PREFACE IN this book I have attempted to give some account of the beautiful sailing ships which played so great a part in the development of the great British Dominions undcr the Southern Cross. It is written specially for the officers and seamen of our Mercantile Marine, and I have endeavoured to avoid such a criticism as the following -Heaps about other ships, but my old barkey was one of the fastest and best known of them all and he dismisses her with a line or two. I have made rather a point of giving passage records, as they are an everlasting theme of interest when seamen get together and yarn about old ships. The memory is notoriously unreIiable where sailing records arc concerned, so I have been most carcful to check these from logbooks and Captains reports. Even Lloyds I have found to be out by a day or two on occasions. A great deal of my material has been gathered bit by bit through the past 25 or 30 years. Alas many of the old timers, who so kindly lent me abstract logs and wrote me interesting letters, have now passed away. The illustrations, I hope, will be appreciated, for these, whether they arc old lithographs or more modern photographs, are more and more difficult to unearth, and a time will soon come when they will be unprocurable. Indeed, if there is any value in this book it is because it records and illustrates a period in our sea history, the memory of which is already fast fading into the misty realms of the past. To preserve this memory, before it becomes impossible, is one of the main objects, if not the main object, of my work....