seas. There was no ocean steamship of her day that approached her record by less than 100 miles, and another flve-and-twenty years passed away before the Atlantic greyhound, the Arizona, made 18 knots for a single hour, on her trial trip. Even at the present time, according to Lloyd's Register, there are not more than thirty oceangoing mail steamships afloat, that are able to steam over 18 knots. It must have been blowing hard enough when the Lightning's jib and foretopsail carried away, for these were not old, worn-out sails, put on board to attract the favorable consideration of underwriters, but were of new canvas, made unusually strong, and had not been out of the sail loft more than a couple of weeks.
Strange as it may seem, the "wood butchers of Liverpool," as Donald McKay used to call them, were allowed to fill in the concave lines of the Lightning's bow with slabs of oak sheathing, and while she continued to be a fast ship, she doubtless would have proved still faster had her original design not been tampered with.[1]
The second of these ships, the Champion of the Seas, measured: length 269 feet, breadth 45 feet, depth 29 feet, dead-rise at half floor 18 inches;
- ↑ These slabs were subsequently removed, one side being washed away.
