CHAPTER XV

THE CRITICAL PERIOD

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 learn first of all why American ships lost the trade they once enjoyed.

To enable us to comprehend the reasons for the decadence of our merchant marine it is necessary to have well in mind the fact that we obtained our supremacy by actual merit. It was an economic development, not the result of any kind of political or other stimulation. We did not gain or hold supremacy because we could build ships cheaper than they could be built elsewhere. Cheaper ships could be had in the north of Europe and in Canada. Moreover our most profitable ships were those that cost the most per ton. The American ships were supreme, too, rather because the wages paid were higher then in spite of that seeming handicap. In short, the whole environment of the American seafaring population had evolved a ship and crew which, taken together as a unit, were able to give more ton-miles for a dollar than any other similar unit in the world.

At first the advent of steamships changed these conditions in but one respect; it gave greater regularity of passage. The swiftest sailing ships could cross the Atlantic, now and then, in as short a time as the steamer, and they carried more cargo at the same time. But the steamer instantly commanded the cream of the traffic, and received higher rates for it, because the merchant could calculate, within a day, the time required for the passage. The time of even the swiftest of sailing ships was sometimes extended by adverse winds to fifty or sixty days.

This is to say that even the first crude steamships took the best of the trade because they were more efficient.

With the inevitable improvements in steamships came an encroachment upon the cheaper traffic that had been carried on sailing ships, and the most important of these improvements was made when the screw propeller was adopted.

Stevens had driven a small boat with screws before Fulton built the _Clermont_, but John Ericsson, a Swede, was the first to develop screw propulsion in a practical manner. His first work was done in England, where he built a screw steamer 45 feet long with which he made a speed (April, 1837) of ten miles an hour on the Thames. Then he towed the American packet ship _Toronto_ at a speed of four and a half miles an hour. On July 7, 1838, an iron vessel 70 feet long by 10 wide, and having a draft of 6 feet 9 inches, named the _Robert F. Stockton_, was launched at Laird & Co.'s yard, Birkenhead, England, for Captain Robert F. Stockton, U. S. N. It was fitted with an engine and an Ericsson screw. It was then brought to America under sail, and set to work under steam as a tug on the Delaware River, where it earned much money for many years.

In 1839 Ericsson came to the United States and built the screw steamship _Princeton_ for our navy, the first warship of the kind in commission.

In the meantime Francis P. Smith, an English farmer, was developing screw propulsion, and succeeded in convincing the Admiralty that the screw was a practical device, with the result that many experiments were tried and the screw was much improved.

In introducing the screw, two difficulties were encountered. The engines of the day gave only about twenty-five revolutions to the minute, and it was therefore necessary to introduce some sort of multiple gearing between the engine-shaft and the screw shaft; for a screw should turn at seventy-five times a minute, or more. The other defect of screw propulsion was found in the strain of the shaft upon the stern of the ship. No combination of timbers in a wooden ship could resist that strain for any great length of time. To the English, however, this was a matter of no moment, for iron had already been used for building hulls. The first of these iron ships was the _Aaron Manby_, launched in London, in 1820, but the iron ship that first really influenced the British merchant marine was the _Great Britain_, built for the Great Western Steamship Company at Bristol, in 1843. She was a big ship for her day (322 feet long), and she was not only a profitable cargo carrier, but, having been stranded on the coast of Ireland, she endured the poundings of the storms of an entire winter, and was then hauled off, repaired at small expense (considering the storms she had endured), and when put at work again was found to be as serviceable as ever.

As the _Great Britain_ was driven by a screw the use of iron screw ships soon became fashionable in the British merchant marine, and the more rapidly because they were much more economical in the use of coal.

Lindsay (_History of Merchant Shipping_) says that the repeal of the ancient British navigation laws helped to turn British merchants to the screw steamer. They were unable to compete with the Americans in the use of sails, and had to take up the new ship or abandon the sea. The Cunard Company would have adopted iron ships promptly but for the contract with the Admiralty. The naval officers supposed that wooden walls were better for keeping out shot than iron, and it was not until 1855, as noted, that this company was allowed to use the best material. The fact that a subsidy thus restrained enterprise seems important here.

For a number of years the iron screw steamer had small effect upon the transatlantic trade. The owners of the sailing packets were making as much money as ever--perhaps more than ever, for they were building larger ships. In 1850, however, William Inman, an Englishman who had been interested in sailing ships, put on a line of iron screw packets between Liverpool and Philadelphia, as noted, and that line sealed the doom of the sailing packet. For the Collins, the Bremen, and the Cunard lines had taken, or were to take, only the cabin passengers and the express freight from the sailing packets, while Inman was after the steerage passengers and the coarser freight. The emigrants were all travelling from Europe to America. The greater part, in bulk, of the freight carried across the Atlantic travelled from America to Europe. Inman filled his ships with emigrants bound west, and with coarse freight bound east. Having a cargo both ways is a most important feature of successful navigation. Inman made money from the first voyage, and he did so _without a penny of subsidy_. The _City of Manchester_, of his line, made a net profit of 40 per cent the first year.

For the sake of emphasis let it be said that our transatlantic sailing packets lost their trade, not because the Cunard Company received a subsidy, and not because Collins lost the subsidy he had been receiving, but because of the evolution of a cargo carrier that was far more efficient than the American ship of the sail at its best. And the Collins and Bremen lines were beaten because they, too, were much less efficient than their competitors.

The reader may now ask why the American ship-owner did not adopt the iron screw steamer. A brief review of the conditions will answer the question. He could secure all the capital he needed for the well-tried sailing ship, but no one would advance money for what seemed to be, then, an experiment with a curious device not yet well tried out. Almost incredible as the statement may seem now, the most influential American ship-owners, during the years before the Civil War, refused to have anything to do with the screw propeller. In an essay on "Screw Propulsion in the United States," read before the American Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, at a meeting held in New York in November, 1909, Mr. Charles H. Cramp, vice-president of the Society, said (see _Shipping Illustrated_, November 20, 1909):--

"The supremacy of British propulsion practically began with the advent of the fine screw steamship _Great Britain_ in 1844, but New York interests would not consider any other than the paddle-wheel, with its walking-beam engine; and as they knew nothing of any other type, they loudly and persistently proclaimed its superiority over all other types, and carried with them the ship-owners, shipbuilders, shipping men, mariners, and all others in general, and the screw propeller was sneered at by them."

Mr. Cramp, having been a shipbuilder in Philadelphia during the period considered, spoke from personal knowledge.

Of equal interest is the state of the iron trade in America at that time. The clippers that were the pride of the nation were bolted together with British iron. All the large castings used in the Collins steamers were imported from England. In his essay quoted above, Mr. Cramp had this to say on iron ship-building:--

"A short time after iron construction was introduced abroad, certain engine builders here commenced iron construction. The first one in America was built in Kensington at the boiler works of Jesse Starr, several squares from the water, and was hauled down there by a large number of horses and then launched.... The first iron steamers here were fearful specimens of naval architecture; the workmen were the boiler-makers of the works, and the vessels were looked on by these engine-builders as merely exaggerated boilers. At first they employed commonplace shipwrights to do certain woodwork that the vessel needed. The British soon began to build the entire ship complete by first-class ship-builders, and the finest specimens of war-ships and merchant ships were turned out by them. In this country iron ships were built with their engines by the boiler-makers and machinists with the most indifferent results."

Said John Roach, a most noted ship-builder, in testifying before the committee of Congress that investigated the state of American shipping in 1869 (H. R. Rep. 28, 41 Cong. 2 sess.):--

"The high cost of iron, produced by the tariff upon it, was one of the principal difficulties that our commerce had to contend with.... If Congress will take off all the duties from American iron, reducing it to the price of foreign iron, then we are prepared to compete with foreign ship-builders. The labor question is misstated. We are prepared to meet that difficulty, and to ask no further legislation upon the subject."

The tariff was not as high before the war as it was after, but the inability of the American ship-builder to obtain iron at home for any purpose at a living price had great influence in preventing the adoption of iron screw steamers.

Of the influence of lack of experience in building sea-going steamships, something more must be said here, and leading authorities of the period shall tell the facts:--

"Hitherto our steamboats have been built for short and comparatively unstormy voyages. The navigation of the Atlantic is quite a different affair from that of the Hudson or the Erie. Now in England they have had the practical experience of thirty-six years in building _sea-going_ steamers." (_Scientific American_, October 7, 1848.)

Charles H. Cramp, another noted ship-builder, when testifying before the committee of Congress mentioned above said:--

"Great Britain now had the advantage of this country in the carrying trade of the world, not because the vessels constructed were superior to ours _in model_, but _because of the great superiority of their marine engines_. The English have built the finest and best marine engines in the world. _We have always been inferior to her in that respect._"

Senator Rusk, of Texas, who was chairman of the Senate "Committee on the Post Office and the Post Roads," in the course of a report made to the Senate under date of June 15, 1852, described at some length the difficulties under which the Collins Line was then laboring in spite of the subsidy it was receiving. In laying special stress upon the expense of running these ships he said that it was in part due to "the well-known fact that, at the period when they were commenced, there were no machine shops in this country in which castings of the size required could be made, _nor were there on this side of the Atlantic, experienced practical engineers competent to take charge of marine engines of such immense size_.... It is not to be supposed that engines of such vast dimensions could have been constructed in a country _where there were, as yet, no workshops adapted to the purpose_ and where labor is very high, as cheaply as in a country where every appliance of the kind already existed and where the prices of labor are proverbially low. _Nor can it be reasonably imagined that vessels of this description could have been navigated upon as good terms by men taken from this country._" (Sen. Rep. Com. 267, 32 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 3-4).

That the iron screw steamer was steadily driving all American ships from the sea, was plainly seen several years before the war, and sufficient warnings were printed in the periodicals of the day. Said the _Scientific American_ on May 16, 1857:--

"There are no less than thirty steamships now running between New York and different ports in Europe. These are regular steamers carrying passengers and merchandise, beside which _there are a number of transient ones that carry cargo only_. But ten of them are American vessels, while the Boston, Portland, and Philadelphia lines are entirely European. _The Atlantic trade is departing from us_, and unless our shipping merchants exhibit more practical wisdom and enterprise _they will ultimately be vanished in this contest_. The whole number of steamships engaged upon the routes between Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Portland, Halifax, and Quebec, on this side of the Atlantic and the ports of Havre, Bremen, Hamburg, Southampton, London, Liverpool, and Glasgow, on the other side, is fifty-one. Of these only seventeen have paddle-wheels: all the others--thirty-four--are _screw propellers with iron hulls_. They are the most economical of steamships; their steam power is but small in proportion to their tonnage; they make very regular and quick passages, carry large cargoes, charge but little more freight than sailing vessels, and _merchants prefer them for carrying goods_. _These_ are the steamers that are fast 'routing out' our sailing craft in the Atlantic trade."

Of the foreign ships mentioned above, only the _Cunard_ received a subsidy.

That was in 1857. On March 31, 1860, the _Scientific American_ again referred to the subject:--

"Three years ago we directed attention to the great increase of foreign screw steamers, and showed clearly how they were rapidly taking away the trade that had been formerly carried by American ships.... Our merchants did not heed this injunction, and, as a consequence, their rivals have grown stronger, while they have become weaker. To-day nearly all the mail and passenger, besides a great deal of the goods, traffic, is carried by foreign ships, _the great majority of which are iron screw steamers_. These facts are indisputable; how can we account for them but upon the theory that iron screw steamers are the cheapest and best for the traffic?... We exhort our shipping merchants to examine the question candidly for themselves, ... for we assure them that 'the Philistines are upon them!' We have not a single new Atlantic steamship on the stocks, from one end of the country to the other, while in Great Britain there are 16,000 tons of new iron screw steamers building for the American trade."

It was in those days that the "New York interests," as Mr. Cramp says, "carried with them the ship-owners, ship-builders, shipping men, mariners, and all others in general," while they sneered at the screw propeller.

Other quotations to show how and why the British secured supremacy are worth making. Said the _Nautical Magazine_ (New York) for February, 1856, regarding two steamers that had been compared in all particulars:--

"The extraordinary fact which presses itself upon our notice from the foregoing details by trials consists in the difference in power required in the two vessels to produce nearly identical speed ... 2050 H. P., economized by the screw, propelled the _Himalaya_ at about the same speed as 3016 H. P., transmitted by paddles, propelled the _Atrato_."

The _New York Journal of Commerce_ published the following warning in 1857:--

"While we are learning [to build steamships] England is using her advantages. Their merchants, captains, engineers, and sailors are carrying on our trade, and taking the bread from our mouths."

Congressman Nelson Dingley, Jr., of Maine, a prominent advocate of the subsidy system, in an article in the _North American Review_, dated April, 1884, said:--

"At the time Great Britain accepted our invitation to participate, on equal terms in the business of" transportation (it was in 1849), "experiments in iron ship building and steam propulsion were going on in that country, which, _as early as 1855, began to work a revolution in marine architecture_.... _This revolution_ from wood to iron and sails to steam _at once_ began to deprive the American merchant marine of" the advantages it had enjoyed.

The total number of British steamers receiving mail pay, or subsidy, in 1857, was 121, including the vessels plying to Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Orkneys, and other near-by points; among which was one line sending two steamers a day over its route. (See _Nautical Magazine_, September, 1857.) The total number of steamers under the British flag, in 1857, was 2132 (Rep. Com. of Nav. for 1901, p. 472). It is manifest that the mail pay aided the 121 steamers thus favored; it is equally manifest that the 2011 unsubsidized steamers were not only obliged to depend on their intrinsic merit for profit, but they were obliged to compete on unfair terms in all the trades (like that from Liverpool to New York) where the subsidized steamers were employed.

The progress made by the British iron screw steamer thereafter was pointed out by John Roach, in the course of his testimony, quoted above, when he said (p. 177) he "had found out by personal examination that there were 119 iron steamships plying between the ports of America and Great Britain. Of that number 110 were running to the port of New York."

A brief space must be given to a commonly accepted statement to the effect that the members of Congress from the South, in the decade before the Civil War, were opposed to the payment of subsidies to American steamers because of prejudice against the North. Marvin, in the _American Merchant Marine_, names Jefferson Davis and three of the men who were afterwards associated with him in his cabinet as president of the Confederacy, as leaders in this assault upon a Northern industry. The reader who is interested in making a candid study of the facts can find many speeches made by Congressmen from all parts of the country, in the _Globe_ for the period in question. Part III, for 1857-1858, will be found most interesting in connection with this charge against Mr. Davis. On page 2832, third column, are the following words uttered by him (he was then a senator), on the method of paying subsidies:--

"Having established the mail line the question is, how shall the compensation be stated. In one of these amendments it seems it is to be the postal receipts. I think that altogether an objectionable method, and I shall vote against that amendment for the reason that this is to be a fluctuating amount.... The company cannot bear the fluctuation. The depression of commerce, the existence of war, or some other cause, may limit the correspondence, and cut off passenger and light freight, and then a line relying on postage receipts might not be able to run; whilst if the government allowed from year to year a fixed sum ... it might keep up the line."

Later Mr. Davis voted as he had talked. It is but fair to say that he, together with other senators and members of Congress, believed that the payment of subsidies, as a national policy, was objectionable, but so, too, did Ben Wade of Ohio, and other pronounced opponents of the "slave oligarchy." Senator Rusk, of Texas, was as firm in his support of the utterly reckless Collins Line as was Seward of New York.

The assertion, so often made at the North, that Congressmen from the Southern States, during the years immediately preceding the Civil War, were united in a conspiracy to injure Northern industries in order thereby to weaken the North and make the work of secession easier, is absolutely without foundation in fact. It is as absurd as the similar statement to the effect that the Secretary of the Navy (Toucey, a Connecticut man) had scattered the ships of the navy all over the world to weaken the fighting power of the general government. The truth is the ships were not as badly scattered in 1860 as they had been in several of the preceding years. Thus there were twelve ships upon the home station in 1860, but only five in 1851. Further than that, Toucey had for two years urged upon Congress the building of seven sloops of war of a draught of only fourteen feet, and Congress, on February 21, 1861, appropriated the money for that purpose. These shoal-draught vessels were admirably adapted for use in the waters along the Southern States, and that fact was pointed out during the discussion in the House. _Nevertheless several members from the Southern States voted for the bill._

The subsidy policy was never treated as a sectional issue in Congress. Hamlin, of Maine, Vice-president under Lincoln, voted with the opponents of the subsidy men. (_Globe_, June 9, 1858, p. 2837.)

Hamlin's opposition is especially significant because he represented the great mass of unsubsidized ship-owners whose business was injured by the subsidized ships, and who were hot in their opposition to Collins.

Then it is to be noted that a chief argument urged by these Southern men against the payment of subsidies to the lines then in question was based on the belief that the ships were not fit for war-ships--were, in that respect, the shams they are now known to have been. In short, any candid reading of the speeches shows that in this question they were inspired by a desire to do what was best for the whole nation.

That one kind of sectional jealousy hurt the Collins line has been pointed out by Smith, in _The Ocean Carrier_--the well-founded jealousy of the ship-owners of Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The clipper ship-owners of New York also bitterly opposed the Collins Line. In fact, these unsubsidized ship-owners combined to fight the Collins lobby at Washington, and it was their influence that struck the "terrible blow" which Marvin says was inflicted by the Southern members of Congress.

The influence of the Civil War upon the merchant marine must now have consideration. First of all, the appearance of Confederate privateers upon the ocean at once doubled the rate of insurance on all American merchantmen. Then, when Commander J. D. Bullock, of the Confederate navy, was sent to England to buy iron-clad war-ships with which to raise the blockade of Confederate ports, and was induced to build swift cruisers with which to raid the North's merchant marine, a still heavier blow was struck. In all, the Confederates had 19 cruisers at sea, and they captured 257 merchantmen. The loss of these ships, however, was the smallest part of the injury suffered. The possibility of capture deprived American ships of the opportunity to obtain cargoes, and led to a cessation of building in American shipyards. It led many owners to transfer their vessels to foreign flags. It changed the currents of commerce. Naturally the British merchants took every advantage of their opportunity, as the Americans had done in the troubled days of the war with Napoleon.

One might suppose that the demand for naval ships would have given prosperity to the shipyards and engine works, but John Roach testified before the committee mentioned that "out of ten marine engine shops that were in existence in New York at the commencement of the war, his was the only one remaining in existence."

Though iron was largely used in the government ships, Nathaniel McKay, the ship-builder, told this committee that "_we have got to have some experience in building iron ships_. We have built but few iron ships, and most of them were failures."

Mere mention only of the transfer of American capital from the sea to the shore need be made here. With the depreciated currency there was plenty of opportunity for "wildcat" speculations; for government contracts, and for other kinds of investments more to the taste of honest capitalists.

The whole seafaring population spent the war period in acquiring new habits, while the British ship-builders were busy perfecting their arts, and the British merchants were establishing themselves firmly in the trades from which the war drove the Americans.

As a final reason for the decadence of the American merchant marine, note that the conditions of life in the American forecastle had greatly changed, and that this change began when the American ships were winning their laurels. With the advent of the packet system the "private venture" method of adding to a sailor's income disappeared, and with it one strong inducement to the young men who thought of going to sea. Then the old custom of making the forecastle a schoolroom, with the ship's officers serving as instructors in navigation, died out. The very prosperity of the American merchant marine served to deteriorate the quality of American seamen, for the number of ships increased much more rapidly than the seafaring population. Foreign sailors were employed for lack of enough Americans. In time even the number of experienced foreigners was insufficient. Captain J. S. Clark testified before the committee of Congress mentioned above that he had taken a ship to sea with "but two men out of a crew of sixty who could steer."

With the employment of foreigners the pleasant relations that had existed between the forecastle and cabin came to an end. The officers who had been shipmates with crews of ambitious young Americans found the foreign sailors, with their lack of ambition--with a certain slowness of movement, in fact--exasperating, especially when topsails were to be reefed after "carrying on" somewhat too long! This exasperation, with race or national prejudices to increase it, was what led to the use of the belaying pin and the pump-brake for the "encouragement" of sailors who failed to "show willing." Naturally, as time passed, the treatment of sailors grew worse, and an American statute which required the sailor to prove malice or revenge on the part of an assailing officer, when he had the officer arrested for ill treatment, did but add to the horrors of a passage on a driven ship. Dana, in his _Two Years Before the Mast_, describes mildly the treatment which common sailors received in American ships in his day. Jewell's _Among Our Sailors_ describes the cruelty more in detail. It was a common thing for captains to torture men, and men were sometimes killed by the brutality which they could not escape. And while the conditions in the American forecastle were growing worse, those in the British were growing better. In 1869 Captain Cyrus F. Sargeant, the well-known ship-owner, testified that "the wages of sailors are lower in an American ship than in an English ship." It is well known that the port makes the wages for the forecastle, but it was true, then, that seamen on British liners, at least, saved more money in a year than the men on American ships.

The testimony taken before the Merchant Marine Commission, in 1904 (p. 1263), contains the following paragraph, the truthfulness of which was not disputed:--

"The condition of sea life under the American flag repels the American, boy and man. These conditions are mainly--we might say solely--due to the state of the navigation laws of the country. These laws are antiquated and disgraceful, compared to American standards: they were designed to govern slaves, and are maintained for the purpose of making slaves. No American boy with any spunk in him will submit himself to the conditions created by the maritime law, except (as frequently happens) as the alternative of a term in prison. Take any trade that now attracts the American boy and now holds the American adult, apply to those who follow it a special code of laws obnoxious to all conceptions of Americanism, repugnant to the dictates of humanity and condemned by the instincts of decency, and it may be regarded as certain that that trade would speedily be shunned by American labor. And if consulted about it the American people would be very likely to declare that if such laws are really necessary to the continuance of the trade in question, it would be a mercy to let the trade die in order to be rid of the laws.... To create a healthy popular interest in the whole subject of American shipping it is necessary to alter the laws affecting American seamen, thus, by inducing Americans to accept service at sea, creating an interest in the vital element of the subject, and also by reflex action, in the physical considerations involved."

This matter is of much importance here because, while life at sea was becoming absolutely unendurable, by a self-respecting American youth,--in an American ship, that is,--the opportunities for a career on shore were becoming more alluring. The young men who might have become leaders in our seafaring population--who might, perhaps, have found a way to maintain our supremacy at sea--were forced to suppress a natural liking for salt water; so they took the farms which the government gave away too freely; or they raised cattle on the unfenced plains; or they located mines; or they became managers and owners of factories where "protected" goods were made; or they obtained power and fortune from the railroads. While the British were strengthening their hold upon the sea, the Americans were steadily losing the sea habit.

It is manifest from any candid review of the facts that the decadence of the American merchant marine was wholly due to natural causes--to conditions of national development (the Civil War was a feature of our national development) that were unavoidable. It is unpleasant, but absolutely necessary, to face the facts. When the American merchant marine lost the command of the sea and the British gained it, the result was due to the working of the immutable law of the survival of the fittest.