As a rule, he owned a share of the ship and received a percentage of the freights and passage money.

His rank when ashore was more exalted than can be conveyed in mere words.

Any normal New York boy would sooner have been captain of a Black Ball packet than President of the United States, and he knew by heart the roaring chantey It is of a flash packet, A packet of fame.
She is bound to New York And the Dreadnought's her name.
She is bound to the west'ard Where the stormy winds blow.
Bound away to the west'ard, Good Lord, let her go.
There were never more than fifty of these ships afloat, a trifling fraction of the American deep-water tonnage of that day, but the laurels they won were immortal.

Not only did the English mariner doff his hat to them, but a Parliamentary committee reported in 1837 that "the American ships frequenting the ports of England are stated by several witnesses to be superior to those of a similar class among the ships of Great Britain, the commanders and officers being generally considered to be more competent as seamen and navigators and more uniformly persons of education than the commanders and officers of British ships of a similar size and class trading from England to America." It was no longer a rivalry with the flags of other nations but an unceasing series of contests among the packets of the several lines, and their records aroused far more popular excitement than when the great steamers of this century were chipping off the minutes, at an enormous coal consumption, toward a five-day passage.

Theirs were tests of real seamanship, and there were few disasters.