CHAPTER XIII

DEEP-WATER STEAMSHIPS--PART I

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 necessary at this point to review briefly our foreign relations in the period between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, and then to consider what was done by the British in the early development of steam navigation.

In the year 1818, in the course of what is known as the Seminole War, General Jackson, at the head of a strong body of troops, invaded the Spanish territory of Florida, captured a number of fortified places, and ruthlessly hanged one British subject named Arbuthnot and shot another named Ambrister on the unproved charge that the two had been "stirring up the Indians to war with the United States." No war followed this outrage, but the ill feeling which had animated the British after the War of 1812 was greatly intensified.

Trouble over the northeast boundary of the United States followed, and when the king of the Netherlands was asked to arbitrate the matter, he laid down a line which was not satisfactory to the English. At the same time it was exasperating to the Americans, especially to the people of Maine. In fact, open hostilities in a small way occurred near the boundary.

In 1837 the British manner of ruling the Canadian region created so much opposition among the settlers there that a small insurrection broke out. It was suppressed, but only to break out again, and at this time a number of American sympathizers joined the insurgents. A band of the insurgents having taken possession of Navy Island, in the Niagara River, the American sympathizers went in the American steamer _Caroline_ to join them, and carried arms and supplies. The steamer then returned to American waters, but the British loyalists crossed over the line, captured the steamer, set her on fire, and sent her over Niagara Falls. One American was killed in the attack. Later a Canadian deputy sheriff boasted that he had killed the man whose life was taken, and then, in 1840, incautiously came across to Lockport, New York, where he was arrested for the murder. His name was Alexander McLeod. Thereupon the British government, with the aggressive Palmerston in the lead, avowed that the _Caroline_ was seized on the authority of the nation, and peremptorily demanded McLeod's release. The Washington authorities were disposed to yield, but Governor Seward, of New York, declared that McLeod should stand trial; and he did. But having proved an alibi, he was acquitted, and on October 12, 1841, he was returned to Canada. In the meantime an American had been seized as a hostage to abide McLeod's fate. He was of course released at last.

In the course of the year 1841 an American coaster named the _Creole_, while carrying a cargo of slaves from the breeding grounds in Virginia to the ever eager market in the Southwest, was taken from her officers and crew by the slaves, who then ran the vessels to the Bahamas, where the slaves, 125 in number, were protected. The slave owners of the United States had been restive because of frequent reports that British cruisers, engaged in suppressing the slave trade upon the coast of Africa, had "exercised the right of search" by boarding ships under the American flag, and when the story of the protection of the _Creole's_ cargo reached the country, the excitement rose toward the war heat.

In the meantime, the United States had annexed Florida. Then the Texans set up an independent government, and it was recognized as an independent nation, but with its people openly anxious for annexation to the United States. The statesmen of England saw that annexation was inevitable and that a war with Mexico would follow, with the result that the territory of the United States would be enlarged in the Southwest and along the Spanish Main, where British subjects were looking for a further extension of territory and influence. For at about this time the ancient settlement of logwood cutters at Belize was developed into the colony of British Honduras (1845). Although England had subscribed to and helped to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, her statesmen were looking to an extension of British Honduras as far south as the mouth of the Rio San Juan, in Nicaragua. To secure this extension a protectorate over the Mosquito Coast Indians was declared, and the coast was assumed to be territory entirely independent of Nicaragua. On August 19, 1841, British war-ships captured San Juan del Norte, at the mouth of the San Juan, drove away the Nicaragua officials, and installed Mosquito Indians. The Nicaraguans soon drove away the Mosquito forces, but the interest in the place having been intensified by projects for building an interoceanic canal across the country, the British returned, late in 1847, and on January 10, 1848, placed the Mosquito chiefs once more in possession.

With the rush of emigrants to California, the United States became interested in this aggression. It would never do to allow the British to control such a highway as was then in contemplation. The British naturally held on to what they had secured at the mouth of the San Juan, however, and then, with a view of obtaining control of the other end of the canal route (the Gulf of Fonseca), they began to press Honduras for the payment of certain claims of British subjects, the nature of which is of no importance because the claims were merely a pretext for an aggression that would have been made had no claims been in existence. To back these claims a British warship appeared, but when the Honduranians were in straits, the American envoy to Nicaragua heard of their trouble, hastened to meet them, and then negotiated a treaty (September 28, 1849) by which a part of Tigre Island and a part of the coast of the Gulf of Fonseca were granted to the United States for a naval station. When the British envoy learned how he had been outwitted, he ordered some of the naval force at his command to seize Tigre Island in contempt of the acquired rights of the United States. (See Keasbey's _Nicaragua Canal_ and Pims _Panama_.) That the British fully expected a war with the United States, is beyond dispute. In fact, they had been prepared for war ever since 1840, but the Nicaragua matter it was supposed would surely bring on the long-looked-for contest.

To add to the dangers of the situation, a dispute had arisen, meantime, over the northwestern boundary of the United States, a controversy commonly referred to in history as the Oregon Question. The United States claimed the territory as far north as the south line of Alaska, then belonging to Russia, in latitude 54° 40′. The British claimed as far south as the Columbia River. The claims created great excitement in this country in 1845, and the cry of "Fifty-four forty, or fight" was heard throughout the nation.

To show the state of feeling in England at that time, here is a quotation from a letter written by Louis McLean, American Minister to London, to the Secretary of State, January 3, 1846.

"I sought an interview with Lord Aberdeen, in order that, in conformity with your instructions, I might bring to his notice the warlike preparations making by Great Britain, and, if possible, ascertain their real character and object.... In introducing the subject I adverted at the same time to the information the President had received from various sources, of the extensive preparations making by Great Britain, and the natural inference upon his part that, in the present pacific state of the relations of Great Britain with all the powers of Europe, they could only look to a rupture with the United States.... Lord Aberdeen said very promptly and frankly that it would be improper to disguise that, with the sincerest wish to avoid it, they were obliged to look to the possibility of a rupture with the United States, and that in such a crisis the warlike preparations now making would be useful and important.... He stated that the most extensive and formidable parts of their preparations were the fortifications of the principal and exposed stations ... and to _the increase of the number of steam vessels_ in lieu of the old craft." (See Cong. _Globe_, February 6, 1847.)

In short, during the whole period under consideration, the Americans and the British were constantly animated by intense antipathy and even animosity, each toward the other.

While turning, now, to the story of the evolution of British steamships, it will be worth while to recall first what has already been said about the environment that developed the character of the American sailor. From the day when the men of Massachusetts Bay built ships and launched forth in them to catch fish and trade with foreign countries, until such men as Palmer, Samuels, and Waterman made marvellous speed with whatever form of ship they happened to command, the whole environment of the American seafaring population had served to develop excellence in handling ships of the sail.

With this fact in mind, note that steamers made an extraordinary change in the conditions of transportation by ships. These conditions were so far removed from the old that a portrait-painter who had never learned any of the arts of the sea designed the first commercially successful steamer in the United States. The keeper of a bathhouse performed a similar service for the British public. When steam navigation had become an assured success, the splendid skill of the sailor _of the sail_ was no longer needed. The man at the throttle usurped the place of the man on the weather yard-arm, and this is true in spite of the curious and absurd fact that even now the captains of steamships do not reach the bridge by way of the stokehole.

Then recall the fact that while the United States had produced excellent sailors of the sail, there was such a dearth of mechanics in Fulton's day that he was obliged to import the _Clermont's_ engine from England; and Stevens, though he built his own engines, was obliged to train men to work in iron before he could do so. The British had been building efficient engines for twenty years before Fulton bought his. In every application of steam power, the British were that much in advance of the Americans.

As Day points out in his _History of Commerce_, inventors living in the United States, as well as in other countries, went to England to perfect their inventions, because of the superior facilities afforded in British machine shops; and this was done as late as 1836--even later. Some of the best machinery invented in the United States, in the period under consideration, was first put in use in Great Britain.

The fact that abundant supplies of coal were to be had at low price in Great Britain is not to be overlooked in connection with this argument. With the consequent great progress in factory industries, the time was close at hand when all England was to become "a free port" for all the world, as well as a place for working up the raw materials of all other countries.

Still another important fact is this, that the American capitalists who began to invest in steamships at an early day, found immense stretches of inland waters upon which to develop the carrying trade, while the inland waters of Great Britain were of insignificant extent, and the capitalists there were soon engaged in the coasting trade where the waters were by no means pacific. In 1818 the _Rob Roy_ was put on the route between Glasgow and Belfast, and a little later she was sent to ply between Dover and Calais. In 1822 a line was established between Liverpool and Glasgow, and this was followed in 1826 by a line plying between Edinburgh and London. These last ships were 160 feet long and were provided with engines of 200 horse-power; they were regarded as such marvellous ships that people came from all parts of the kingdom to look at them. And it is to be noted that all the coasters so far mentioned were provided with a form of engine (the side lever) which was efficient for deep-water service.

Following the success of the Glasgow line, other lines were established to various ports of Europe, including one to Bordeaux, the ships of which had to cross the stormy Bay of Biscay and traverse a route 1600 miles long. All of this is to emphasize the fact that while the steamship men of the United States were making records upon the Hudson and other _inland_ waters, those of Great Britain were engaged almost exclusively upon waters with a rending power little, if any, less than that of the Atlantic. The environments of the men engaged in steamboat traffic in the two countries were so different that widely different classes of ships, engines, _and engineers_ were developed. The British had been navigating the Bay of Biscay with success for several years before the Americans put the _Home_ upon the route around Cape Hatteras.

And yet it was an American that first stirred up the British to embark in the transatlantic steamer trade--Dr. Junius Smith, who graduated from Yale in 1802, and then went to London as representative of some American merchants. The success of the British coasters led Smith to believe that transatlantic steamers would prove successful, and in 1832 he came to the United States to look into the matter more fully.

"My friends in New York make no doubt of the practicability nor of the success of such an undertaking," he wrote to a director of the London and Edinburgh Steam Packet Company, "and have assured me that they will build two steam vessels suited to the object in view," provided English capitalists would build two more for use in the same line. Mr. Smith's letter was written to invite the directors of the company to join in the enterprise, and to charter to him one of their steamers for a demonstration trip, to New York. The directors replied with a cold refusal. Smith, however, tried elsewhere, and when his plans were presented in the newspapers, the professional humorists gave much attention to the "Yankee" innovator. In 1836 a noted scientist of the period, Dr. Lardner, in a lecture at Liverpool, declared that any effort to make direct passages from New York to Liverpool would prove "perfectly chimerical, and they might as well talk of making the direct voyage from New York or Liverpool to the moon."

When this lecture was reported in the papers, a number of steamship men showed by arguments drawn from the experience of the coasters that Lardner was wrong, but even with their assistance Smith made two vain efforts to organize a company. But in July, 1836, when the books were again opened, enough shares were taken to enable the company to build a good ship which in time proved successful. But because there were long delays in getting this vessel afloat, Smith's company chartered the steamer _Sirius_, a packet plying between London and Cork, for a voyage to New York.

The _Sirius_ was of about the size of a large sailing packet of the day. She measured 700 tons and had engines of 320 horse-power. On April 4, 1838, she left Cork for New York.

In the meantime, I. K. Brunel, who was then chief engineer of the Great Western Railroad, had become convinced of the feasibility of transatlantic steam navigation, and with a few associates he had built at Bristol a ship named the _Great Western_, especially for traffic between Bristol (the end of the Great Western Railroad) and New York. This ship was 212 feet long by 35 wide and 23 deep. She registered at 1340 tons. She was provided with side-lever engines of 440 horse-power, the cylinders being 73½ inches in diameter by 7 feet stroke.

As it happened, the _Great Western_ left Bristol for New York on April 7, and transatlantic steam navigation was thereby begun with a race. The _Sirius_ arrived first, anchoring off the Battery, New York, early in the morning on April 23. The excitement in the city was extraordinary, and the water about the ship was soon covered with small boats carrying people for a look at her. And then at about 11 o'clock, when the throngs around the _Sirius_ were densest, a lookout announced another steamship in sight down below, when the crowd began to shout:--

"The _Great Western_! The _Great Western_!"

It was she, and in the middle of the afternoon she anchored off Pike Street.

The British consul, in a letter congratulating Lieutenant R. Roberts, R. N., commanding the _Sirius_, on arriving first, said:--

"I have a further cause of rejoicing, that the honor of accomplishing the enterprise has been achieved by a son of the British navy, and that it was completed on St. George's Day."

It was five years after this arrival that the keel of the first American clipper was laid, but _with the termination of the passages of these two ships_ the dawn of the day of British supremacy upon the high seas appeared.

Special attention seems due to the _Great Western_, because she was the first ship built for the traffic. She had steamed 3125 sea miles, making an average of 208 miles per day, or 8.2 knots an hour. The total consumption of fuel was 655 tons, less than a day's consumption in some modern ships. She returned home with a consumption of only 392 tons, prevailing winds and a large spread of canvas helping her to save coal. The cost of this ship was £50,000, of which £13,500 was paid for the engines. She continued to ply regularly on the route, and on September 25, 1838, the New York _American_ had this to say:--

"The arrival of the steam packet _Great Western_ puts us in possession of intelligence to the 8th.... The great success of this enterprise has confirmed the timid and almost crazed the sanguine. She brings _one hundred and forty passengers_. All her berths were engaged before she arrived at Bristol." Then an article from the London _Times_ is quoted as follows:--

"Upon the eighty-seven passengers home, and the 130 out, at 40 guineas passage money per head in the saloon, and 35 guineas in the cabin, each way, the directors of the Great Western will have received upwards of £8000, exclusive of the benefit derived from the conveyance of goods, of which the _Great Western_ brought from New York to the extent of about 200 tons' measurement."

The Liverpool _Albion_ is then quoted as saying that "the last trip of the _Great Western_ netted £6000."

The _Great Western_ continued in the New York and Bristol and the New York and Liverpool trades until she had made seventy-four passages, and she was then sold for use between England and the West Indies. These facts are of importance to the history of the American merchant marine, because our writers who have favored paying subsidies to American steam lines have asserted that in those days it was not possible to run steamship lines between the United States and England without a subsidy. The _Great Western_ made money without a subsidy. So did many other steamers that followed, as shall appear.

We now come, however, to the story of the first lines of subsidized transatlantic steamships. One Samuel Cunard, a wealthy merchant of Nova Scotia, had been dreaming about steam navigation since 1830, and when the Great Western Company had shown the way, he went to England in order to arrange for a line from Liverpool to Halifax, and thence to Boston. After consultation with eminent men of experience in steam navigation, he gave an order to Robert Napier, the foremost designer and builder of steamships in the kingdom, for four steamships of about 900 tons each. But before the work was begun, Napier convinced him that larger ships would prove more profitable, and as the larger ships would cost more than Cunard had to invest, George Burns, of Glasgow, and David McIver, of Liverpool (both of whom were men of experience), were united with him in forming what is now known as the Cunard Company. The _Britannia_, the first ship built for this company, was a wooden vessel 207 feet long by 34 wide and 22 deep, registering 1156 tons. She had engines of 423 horse-power. The other three ships built at that time were slightly smaller.

It is to be noted that this company was formed to run ships in opposition to the _Great Western_ and to Smith's lines. They were to depend upon what traffic they could get for success and upon nothing else. But in the meantime the British government had been considering the advisability of employing steamships to carry the royal mail across the Atlantic. Theretofore certain brigs had been employed by the Admiralty for this purpose, and beginning in 1821, government-owned brigs were employed exclusively. This proving expensive, the plan of hiring privately owned brigs was resumed in 1833, and these brigs were in use at that time. The success of the _Great Western_ having proven the efficiency of steamships in the transatlantic trade, the postal authorities, in connection with the Admiralty, decided to use steam, and when Cunard came into the field, bids were invited for a mail service under certain burdensome conditions among which were these: The ships were to be fit for war use, carrying heavy guns, a naval officer was to be carried to care for the mail, and the ships were to be sold to the Admiralty on demand at a valuation. The Great Western, as well as the Cunard people, put in bids. The Great Western did not know that they would have opposition, and bid accordingly, with the result that Cunard made the better offer and got the contract. The full story is told in Lindsay's _History of Merchant Shipping_. Cunard was to receive at first £3295 per voyage, but, the plans having been modified, the subsidy was raised to £81,000 a year. For this he was to maintain a fortnightly service from Liverpool by way of Halifax to Boston, and with a line of smaller steamers from Halifax to Quebec. The _Britannia_ left Liverpool upon her first voyage on July 4, 1840. No American writer has as yet pointed out that this was "a beautiful coincidence of nominal dates."

A few months later the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company was organized especially to carry the mail to the West Indies, including St. Thomas, Haiti, and Cuba, and to Chagres, to Mexico, and to the south part of the United States, as well. A branch line was to be maintained from the West Indies to Brazil. The contract (made in March, 1841) called for fourteen steamships built so as to carry "guns of the largest caliber" then in use in the navy; and the frames and planking were of a thickness to resist shot as well as a frigate--as, indeed, were those of the Cunard line. The commanders of the ships were to be naval officers. The subsidy paid was £240,000 a year.

It is important to note that this line was to run regularly to Chagres, where there was not enough traffic to pay the expense of the ship while lowering a boat to carry the mail ashore, and, further, that there was not enough traffic anywhere on the route to pay any considerable part of the expense of the line. Indeed, the traffic and subsidy together proved insufficient to pay expenses. Further than that, the time allowed in all the ports was limited--to six hours at the important island of Barbados, for instance, and to twenty-four at Port Royal, Jamaica, where there was an important naval station. It was impossible to handle any valuable quantity of West India cargo in such short periods. It is therefore certain that frequent and swift voyages were wanted in the establishing of this line, rather than the carrying of cargo. And this is to say that it was established for the same reasons that brigs had been used in carrying the royal mail theretofore. It was a political and military service that the ships were to perform.

Consider all these facts in connection with the political complications with the United States that have been mentioned. It was in 1840 that the British government demanded the release of McLeod on pain of war. It was at that time that the people of Maine and New Brunswick took up arms in connection with the boundary dispute. At the same time the British government was looking ahead to an increase of territory along the Spanish Main, including a canal across Nicaragua in contempt of the Monroe Doctrine.

Then recall the fact that the use of steam for driving war-ships was yet in the experimental stage. Many able naval men believed that sails were yet to be preferred, but the English were especially anxious to learn all about the new power in order to keep abreast with the progress of the age--to preserve their _naval_ superiority. It is of significance that young naval officers were detailed to command all of the West India ships and to accompany those of the Cunard line. Further than that, it is to be noted that the Admiralty insisted that the subsidized ships be built of wood not only then, but for years after iron had proved cheaper and more efficient for merchant ships, and this was done because it was fully believed that a wooden ship was best for naval uses.

In short, the subsidizing of ships was begun chiefly as a military and diplomatic measure. Any candid review of the facts shows it. It was done, too, with a full knowledge that paying a subsidy was against the interests of the other owners of steamships that were already plying between Liverpool and New York. In fact, the Cunard line had hardly learned the way to Boston when the Great Western line made such loud complaints about the destruction of private enterprise through the subsidizing of the Cunard that a committee of Parliament took up the whole matter and concluded that the other steamers would not be put out of the trade.

There were men on both sides of the Atlantic who saw at that time that steam would eventually drive sails from the packet routes. E. K. Collins was one of these men. But no one supposed at that time that subsidizing a single mail line from Liverpool to Boston would do it. And even the optimistic Cunard directors made no effort to interfere with the traffic of the New York and Liverpool sailing packets until it was seen that American capitalists were about to put on a line of steamers between New York and Liverpool.

With these facts in mind, we may now comprehend the full story of the first American steam-packet lines that ran across the Atlantic Ocean.