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.