1 1 THE STORY' OF OUR MERCHANT MARINE The Story of Our Merchant Marine Its period of glory, its prolonged decadence and its vigorous revival as the result of the world war BY WILLIS J. ABBOT Author of "The Story of Our Army" "The Story of Our "Soldiers of the Sea"^ etc. ILLUSTRATED BY RAY BROWN NEW YORK Dodd, Mead and Company 1919 Copyright, 1902 BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY As "American Merchant Ships and Sailors" Copyright, 1919 BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. Introduction No more perplexing nor more baffling problem con- fronts the people of the United States to-day than the future of the nation's merchant marine. For the first half century of our existence as a nation the sea was our greatest industrial field. Seafaring and international trade engaged our brightest minds and most adventurous spirits. By the middle of the iQth Century we had attained so preeminent a position on the ocean that 'we were the most important commerce carrier in the world. Then began a process of gradual decline until our overseas fleet had sunk to contemptible propor- tions. In 1913 less than ten per cent, of our exports and imports was carried in American bottoms. The reasons for this decline are many, and, despite the clamor of politicians, not all are connected with leg- islation or with political doctrines. It is quite true that the United States has always been niggardly in the mat- ter of subsidies, if not indeed absolutely antagonistic to that system. Accordingly we have seen the British mer- chant fleet greatly increased by government aid, while the German merchant marine, annihilated by the war, may fairly be said to have been raised to second place entirely by liberal subsidies. During this period the Con- gress of the United States stubbornly refused financial aid of this character to shipping corporations and our fleet, engaged in international or overseas trade fell below even those of France, Germany and Norway. But the subsidy idea came in with steam navigation and the decline of our merchant fleet was apparent even v vi INTRODUCTION before that era. In the body of this book the causes of this decline are fully discussed, but may be briefly stated thus: Iron as a shipbuilding material was more economically produced in England. England was earlier in designing and building marine engines. The Confederate cruisers destroyed many American ships, and drove others to the protection of foreign flags. England's wide distribution of colonies provided her with superior coaling stations all over the world. Lloyd's, as a British corporation, discriminated against American ships in registry and insurance. After the Civil War the work of developing our great interior domain turned American enterprise away from the sea. American high wages ashore and afloat made competition with England in building and manning ships difficult. The subsidy system has never appealed to American law- makers. Such, briefly stated, are the causes which brought the American merchant marine to its ignoble state prior to the war. All, with the possible exception of the concen- tration of American effort upon internal development, are operative to-day. The problem now confronting the American people is how to use the impetus furnished by war-time necessities to advance our merchant fleet to preeminence and keep it there under peace conditions. We have approaching completion an enormous fleet of cargo ships. When launched and outfitted they will put us first on the ocean. Can we retain that position ? Can we even retain a creditable second place, conceding first to Great Britain in view of her insular citadel and far- flung colonial empire? The questions are not easy to answer. Our ships have been built with war-time extravagance. The Gov- ernment will have to charge off hundreds of millions of their cost to put them on terms of economic equality with those of Great Britain. And are they to be owned INTRODUCTION vii by the Government or sold to private owners? If the latter what assurance have we that the desire for imme- diate profit will not result in their speedy resale to for- eign owners ? Perhaps the Government may merely lease them to private operators. Perhaps by this means enter- prise may be encouraged without recourse to the subsidy, against which American prejudice appears to be invet- erate. Do we want an American merchant marine manned by foreign sailors? Or do we want one manned by American sailors whose wages, by competition in the international labor market, have been reduced to the level at which the Japanese, Lascars or Chinese coolies are eager to work? Will the LaFollette seaman's law so fully protect the American sailor as to force the American ship off the seas? Or can it, in the midst of the great international reorganization now in progress at Paris, be made the basis for an international standard of sea- man's wages that will ameliorate the condition of a sorely underpaid and badly used body of men? All these questions confront the United States to-day as a new chapter in the history of her achievements on the high seas is opened. It is not claimed that this book furnishes the solutions of problems which must for long time to come tax the intellectual resources of our ablest statesmen. But there are gathered in this volume many of the facts which must be known if the nature of those problems is to be understood and progress to be made toward their solution. No apology is needed for the amount of space de- voted to the earlier triumphs of the United States upon the sea, and the romantic history of our sailors' achieve- ments in every phase of seafaring life. He who best knows what our seamen have done in the past will most viii INTRODUCTION efficiently join in the endeavor to open for them new and corresponding opportunities in the present. Despite the clash of argument concerning the reasons for the long decline of American shipping in the past the author is convinced that the chief and predominant cause was the diversion of the American mind to greater w opportunities for constructive effort, notably the build- ing of railroads, the development of the West, and the reorganization of productive industries on a large scale. To a great extent these tasks have been accomplished. The attention of our people is again turned toward the sea, and the assumption and maintenance of our proper position in international trade and maritime enterprise. We are forced to put away the parochialism and isola- tion of the past, and assume our place in the society of nations. That place can only be held by sea-power both naval and mercantile and as it becomes increas- ingly evident that the United States needs that power her citizens will infallibly supply it. Perhaps the situation could not better be described than it was by Mr. Edward N. Hurley, Chairman of the United States Shipping Board, in these words in the National Geographic Magazine: "We must make America ship-minded. We are so little ship-minded to-day that it is chiefly the difficulties of operation which occupy the thoughts of those who are giving any thought whatever to our merchant marine of to-morrow. . . . What people want they usually get. The American people to-day are alert to the importance of ships, and our national business genius will be equal to working out all the problems and overcoming all the difficulties." W. J. A. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE NEW ENGLAND EARLY TOOK THE LEAD IN BUILDING SHIPS Frontispiece THE SHALLOP 2 THE KETCH 5 "THE BROAD ARROW-MARKED TIMBER FIT FOR SHIPS" . 7 "THE FARMER-BUILDER AT THE HELM" .... 8 SCHOONER-RlGGED SHARPIE 11 ONE OF THE FIFTY WAYS AT HOG ISLAND SHIPYARDS facing 12 "AFTER A BRITISH LIEUTENANT HAD PICKED THE BEST OF HER CREW" 18 EARLY TYPE OF SMACK 21 ONE OF OUR NEW SHIPS TAKING WATER . . facing 24 THE SNOW, AN OBSOLETE TYPE 29 THE BUG-EYE 34 A "PINK" - .... 38 "INSTANTLY THE GUN WAS RUN OUT AND DISCHARGED" . 42 "THE WATER FRONT OF A GREAT SEAPORT LIKE NEW YORK" 55 AN ARMED CUTTER 57 "THE LOUD LAUGH OFTEN ROSE AT MY EXPENSE" . . 65 "THE DREADNAUGHT" NEW YORK AND LIVERPOOL PACKET 69 THERE ARE BUILDING IN AMERICAN YARDS . . facing 82 "A FAVORITE TRICK OF THE FLEEING SLAVER WAS TO THROW OVER SLAVES" 95 DEALERS WHO CAME ON BOARD WERE THEMSELVES KID- NAPPED facing 98 "THE ROPE WAS PUT AROUND His NECK" . . . .103 "BOUND THEM TO THE CHAIN CABLE" 114 "SENDING BOAT AND MEN FLYING INTO THE AIR" . . 128 "SUDDENLY THE MATE GAVE A HOWL 'STARN ALL !' " facing 132 "RoT AT MOULDERING WHARVES" 140 "THERE SHE BLOWS!" 144 "TAKING IT IN His JAWS" 146 NEARLY EVERY MAN ON THE QUARTERDECK OF THE "ARGO" WAS KILLED OR WOUNDED 162 THE PRISON SHIP "JERSEY" 163 ix x LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE IF THEY RETREATED FARTHER HE WOULD BLOW Up THE SHIP facing 176 "I THINK SHE is A HEAVY SHIP" 179 "STRIVING TO REACH HER DECKS AT EVERY POINT" . . 186 "THEY FELL DOWN AND DIED AS THEY WALKED" . . 199 "THE TREACHEROUS KAYAK" 203 THE SHIP WAS CAUGHT IN THE ICE PACK . . facing 204 ADRIFT ON AN ICE FLOE 206 DE LONG'S MEN DRAGGING THEIR BOATS OVER THE ICE . 210 THE WOODEN BATEAUX OF THE FUR TRADERS . . facing 230 "THE RED-MEN SET UPON THEM AND SLEW THEM ALL" . 235 ONE OF THE FIRST LAKE SAILORS 237 "TWO BOAT-LOADS OF REDCOATS BOARDED Us AND TOOK Us PRISONERS" 239 A VANISHING TYPE ON THE LAKES 243 "THE WHALEBACK" 247 FLATBOATS MANNED WITH RIFLEMEN . . . facing 266 "THE EVENING WOULD PASS IN RUDE AND HARMLESS JOLLITY" 271 THE MISSISSIPPI PILOT 286 A DECK LOAD OF COTTON 290 FEEDING THE FURNACE 293 ON THE BANKS 314 "THE BOYS MARKED THEIR FISH BY CurriNe OFF THEIR TAILS" 322 FISHING FROM THE RAIL 328 TRAWLING FROM A DORY 333 STRIKES A SCHOONER AND SHEARS THROUGH HER LIKE A KNIFE facing 334 REVENUE CUTTER 335 MILES OF SHIPYARDS GROWING WITH INCREDIBLE SPEED UPON A MARSH facing 340 MINOT'S LEDGE LIGHT 341 WHISTLING BUOY 350 LAUNCHING A LIFEBOAT THROUGH THE SURF . . .360 THE EXCITING MOMENT IN THE PILOT'S TRADE . facing 362 ONE OF OUR NEW MERCHANTMEN . . . facing 364 CONTENTS CHAPTER I. PAGE INTRODUCTORY PLIGHT OF THE UNITED STATES IN 1914 AN ENORMOUS DEMAND AND No SHIPS TO MEET IT THE EARLIE^JJ^T^Y^^OF^^OUR^ MERCHANT MARINE THE AMERICAN SHIP AND THE AMERICAN SAILOR NEW ENG- LAND'S LEAD ON THE OCEAN THE EARLIEST AMERICAN SHIP-BUILDING SHIP-BUILDING IN THE FORESTS AND ON THE FARM SOME EARLY TYPES THE FIRST SCHOONER AND THE FIRST FULL-RIGGED SHIP JEALOUSY AND ANTAG- ONISM OF ENGLAND THE PEST OF PRIVATEERING EN- COURAGEMENT FROM CONGRESS THJE GOLDEN DAYS OF OUR MERCHANT MARINE FIGHTING CAPTAINS AND^TRAD- ING CAPTAINS GROUND BETWEEN FRANCE AND ENGLAND CHECKED BY THE WARS SEALING AND WHALING INTO THE PACIFIC How YANKEE BOYS MOUNTED THE QUARTER- DECK SOME STORIES OF EARLY SEAMEN THE PACKETS AND THEIR EXPLOITS 1 CHAPTER II. THE TRANSITION FROM SAILS TO STEAM THE CHANGE IN MARINE ARCHITECTURE THE DEPOPULATION OF THE OCEAN CHANGES IN THE SAILOR'S LOT FROM WOOD TO STEEL THE INVENTION OF THE STEAMBOAT THE FATE OF FITCH FULTON'S LONG STRUGGLES OPPOSITION OF THE SCIEN- TISTSTHE "CLERMONT" THE STEAMBOAT ON THE OCEAN ON WESTERN RIVERS THE TRANS- ATLANTIC PASSAGE THE "SAVANAH" MAKES THE FIRST CROSSING ESTAB- LISHMENT OF BRITISH LINES EFFORTS OF UNITED STATES SHIP-OWNERS TO COMPETE THE FAMOUS COLLINS LINE THE CLIPPERS STEAM WINS GOLD AND THE PANAMA ROUTE THE COST OF THE WAR JHE DECLINE OF OUR SHIPPING 53 xi xii CONTENTS PAGE CHAPTER III. AN UGLY FEATURE OF EARLY SEAFARING THE SLAVE TRADE AND ITS PROMOTERS PART PLAYED BY EMINENT NEW ENG- LANDERS HOW THE TRADE GREW UP THE PlOUS AuS- PICES WHICH SURROUNDED THE TRAFFIC SLAVE- STEALING AND SABBATH-BREAKING CONDITIONS OF THE TRADE SIZE OF THE VESSELS How THE CAPTIVES WERE TREATED MUTINIES, MAN-STEALING, AND MURDER THE REVELA- TIONS OF THE ABOLITION SOCIETY EFFORTS TO BREAK UP THE TRADE AN AWFUL RETRIBUTION ENGLAND LEADS THE WAY DIFFICULTY OF ENFORCING THE LAW AMER- ICA'S SHAME THE END OF THE EVIL THE LAST SLAVER 89 CHAPTER IV. THE WHALING INDUSTRY ITS EARLY DEVELOPMENT IN NEW ENGLAND KNOWN TO THE ANCIENTS SHORE WHALING BEGINNINGS OF THE DEEP-SEA FISHERIES THE PRIZES OP WHALING PIETY OF ITS EARLY PROMOTERS THE RIGHT WHALE AND THE CACHALOT A FLURRY SOME FIGHTING WHALES THE "ESSEX" AND THE "ANN ALEXANDER" TYPES OF WHALERS DECADENCE OF THE INDUSTRY EFFECT OF OUR NATIONAL WARS THE EM- BARGO SOME STORIES OF WHALING LIFE. . . 121 CHAPTER V. THE PRIVATEERS PART TAKEN BY MERCHANT SAILORS IN BUILDING UP THE PRIVATEERING SYSTEM LAWLESS STATE OF THE HIGH SEAS METHOD OF DISTRIBUTING PRIVATEER- ING PROFITS PICTURESQUE FEATURES OF THE CALLING THE GENTLEMEN SAILORS EFFECTS ON THE REVOLU- TIONARY ARMY PERILS OF PRIVATEERING THE OLD JERSEY PRISON SHIP EXTENT OF PRIVATEERING EFFECT ON AMERICAN MARINE ARCHITECTURE SOME FAMOUS PRIVATEERS THE "CHASSEUR," THE "PRINCE DE NEUF- CHATEL," THE "MAM MOTH*' THE SYSTEM OF CONVOYS AND THE "RUNNING SHIPS" A TYPICAL PRIVATEER'S CONTENTS xiii PAGE BATTLE THE "GENERAL ARMSTRONG" AT FAYAL SUM- MARY OF THE WORK OF THE PRIVATEERS .155 CHAPTER VI. THE ARCTIC TRAGEDY AMERICAN SAILORS IN THE FROZEN DEEPTHE SEARCH FOR SIR JOHN* FRANKLIN REASONS FOR SEEKING THE NORTH POLE TESTIMONY OF SCIENTISTS AND EXPLORERS PERTINACITY OF POLAR VOYAGERS DR. KANE AND DR. HAYES CHARLES F. HALL, JOURNALIST AND EXPLORER MIRACULOUS ESCAPE OF His PARTY THE ILL-FATED "J EANNETTE " EXPEDITION SUFFERING AND DEATH OF DE LONG AND His COMPANIONS A PITIFUL DIARY THE GREELY EXPEDITION ITS CAREFUL PLAN AND COMPLETE DISASTER RESCUE OF THE GREELY SUR- VIVORSPEARY, WELLMAN, AND BALDWIN 193 CHAPTER VII. - THE GREAT LAKES THEIR SHARE IN THE MARITIME TRAFFIC OF THE UNITED STATES THE EARLIEST RECORDED VOYAG- ERS INDIANS AND FUR TRADERS THE PIGMY CANAL AT THE SAULT STE. MARIE BEGINNING OF NAVIGATION BY SAILS DE LA SALLE AND THE "GRIFFIN" RECOLLEC- TIONS OF EARLY LAKE SEAMEN THE LAKES AS A HIGH- WAY FOR WESTWARD EMIGRATION THE FIRST STEAMBOAT EFFECT OF MINERAL DISCOVERIES ON LAKE SUPERIOR THE ORE-CARRYING FLEET THE WHALES-BACKS THE SEAMEN OF THE LAKES THE GREAT CANAL AT THE "Soo" THE CHANNEL TO BUFFALO BARRED OUT FROM THE OCEAN, , , , , , ,,,,,,,,,, 227 CHAPTER VIII. THE MISSISSIPPI AND TRIBUTARY RIVERS THE CHANGING PHASES OF THEIR SHIPPING DRIVER NAVIGATION AS A NATION-BUILDING FORCE THE VALUE OF SMALL STREAMS WORK OF THE OHIO COMPANY AN EARLY PROPELLER THE FRENCH FIRST ON THE MISSISSIPPI THE SPANIARDS AT NEW ORLEANS EARLY METHODS OF NAVIGATION THE xiv CONTENTS PAGE FLATBOAT, THE BROADHORN, AND THE KEELBOAT LIFE OF THE RlVERMEN PlRATES AND BUCCANEERS LAFITTE AND THE BARATARIANS THE GENESIS OF THE STEAMBOATS CAPRICIOUS RIVER FLUSH TIMES IN NEW ORLEANS RAPID MULTIPLICATION OF STEAMBOATS RECENT FIGURES ON RIVER SHIPPING COMMODORE WHIPPLE'S EXPLOIT THE MEN WHO STEERED THE STEAMBOATS THEIR TECH- NICAL EDUCATION THE SHIPS THEY STEERED FIRES AND EXPLOSIONS HEROISM OF THE PILOTS THE RACES 261 CHAPTER IX. THE NEW ENGLAND FISHERIES THEIR PART IN EFFECTING THE SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA THEIR RAPID DEVELOPMENT WIDE EXTENT OF THE TRADE EFFORT OF LORD NORTH TO DESTROY IT THE FISHERMEN IN THE REVOLUTION EFFORTS TO ENCOURAGE THE INDUSTRY ITS PART IN POLITICS AND DIPLOMACY THE FISHING BANKS TYPES OF BOATS GROWTH OF THE FISHING COMMUNITIES FARMERS AND SAILORS BY TURNS THE EDUCATION OF THE FISHERMEN METHODS OF TAKING MACKEREL THE SEINE AND THE TRAWL SCANT PROFITS OF THE INDUSTRY PERILS OF THE BANKS SOME PERSONAL EXPERIENCES THE FOG AND THE FAST LINERS THE TRIBUTE OF HUMAN LIFE... . 303 CHAPTER X. THE FUTURE OF OUR MERCHANT MARINE How WAR STIM- ULATED IT ACTION OF CONGRESS DELAYS AND CONTRO- VERSIES WOOD OR STEEL? THE SHIPBUILDING PROGRAMME THE INDUSTRIAL CITIES THE PROBLEM OF LABOR TWENTY THOUSAND TONS AFLOAT INTERNATIONAL COM- PETITION COST OF MAINTAINING AMERICAN SHIPS FINDING AND TRAINING THE SAILORS 337 The Story of Our Merchant Marine CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY PLIGHT OF THE UNITED STATES IN 1914 AN ENOR- MOUS DEMAND AND No SHIPS TO MEET IT THE EARLIER HISTORY OF OUR MERCHANT MARINE THE AMERICAN SHIP AND THE AMERICAN SAILOR NEW ENGLAND'S LEAD ON THE OCEAN THE EARLIEST AMERICAN SHIP-BUILDINGSHIP- BUILDING IN THE FORESTS AND ON THE FARM SOME EARLY TYPES THE FIRST SCHOONER AND THE FIRST FULL-RIGGED SHIP JEALOUSY AND ANTAGONISM OF- ENGLAND THE PEST OF PRIVATEERING ENCOURAGEMENT FROM CONGRESS THE GOLDEN DAYS OF OUR MERCHANT MARINE FIGHTING CAP- TAINS AND TRADING CAPTAINS GROUND BETWEEN FRANCE AND ENGLAND CHECKED BY THE WARS SEALING AND WHAL- ING INTO THE PACIFIC How YANKEE BOYS MOUNTED THE QUARTER-DECK SOME STORIES OF EARLY SEAMEN THE PACKETS AND THEIR EXPLOITS. WHEN Robinson Crusoe after long and painstaking work had completed the pinnace by the aid of which he expected to escape from his desolate island he suddenly awoke to the fact that he had built it far from the water and had no possible way of transporting it to its true element. DeFoe, author of that immortal story well depicts the bitter disappointment and self-accusing wrath with which the luckless castaway was over- whelmed on recognizing the fatal effect of his initial blunder. But he makes Crusoe meet the disaster like a man, square his shoulders and set* about the building of another boat straitway. A great shock tests the quality OF OUR of a man and of a naton. It awakens each to a sense of some grave error, a recognition of some fatal defect by which their fortune or perhaps their lives may be endan- gered. If man or nation has courage, determination, the THE SHALLOP ability to withstand adversity and to surmount obstacles in brief what we call backbone such a reverse is in the end an advantage, for it brings out all that is bravest MERCHANT MARINE 3 and best in the sufferer and enables him to mount on a stairway of new and wiser endeavor to heights never before attained. When the great war in Europe broke out in 1914 the United States was in somewhat the position of Robinson Crusoe with his boat. It had food and products of every sort which were eagerly desired by the belligerent nations, and which our people no less eagerly desired to sell. But we had practically no ships in which to carry our products to the foreign markets. Most happily for the Allied cause which after almost three years of hesita- tion we joined Great Britain had a prodigious mer- chant marine and an invincible navy with which to pro- tect its cargo ships. Had the condition been reversed, had Germany possessed at sea the power she wielded on land, the result of the war would inevitably have been German victory. For as, during our years of neutrality our foodstuffs and our manufactures were equally at the disposal of any belligerent who was able to carry them away, Germany would then have monopolized our products and swiftly starved England into subjection. Without a navy adequate to meet that of Great Britain in combat, Germany endeavored to accomplish this end with her submarines, and in due time the lawless pro- cedure of her U-boats forced this country into war. Then indeed the nation awoke to the error which had allowed its merchant marine to languish through more than half a century of government neglect. We could, and did, create a monster army in but a few months' time. Our munitions factories which had long been working day and night for our allies could readily divert their activities to furnishing our own men with cannon and shells, airplanes and tanks, rifles, bayonets, grenades, asphyxiating gas and liquid fire. As a workshop our 4 THE STORY OF OUR efficiency was beyond dispute, but we lacked a delivery system. This situation was the more intolerable because the time had been as will be shown later in this volume when the United States had led all nations on the ocean, when the Stars and Stripes were to be encountered in the most out-of-the-way corners of the world, and when Great Britain herself was forced to yield preeminence afloat to the sailors of the land that had thrown off her domination. But the past, however glorious, could not come to our aid in the war-torn present. The clippers of Baltimore and of Salem, the prowling schooners of Maine, the bluff-bowed brigs of New Bedford, the liners with towering masts and clouds of canvas that had once sailed from New York were vanished. We wanted to supply a world with meats, grain and other foodstuffs, to equip battling armies with great guns and high ex- plosives, to send over in due time an army of our own which it seemed might number 5,000,000 men and to keep each of these supplied and equipped. The phantom ships of the past were of no service to this end. We needed huge fleets of cargo carriers at once. Men esti- mated that three tons to the man in the field was the amount of shipping needed. One million men was the least we thought of for the first year's contribution of the United States to the Allied armies in France. That made 3,000,000 tons of shipping. All the ocean-going ships under American registry at the moment amounted to 2,191,000 tons. Whence were we to obtain the other 900,000 tons ? Indeed, that is not a fair statement of the propor- tions of the problem. For we had not only to create a gigantic merchant fleet, but we had to maintain it at its fullest size. And when we entered the war the Germans MERCHANT MARINE 5 were sinking ships at the rate of 500,000 tons a month. Von Tirpitz, and other extremists of the German admir- alty, held forth to their countrymen the pleasing promise that, freed from restraints which the neutrality of the United States imposed, they could easily sink a million tons a month and thus bring England to her knees. Had THE KETCH they been able to accomplish this enormous execution, that result might fairly have followed, but the British and Amercan navies found at least a partial remedy for the submarine before it had brought famine very close to the people of the British Isles. However, what the United States had to face was 6 THE STORY OF OUR the immediate necessity of a fleet of not less than 6,000,- ooo tons, and the construction of new vessels at such a rate as would not merely replace all losses inflicted by submarines, but would at least double the effective size of the fleet during the period of the war, which, when the United States entered upon it, few people thought would be ended in less than two years. Some idea of the proportions of this problem may be derived from the record of ship construction and ship losses by the Allies during the period of the war ending in February, 1917 the date of the entrance of the United States. During that time the shipyards of Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy and Japan turned out 2,800,000 tons of new ships while the submarines took away a little more than 3,000,000. And this was the outcome of the con- test between the builders and the sinkers of ships, during the period when the latter were just beginning to test out the efficacy of their almost untried submarines, and were still restrained to some extent by the insistence of the United States and other neutrals that the new weapon should not be used in a way revolting to humanity, and in flagrant violation of recognized principles of inter- national law. At the moment the shipping of the world in the hands of nations either neutral or at war with the Teutonic alliance amounted to 25,500,000 tons in Atlantic waters and 5,500,000 tons in the Pacific. Every hull was busy. It was the golden moment for ship owners. Old square- rigged wind-jammers that had been laid up for years, and that might never again hope to breast a blue sea, were outfitted and made fortunes for their owners. New wooden ships, hastily constructed, paid for themselves in their first voyage. Lake boats and harbor craft were "sent out into the ocean and reaped golden rewards. MERCHANT MARINE ^ In the list of ship-owning nations the United States ranked second. But the rank was illusory. Great Britain came first with some 14,000,000 tons of ocean-going ves- sels available. The United States followed a very bad second with 2,400,000 tons, classed as "available" by THE BROAD ARROW MARKED TIMBER FIT FOR SHIPS the Shipping Board. But much of our tonnage was of coastwise craft or vessels designed for special service like oil tanks. Moreover, it is a melancholy fact that our gross tonnage in 1917 was almost precisely what it 8 THE STORY OF OUR was in 1891. In that period the gross tonnage of other nations had more than doubled. For actual all-round ocean-going service the 2,300,000 tons of Norway, the 1,600,000 tons of Holland, the 1,800,000 tons of France or the 1,400,000 tons of Italy were more serviceable though ours stood higher in the statistical table. The character of our fleet was unfortunate. What we needed was swift passenger vessels to carry troops to Europe of these we had not half a dozen and com- modious cargo ships for carrying supplies. The largest number of our modern ships were oil tanks, admirable for the purpose of carrying oil in tanks to all quarters of the world, but unfit for the passenger, or package "THE FARMER-BUILDER AT THE HELM" freight service which was war's first need. Many were fruit ships designed for navigation in the tropics. We had only two trans-Atlantic liners suitable for passenger use, and when the war broke out these had just been MERCHANT MARINE 9 reduced by the companies operating them to the grade of second-class ships. About one-eighth of our total fleet had passenger accommodations, and these were mainly coasters. It is proper, however, to note that be- cause of the distance between our ports and the nature of the seas to be navigated the American coaster is a superior craft to those of the same class in European waters. For example, a ship sailing between New York and New Orleans or Galveston undertakes a voyage equal in possible peril to that of the average trans-Atlantic liner, and far exceeding anything in length which comes in the regular service of a British or French coaster. Many of these performed most efficient service as trans- ports, two at least, the "Antilles" and the "Covington," going down before the deadly stroke of the submarines. While but about 2,400,000 tons oLour shipping in 1917 was classed by the Shipping Board as available for war purposes, the gross tonnage of the United States mer- chant marine was greater than this. We had at that time, of craft of over 100 gross tons each, about 8,600,000 tons. Of these 4,000,000 were in the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and Pacific coast trade; about 3,000,000 tons on the Great Lakes and the rest in international trade. Our total tonnage was about one and one-half times as great as that of Germany, but hers was practically wholly made up of ships in international trade. Indeed, the German ships interned in American harbors and seized by us upon our declaration of war greatly exceeded in tonnage and value the entire United States fleet en- gaged in trans-Atlantic trade. Such then stated in a broad and general way was the condition of the United States merchant marine when the sudden shock of war compelled the nation to take steps for building it up to proportions commensurate io THE STORY OF OUR with the needs and dignity of the nation. Before telling the story of that belated endeavor to revive a shipping that had once led all the world, let us take up the long narrative of the beginnings of the United States merchant marine, its rise to the very first place on the seas, and its gradual sinking to the ignoble position it occupied when a World War galvanized it into life once more. It was but natural that the people of British origin who settled our Atlantic seaboard after the middle of the Seventeenth Century should have turned to seafaring as a pursuit. They were sprung from the greatest mari- time nation of the day. They were separated from their earlier homes and from their immediate markets by the ocean. In New England, at least, they inhabited a rugged and sterile country, responding but reluctantly to the efforts of the farmer, and they naturally looked for their livelihood to other occupations than that of agriculture. In a way the sea forced upon them the evidences of the wealth hidden in its capricious bosom. The waters bor- dering their coasts abounded with fish. The rivers such as the Connecticut, the Thames and the Penobscot so teemed with salmon coming up from the sea to spawn that it was the practice of farm hands taking employ- ment to stipulate that they should not be called upon to eat salmon more than a certain number of times a week. The rich fisheries of the Newfoundland Banks had been known in Europe even before the establishment of the American colonies, and one of the causes of the Revolu- tion was the endeavor of Lord North's ministry to shut the colonists off from fishing in these populous waters. The whales frequented New England waters long before New Englanders by the thousands began prowling into seas on the other side of the continent in pursuit of the retreating animals. TJie gigantic carcasses of these MERCHANT MARINE II cetaceans washed up on New England shores taught the people the worth of whale-oil and whalebone, and for years whaling was practiced in open boats within sight of Nantucket and the shores of Cape Cod. SCHOONER -RIGGED SHARPIE Naturally the beginnings of maritime enterprise on this side of the Atlantic were small, and little celebrated in history. The first vessel of which we have record was the "Virginia," described at the time as a "faire pin- nace of 30 tons," built at the mouth of the Kennebec in 1608 to carry home a group of discontented colonists. There followed a decked vessel of 16 tons, built on the Hudson in 1615, and in 1631 'The Blessing of the Bay," a sloop of 60 tons built on the Mystic River, by the 12 THE STORY OF OUR doughty John Winthrop, Governor of the Colony, and begun on July 4, 1631 a month and day destined to find fame in connection with the launching of a ship of state. Ten years later a ship of 300 tons burden was launched at Salem a bigger craft than the "Mayflower" which had brought over the colony, and bigger by far than 90 per cent, of the ships in the British merchant marine. So with that year the business of ship building may be looked upon as definitely established among the leading New England industries. By that time most European ports were beginning to show the clearances of American vessels. This was but natural. Nowhere in the world were there such forests of great towering pines and sturdy oaks close to the water's edge, so that the work of making a clearing for a shipyard furnished much of the timber for the first ships. The tall, straight pines of Maine and New Hampshire furnished masts for the ships of Drake and Rodney, and not infrequently a colony, in the days of loyalty to the Crown, would send a present of these stately spars of from 33 to 35 inches in diameter. The navigable rivers, extending into the trackless forests, enabled the shipbuilders to do their work where the timber was standing. Farmers during the winter built small craft from the forests on their own lands, and many of the farmers' boys took the ship built in their dooryard, loaded her with their own and their neighbor's produce and took her to the markets of Portsmouth, Bos- ton or New York. The types of craft making up our early fleets have largely disappeared. Even the names need explanation to-day. The ketch was a two-master, sometimes with lanteen sails, but more commonly with a square rigged foremast, and a mainmast carrying a fore-and-aft sail OXE OF THE FIFTY WAYS AT HOG ISLAND SHIPYARDS MERCHANT MARINE 13 topped with a square topsail. The snow was practically a brig, but with a fore-and-aft sail on the mainmast. A pink was a schooner without bowsprit or jib. The shal- lop, the bug-eye, the sharpie, the smack had each definite characteristics, and the sharpie in Long Island Sound and the bug-eye in Chesapeake Bay still persist. But of all craft the New England schooner had most effect on marine architecture. Built first at Gloucester in 1713 it derived its name from the shout of a bystander as the hull slid lightly from the ways into the water. "See how she scoons," he exclaimed, and the proud owner shouted, "A schooner let her be." By 1642 they were building good-sized vessels at Boston, and the year following was launched the first full- rigged ship, the "Trial," which went to Malaga, and brought back "wine, fruit, oil, linen and wool, which was a great advantage to the country, and gave encouragement to trade." A year earlier there set out the modest fore- runner of our present wholesale spring pilgrimages to Europe. A ship set sail for London from Boston "with many passengers, men of chief rank in the country, and great store of beaver. Their adventure was very great, considering the doubtful estate of affairs of, England, but many prayers of the churches went with them and fol- lowed after them." By 1698 Governor Bellomont was able to say of Bos- ton alone, "I believe there are more good vessels belong- ing to the town of Boston than to all Scotland and Ire- land." Thereafter the business rapidly developed, until in a map of about 1730 there are noted sixteen shipyards. Rope walks, too, sprung up to furnish rigging, and pres- ently for these Boston was a centre. Another industry, less commendable, grew up in this as in other shipping 14 THE STORY OF OUR centres. Molasses was one of the chief staples brought from the West Indies, and it came in quantities far in excess of any possible demand from the colonial sweet tooth. But it could be made into rum, and in those days rum was held an innocent beverage, dispensed like water at all formal gatherings, and used as a matter of course in the harvest fields, the shop, and on the deck at sea. Moreover, it had been found to have a special value as currency on the west coast of Africa. The negro savages manifested a more than civilized taste for it, and were ready to sell their enemies or their friends, their sons, fathers, wives, or daughters into slavery in exchange for the fiery fluid. So all New England set to turning the good molasses into fiery rum, and while the slave trade throve abroad the rum trade prospered at home. Of course the rapid advance of the colonies in ship- building and in maritime trade was not regarded in Eng- land with unqualified pride. The theory of that day and one not yet wholly abandoned was that a colony was a mine, to be worked for the sole benefit of the mother country. It was to buy its goods in no other market. It was to use the ships of the home government alone for its trade across seas. It must not presume to manufacture for itself articles which merchants at home desired to sell. England early strove to impress such trade regula- tions upon the American colonies, and succeeded in em- barrassing and handicapping them seriously, although evasions of the navigation laws were notorious, and were winked at by the officers of the crown. The restrictions were sufficiently burdensome, however, to make the ship- owners and sailors of 1770 among those most ready and eager for the revolt against the king. The close of the Revolution found American shipping in a reasonably prosperous condition. It is true that the MERCHANT MARINE 15 peaceful vocation of the seamen had been interrupted, all access to British ports denied them, and their voyages to Continental markets had for six years been attended by the ever-present risk of capture and condemnation. But on the other hand, the war had opened the way for priva- teering, and out of the ports of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut the privateers swarmed like swal- lows from a chimney at dawn. To the adventurous and not over-scrupulous men who followed it, privateering was a congenial pursuit so much so, unhappily, that when the war ended, and a treaty robbed their calling of its guise of lawfulness, too many of them still continued it, braving the penalties of piracy for the sake of its gains. But during the period of the Revolution privateering did the struggling young nation two services it sorely har- assed the enemy, and it kept alive the seafaring zeal and skill of the New Englanders. For a time it seemed that not all this zeal and skill could replace the maritime interests where they were when the Revolution began. For most people in the colonies independence meant a broader scope of activity to the shipowner and sailor it meant new and serious limitations. England was still engaged in the effort to monopolize ocean traffic by the operation of tariffs and navigation laws. New England having become a foreign nation, her ships were denied admittance to the ports of the British West Indies, with which for years a flourish- ing trade had been conducted. Lumber, corn, fish, live stock, and farm produce had been sent to the islands, and coffee, sugar, cotton, rum, and indigo brought back. This commerce, which had come to equal 3,500,000 a year, was shut off by the British after American independence, despite the protest of Pitt, who saw clearly that the West Indians would suffer even more than the Americans. 16 THE STORY OF OUR Time showed his wisdom. Terrible sufferings came upon the West Indies for lack of the supplies they had been accustomed to import, and between 1780 and 1787 as many as 15,000 slaves perished from starvation. Another cause held the American merchant marine in check for several years succeeding the declaration of peace. If there be one interest which must have behind it a well-organized, coherent national government, able to protect it and to enforce its rights in foreign lands, it is the shipping interest. But American ships, after the Treaty of Paris, hailed from thirteen independent but puny States. They had behind them the shadow of a confederacy, but no substance. The flags they carried were not only not respected in foreign countries they were not known. Moreover, the States were jealous of each other, possessing no true community of interest, and each seeking advantage at the expense of its neighbors. They were already beginning to adopt among themselves the very tactics of harassing and crippling navigation laws which caused the protest against Great Britain. This "Critical Period of American History," as Professor Fiske calls it, was indeed a critical period for American shipping. The new government, formed under the Constitution, was prompt to recognize the demands of the shipping interests upon the country. In the very first measure adopted by Congress steps were taken to encourage Amer- ican shipping by differential duties levied on goods im- ported in American and foreign vessels. Moreover, in the tonnage duties imposed by Congress an advantage of almost 50 per cent, was given ships built in the United States and owned abroad. Under this stimulus the ship- ping interests throve, despite hostile legislation in Eng- land, and the disordered state of the high seas, where MERCHANT MARINE 17 French and British privateers were only a little less preda- tory than Algierian corsairs or avowed pirates. It was at this early day that Yankee skippers began making those long voyages that are hardly paralleled to-day when steamships hold to a single route like a trolley car between two towns. The East Indies was a favorite trading point. Carrying a cargo suited to the needs of perhaps a dozen different peoples, the vessel would put out from Boston or Newport, put in at Madeira perhaps, or at some West Indian port, dispose of part of its cargo, and proceed, stopping again and again on its way, and exchanging its goods for money or for articles thought to be more salable in the East Indies. Arrived there, all would be sold, and a cargo of tea, coffee, silks, spices, nankeen cloth, sugar, and other products of the country taken on. If these goods did not prove salable at home the* ship would make yet another voyage and dispose of them at Hamburg or some other Continental port. In 1785 a Baltimore ship showed the Stars and Stripes in the Canton River, China. In 1788 the ship "Atlantic," of Salem, visited Bombay and Calcutta., The effect of being barred from British ports was not, as the British had expected, to put an abrupt end to American maritime enterprise. It only sent our hardy seamen on longer voyages, only brought our merchants into touch with the commerce of the most distant lands. Industry, like men, sometimes thrives upon obstacles. For twenty-five years succeeding the adoption of the Constitution the maritime interest both shipbuilding and shipowning thrived more, perhaps, than any other /gainful industry pursued by the Americans. Yet it was a time when every imaginable device was employed to keep our people out of the ocean-carrying trade. The British regulations, which denied us access to their ports, were imitated by the French. The Napoleonic wars came i8 THE STORY OF OUR on, and the belligerents bombarded each other with orders in council and decrees that fell short of their mark, but did havoc among neutral merchantmen. To the ordinary perils of the deep the danger of capture lawful or unlaw- ful fay cruiser or privateer, was always to be added. The British were still enforcing their so-called "right of search," and many an American ship was left short- handed far out at sea, after a British naval lieutenant had 'AFTER A BRITISH LIEUTENANT HAD PICKED THE BEST OF HER CREW" picked the best of her crew on the pretense that they were British subjects. The superficial differences between an American and an Englishman not being as great as those MERCHANT MARINE 19 between an albino and a Congo black, it is not surprising that the boarding officer should occasionally make mis- takes particularly when his ship was in need of smart, active sailors. Indeed, in those years the civilized by which at that period was meant the warlike nations were all seeking sailors. Dutch, Spanish, French, and English were eager for men to man their fighting ships ; hired them when they could, and stole them when they must. It was the time of the press gang, and the day when sailors carried as a regular part of their kit an out- fit of women's clothing in which to escape if the word were passed that "the press is hot to-night." The United States had never to resort to impressment to fill its navy ships' companies, a fact perhaps due chiefly to the small size of its navy in comparison with the seafaring popula- tion it had to draw from. As for the American merchant marine, it was full of British seamen. Beyond doubt inducements were offered them at every American port to desert and ship under the Stars and Stripes. In the winter of 1801 every British ship visiting New York lost the greater part of its crew. At Norfolk the entire crew of a British merchantman deserted to an American sloop-of-war. A lively trade was done in forged papers of American citizenship, and the British naval officer who gave a boat-load of blue- jackets shore leave at New York was liable to find them all Americans when their leave was up. Other nations looked covetously upon our great body of able-bodied seamen, born within sound of the swash of the surf, nur- tured in the fisheries, able to build, to rig, or to navigate a ship. They were fighting sailors, too, though serving only in the merchant marine. In those days the men that went down to the sea in ships had to be prepared to fight other antagonists than Neptune and JEolus. All the ships 20 THE STORY OF OUR went armed. It is curious to read in old annals of the number of cannon carried by small merchantmen. We find the "Prudent Sarah" mounting 10 guns; the "Olive Branch," belied her peaceful name with 3, while the pink "Friendship" carried 8. These years, too, were the privateers' harvest time. During the Revolution the ships owned by one Newburyport merchant took 23,360 tons of shipping and 225 men, the prizes with their cargoes sell- ing for $3,950,000. But of the size and the profits of the privateering business more will be said in the chapter devoted to that subject. It is enough to note here that it made the American merchantman essentially a fighting man. The growth of American shipping during the years 1794-1810 is almost incredible in face of the obstacles put in its path by hostile enactments and the perils of the war. In 1794 United States ships, aggregating 438,863 tons, breasted the waves, carrying fish and staves to the West Indies, bringing back spices, rum, cocoa, and coffee Sometimes they went from the W'est Indies to the Ca- naries, and thence to the west coast of Africa, where very valuable and very pitiful cargoes of human beings, whose black skins were thought to justify their treatment as dumb beasts of burden, were shipped. Again the East Indies opened markets for buying and selling both. But England and almost the whole of Western Europe were closed. It is not possible to understand the situation in which the American sailor and shipowner of that day was placed, without some knowledge of the navigation laws and bel- ligerent orders by which the trade was vexed. In 1793 the Napoleonic wars began, to continue with slight inter- ruptions until 1815. France and England were the chief contestants, and between them American shipping was MERCHANT MARINE 21 sorely harried. The French at first seemed to extend to the enterprising Americans a boon of incalculable value to the maritime interest, for the National Convention promulgated a decree giving to neutral ships practically to American ships, for they were the bulk of the neutral shipping the rights of French ships. Overjoyed by this EARLY TYPE OF SMACK sudden opening of a rich market long closed, the Yankee barks and brigs slipped out of the New England harbors in schools, while the shipyards rung with the blows of the hammers, and the forest resounded with the shouts of the woodsmen getting out ship-timbers. The ocean 22 THE STORY OF OUR pathway to the French West Indies was flecked with sails, and the harbors of St. Kitts, Guadaloupe, and Martinique were crowded. But this bustling trade was short-lived. The argosies that set forth on their peaceful errand were shattered by enemies more dreaded than wind or sea. Many a ship reached the port eagerly sought only to rot there; many a merchant was beggared, nor knew what had befallen his hopeful venture until some belated con- sular report told of its condemnation in some French or English admiralty court. For England met France's hospitality with a new stroke at American interests. The trade was not neutral, she said. France had been forced to her concession by war. Her people were starving because the vigilance of British cruisers had driven French cruisers from the seas, and no food could be imported. To permit Americans to purvey food for the French colonies would clearly be to undo the good work of the British navy. Obviously food was contraband of war. So all English men-of-war were ordered to seize French goods on whatever ship found; to confiscate cargoes of wheat, corn, or fish bound for French ports as contraband, and particularly to board all American merchantmen and scrutinize the crews for English-born sailors. The latter injunction was obeyed with peculiar zeal, so that the State Department had evi- dence that at one time, in 1806, there were as many as 6000 American seamen serving unwillingly in the British navy. France, meanwhile, sought retaliation upon England at the expense of the Americans. The United States, said the French government, is a sovereign nation. If it does not protect its vessels against unwarrantable British aggressions it is because the Americans are secretly in league with the British. France recognizes no difference MERCHANT MARINE 23 between its foes. So it is ordered that any American vessel which submitted to visitation and search from an English vessel, or paid dues in a British port, ceased to be neutral, and became subject to capture by the French. The effect of these orders and decrees was simply that any American ship which fell in with an English or French man-of-war or privateer, or was forced by stress of weather to seek shelter in an English or French port, was lost to her owners. The times were rude, evidence was easy to manufacture, captains were rapacious, admir- alty judges were complaisant, and American commerce was rich prey. The French West Indies fell an easy spoil to the British, and at Martinique and Basseterre American merchantmen were caught in the harbor. Their crews were impressed, their cargoes, not yet discharged, seized, the vessels themselves wantonly destroyed or libelled as prizes. Nor were passengers exempt from the rigors of search and plunder. The records of the State Department and the rude newspapers of the time are full of the com- plaints of shipowners, passengers, and shipping mer- chants. The robbery was prodigious in its amount, the indignity put upon the nation unspeakable. And yet the least complaint came from those who suffered most. The New England seaport towns were rilled with idle seamen, their harbors with pinks, schooners, and brigs, lying lazily at anchor. The sailors, with the philosophy of men long accustomed to submit themselves to nature's moods and the vagaries of breezes, cursed British and French im- partially, and joined in the general depression and idle- ness of the towns and counties dependent on their activity. It was about this period (1794) that the American navy was begun ; though, curiously enough, its foundation was not the outcome of either British or French depredations, but of the piracies of the Algerians. That fierce and 24 THE STORY OF OUR predatory people had for long years held the Mediter- ranean as a sort of a private lake into which no nation might send its ships without paying tribute. With singu- lar cowardice, all the European peoples had acquiesced in this conception save England alone. The English were feared by the Algerians, and an English pass which tradition says the illiterate Corsairs identified by measuring its enscrolled border, instead of by reading protected any vessel carrying it. American ships, how- ever, were peculiarly the prey of the Algerians, and many an American sailor was sold by them into slavery until Decatur and Rodgers in 1805 thrashed the piratical states of North Africa into recognition of American power. In 1794, however, the Americans were not eager for war, and diplomats strove to arrange a treaty which would protect American shipping, while Congress prudently or- dered the beginning of six frigates, work to be stopped if peace should be made with the Dey. The treaty not one very honorable to us was indeed made some months later, and the frigates long remained unfinished. It has been the fashion of late years to sneer at our second war with England as unnecessary and inconclu- sive. But no one who studies the records of the life, in- dustry, and material interests of our people during the years between the adoption of the Constitution and the outbreak of that war can fail to wonder that it did not come sooner, and that it was not a war with France as well as England. For our people were then essentially a maritime people. Their greatest single manufacturing industry was ship-building. The fisheries whale, her- ring, and cod employed thousands of their men and sup- ported more than one considerable town. The markets for their products lay beyond seas, and for their com- merce an undisputed right to the peaceful passage of the . ONE OF OUR NKW SHIPS TAKING WATER MERCHANT MARINE 25 ocean was necessary. Yet England and France, prose- cuting their own quarrel, fairly ground American ship- ping as between two millstones. Our sailors were pressed, our ships seized, their cargoes stolen, under hol- low forms of law. The high seas were treated as though they were the hunting preserves of these nations and American ships were quail and rabbits. The London "Naval Chronicle" at that time, and for long after, bore at the head of its columns the boastful lines : "The sea and waves are Britain's broad domain, And not a sail but by permission spreads." And France, while vigorously denying the maxim in so far as it related to British domination, was not able to see that the ocean could be no one nation's domain, but must belong equally to all. It was the time when the French were eloquently discoursing of the rights of man ; but they did not appear to regard the peaceful navi- gation of the ocean as one of those rights; they were preaching of the virtues of the American republic, but their rulers issued orders and decrees that nearly brought the two governments to the point of actual war. But the very fact that France and England were almost equally arrogant and aggressive delayed the formal dec- laration of hostilities. Within the United States two political parties the Federalists and the Republicans were struggling for mastery. The one defended, though half-heartedly, the British, and demanded drastic action against the French spoliators. The other denounced British insolence and extolled our ancient allies and brothers in republicanism, the French. While the poli- ticians quarreled the British stole our sailors and the French stole our ships. In 1798 our, then infant, navy gave bold resistance to the French ships, and for a time 26 THE STORY OF OUR a quasi-war was waged on the ocean, in which the frig- ates "Constitution" and "Constellation" laid the founda- tion for that fame which they were to finally achieve in the war with Great Britain in 1812. No actual war with France grew out of her aggressions. The Republicans came into power in the United States, and by diplomacy averted an actual conflict. But the American shipping interests suffered sadly meanwhile. The money finally paid by France as indemnity for her unwarranted spolia- tions lay long undivided in the United States Treasury, and the easy-going labor of urging and adjudicating French spoliation claims furnished employment to some generations of politicians after the despoiled seamen and shipowners had gone down into their graves. fin 1800 the whole number of American ships in for- eign and coasting trades and the fisheries had reached a tonnage of 972,492. The growth was constant, despite the handicap resulting from the European wars. Indeed, it is probable that those wars stimulated American ship- ping more than the restrictive decrees growing out of them retarded it, for they at least kept England and France (with her allies) out of the active encouragement of maritime enterprise. But the vessels of that day were mere pigmies, and the extent of the trade carried on in them would at this time seem trifling. The gross ex- ports and imports of the United States in 1800 were about $75,000,000 each. The vessels that carried them were of about 250 tons each, the largest attaining 400 tons. An irregular traffic was carried on along the coast, and it was 1801 before the first sloop was built to ply regu- larly on the Hudson between New York and Albany. She was of 100 tons, and carried passengers only. Some- times the trip occupied a week, and the owner of the sloop established an innovation by supplying beds, pro- MERCHANT MARINE 27 visions, and wines for his passengers. Between Boston and New York communication was still irregular, pas- sengers waiting for cargoes. But small as this maritime interest now seems, more money was invested in it, and it occupied more men, than any other American industry, save only agriculture. To this period belong such shipowners as William Gray, of Boston, who in 1809, though he had sixty great square-rigged ships in commission, nevertheless heartily approved of the embargo with which President Jefferson vainly strove to combat the outrages of France and Eng- land. Though the commerce of those days was world- wide, its methods particularly on the bookkeeping side were primitive. "A good captain," said Merchant Gray, "will sail with a load of fish to the West Indies, hang up a stocking in the cabin on arriving, put therein hard dollars as he sells fish, and pay out when he buys rum, molasses, and sugar, and hand in the stocking on his return in full of all accounts." The West Indies, though a neighboring market, were far from monopolizing the attention of the New England shipping merchants. Gin- seng and cash were sent to China for silks and tea, the voyage each way, around the tempestuous Horn, occupy- ing six months. In 1785 the publication of the journals of the renowned explorer, Captain Cook, directed the ever-alert minds of the New Englanders to the great herds of seal and sea-otters on the northwestern coast of the United States, and vessels were soon faring thither in pursuit of fur-bearing animals, then plentiful, but now bidding fair to become as rare as the sperm-whale. A typical expedition of this sort was that of the ship "Co- lumbia," Captain Kendrick, and the sloop "Washington," Captain Gray, which sailed September 30, 1787, bound to the northwest coast and China. The merchant who 28 THE STORY OF OUR saw his ships drop down the bay bound on such a voyage said farewell to them for a long time perhaps forever. Years must pass before he could know whether the money he had invested, the cargo he had adventured, the stout ships he had dispatched, were to add to his fortune or to be at last a total loss. Perhaps for months he 1 might be going about the wharves and coffee-houses, esteeming himself a man of substance and so held by all his neighbors, while in fact his all lay whitening in the surf on some far-distant Pacific atoll. So it was al- most three years before news came back to Boston of these two ships; but then it was glorious, for then the "Federalist," of New York, came into port, bringing tid- ings that at Canton she had met the "Columbia/' and had been told of the discovery by that vessel of the great river in Oregon to which her name had been given. Thus Oregon and Washington were given to the infant Union, the latter perhaps taking its name from the little sloop of 90 tons which accompanied the "Columbia" on her voyage. Six months later the two vessels reached Boston, and were greeted with salutes of cannon from the forts. They were the first American vessels to circumnavigate the globe. It is pleasant to note that a voyage which was so full of advantage to the nation was profitable to the owners. Thereafter an active trade was done with mis- cellaneous goods to the northwest Indians, skins and furs thence to the Chinese, and teas home. A typical out- bound cargo in this trade was that of the "Atakualpa" in 1800. The vessel was of 218 tons, mounted eight guns, and was freighted with broadcloth, flannel, blankets, powder, muskets, watches, tools, beads, and looking- glasses. How great were the proportions that this trade speedily assumed may be judged from the fact that be- tween June, 1800, and January, 1803, there were im- MERCHANT MARINE 29 ported into China, in American vessels, 34,357 sea-otter skins, worth on an average $18 to $20 each. Over a million sealskins were imported. In this trade were em- ployed 80 ships and 9 brigs and schooners, more than half of them from Boston. THE 8NOW, AN OBSOLETE TYPE Indeed, by the last decade of the eighteenth century Boston had become the chief shipping port of the United States. In 1790 the arrivals from abroad at that port 30 THE STORY OF OUR were 60 ships, 7 snows, 159 brigs, 170 schooners, 59 sloops, besides coasters estimated to number 1,220 sail. In the Independent Chronicle, of October 27, 1791, ap- pears the item: "Upwards of seventy sail of vessels sailed from this port on Monday last, for all parts of the world." A descriptive sketch, written in 1794 and printed in the Massachusetts Historical Society collections, says of the appearance of the water front at that time : "There are eighty wharves and quays, chiefly on the east side of the town. Of these the most distinguished is Boston pier, or the Long Wharf, which extends from the bottom of State Street 1,743 feet into the harbor. Here the principal navigation of the town is carried on ; vessels of all burdens load and unload; and the London ships generally discharge their cargoes. . . . The harbor of Boston is at this date crowded with vessels. It is reckoned that not less than 450 sail of ships, brigs, schooners, sloops, and small craft are now in this port." New York and Baltimore, in a large way; Salem, Hull, Portsmouth, New London, New Bedford, New Haven, and a host of smaller seaports, in a lesser degree, joined in this prosperous industry. It was the great in- terest of the United States, and so continued, though with interruptions, for more than half a century, influenc- ing the thought, the legislation, and the literature of our people. When Daniel Webster, himself a son of a sea- faring State, sought to awaken his countrymen to the peril into which the nation was drifting through sec- tional dissensions and avowed antagonism to the national authority, he chose as the opening metaphor of his reply to Hayne the description of a ship, drifting rudderless and helpless on the trackless ocean, exposed to perils both known and unknown. The orator knew his audi- ence. To all New England the picture had the vivacity MERCHANT MARINE 31 of life. The metaphors of the sea were on every tongue. The story is a familiar one of the Boston clergyman who, in one of his discourses, described a poor, sinful soul drifting toward shipwreck so vividly that a sailor in the audience, carried away by the preacher's imaginative skill, cried out : "Let go your best bower anchor, or you're lost." In another church, which had its pulpit set at the side instead of at the end, as customary, a sailor remarked critically : "I don't like this craft ; it has its rudder amidships." At this time, and, indeed, for perhaps fifty years thereafter, the sea was a favorite career, not only for American boys with their way to make in the world, but for the sons of wealthy men as well. That classic of New England seamanship, "Two Years Before the Mast," was not written until the middle of the nineteenth century, and its author went to sea, not in search of wealth, but of health. But before the time of Richard Henry Dana, many a young man of good family and education a Harvard graduate like him, perhaps bade farewell to a home of comfort and refinement and made his berth in a smoky, fetid forecastle to learn the sailor's calling. The sons of the great shipping merchants al- most invariably made a few voyages oftenest as super- cargoes, perhaps, but not infrequently as common sea- men. In time special quarters, midway between the cabin and the forecastle, were provided for these apprentices, who were known as the "ship's cousins." They did the work of the seamen before the mast, but were regarded as brevet officers. There was at that time less to engage the activities and arouse the ambitions of youth than now, and the sea offered the most promising career. Moreover, the trading methods involved, and the rela- tions of the captain or other officers to the owners, were 32 THE STORY OF OUR such as to spur ambition and promise profit. The mer- chant was then greatly dependent on his captain, who must judge markets, buy and sell, and shape his course without direction from home. So the custom arose of giving the captain and sometimes other officers an opportunity to carry goods of their own in the ship, or to share the owner's adventure. In the whaling and fishery business we shall see that an almost pure com- munism prevailed. These conditions attracted to the maritime calling men of an enterprising and ambitious nature men to whom the conditions to-day of mere wage servitude, fixed routes, and constant dependence upon the cabled or telegraphed orders of the owner would be intolerable. Profits were heavy, and the men who earned them were afforded opportunities to share them. Ships were multiplying fast, and no really lively and alert seaman need stay long in the forecastle. Often they be- came full-fledged captains and part owners at the age of twenty-one, or even earlier, for boys went to sea at ages when the youngsters of equally prosperous families in these days would scarcely have passed from the care of a nurse to that of a tutor. Thomas T. Forbes, for example, shipped before the mast at the age of thirteen ; was commander of the "Levant" at twenty ; and was lost in the Canton River before he was thirty. He was of a family great in the history of New England shipping for a hundred years. Nathaniel Silsbee, afterwards United States Senator from Massachusetts, was master of a ship in the East India trade before he was twenty-one; while John P. Gushing at the age of sixteen was the sole and highly successful representative in China of a large Boston house. William Sturges, afterwards the head of a great world-wide trading house, shipped at seventeen, was a captain and manager in the China trade at nineteen, MERCHANT MARINE 33 and at twenty-nine left the quarter-deck with a com- petence to establish his firm, which at one time controlled half the trade between the United States and China. A score of such successes might be recounted. But the fee which these Yankee boys paid for introduc- tion into their calling was a heavy one. Dana's descrip- tion of life in the forecastle, written in 1840, holds good for the conditions prevailing for forty years before and forty after he penned it. The greeting which his cap- tain gave to the crew of the brig "Pilgrim" was repeated, with little variation, on a thousand quarter-decks : "Now, my men, we have begun a long voyage. If we get along well together we shall have a comfortable time; if we don't, we shall hav~ hell afloat. All you have to do is to obey your orders and do your duty like men then you will fare well enough ;. if you don't, you will fare hard enough, I can tell you. If we pull together you will find me a clever fellow ; if we don't, you will find me a bloody rascal. That's all I've got to say. Go below the larboard watch." But the note of roughness and blackguardism was not always sounded on American ships. We find, in looking over old memoirs, that more than one vessel was known as a "religious ship" though, indeed, the very fact that few were thus noted speaks volumes for the paganism of the mass. But the shipowners of Puritan New England not infrequently laid stress on the moral character of the men shipped. Nathaniel Ames, a Harvard graduate who shipped before the mast, records that on his first vessel men seeking berths even in the forecastle were ordered to bring certificates of good character from the clergyman whose church they had last attended. Beyond doubt, however, this was a most unusual requirement. More often the majority of the crew were rough, illiterate 34 THE STORY OF OUR fellows, often enticed into shipping while under the influ- ence of liquor, and almost always coming aboard at the last moment, much the worse for long debauches. The men of a better sort who occasionally found themselves unluckily shipped with such a crew, have left on record many curious stories of the way in which sailors, utterly THE BUG-E\E unable to walk on shore or on deck for intoxication, would, at the word of command, spring into the rigging, clamber up the shrouds, shake out reefs, and perform the most difficult duties aloft. Most of the things which go to make the sailor's lot MERCHANT MARINE 35 at least tolerable nowadays, were at that time unknown. A smoky lamp swung on gimbals half-lighted the fore- castle an apartment which, in a craft of scant 400 tons, did not afford commodious quarters for a crew of per- haps a score, with their sea chests and bags. The condi- tion of the fetid hole at the beginning of the voyage, with four or five apprentices or green hands deathly sick, the hardened seamen puffing out clouds of tobacco smoke, and perhaps all redolent of rum, was enough to disen- chant the most ardent lover of the sea. The food, bad enough in all ages of seafaring, was, in the early days of our merchant marine, too often barely fit to keep life in men's bodies. The unceasing round of salt pork, stale beef, "duff," "lobscouse," doubtful coffee sweetened with molasses, and water, stale, lukewarm, and tasting vilely of the hogshead in which it had been stored, required sturdy appetites to make it even tolerable. Even in later days Frank T. Bullen was able to write: "I have often seen the men break up a couple of biscuits into a pot of coffee for their breakfast, and after letting it stand a minute or two, skim off the accumulated scum of vermin from the top maggots, weevils, etc to the extent of a couple of tablespoonsful, before they could shovel the mess into their craving stomachs." It may be justly doubted whether history has ever known a race of men so hardy, so self-reliant, so adapta- ble to the most complex situations, so determined to compel success, and so resigned in the presence of in- evitable failure, as the early American sea captains. Their lives were spent in a ceaseless conflict with the forces of nature and of men. They had to deal with a mutinous crew one day and with a typhoon the next. If by skill- ful seamanship a piratical schooner was avoided in the reaches of the Spanish Main, the resources of diplomacy 36 THE STORY OF OUR would be taxed the next day to persuade some English or French colonial governor not to seize the cargo that had escaped the pirates. The captain must be a seaman, a sea-soldier, a sea-lawyer, and a sea-merchant, shut off from his principals by space which no electric current then annihilated. He must study markets, sell his cargo at the most profitable point, buy what his prophetic vision suggested would sell profitably, and sell half a dozen intermediate cargoes before returning, and even dispose of the vessel herself, if gain would result. His experi- ence was almost as much commercial as nautical, and many of the shipping merchants who formed the aristoc- racy of old New York, and Boston, mounted from the forecastle to the cabin, thence to the counting-room. In a paper on the maritime trade of Salem, the Rev. George Bachelor tells of the conditions of this early sea- faring, the sort of men engaged in it, and the stimulus it offered to all their faculties : "After a century of comparative quiet, the citizens of the little town were suddenly dispersed to every part of the Oriental world, and to every nook of barbarism which had a market and a shore. The borders of the commercial world received sudden enlargement, and the boundaries of the intellectual world under- went similar expansion. The reward of enterprise might be the discovery of an island in which wild pepper enough to load a ship might be had almost for the asking, or of forests where precious gems had no commercial value, or spice islands un- visited and unvexed by civilization. Every ship-master and every mariner returning on a richly loaded ship was the custodian of valuable information. In those days crews were made up of Salem boys, every one of whom expected to become an East Indian merchant. When a captain was asked at Manila how he contrived to find his way in the teeth of a northeast monsoon by mere dead reckoning, he replied that he had a crew of twelve men, any one of whom could take and work a lunar observation as well, for all practical purposes, as Sir Isaac Newton himself. MERCHANT MARINE 37 "When, in. 1816, George Coggeshall coasted the Mediter- anean in the 'Cleopatra's Barge/ a magnificent yacht of 197 tons, vhich excited the wonder even of the Genoese, the black cook, vho had once sailed with Bowditch, was found to be as compe- ent to keep a ship's reckoning as any of the officers. "Rival merchants sometimes drove the work of preparation light and day, when virgin markets had favors to be won, and ihips which set out for unknown ports were watched when they lipped their cables and sailed away by night, and dogged for nonths on the high seas, in the hopes of discovering a secret, veil kept by the owner and crew. Every man on board was illowed a certain space for his own little venture. People in >ther pursuits, not excepting the owner's minister, entrusted their .avings to the supercargo, and watched eagerly the result of their idventure. This great mental activity, the profuse stores of knowledge brought by every ship's crew, and distributed, together vith India shawls, blue china, and unheard-of curiosities from very savage shore, gave the community a Tare alertness of ntellect." The spirit in which young fellows, scarcely attained o years of maturity, met and overcame the dangers of he deep is vividly depicted in Captain George Cogges- lall's narrative of his first face-to- face encounter with leath. He was in the schooner "Industry," off the Island )f Teneriffe, during a heavy gale. "Captain K. told me I had better go below, and that ic would keep an outlook and take a little tea biscuit on leek. I had entered the cabin, when I felt a terrible hock. I ran to the companion-way, when I saw a ship ithwart our bows. At that moment our foremast went >y the board, carrying with it our main topmast. In an nstant the two vessels separated, and we were left a )erfect wreck. The ship showed a light for a few mo- nents and then disappeared, leaving us to our fate. When we came to examine our situation, we found our K>wsprit gone close to the knight-heads." An investiga- 38 THE STORY OF OUR tion showed that the collision had left the "Industry" in a grievous state, while the gale, ever increasing, blew directly on shore. But the sailors fought sturdily for life. "To retard the schooner's drift, we kept the wreck of the foremast, bowsprit, sails, spars, etc., fast by the A "PINK bowsprit shrouds and other ropes, so that we drifted to leeward but about two miles the hour. To secure the mainmast was now the first object. I therefore took with me one of the best of the crew, and carried the end MERCHANT MARINE 39 of a rope cable with us up to the mainmast head, and clenched it round the mast, while it was badly spring- ing. We then took the cable to the windlass and hove taut, and thus effectually secured the mast. . . . We were then drifting directly on shore, where the cliffs were rocky, abrupt, and almost perpendicular, and were per- haps almost 1,000 feet high. At each blast of lightning we could see the surf break, whilst we heard the awful roar of the sea dashing and breaking against the rocks and caverns of this iron-bound island. "When I went below I found the captain in the act of going to bed ; and as near as I can recollect, the follow- ing dialogue took place : " 'Well, Captain K., what shall we do next ? We have now about six hours to pass before daylight; and, ac- cording to my calculation, we have only about three hours more drift. Still, before that time there may, perhaps, be some favorable change.' "He replied: 'Mr. C., we have done all we can, and can do nothing more. I am resigned to my fate, and think nothing can save us.' "I replied : 'Perhaps you are right ; still, I am resolved to struggle to the last. I am too young to die ; I am only twenty-one years of age, and have a widowed mother, three brothers, and a sister looking to me for support and sympathy. No, sir, I will struggle and persevere to the last.' "'Ah/ said he, 'what can you do? Our boat will not live five minutes in the surf, and you have no other resource/ " 'I will take the boat/ said I, 'and when she fills I will cling to a spar. I will not die until my strength is exhausted and I can breathe no longer.' Here the con- versation ended, when the captain covered his head with 40 THE STORY OF OUR a blanket. I then wrote the substance of our misfortune in the log-book, and also a letter to my mother; rolled them up in a piece of tarred canvas ; and, assisted by the carpenter, put the package into a tight keg, thinking that this might probably be thrown on shore, and thus our friends might perhaps know of our end." Men who face Death thus sturdily are apt to over- come him. The gale lessened, the ship was patched up, the craven captain resumed command, and in two weeks' time the "Industry" sailed, sorely battered, into Santa Cruz, to find that she had been given up as lost, and her officers and crew "were looked upon as so many men risen from the dead." Young Coggeshall lived to follow the sea until gray-haired and weather-beaten, to die in his bed at last, and to tell the story of his eighty voyages in two volumes of memoirs, now growing very rare. Before he was sixteen he had made the voyage to Cadiz a port now moldering, but which once was one of the great portals for the commerce of the world. In his second voyage, while lying in the harbor of Gibraltar, he witnessed one of the almost every-day dangers to which American sailors of that time were exposed : "While we were lying in this port, one morning at daylight we heard firing at a distance. I took a spy-glass, and from aloft could clearly see three gunboats engaged with a large ship. It was a fine, clear morning, with scarcely wind enough to ruffle the glass-like surface of the water. During the first hour or two of this engagement the gunboats had an immense advantage; being propelled both by sails and oars, they were enabled to choose their own position. While the ship lay becalmed and unmanage- able they poured grape and canister shot into her stern and bows like hailstones. At this time the ship's crew could not bring a single gun to bear upon them, and all they could do was to use their small arms through the ports and over the rails. Fortu- nately for the crew, the ship had thick and high bulwarks, which protected them from the fire of the enemy, so that while they MERCHANT' MARINE 41 were hid and screened by the boarding cloths, they could use their small arms to great advantage. At this stage of the action, while the captain, with his speaking-trumpet under his left arm, was endeavoring to bring one of his big guns to bear on one of the gunboats, a grapeshot passed through the port and trumpet and entered his chest near his shoulder-blade. The chief mate carried him below and laid him upon a mattress on the cabin floor. For a moment it seemed to dampen the ardor of the men ; but it was but for an instant. The chief mate (I think his name was Randall), a gallant young man from Nantucket, then took the command, rallied, and encouraged the men to continue the action with renewed obstinacy and vigor. At this time a lateen- rigged vessel, the largest of the three privateers, was preparing to make a desperate atempt to board the ship on the larboard quarter, and, with nearly all his men on the forecastle and long bowsprit, were ready to take the final leap. "In order to meet and frustrate the design of the enemy, the mate of the ship had one of the quarter-deck guns loaded with grape and canister shot; he then ordered all the ports on this quarter to be shut, so that the gun could not be seen; and thus were both parties prepared when the privateer came boldly up within a few yards of the ship's lee quarter. The captain, with a threatening flourish of his sword, cried out with a loud voice, in broken English: 'Strike, you damned rascal, or I will put you all to death.' At this moment a diminutive-looking man on board the 'Louisa/ with a musket, took deliberate aim through one of the waist ports, and shot him dead. Instantly the gun was run out and discharged upon the foe with deadly effect, so that the remaining few on board the privateer, amazed and as- tounded, were glad to give up the conflict and get off the best way they could. "Soon after this a breeze sprung up, so that they could work their great guns to some purpose. I never shall forget the mo- ment when I saw the Star-Spangled Banner blow out and wave gracefully in the wind, through the smoke. I also at the same moment saw with pleasure the three gunboats sailing and row- ing away toward the land to make their escape. When the ship drew near the port, all the boats from the American shipping voluntarily went to assist in bringing her to anchor. She proved to be the letter-of-marque ship 'Louisa,' of Philadelphia. 42 THE STORY OF OUR "I went with our captain on board of her, and we there learned that, with the exception of the captain, not a man had been killed or wounded. The ship was terribly cut up and crippled in her sails and rigging lifts and braces shot away; her stern was literally riddled like a grater, and both large and small shot, in great numbers, had entered her hull and were sticking to her sides. How the officers and crew escaped unhurt is almost impossible to conceive. The poor captain was imme- diately taken on shore, but only survived his wound a few 'INSTANTLY THE GUN WAS BUN OUT AND DISCHARGED' days. He had a public funeral, and was followed to the grave by all the Americans in Gibraltar, and very many of the officers of the garrison and inhabitants of the town. "The ship had a rich cargo of coffee, sugar, and India goods on board, and I believe was bound for Leghorn. The gun- boats belonged to Algeciras and fought under French colors, but were probably manned by the debased of all nations. I can form no idea how many were killed or wounded on board the gunboats, but from the great number of men on board, and from MERCHANT MARINE 43 the length of the action, there must have been great slaughter. Neither can I say positively how long the engagement lasted; but I should think at least from three to four hours. To the chief mate too much credit can not be given for saving the ship after the captain was shot." This action occurred in 1800, and the assailants fought under French colors, though the United States were at peace with France. It was fought within easy eyesight of Gibraltar, and therefore in British waters; but no effort was made by the British men-of-war always plen- tiful there to maintain the neutrality of the port. For sailors to be robbed or murdered, or to fight with des- peration to avert robbery and murder, was then only a commonplace of the sea. Men from the safety of the adjoining shore only looked on in calm curiosity, as nowadays men look on indifferently to see the powerful freebooter of the not less troubled business sea rob, im- poverish, and perhaps drive down to untimely death others who only ask to be permitted to make their little voyages unvexed by corsairs. From a little book of memoirs of Captain Richard J. Cleveland, the curious observer can learn what it was to belong to a seafaring family in the golden days of American shipping. His was a Salem stock. His father, in 1756, when but sixteen years old, was captured by a British press-gang in the streets of Boston, and served for years in the British navy. For this compulsory servitude he exacted full com- pensation in later years by building' and commanding divers privateers to prey upon the commerce of England. His three sons all became sailors, taking to the water like young ducks. A characteristic note of the cosmo- politanism of the young New Englander of that day is sounded in the most matter-of-fact fashion by young 44 THE STORY OF OUR Cleveland in a letter from Havre: "I can't help loving home, though I think a young man ought to be at home in any part of the globe." And at home everywhere Cap- tain Cleveland certainly was. All his life was spent in wandering over the Seven Seas, in ships of every size, from a 25-ton cutter to a 4OO-ton Indiaman. In those days of navigation laws, blockades, hostile cruisers, hungry privateers, and bloodthirsty pirates, the smaller craft was often the better, for it was wiser to brave na- ture's moods in a cockle-shell than to attract men's notice in a great ship. Captain Cleveland's voyages from Havre to the Cape of Good Hope, in a 45-ton cutter; from Calcutta to the Isle of France, in a 25-ton sloop; and Captain Coggeshall's voyage around Cape Horn in an unseaworthy pilot-boat are typical exploits of Yankee seamanship. We see the same spirit manifested occa- sionally nowadays when some New Englander crosses the ocean in a dory, or circumnavigates the world alone in a 3