This is a rather startling statement when one reflects that the Arizona of the Guion line seems to a generation still living a modern steamer and record-holder.

It is even more impressive when coupled with the fact that, of the innumerable passenger steamers traversing the seas today, only a few are capable of a speed of more than eighteen knots.
This clipper Lightning did her 436 sea miles in one day, or eighteen and a half knots, better than twenty land miles an hour, and this is how the surpassing feat was entered in her log, or official journal: "March 1.
Wind south.

Strong gales; bore away for the North Channel, carrying away the foretopsail and lost jib; hove the log several times and found the ship going through the water at the rate of 18 to 18 1/2 knots; lee rail under water and rigging slack.

Distance run in twenty-four hours, 436 miles." The passage was remarkably fast, thirteen days and nineteen and a half hours from Boston Light, but the spectacular feature was this day's work.

It is a fitting memorial of the Yankee clipper, and, save only a cathedral, the loveliest, noblest fabric ever wrought by man's handiwork.
The clipper, however, was a stranger in the Atlantic and her chosen courses were elsewhere.