Early in the nineteenth century the movement of both freight and passengers between New York or Boston on this side and London and Liverpool on the other began to demand regular sailings on announced days, and so the era of the American packet-ship began.

Then, too, the trade with China grew to such great proportions that some of the finest fortunes America knew in the days before the "trust magnate" and the "multimillionaire"-- were founded upon it.

The clipper-built ship, designed to bring home the cargoes of tea in season to catch the early market, was the outcome of this trade.

Adventures were still for the old-time trading captain who wandered about from port to port with miscellaneous cargoes; but the new aristocracy of the sea trod the deck of the packets and the clippers.

Their ships were built all along the New England coast; but builders on the shores of Chesapeake Bay soon began to struggle for preeminence in this style of naval architecture.
Thus, even in the days of wooden ships, the center of the ship-building industry began to move toward that point where it now seems definitely located.