As a class the packet sailors became more and more degraded because their life was intolerable to decent men.

It followed therefore that the quarterdeck employed increasing severity, and, as the officer's authority in this respect was unchecked and unlimited, it was easy to mistake the harshest tyranny for wholesome discipline.
Reenforcing the bucko mate was the tradition that the sailor was a dog, a different human species from the landsman, without laws and usages to protect him.

This was a tradition which, for centuries, had been fostered in the naval service, and it survived among merchant sailors as an unhappy anachronism even into the twentieth century, when an American Congress was reluctant to bestow upon a seaman the decencies of existence enjoyed by the poorest laborer ashore.
It is in the nature of a paradox that the brilliant success of the packet ships in dominating the North Atlantic trade should have been a factor in the decline of the nation's maritime prestige and resources.
Through a period of forty years the pride and confidence in these ships, their builders, and the men who sailed them, was intense and universal.
They were a superlative product of the American genius, which still displayed the energies of a maritime race.

On other oceans the situation was no less gratifying.

American ships were the best and cheapest in the world.