To the Editors of the Boston Atlas:
Gentlemen - We perused with pleasure an article in your daily of the 16th inst., copied at the earnest request of a New York correspondent, from the New York Herald of the 4th inst.
The writer appeals to your sense of fair play to do the New York clipper Contest justice, because, as he writes, several statements have appeared in the Boston papers, to the effect that the clipper ship Northern Light had beaten the clipper ship Contest on, the last voyage TO San Francisco and BACK, which he says is not the fact.
We have looked in vain to find a statement in any Boston paper that the Northern Light beat the Contest on the last voyage TO San Francisco and BACK; but we do state, and we believe it to be an indisputable fact, that the Northern Light beat the Contest on the passage back from San Francisco to Boston by four days of actual time, saying not a word about the difference in favor of a voyage from San Francisco to New York over one to Boston, which we claim to be as good as two days more.
Our New York friend, to prove, we suppose, that the Contest is the fastest sailer of the two ships, gives us extracts from the Log Book of the Contest, which go to show that the two ships were in company several days, and is the course of the last day the Contest left the Northern Light at nightfall lost in the astern distance. We have not been favored with the Log of the Northern Light, that we might compare accounts, but we have had the gratification of receiving information from a gentleman who came home a passenger in the Contest, which is substantially this, that on the evening of the 19th of April, a large ship was discovered right astern, which he expressed his opinion as being the Northern Light from the fact of her carrying but one, that a main skysail; at meridian of the day following she was abeam - remained in company two or three days, and when last seen was a few ahead as night set in, and was not seen again. We make this statement, not to strengthen the fact that the Northern Light is a very fast sailer, but to show how exceedingly at variance are the facts as stated in the Log of the Contest and by one who was a present and disinterested observer of the affair.
We do not, with our New York friend, see anything "very silly" in the terming of the Northern Light a fast, a very fast shipNorthern Light has made the shortest passage between the port of San Francisco and the Atlantic States upon record, and that her performance justly entitles her to wear that Commodore's broad pennant, which flies at her main; which, by the by, if it should have the effect of causing clipper owners and builders to strive and produce a model which shall surpass, in its sailing and other qualities, that of the Northern Light, will not have waved in vain, and we have no doubt but that the owners of the Northern Light would surrender it with a good grace to their conqueror whenever she comes along.
The gentleman to whom the Northern Light owes her beautiful and valuable model, was once heard to say that he believed 75 days would soon be a sufficient time for a clipper to accomplish her voyage in, from San Francisco to Boston; and we now congratulate him upon being so fortunate as to have already seen his prediction so nearly accomplished by a vessel constructed, in every respect, upon his own model. May she be to her owners as fortunate a vessel as she has proved herself FAST.
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Transcribed by Lars Bruzelius.
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