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 SCIENTISTS--THE "CLERMONT"--THE STEAMBOAT ON
THE OCEAN--ON WESTERN RIVERS--THE TRANSATLANTIC PASSAGE--THE "SAVANNAH"
MAKES THE FIRST CROSSING--ESTABLISHMENT OF BRITISH LINES--EFFORTS OF
UNITED STATES SHIP-OWNERS TO COMPETE--THE FAMOUS COLLINS LINE--THE
DECADENCE OF OUR MERCHANT MARINE--SIGNS OF ITS REVIVAL--OUR GREAT DOMESTIC
SHIPPING INTEREST--AMERICA'S FUTURE ON THE SEA.
Even as recently as twenty years ago, the water front of a great seaport
like New York, viewed from the harbor, showed a towering forest of tall
and tapering masts, reaching high up above the roofs of the water-side
buildings, crossed with slender spars hung with snowy canvas, and braced
with a web of taut cordage. Across the street that passed the foot of the
slips, reached out the great bowsprits or jibbooms, springing from
fine-drawn bows where, above a keen cut-water, the figurehead--pride of
the ship--nestled in confident strength. Neptune with his trident, Venus
rising from the sea, admirals of every age and nationality, favorite
heroes like Wellington and Andrew Jackson were carved, with varying skill,
from stout oak, and set up to guide their vessels through tumultuous seas.
[Illustration: "THE WATER FRONT OF A GREAT SEAPORT LIKE NEW YORK"]
To-day, alas, the towering masts, the trim yards, the web of cordage, the
quaint figureheads, are gone or going fast. The docks, once so populous,
seem deserted--not because maritime trade has fallen off, but because one
steamship does the work that twenty stout clippers once were needed for.
The clipper bow with figurehead and reaching jib-boom are gone, for the
modern steamship has its bow bluff, its stem perpendicular, the "City of
Rome" being the last great steamship to adhere to the old model. It is not
improbable, however, that in this respect we shall see a return to old
models, for the straight stem--an American invention, by the way--is held
to be more dangerous in case of collisions. Many of the old-time sailing
ships have been shorn of their towering masts, robbed of their canvas, and
made into ignoble barges which, loaded with coal, are towed along by some
fuming, fussing tugboat--as Samson shorn of his locks was made to bear the
burdens of the Philistines. This transformation from sail to steam has
robbed the ocean of much of its picturesqueness, and seafaring life of
much of its charm, as well as of many of its dangers.
The greater size of vessels and their swifter trips under steam, have had
the effect of depopulating the ocean, even in established trade routes. In
the old days of ocean travel the meeting of a ship at sea was an event
long to be remembered. The faint speck on the horizon, discernible only
through the captain's glass, was hours in taking on the form of a ship. If
a full-rigged ship, no handiwork of man could equal her impressiveness as
she bore down before the wind, sail mounting on sail of billowing
whiteness, until for the small hull cleaving the waves so swiftly, to
carry all seemed nothing sort of marvelous. Always there was a hail and an
interchange of names and ports; sometimes both vessels rounded to and
boats passed and repassed. But now the courtesies of the sea have gone
with its picturesqueness. Great ocean liners rushing through the deep,
give each other as little heed as railway trains passing on parallel
tracks. A twinkle of electric signals, or a fluttering of parti-colored
flags, and each seeks its own horizon--the incident bounded by minutes
where once it would have taken hours.
It would not be easy to say whether the sailor's lot has been lightened or
not, by the substitution of steel for wood, of steam for sail. Perhaps the
best evidence that the native-born American does not regard the change as
wholly a blessing, is to be found in the fact that but few of them now
follow the sea, and scarcely a vestige is left of the old New England
seafaring population except in the fisheries--where sails are still the
rule. Doubtless the explanation of this lies in the changed conditions of
seafaring as a business. In the days which I have sketched in the first
chapter, the boy of good habits and reasonable education who shipped
before the mast, was fairly sure of prompt promotion to the quarter-deck,
of a right to share in the profits of the voyage, and of finally owning
his own ship. After 1860 all these conditions changed. Steamships, always
costly to build, involved greater and greater investments as their size
increased. Early in the history of steam navigation they became
exclusively the property of corporations. Latterly the steamship lines
have become adjuncts to great railway lines, and are conducted by the
practiced stock manipulator--not by the veteran sea captain.
Richard J. Cleveland, a successful merchant navigator of the early days of
the nineteenth century, when little more than a lad, undertook an
enterprise, thus described by him in a letter from Havre:
"I have purchased a cutter-sloop of forty-three tons burden, on
a credit of two years. This vessel was built at Dieppe and
fitted out for a privateer; was taken by the English, and has
been plying between Dover and Calais as a packet-boat. She has
excellent accommodations and sails fast. I shall copper her, put
her in ballast, trim with £1000 or £1500 sterling in cargo, and
proceed to the Isle of France and Bourbon, where I expect to
sell her, as well as the cargo, at a very handsome profit, and
have no doubt of being well paid for my twelve months' work,
calculating to be with you next August."
[Illustration: AN ARMED CUTTER]
In such enterprises the young American sailors were always
engaging--braving equally the perils of the deep and not less treacherous
reefs and shoals of business but always struggling to become their own
masters to command their own ships, and if possible, to carry their own
cargoes. The youth of a nation that had fought for political independence,
fought themselves for economic independence.
To men of this sort the conditions bred by the steam-carrying trade were
intolerable. To-day a great steamship may well cost $2,000,000. It must
have the favor of railway companies for cargoes, must possess expensive
wharves at each end of its route, must have an army of agents and
solicitors ever engaged upon its business. The boy who ships before the
mast on one of them, is less likely to rise to the position of owner, than
the switchman is to become railroad president--the latter progress has
been known, but of the former I can not find a trace. So comparatively few
young Americans choose the sea for their workshop in this day of steam.
If this book were the story of the merchant marine of all lands and all
peoples, a chapter on the development of the steamship would be, perhaps,
the most important, and certainly the most considerable part of it. But
with the adoption of steam for ocean carriage began the decline of
American shipping, a decline hastened by the use of iron, and then steel,
for hulls. Though we credit ourselves--not without some protest from
England--with the invention of the steamboat, the adaptation of the screw
to the propulsion of vessels, and the invention of triple-expansion
engines, yet it was England that seized upon these inventions and with
them won, and long held, the commercial mastery of the seas. To-day (1902)
it seems that economic conditions have so changed that the shipyards of
the United States will again compete for the business of the world. We are
building ships as good--perhaps better--than can be constructed anywhere
else, but thus far we have not been able to build them as cheap.
Accordingly our builders have been restricted to the construction of
warships, coasters, and yachts. National pride has naturally demanded that
all vessels for the navy be built in American shipyards, and a federal law
has long restricted the trade between ports of the United States to ships
built here. The lake shipping, too--prodigious in numbers and activity--is
purely American. But until within a few years the American flag had almost
disappeared from vessels engaged in international trade. Americans in many
instances are the owners of ships flying the British flag, for the United
States laws deny American registry--which is to a ship what citizenship is
to a man--to vessels built abroad. While the result of this attempt to
protect American shipyards has been to drive our flag from the ocean,
there are indications now that our shipyards are prepared to build as
cheaply as others, and that the flag will again figure on the high seas.
Popular history has ascribed to Robert Fulton the honor of building and
navigating the first steamboat. Like claims to priority in many other
inventions, this one is strenuously contested. Two years before Fulton's
"Clermont" appeared on the Hudson, John Stevens, of Hoboken, built a
steamboat propelled by a screw, the model of which is still in the Stevens
Polytechnic Institute. Earlier still, John Fitch, of Pennsylvania, had
made a steamboat, and urged it upon Franklin, upon Washington, and upon
the American Philosophical Society without success; tried it then with the
Spanish minister, and was offered a subsidy by the King of Spain for the
exclusive right to the invention. Being a patriotic American, Fitch
refused. "My invention must be first for my own country and then for all
the world," said he. But later, after failing to reap any profit from his
discover and finding himself deprived even of the honor of first
invention, he wrote bitterly in 1792:
"The strange ideas I had at that time of serving my country, without the
least suspicion that my only reward would be contempt and opprobrious
names! To refuse the offer of the Spanish nation was the act of a
blockhead of which I should not be guilty again."
Indeed Fitch's fortune was hard. His invention was a work of the purest
originality. He was unread, uneducated, and had never so much as heard of
a steam-engine when the idea of propelling boats by steam came to him.
After repeated rebuffs--the lot of every inventor--he at length secured
from the State of New Jersey the right to navigate its waters for a term
of years. With this a stock company was formed and the first boat built
and rebuilt. At first it was propelled by a single paddle at the stem;
then by a series of paddles attached to an endless chain on each side of
the boat; afterwards by paddle-wheels, and finally by upright oars at the
side. The first test made on the Delaware River in August, 1787--twenty
years before Fulton--in the presence of many distinguished citizens, some
of them members of the Federal Convention, which had adjourned for the
purpose, was completely successful. The boiler burst before the afternoon
was over, but not before the inventor had demonstrated the complete
practicability of his invention.
For ten years, struggling the while against cruel poverty, John Fitch
labored to perfect his steamboat, and to force it upon the public favor,
but in vain. Never in the history of invention did a new device more fully
meet the traditional "long-felt want." Here was a growing nation made up
of a fringe of colonies strung along an extended coast. No roads were
built. Dense forests blocked the way inland but were pierced by navigable
streams, deep bays, and placid sounds. The steamboat was the one thing
necessary to cement American unity and speed American progress; but a full
quarter of a century passed after Fitch had steamed up and down the
Delaware before the new system of propulsion became commercially useful.
The inventor did not live to see that day, and was at least spared the
pain of seeing a later pioneer get credit for a discovery he thought his
own. In 1798 he died--of an overdose of morphine--leaving behind the
bitter writing: "The day will come when some powerful man will get fame
and riches from my invention; but nobody will ever believe that poor John
Fitch can do anything worthy of attention."
In trying to make amends for the long injustice done to poor Fitch, modern
history has come near to going beyond justice. It is undoubted that Fitch
applied steam to the propulsion of a boat, long before Fulton, but that
Fitch himself was the first inventor is not so certain. Blasco de Garay
built a rude steamboat in Barcelona in 1543; in Germany one Papin built
one a few years later, which bargemen destroyed lest their business be
injured by it. Jonathan Hulls, of Liverpool, in 1737 built a
stern-wheeler, rude engravings of which are still in existence, and
Symington in 1801 built a thoroughly practical steamboat at Dundee. 'Tis a
vexed question, and perhaps it is well enough to say that Fitch first
scented the commercial possibilities of steam navigation, while Fulton
actually developed them--the one "raised" the fox, while the other was in
at the death.
To trace a great idea to the actual birth is apt to be obstructive to
national pride. It is even said that the Chinese of centuries ago
understood the value of the screw-propeller--for inventing which our
adoptive citizen Ericsson stands in bronze on New York's Battery.
From the time of Robert Fulton, at any rate, dates the commercial usage of
the steamboat. Others had done the pioneering--Fitch on the Delaware,
James Rumsey on the Potomac, William Longstreet on the Savannah, Elijah
Ormsley on the waters of Rhode Island, while Samuel Morey had actually
traveled by steamboat from New Haven to New York. Fulton's craft was not
materially better than any of these, but it happened to be launched on
----that tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.
But the flood of that tide did not come to Fulton without long waiting and
painstaking preparation. He was the son of an Irish immigrant, and born in
Pennsylvania in 1765. To inventive genius he added rather unusual gifts
for drawing and painting; for a time followed the calling of a painter of
miniatures and went to London to study under Benjamin West, whom all
America of that day thought a genius scarcely second to Raphael or Titian.
He was not, like poor Fitch, doomed to the narrowest poverty and shut out
from the society of the men of light and learning of the day, for we find
him, after his London experience, a member of the family of Joel Barlow,
then our minister to France. By this time his ambition had forsaken art
for mechanics, and he was deep in plans for diving boats, submarine
torpedoes, and steamboats. Through various channels he succeeded in
getting his plan for moving vessels with steam, before Napoleon--then
First Consul--who ordered the Minister of Marine to treat with the
inventor. The Minister in due time suggested that 10,000 francs be spent
on experiments to be made in the Harbor of Brest. To this Napoleon
assented, and sent Fulton to the Institute of France to be examined as to
his fitness to conduct the tests. Now the Institute is the most learned
body in all France. In 1860 one of its members wrote a book to prove that
the earth does not revolve upon its axis, nor move about the sun. In 1878,
when Edison's phonograph was being exhibited to the eminent scientists of
the Institute, one rushed wrathfully down the aisle and seizing by the
collar the man who manipulated the instrument, cried out, "Wretch, we are
not to be made dupes of by a ventriloquist!" So it is readily
understandable that after being referred to the Institute, Fulton and his
project disappeared for a long time.
The learned men of the Institute of France were not alone in their
incredulity. In 1803 the Philosophical Society of Rotterdam wrote to the
American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, for information concerning
the development of the steam-engine in the United States. The question was
referred to Benjamin H. Latrobe, the most eminent engineer in America, and
his report was published approvingly in the _Transactions_. "A sort of
mania," wrote Mr. Latrobe, "had indeed prevailed and not yet entirely
subsided, for impelling boats by steam-engines." But his scientific
hearers would at once see that there were general objections to it which
could not be overcome. "These are, first, the weight of the engine and of
the fuel; second, the large space it occupies; third, the tendency of its
action to rack the vessel and render it leaky; fourth, the expense of
maintenance; fifth, the irregularity of its motion and the motion of the
water in the boiler and cistern, and of the fuel vessel in rough weather;
sixth, the difficulty arising from the liability of the paddles, or oars,
to break, if light, and from the weight if made strong."
But the steamboat survived this scientific indictment in six counts.
Visions proved more real than scientific reasoning.
While in the shadow of the Institute's disfavor, Fulton fell in with the
new minister to France, Robert R. Livingston, and the result of this
acquaintance was that America gained primacy in steam navigation, and
Napoleon lost the chance to get control of an invention which, by
revolutionizing navigation, might have broken that British control of the
sea, that in the end destroyed the Napoleonic empire. Livingston had long
taken an intelligent interest in the possibilities of steam power, and had
built and tested, on the Hudson, an experimental steamboat of his own.
Perhaps it was this, as much as anything, which aroused the interest of
Thomas Jefferson--to whom he owed his appointment as minister to
France--for Jefferson was actively interested in every sort of mechanical
device, and his mind was not so scientific as to be inhospitable to new,
and even, revolutionary, ideas. But Livingston was not possessed by that
idea which, in later years, politicians have desired us to believe
especially Jeffersonian. He was no foe to monopoly. Indeed, before he had
perfected his steamboat, he used his political influence to get from New
York the concession of the _exclusive_ right to navigate her lakes and
rivers by steam. The grant was only to be effective if within one year he
should produce a boat of twenty tons, moved by steam. But he failed, and
in 1801 went to France, where he found Fulton. A partnership was formed,
and it was largely through Livingston's money and influence that Fulton
succeeded where others, earlier in the field than he, had failed. Yet even
so, it was not all easy sailing for him. "When I was building my first
steamboat," he said, "the project was viewed by the public either with
indifference, or with contempt as a visionary scheme. My friends, indeed,
were civil, but were shy. They listened with patience to my explanations,
but with a settled cast of incredulity upon their countenances. I felt the
full force of the lamentation of the poet--
Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land;
All fear, none aid you, and few understand.
[Illustration: "THE LOUD LAUGH ROSE AT MY EXPENSE"]
"As I had occasion to pass daily to and from the building yard while my
boat was in progress, I have often loitered unknown near the idle groups
of strangers gathered in little circles and heard various inquiries as to
the object of this new vehicle. The language was uniformly that of scorn,
or sneer, or ridicule. The loud laugh often rose at my expense; the dry
jest; the wise calculation of losses and expenditures; the dull, but
endless repetition of 'the Fulton Folly.' Never did a single encouraging
remark, a bright hope, or a warm wish cross my path."
The boat which Fulton was building while the wiseacres wagged their heads
and prophesied disaster, was named "The Clermont." She was 130 feet long,
18 feet wide, half-decked, and provided with a mast and sail. In the
undecked part were the boiler and engine, set in masonry. The wheels were
fifteen feet in diameter, with buckets four feet wide, dipping two feet
into the water.
It was 1806 when Fulton came home to begin her construction. Since his
luckless experience with the French Institute he had tested a steamer on
the Seine; failed to interest Napoleon; tried, without success, to get the
British Government to adopt his torpedo; tried and failed again with the
American Government at Washington. Fulton's thoughts seemed to have been
riveted on his torpedo; but Livingston was confident of the future of the
steamboat, and had had an engine built for it in England, which Fulton
found lying on a wharf, freight unpaid, on his return from Europe. The
State of New York had meantime granted the two another monopoly of steam
navigation, and gave them until 1807 to prove their ability and right. The
time, though brief, proved sufficient, and on the afternoon of August 7,
1807, the "Clermont" began her epoch-making voyage. The distance to
Albany--150 miles--she traversed in thirty-two hours, and the end of the
passenger sloop traffic on the Hudson was begun. Within a year steamboats
were plying on the Raritan, the Delaware, and Lake Champlain, and the
development and use of the new invention would have been more rapid than
it was, save for the monopoly rights which had been granted to Livingston
and Fulton. They had the sole right to navigate by steam, the waters of
New York. Well and good. But suppose the stream navigated touched both New
York and New Jersey. What then? Would it be seriously asserted that a
steamer owned by New Jersey citizens could not land passengers at a New
York port?
Fulton and Livingston strove to protect their monopoly, and the two States
were brought to the brink of war. In the end the courts settled the
difficulty by establishing the exclusive control of navigable waters by
the Federal Government.
From the day the "Clermont" breasted the tide of the Hudson there was no
check in the conquest of the waters by steam. Up the narrowest rivers,
across the most tempestuous bays, along the placid waters of Long Island
Sound, coasting along the front yard of the nation from Portland to
Savannah the steamboats made their way, tying the young nation
indissolubly together. Curiously enough it was Livingston's monopoly that
gave the first impetus to the extension of steam navigation. A mechanic by
the name of Robert L. Stevens, one of the first of a family distinguished
in New York and New Jersey, built a steamboat on the Hudson. After one or
two trips had proved its usefulness, the possessors of the monopoly became
alarmed and began proceedings against the new rival. Driven from the
waters about New York, Stevens took his boat around to Philadelphia. Thus
not only did he open an entirely new field of river and inland water
transportation, but the trip to Philadelphia demonstrated the entire
practicability of steam for use in coastwise navigation. Thereafter the
vessels multiplied rapidly on all American waters. Fulton himself set up a
shipyard, in which he built steam ferries, river and coastwise steamboats.
In 1809 he associated himself with Nicholas J. Roosevelt, to whom credit
is due for the invention of the vertical paddle-wheel, in a partnership
for the purpose of putting steamboats on the great rivers of the
Mississippi Valley, and in 1811 the "New Orleans" was built and navigated
by Roosevelt himself, from Pittsburg to the city at the mouth of the
Mississippi. The voyage took fourteen days, and before undertaking it, he
descended the two rivers in a flatboat, to familiarize himself with the
channel. The biographer of Roosevelt prints an interesting letter from
Fulton, in which he says, "I have no pretensions to be the inventor of the
steamboat. Hundreds of others have tried it and failed." Four years after
Roosevelt's voyage, the "Enterprise" made for the first time in history
the voyage up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers from New Orleans to
Louisville, and from that era the great rivers may be said to have been
fairly opened to that commerce, which in time became the greatest agency
in the building up of the nation. The Great Lakes were next to feel the
quickening influence of the new motive power, but it was left for the
Canadian, John Hamilton, of Queenston, to open this new field. The
progress of steam navigation on both lakes and rivers will be more fully
described in the chapters devoted to that topic.
So rapidly now did the use of the steamboat increase on Long Island Sound,
on the rivers, and along the coast that the newspapers began to discuss
gravely the question whether the supply of fuel would long hold out. The
boats used wood exclusively--coal was then but little used--and despite
the vast forests which covered the face of the land the price of wood in
cities rose because of their demand. Mr. McMaster, the eminent historian,
discovers that in 1825 thirteen steamers plying on the Hudson burned
sixteen hundred cords of wood per week. Fourteen hundred cords more were
used by New York ferry boats, and each trip of a Sound steamer consumed
sixty cords. The American who traverses the placid waters of Long Island
Sound to-day in one of the swift and splendid steamboats of the Fall River
or other Sound lines, enjoys very different accommodations from those
which in the second quarter of the last century were regarded as palatial.
The luxury of that day was a simple sort at best. When competition became
strong, the old Fulton company, then running boats to Albany, announced as
a special attraction the "safety barge." This was a craft without either
sails or steam, of about two hundred tons burden, and used exclusively for
passengers. It boasted a spacious dining-room, ninety feet long, a deck
cabin for ladies, a reading room, a promenade deck, shaded and provided
with seats. One of the regular steamers of the line towed it to Albany,
and its passengers were assured freedom from the noise and vibration of
machinery, as well as safety from possible boiler explosions--the latter
rather a common peril of steamboating in those days.
[Illustration: "THE DREADNAUGHT"--NEW YORK AND LIVERPOOL PACKET]
It was natural that the restless mind of the American, untrammeled by
traditions and impatient of convention, should turn eagerly and early to
the question of crossing the ocean by steam. When the rivers had been made
busy highways for puffing steamboats; when the Great Lakes, as turbulent
as the ocean, and as vast as the Mediterranean, were conquered by the new
marine device; when steamships plied between New York, Philadelphia,
Baltimore, Savannah, and Charleston, braving what is by far more perilous
than mid-ocean, the danger of tempests on a lee shore, and the shifting
sands of Hatteras, there seemed to the enterprising man no reason why the
passage from New York to Liverpool might not be made by the same agency.
The scientific authorities were all against it. Curiously enough, the
weight of scientific authority is always against anything new. Marine
architects and mathematicians proved to their own satisfaction at least
that no vessel could carry enough coal to cross the Atlantic, that the
coal bunkers would have to be bigger than the vessel itself, in order to
hold a sufficient supply for the furnaces. It is a matter of history that
an eminent British scientist was engaged in delivering a lecture on this
very subject in Liverpool when the "Savannah," the first steamship to
cross the ocean, steamed into the harbor. It is fair, however, to add that
the "Savannah's" success did not wholly destroy the contention of the
opponents of steam navigation, for she made much of the passage under
sail, being fitted only with what we would call now "auxiliary steam
power." This was in 1819, but so slow were the shipbuilders to progress
beyond what had been done with the "Savannah," that in 1835 a highly
respected British scientist said in tones of authority: "As to the project
which was announced in the newspapers, of making the voyage from New York
to Liverpool direct by steam, it was, he had no hesitation in saying,
perfectly chimerical, and they might as well talk of making a voyage from
New York or Liverpool to the moon." Nevertheless, in three years from that
time transatlantic steam lines were in operation, and the doom of the
grand old packets was sealed.
The American who will read history free from that national prejudice which
is miscalled patriotism, can not fail to be impressed by the fact that,
while as a nation we have led the world in the variety and audacity of our
inventions, it is nearly always some other nation that most promptly and
most thoroughly utilizes the genius of our inventors. Emphatically was
this the case with the application of steam power to ocean steamships.
Americans showed the way, but Englishmen set out upon it and were
traveling it regularly before another American vessel followed in the wake
of the "Savannah." In 1838 two English steamships crossed the Atlantic to
New York, the "Sirius" and the "Great Western." That was the beginning of
that great fleet of British steamers which now plies up and down the Seven
Seas and finds its poet laureate in Mr. Kipling. A very small beginning it
was, too. The "Sirius" was of 700 tons burden and 320 horse-power; the
"Great Western" was 212 feet long, with a tonnage of 1340 and engines of
400 horse-power. The "Sirius" brought seven passengers to New York, at a
time when the sailing clippers were carrying from eight hundred to a
thousand immigrants, and from twenty to forty cabin passengers. To those
who accompanied the ship on her maiden voyage it must have seemed to
justify the doubts expressed by the mathematicians concerning the
practicability of designing a steamship which could carry enough coal to
drive the engines all the way across the Atlantic, for the luckless
"Sirius" exhausted her four hundred and fifty tons of coal before reaching
Sandy Hook, and could not have made the historic passage up New York Bay
under steam, except for the liberal use of spars and barrels of resin
which she had in cargo. Her voyage from Cork had occupied eighteen and a
half days. The "Great Western," which arrived at the same time, made the
run from Queenstown in fifteen days. That two steamships should lie at
anchor in New York Bay at the same time, was enough to stir the wonder and
awaken the enthusiasm of the provincial New Yorkers of that day. The
newspapers published editorials on the marvel, and the editor of _The
Courier and Enquirer_, the chief maritime authority of the time, hazarded
a prophecy in this cautious fashion:
"What may be the ultimate fate of this excitement--whether or
not the expenses of equipment and fuel will admit of the
employment of these vessels in the ordinary packet service--we
cannot pretend to form an opinion; but of the entire feasibility
of the passage of the Atlantic by steam, as far as regards
safety, comfort, and dispatch, even in the roughest and most
boisterous weather, the most skeptical must now cease to doubt."
Unfortunately for our national pride, the story of the development of the
ocean steamship industry from this small beginning to its present
prodigious proportions, is one in which we of the United States fill but a
little space. We have, it is true, furnished the rich cargoes of grain, of
cotton, and of cattle, that have made the ocean passage in one direction
profitable for shipowners. We found homes for the millions of immigrants
who crowded the "'tween decks" of steamers of every flag and impelled the
companies to build bigger and bigger craft to carry the ever increasing
throngs. And in these later days of luxury and wealth unparalleled, we
have supplied the millionaires, whose demands for quarters afloat as
gorgeous as a Fifth Avenue club have resulted in the building of floating
palaces. America has supported the transatlantic lines, but almost every
civilized people with a seacoast has outdone us in building the ships. For
a time, indeed, it seemed that we should speedily overcome the lead that
England immediately took in building steamships. Her entrance upon this
industry was, as we have seen, in 1838. The United States took it up about
ten years later. In 1847 the Ocean Steam Navigation Company was organized
in this country and secured from the Government a contract to carry the
mails between New York and Bremen. Two ships were built and regular trips
made for a year or more; but when the Government contract expired and was
not renewed, the venture was abandoned. About the same time the owners of
one of the most famous packet lines, the Black Ball, tried the experiment
of supplementing their sailing service with a steamship, but it proved
unprofitable. Shortly after the New York and Havre Steamship Company, with
two vessels and a postal subsidy of $150,000, entered the field and
continued operations with only moderate success until 1868.
The only really notable effort of Americans in the early days of steam
navigation to get their share of transatlantic trade--indeed, I might
almost say the most determined effort until the present time--was that
made by the projectors of the Collins line, and it ended in disaster, in
heavy financial loss, and in bitter sorrow.
E.K. Collins was a New York shipping merchant, the organizer and manager
of one of the most famous of the old lines of sailing packets between that
port and Liverpool--the Dramatic line, so called from the fact that its
ships were named after popular actors of the day. Recognizing the fact
that the sailing ship was fighting a losing fight against the new style of
vessels, Mr. Collins interested a number of New York merchants in a
distinctly American line of transatlantic ships. It was no easy task.
Capital was not over plenty in the American city which now boasts itself
the financial center of the world, while the opportunities for its
investment in enterprises longer proved and less hazardous than steamships
were numerous. But a Government mail subsidy of $858,000 annually promised
a sound financial basis, and made the task of capitalization possible. It
seems not unlikely that the vicissitudes of the line were largely the
result of this subsidy, for one of its conditions was extremely onerous:
namely, that the vessels making twenty-six voyages annually between New
York and Liverpool, should always make the passage in better time than
the British Cunard line, which was then in its eighth year. However, the
Collins line met the exaction bravely. Four vessels were built, the
"Atlantic," "Pacific," "Arctic," and "Baltic," and the time of the fleet
for the westward passage averaged eleven days, ten hours and twenty-one
minutes, while the British ships averaged twelve days, nineteen hours and
twenty-six minutes--a very substantial triumph for American naval
architecture. The Collins liners, furthermore, were models of comfort and
even of luxury for the times. They averaged a cost of $700,000 apiece, a
good share of which went toward enhancing the comfort of passengers. To
our English cousins these ships were at first as much of a curiosity as
our vestibuled trains were a few years since. When the "Atlantic" first
reached Liverpool in 1849, the townspeople by the thousand came down to
the dock to examine a ship with a barber shop, fitted with the curious
American barber chairs enabling the customer to recline while being
shaved. The provision of a special deck-house for smokers, was another
innovation, while the saloon, sixty-seven by twenty feet, the dining
saloon sixty by twenty, the rich fittings of rosewood and satinwood,
marble-topped tables, expensive upholstery, and stained-glass windows,
decorated with patriotic designs, were for a long time the subject of
admiring comment in the English press. Old voyagers who crossed in the
halcyon days of the Collins line and are still taking the "Atlantic
ferry," agree in saying that the increase in actual comfort is not so
great as might reasonably be expected. Much of the increased expenditures
of the companies has gone into more gorgeous decoration, vastly more of
course into pushing for greater speed; but even in the early days there
was a lavish table, and before the days of the steamships the packets
offered such private accommodations in the of roomy staterooms as can be
excelled only by the "cabins de luxe" of the modern liner. Aside from the
question of speed, however, it is probable that the two inventions which
have added most to the passengers' comfort are the electric light and
artificial refrigeration.
The Collins line charged from thirty to forty dollar a ton for freight, a
charge which all the modern improvements and the increase in the size of
vessels, has not materially lessened. In six years, however, the
corporation was practically bankrupt. The high speed required by the
Government more than offset the generous subsidy, and misfortune seemed to
pursue the ships. The "Arctic" came into collision with a French steamer
in 1854, and went down with two hundred and twenty-two of the two hundred
and sixty-eight people on board. The "Pacific" left Liverpool June 23,
1856, and was never more heard of. Shortly thereafter the subsidy was
withdrawn, and the famous line went slowly down to oblivion.
It was during the best days of the Collins line that it seemed that the
United States might overtake Great Britain in the race for supremacy on
the ocean. In 1851 the total British steam shipping engaged in foreign
trade was 65,921 tons. The United States only began building steamships in
1848, yet by 1851 its ocean-going steamships aggregated 62,390 tons. For
four years our growth continued so that in 1855 we had 115,000 tons
engaged in foreign trade. Then began the retrograde movement, until in
1860--before the time of the Confederate cruisers--there were; according
to an official report to the National Board of Trade, "no ocean mail
steamers away from our own coasts, anywhere on the globe, under the
American flag, except, perhaps, on the route between New York and Havre,
where two steamships may then have been in commission, which, however,
were soon afterward withdrawn. The two or three steamship companies which
had been in existence in New York had either failed or abandoned the
business; and the entire mail, passenger, and freight traffic between
Great Britain and the United States, so far as this was carried on by
steam, was controlled then (as it mainly is now) by British companies."
And from this condition of decadence the merchant marine of the United
States is just beginning to manifest signs of recovery.
When steam had fairly established its place as the most effective power
for ocean voyages of every duration, and through every zone and clime,
improvements in the methods of harnessing it, and in the form and material
of the ships that it was to drive, followed fast upon each other. As in
the case of the invention of the steamboat, the public has commonly
lightly awarded the credit for each invention to some belated experimenter
who, walking more firmly along a road which an earlier pioneer had broken,
attained the goal that his predecessor had sought in vain. So we find
credit given almost universally to John Ericsson, the Swedish-born
American, for the invention of the screw-propeller. But as early as 1770
it was suggested by John Watt, and Stevens, the American inventor,
actually gave a practical demonstration of its efficiency in 1804.
Ericsson perfected it in 1836, and soon thereafter the British began
building steamships with screws instead of paddle-wheels. For some reason,
however, not easy now to conjecture, shipbuilders clung to the
paddle-wheels for vessels making the transatlantic voyage, long after they
were discarded on the shorter runs along the coasts of the British isles.
It so happened, too, that the first vessel to use the screw in
transatlantic voyages, was also first iron ship built. She was the "Great
Britain," a ship of 3,000 tons, built for the Great Western Company at
Bristol, England, and intended to eclipse any ship afloat. Her hull was
well on the way to completion when her designer chanced to see the
"Archimedes," the first screw steamer built, and straightway changed his
plans to admit the use of the new method of propulsion So from 1842 may be
dated the use of both screw propellers and iron ships. We must pass
hastily over the other inventions, rapidly following each other, and all
designed to make ocean travel more swift, more safe, and more comfortable,
and to increase the profit of the shipowner. The compound engine, which
has been so developed that in place of Fulton's seven miles an hour, our
ocean steamships are driven now at a speed sometimes closely approaching
twenty-five miles an hour, seems already destined to give way to the
turbine form of engine which, applied thus far to torpedo-boats only, has
made a record of forty-four miles an hour. Iron, which stood for a
revolution in 1842, has itself given way to steel. And a new force,
subtile, swift, and powerful, has found endless application in the body of
the great ships, so that from stem to stern-post they are a network of
electric wires, bearing messages, controlling the independent engines that
swing the rudder, closing water-tight compartments at the first hint of
danger, and making the darkest places of the great hulls as light as day
at the throwing of a switch. During the period of this wonderful advance
in marine architecture ship-building in the United States languished to
the point of extinction. Yachts for millionaires who could afford to pay
heavily for the pleasure of flying the Stars and Stripes, ships of 2500 to
4000 tons for the coasting trade, in which no foreign-built vessel was
permitted to compete, and men-of-war--very few of them before 1890--kept a
few shipyards from complete obliteration. But as an industry,
ship-building, which once ranked at the head of American manufactures, had
sunk to a point of insignificance.
The present moment (1902) seems to show the American shipping interest in
the full tide of successful reëstablishment. In Congress and in boards of
trade men are arguing for and against subsidies, for and against the
policy of permitting Americans to buy ships of foreign builders if they
will, and fly the American flag above them. But while these things remain
subjects of discussion natural causes are taking Americans again to sea.
Some buy great British ships, own and manage them, even although the laws
of the United States compel the flying of a foreign flag. For example, the
Atlantic Transport line is owned wholly by citizens of the United States,
although at the present moment all its ships fly the British flag. Two new
ships are, however, being completed for this line in American shipyards,
the "Minnetonka" and "Minnewaska," of 13,401 tons each. This line, started
by Americans in 1887, was the first to use the so-called bilge keels, or
parallel keels along each side of the hull to prevent rolling. It now has
a fleet of twenty-three vessels, with a total tonnage of about 90,000, and
does a heavy passenger business despite the fact that its ships were
primarily designed to carry cattle. Quite as striking an illustration of
the fact that capital is international, and will be invested in ships or
other enterprises which promise profit quite heedless of sentimental
considerations of flags, was afforded by the purchase in 1901 of the
Leyland line of British steamships by an American. Immediately following
this came the consolidation of ownership, or merger, of the principal
British-American lines, in one great corporation, a majority of the stock
of which is held by Americans. Despite their ownership on this side of
the water, these ships will still fly the British flag, and a part of the
contract of merger is that a British shipyard shall for ten years build
all new vessels needed by the consolidated lines this situation will
persist. This suggests that the actual participation of Americans in the
ocean-carrying trade of the world is not to be estimated by the frequency
or infrequency with which the Stars and Stripes are to be met on the
ocean. It furthermore gives some indication of the rapidity with which the
American flag would reappear if the law to register only ships built in
American yards were repealed.
Indeed, it would appear that the law protecting American ship-builders,
while apparently effective for that purpose, has destroyed American
shipping. Our ship-building industry has attained respectable and even
impressive proportions; but our shipping, wherever brought into
competition with foreign ships, has vanished. One transatlantic line only,
in 1902 displayed the American flag, and that line enjoyed special and
unusual privileges, without which it probably could not have existed. In
consideration of building two ships in American yards, this line, the
International Navigation Company, was permitted to transfer two
foreign-built ships to American registry, and a ten years' postal contract
was awarded it, which guaranteed in advance the cost of construction of
all the ships it was required to build. It is a fact worth noting that,
while the foreign lines have been vying with each other in the
construction of faster and bigger ships each year, this one has built none
since its initial construction, more than a decade ago. Ten years ago its
American-built ships, the "New York" and the "Paris," were the largest
ships afloat; now there are eighteen larger in commission, and many
building. Besides this, there are only two American lines on the Atlantic
which ply to other than coastwise ports--the Pacific Mail, which is run
in connection with the Panama railway, and the Admiral line, which plies
between New York and the West Indies. Indeed, the Commissioner of
Navigation, in his report for 1901, said:
"For serious competition with foreign nations under the conditions now
imposed upon ocean navigation, we are practically limited to our
registered iron and steam steel vessels, which in all number 124, of
271,378 gross tons. Those under 1,000 gross tons are not now commercially
available for oversea trade. There remains 4 steamships, each of over
10,000 gross tons; 5 of between 5,000 and 6,000 gross tons; 2 of between
4,000 and 5,000 tons; 18 between 3000 and 4000 tons; 35 between 2000 and
3000 tons, and 33 between 1000 and 2000 tons; in all 97 steamships over
1000 tons, aggregating 260,325 gross tons."
Most of these are engaged in coastwise trade. The fleet of the
Hamburg-American line alone, among our many foreign rivals, aggregates
515,628 gross tons.
However, we must bear in mind that this seemingly insignificant place held
by the United States merchant marine represents only the part it holds in
the international carrying trade of the world. Such a country as Germany
must expend all its maritime energies on international trade. It has
little or no river and coastwise traffic. But the United States is a
little world in itself; not so very small, and of late years growing
greater. Our wide extended coasts on Atlantic, Pacific, and the Mexican
Gulf, are bordered by rich States crowded with a people who produce and
consume more per capita than any other race. From the oceans great
navigable rivers, deep bays, and placid sounds, extend into the very heart
of the country. The Great Lakes are bordered by States more populous and
cities more busy and enterprising than those, which in the proudest days
of Rome, and Carthage and Venice skirted the Mediterranean and the
Adriatic. The traffic of all these trade highways is by legislation
reserved for American ships alone. On the Great Lakes has sprung up a
merchant marine rivaling that of some of the foremost maritime peoples,
and conducting a traffic that puts to shame the busiest maritime highways
of Europe. Long Island Sound bears on its placid bosom steamships that are
the marvel of the traveling public the world over. The Hudson, the Ohio,
the Mississippi, are all great arteries through which the life current of
trade is ceaselessly flowing. A book might be written on the one subject
of the part that river navigation has played in developing the interior
States of this Union. Another could well be devoted to the history of lake
navigation, which it is no overstatement to pronounce the most impressive
chapter in the history of the American merchant marine. In this volume,
however, but brief attention can be given to either.
The figures show how honorably our whole body of shipping compares in
volume to that operated by any maritime people. Our total registered
shipping engaged in the fisheries, coastwise, and lake traffic, and
foreign trade numbered at the beginning of 1902, 24,057 vessels, with an
aggregate tonnage of 5,524,218 tons. In domestic trade alone we had
4,582,683 tons, or an amount exceeding the total tonnage of Germany and
Norway combined, or of Germany and France. Only England excelled us, but
her lead, which in 1860 was inconsiderable, in 1901 was prodigious; the
British flag flying over no less than 14,261,254 tons of shipping, more
than three times our tonnage! It is proper to note that more than
two-thirds of our registered tonnage is of wood.
[Illustration: THERE ARE BUILDING IN AMERICAN YARDS ]
I have already given reasons why, in the natural course of things, this
disparity between the American and the British foreign-going merchant
marine will not long continue. And indeed, as this book is writing, it is
apparent that its end is near. Though shipyards have multiplied fast in
the last five years of the nineteenth century, the first years of the new
century found them all occupied up to the very limit of their capacity.
Yards that began, like the Cramps, building United States warships and
finding little other work, were soon under contract to build men-of-war
for Russia and Japan. The interest of the people in the navy afforded a
great stimulus to shipbuilding. It is told of one of the principal yards,
that its promotor went to Washington with a bid for naval construction in
his pocket, but without either a shipyard or capital wherewith to build
one. He secured a contract for two ships, and capital readily interested
itself in his project. When that contract is out of the way the yard will
enter the business of building merchant vessels, just as several yards,
which long had their only support from naval contracts, are now doing.
There were built in the year ending June 30, 1901, in American yards, 112
vessels of over 1000 tons each, or a total of 311,778. Many of these were
lake vessels; some were wooden ships. Of modern steel steamers, built on
the seaboard, there were but sixteen. At the present moment there are
building in American yards, or contracted for, almost 255,325 tons of
steel steamships, to be launched within a year--or 89 vessels, more than
twice the output of any year in our history, and an impressive earnest for
the future. Nor is this rapid increase in the ship-building activity of
the United States accompanied by any reduction in the wages of the
American working men. Their high wages, of which ship-builders complain,
and in which everyone else rejoices, remain high. But it has been
demonstrated to the satisfaction, even of foreign observers, that the
highly-paid American labor is the most effective, and in the end the
cheapest. Our workingmen know how to use modern tools, to make compressed
air, steam, electricity do their work at every possible point, and while
the United States still ranks far below England as a ship-building center,
Englishmen, Germans, and Frenchmen are coming over here to learn how we
build the ships that we do build. If it has not yet been demonstrated that
we can build ships as cheaply as any other nation, we are so near the
point of demonstration, that it may be said to be expected momentarily.
With the cheapest iron in the world, we have at least succeeded in making
steel, the raw material of the modern ship, cheaper than it can be made
elsewhere, and that accomplished, our primacy in the matter of
ship-building is a matter of the immediate future. A picturesque
illustration of this change is afforded by the fact that in 1894 the
plates of the "Dirigo," the first steel square-rigged vessel built in the
United States, were imported from England. In 1898 we exported to England
some of the plates for the "Oceanic," the largest vessel built to that
time.
Even the glory, such as it may be, of building the biggest ship of the
time is now well within the grasp of the United States. At this writing,
indeed, the biggest ship is the "Celtic," British built, and of 20,000
tons. But the distinction is only briefly for her, for at New London,
Connecticut, two ponderous iron fabrics are rising on the ways that
presently shall take form as ocean steamships of 25,000 tons each, to fly
the American flag, and to ply between Seattle and China. These great ships
afford new illustrations of more than one point already made in this
chapter. To begin with they are, of course, not constructed for any
individual owner. Time was that the farmer with land sloping down to New
London would put in his spare time building a staunch schooner of 200
tons, man her with his neighbors, and engage for himself in the world's
carrying trade. It is rather different now. The Northern Pacific railroad
directors concluded that their railroad could not be developed to its
fullest earning capacity without some way of carrying to the markets of
the far East the agricultural products gathered up along its line. As the
tendency of the times is toward gathering all branches of a business under
one control, they determined to not rely upon independent shipowners, but
to build their own vessels. That meant the immediate letting of a contract
for $5,000,000 worth of ship construction, and that in turn meant that
there was a profit to somebody in starting an entirely new shipyard to do
the work. So, suddenly, one of the sleepiest little towns in New England,
Groton, opposite New London, was turned into a ship-building port. The two
great Northern Pacific ships will be launched about the time this book is
published, but the yard by that time will have become a permanent addition
to the ship-building enterprises of the United States. So, too, all along
the Atlantic coast, we find ancient shipyards where, in the very earliest
colonial days, wooden vessels were built, adapting themselves to the
construction of the new steel steamships.
How wonderful is the contrast between the twentieth century, steel,
triple-screw, 25,000-ton, electric-lighted, 25-knot steamship, and
Winthrop's little "Blessing of the Bay," or Fulton's "Clermont," or even
the ships of the Collins line--floating palaces as they were called at the
time! Time has made commonplace the proportions of the "Great Eastern,"
the marine marvel not only of her age, but of the forty years that
succeeded her breaking-up as impracticable on account of size. She was
19,000 tons, 690 feet long, and built with both paddle-wheels and a screw.
The "Celtic" is 700 feet long, 20,000 tons, with twin screws. The one was
too big to be commercially valuable, the other has held the record for
size only for a year, being already outclassed by the Northern Pacific
25,000-ton monsters. That one was a failure, the other a success, is
almost wholly due to the improvements in engines, which effect economy of
space both in the engine-room and in the coal bunkers. It is, by the way,
rather a curious illustration of the growing luxury of life, and of ocean
travel, that the first voyage of this enormous ship was made as a yacht,
carrying a party of pleasure-seekers, with not a pound of cargo, through
the show places of the Mediterranean.
It will be interesting to chronicle here some of the characteristics of
the most modern of ocean steamships, and to show by the use of some
figures, the enormous proportions to which their business has attained.
For this purpose it will be necessary to use figures drawn from the
records of foreign lines, and from such vessels as the "Deutschland" and
the "Celtic," although the purpose of this book is to tell the story of
the American merchant marine. But the figures given will be approximately
correct for the great American ships now building, while there are not at
present in service any American passenger ships which are fairly
representative of the twentieth century liner.
The "Celtic," for example, will carry 3,294 persons, of whom 2,859 will be
passengers. That is, it could furnish comfortable accommodations, heated
and lighted, with ample food for all the students in Harvard University,
or the University of Michigan, or Columbia University, or all in Amherst,
Dartmouth, Cornell, and Williams combined. If stood on end she would
almost attain the height of the Washington monument placed on the roof of
the Capitol at Washington. She has nine decks, and a few years ago, if
converted into a shore edifice, might fairly have been reckoned in the
"skyscraper" class. Her speed, as she was built primarily for capacity is
only about seventeen knots, and to attain that she burns about 260 tons of
coal a day. The "Deutschland," which holds the ocean record for speed,
burns nearly 600 tons of coal a day, and with it carries through the seas
only 16,000 tons as against the "Celtic's" 20,000. But she is one of the
modern vessels built especially to carry passengers. In her hold, huge as
it is, there is room for only about 600 tons of cargo, and she seldom
carries more than one-sixth of that amount. One voyage of this great ship
costs about $45,000, and even at that heavy expense, she is a profit
earner, so great is the volume of transatlantic travel and so ready are
people to pay for speed and luxury. Her coal alone costs $5,000 a trip,
and the expenses of the table, laundry, etc., equal those of the most
luxurious hotel.
But will ever these great liners, these huge masses of steel, guided by
electricity and sped by steam, build up anew the race of American sailors?
Who shall say now? To-day they are manned by Scandinavians and officered,
in the main, by the seamen of the foreign nations whose flags they float.
But the American is an adaptable type. He at once attends upon changing
conditions and conquers them. He turned from the sea to the railroads when
that seemed to be the course of progress; he may retrace his steps now
that the pendulum seems to swing the other way. And if he finds under the
new regime less chance for the hardy topman, no opportunity for the shrewd
trader to a hundred ports, the gates closed to the man of small capital,
yet be sure he will conquer fate in some way. We have seen it in the armed
branch of the seafaring profession only within a few months. When the fine
old sailing frigates vanished from the seas, when the "Constitution" and
the "Hartford" became as obsolete as the caravels of Columbus, when a navy
officer found that electricity and steam were more serious problems in his
calling than sails and rigging, and a bluejacket could be with the best in
his watch without ever having learned to furl a royal, then said
everybody: "The naval profession has gone to the dogs. Its romance has
departed. Our ships should be manned from our boiler shops, and officered
from our institutions of technology. There will be no more Decaturs,
Somerses, Farraguts, Cushings." And then came on the Spanish war and the
rush of the "Oregon" around Cape Horn, the cool thrust of Dewey's fleet
into the locked waters of Manila Bay, the plucky fight and death of Bagley
at Cardenas, the braving of death by Hobson at Santiago, and the complete
destruction of Cervera's fleet by Schley showed that Americans could fight
as well in steel ships as in wooden ones. Nor can we doubt that the
history of the next half-century will show that the new order at sea will
breed a new race of American seamen able as in the past to prove
themselves masters of the deep.