The Story of the American Merchant Marine

In 1866, just after the end of the Civil War, the American steam fleet registered for foreign trade, measured 198,289 tons. The steam vessels enrolled for coasting traffic measu...

It will help us to appreciate the work of the men who first experimented with steam-driven ships if we recall the fact that James Watt, working at Soho, near Birmingham, England...

Two of the trades in which the ships of the American colonies were largely engaged during the seventeenth century are of special interest here--the whale fishery and the slave t...

Two results of the War of 1812 are of especial interest here. Through good fighting the American ship was at last free to sail upon the high seas unmolested by any power upon ea...

The first vessel built within the limits of the United States for commercial uses was a sea-going pinnace of thirty tons named the _Virginia_. Her keel was laid at the mouth of...

When seen in its true light, one of the most curious and interesting chapters in the history of the American merchant marine is that relating to the men who, having the might, u...

If ships under the American flag are ever again to obtain any share of the deep-water carrying-trade of the world, it is of the utmost importance that the American people should...

WHEN the War of the Revolution came to an end, the territory of the United States extended along the Atlantic coast from Maine to Georgia, and westward over the Appalachian Moun...

Among the first acts of the English Parliament for the regulation of the commerce of the American colonies, notable here, was that passed in 1646, by which it was provided that...

The success of the British steamers that crossed the Atlantic in 1838 led a number of New York capitalists to form what they called the American Atlantic Steam Navigation Compan...

Although geographical conditions were in most respects against them, it is manifest from any study of the New Englanders that their chief mercantile interests, during the earlie...

In order to comprehend the story of the efforts to establish lines of steam packets under the American flag between the United States and various ports in Europe, it is necessar...

In the year 1772 the people of Marblehead, Massachusetts, boasted that "the number of polls was 1203," and that the vessels of all kinds owned in the port measured more than 12,...

BEFORE considering the aggressions of the British government upon our shipping during the period between the Revolution and the War of 1812, it seems still more necessary than i...

Some of the most stirring tales in the history of the American merchant marine are those of the battles of men who, like Captain Jonathan Haraden, of Salem, commanded armed merc...

ON July 25, 1785, while the schooner _Maria_, Captain Isaac Stevens, of Boston, was sailing past Cape St. Vincent, on the southwest corner of Spain, she was captured by an armed...