How the Wool Went Home Long Ago

Well within the memory of people who still call themselves middle-aged, practically the whole of the Australasian wool harvest was carried away by a fleet of what were, perhaps, the finest sailing ships the world has ever seen. Of them, at the present day, almost all that remains to us are their names and the records of the splendid passages made by those old-time greyhounds of the sea, as they roared home, jammed to the squares of their hatchways with their brisk and lively cargoes, and leaving a wake of stun'sl booms from Antipodes Island to Gape Horn. From the time the clipper threw off the towline of the tug and spread her kites, either abreast of Sydney Heads or those of Port Phillip, or well down the Gulfs of St. Vincent or Spencer, the word was "What she can't carry let her drag." And how the skippers of the fleet, eager to be home for the February wool sales, did crack on in those days!-- cracked on, and kept all standing after a fashion that would make the man who runs the tramp "sailer" of our times stare aghast and tremble for his steel topmasts.

-"Keep all fast" was the nickname that one skipper went by, from his invariable formula on his officers reporting the weather to him through the night watches.