The rumors that he frightfully abused them were not current, however, until he took the Sea Witch and showed the world the fastest ship under canvas.

Low in the water, with black hull and gilded figurehead, she seemed too small to support her prodigious cloud of sail.

For her there were to be no leisurely voyages with Captain Bob Waterman on the quarter-deck.

Home from Canton she sped in seventy-seven days and then in seventy-nine--records which were never surpassed.
With what consummate skill and daring this master mariner drove his ship and how the race of hardy sailors to which he belonged compared with those of other nations may be descried in the log of another of them, Captain Philip Dumaresq, homeward bound from China in 1849 in the clipper Great Britain.

Three weeks out from Java Head she had overtaken and passed seven ships heading the same way, and then she began to rush by them in one gale after another.