One thinks of the old merchant marine in terms of the clipper ship and
distant ports. The coasting trade has been overlooked in song and story;
yet, since the year 1859, its fleets have always been larger and more
important than the American deep-water commerce nor have decay and
misfortune overtaken them. It is a traffic which flourished from the
beginning, ingeniously adapting itself to new conditions, unchecked by
war, and surviving with splendid vigor, under steam and sail, in this
modern era.
The seafaring pioneers won their way from port to port of the
tempestuous Atlantic coast in tiny ketches, sloops, and shallops when
the voyage of five hundred miles from New England to Virginia was a
prolonged and hazardous adventure. Fog and shoals and lee shores beset
these coastwise sailors, and shipwrecks were pitifully frequent. In
no Hall of Fame will you find the name of Captain Andrew Robinson
of Gloucester, but he was nevertheless an illustrious benefactor and
deserves a place among the most useful Americans. His invention was the
Yankee schooner of fore-and-aft rig, and he gave to this type of vessel
its name. * Seaworthy, fast, and easily handled, adapted for use in
the early eighteenth century when inland transportation was almost
impossible, the schooner carried on trade between the colonies and was
an important factor in the growth of the fisheries.
* It is said that as the odd two-master slid gracefully into the water,
a spectator exclaimed: "See how she scoons!" "Aye," answered Captain
Robinson, "a SCHOONER let her be!" This launching took place in 1718 or
1714.
Before the Revolution the first New England schooners were beating up
to the Grand Bank of Newfoundland after cod and halibut. They were of
no more than fifty tons' burden, too small for their task but manned
by fishermen of surpassing hardihood. Marblehead was then the foremost
fishing port with two hundred brigs and schooners on the offshore banks.
But to Gloucester belongs the glory of sending the first schooner to the
Grand Bank. * From these two rock-bound harbors went thousands of trained
seamen to man the privateers and the ships of the Continental navy,
slinging their hammocks on the gun-decks beside the whalemen of
Nantucket. These fishermen and coastwise sailors fought on the land as
well and followed the drums of Washington's armies until the final
scene at Yorktown. Gloucester and Marblehead were filled with widows and
orphans, and half their men-folk were dead or missing.
* Marvin's "American Merchant Marine," p. 287.
The fishing-trade soon prospered again, and the men of the old ports
tenaciously clung to the sea even when the great migration flowed
westward to people the wilderness and found a new American empire.
They were fishermen from father to son, bound together in an intimate
community of interests, a race of pure native or English stock,
deserving this tribute which was paid to them in Congress: "Every
person on board our fishing vessels has an interest in common with his
associates; their reward depends upon their industry and enterprise.
Much caution is observed in the selection of the crews of our fishing
vessels; it often happens that every individual is connected by blood
and the strongest ties of friendship; our fishermen are remarkable for
their sobriety and good conduct, and they rank with the most skillful
navigators."
Fishing and the coastwise merchant trade were closely linked. Schooners
loaded dried cod as well as lumber for southern ports and carried back
naval stores and other southern products. Well-to-do fishermen owned
trading vessels and sent out their ventures, the sailors shifting from
one forecastle to the other. With a taste for an easier life than the
stormy, freezing Banks, the young Gloucesterman would sign on for a
voyage to Pernambuco or Havana and so be fired with ambition to become
a mate or master and take to deep water after a while. In this way was
maintained a school of seamanship which furnished the most intelligent
and efficient officers of the merchant marine. For generations they were
mostly recruited from the old fishing and shipping ports of New England
until the term "Yankee shipmaster" had a meaning peculiarly its own.
Seafaring has undergone so many revolutionary changes and old days and
ways are so nearly obliterated that it is singular to find the sailing
vessel still employed in great numbers, even though the gasolene motor
is being installed to kick her along in spells of calm weather. The
Gloucester fishing schooner, perfect of her type, stanch, fleet, and
powerful, still drives homeward from the Banks under a tall press of
canvas, and her crew still divide the earnings, share and share, as did
their forefathers a hundred and fifty years ago. But the old New England
strain of blood no longer predominates, and Portuguese, Scandinavians,
and Nova Scotia "Bluenoses" bunk with the lads of Gloucester stock. Yet
they are alike for courage, hardihood, and mastery of the sea, and the
traditions of the calling are undimmed.
There was a time before the Civil War when Congress jealously protected
the fisheries by means of a bounty system and legislation aimed against
our Canadian neighbors. The fishing fleets were regarded as a source
of national wealth and the nursery of prime seamen for the navy and
merchant marine. In 1858 the bounty system was abandoned, however, and
the fishermen were left to shift for themselves, earning small profits
at peril of their lives and preferring to follow the sea because they
knew no other profession. In spite of this loss of assistance from the
Government, the tonnage engaged in deep-sea fisheries was never so great
as in the second year of the Civil War. Four years later the industry
had shrunk one-half; and it has never recovered its early importance *
* In 1882, the tonnage amounted to 193,459; in 1866, to 89,336.
The coastwise merchant trade, on the other hand, has been jealously
guarded against competition and otherwise fostered ever since 1789, when
the first discriminatory tonnage tax was enforced. The Embargo Act of
1808 prohibited domestic commerce to foreign flags, and this edict was
renewed in the American Navigation Act of 1817. It remained a firmly
established doctrine of maritime policy until the Great War compelled
its suspension as an emergency measure. The theories of protection
and free trade have been bitterly debated for generations, but in this
instance the practice was eminently successful and the results were
vastly impressive. Deepwater shipping dwindled and died, but the
increase in coastwise sailing was consistent. It rose to five million
tons early in this century and makes the United States still one of the
foremost maritime powers in respect to saltwater activity.
To speak of this deep-water shipping as trade coastwise is misleading,
in a way. The words convey an impression of dodging from port to port
for short distances, whereas many of the voyages are longer than those
of the foreign routes in European waters. It is farther by sea from
Boston to Philadelphia than from Plymouth, England, to Bordeaux. A
schooner making the run from Portland to Savannah lays more knots over
her stern than a tramp bound out from England to Lisbon. It is a shorter
voyage from Cardiff to Algiers than an American skipper pricks off on
his chart when he takes his steamer from New York to New Orleans or
Galveston. This coastwise trade may lack the romance of the old school
of the square-rigged ship in the Roaring Forties, but it has always
been the more perilous and exacting. Its seamen suffer hardships unknown
elsewhere, for they have to endure winters of intense cold and heavy
gales and they are always in risk of stranding or being driven ashore.
The story of these hardy men is interwoven, for the most part, with the
development of the schooner in size and power. This graceful craft,
so peculiar to its own coast and people, was built for utility and
possessed a simple beauty of its own when under full sail. The schooners
were at first very small because it was believed that large fore-and-aft
sails could not be handled with safety. They were difficult to reef or
lower in a blow until it was discovered that three masts instead of two
made the task much easier. For many years the three-masted schooner was
the most popular kind of American merchant vessel. They clustered in
every Atlantic port and were built in the yards of New England, New
York, New Jersey, and Virginia,--built by the mile, as the saying was,
and sawed off in lengths to suit the owners' pleasure. They carried
the coal, ice, lumber of the whole seaboard and were so economical of
man-power that they earned dividends where steamers or square-rigged
ships would not have paid for themselves.
As soon as a small steam-engine was employed to hoist the sails, it
became possible to launch much larger schooners and to operate them at
a marvelously low cost. Rapidly the four-master gained favor, and then
came the five- and six-masted vessels, gigantic ships of their kind.
Instead of the hundred-ton schooner of a century ago, Hampton Roads
and Boston Harbor saw these great cargo carriers which could stow under
hatches four and five thousand tons of coal, and whose masts soared a
hundred and fifty feet above the deck. Square-rigged ships of the same
capacity would have required crews of a hundred men, but these schooners
were comfortably handled by a company of fifteen all told, only ten of
whom were in the forecastle. There was no need of sweating and hauling
at braces and halliards. The steam-winch undertook all this toil. The
tremendous sails, stretching a hundred feet from boom to gaff could
not have been managed otherwise. Even for trimming sheets or setting
topsails, it was necessary merely to take a turn or two around the drum
of the winch engine and turn the steam valve. The big schooner was the
last word in cheap, efficient transportation by water. In her own sphere
of activity she was as notable an achievement as the Western Ocean
packet or the Cape Horn clipper.
The masters who sailed these extraordinary vessels also changed and had
to learn a new kind of seamanship. They must be very competent men, for
the tests of their skill and readiness were really greater than those
demanded of the deepwater skipper. They drove these great schooners
alongshore winter and summer; across Nantucket Shoals and around Cape
Cod, and their salvation depended on shortening sail ahead of the gale.
Let the wind once blow and the sea get up, and it was almost impossible
to strip the canvas off an unwieldy six-master. The captain's chief fear
was of being blown offshore, of having his vessel run away with him!
Unlike the deep-water man, he preferred running in toward the beach and
letting go his anchors. There he would ride out the storm and hoist sail
when the weather moderated.
These were American shipmasters of the old breed, raised in schooners
as a rule, and adapting themselves to modern conditions. They sailed for
nominal wages and primage, or five per cent of the gross freight paid
the vessel. Before the Great War in Europe, freights were low and the
schooner skippers earned scanty incomes. Then came a world shortage
of tonnage and immediately coastwise freights soared skyward. The big
schooners of the Palmer fleet began to reap fabulous dividends and their
masters shared in the unexpected opulence. Besides their primage they
owned shares in their vessels, a thirty-second or so, and presently
their settlement at the end of a voyage coastwise amounted to an income
of a thousand dollars a month. They earned this money, and the
managing owners cheerfully paid them, for there had been lean years and
uncomplaining service and the sailor had proved himself worthy of his
hire. So tempting was the foreign war trade, that a fleet of them was
sent across the Atlantic until the American Government barred them from
the war zone as too easy a prey for submarine attack. They therefore
returned to the old coastwise route or loaded for South American
ports--singularly interesting ships because they were the last bold
venture of the old American maritime spirit, a challenge to the Age of
Steam.
No more of these huge, towering schooners have been built in the last
dozen years. Steam colliers and barges have won the fight because time
is now more valuable than cheapness of transportation. The schooner
might bowl down to Norfolk from Boston or Portland in four days and be
threshing about for two weeks in head winds on the return voyage.
The small schooner appeared to be doomed somewhat earlier. She had
ceased to be profitable in competition with the larger, more modern
fore-and-after, but these battered, veteran craft died hard. They
harked back to a simpler age, to the era of the stage-coach and the
spinning-wheel, to the little shipyards that were to be found on every
bay and inlet of New England. They were still owned and sailed by men
who ashore were friends and neighbors. Even now you may find during your
summer wanderings some stumpy, weatherworn two-master running on for
shelter overnight, which has plied up and down the coast for fifty or
sixty years, now leaking like a basket and too frail for winter voyages.
It was in a craft very much like this that your rude ancestors went
privateering against the British. Indeed, the little schooner Polly,
which fought briskly in the War of 1812, is still afloat and loading
cargoes in New England ports.
These little coasters, surviving long after the stately merchant marine
had vanished from blue water, have enjoyed a slant of favoring fortune
in recent years. They, too, have been in demand, and once again there is
money to spare for paint and cordage and calking. They have been granted
a new lease of life and may be found moored at the wharfs, beached on
the marine railways, or anchored in the stream, eagerly awaiting their
turn to refit. It is a matter of vital concern that the freight on
spruce boards from Bangor to New York has increased to five dollars a
thousand feet. Many of these craft belong to grandfatherly skippers who
dared not venture past Cape Cod in December, lest the venerable Matilda
Emerson or the valetudinarian Joshua R. Coggswell should open up and
founder in a blow. During the winter storms these skippers used to hug
the kitchen stove in bleak farmhouses until spring came and they could
put to sea again. The rigor of circumstances, however, forced others to
seek for trade the whole year through. In a recent winter fifty-seven
schooners were lost on the New England coast, most of which were unfit
for anything but summer breezes. As by a miracle, others have been able
to renew their youth, to replace spongy planking and rotten stems, and
to deck themselves out in white canvas and fresh paint!
The captains of these craft foregather in the ship-chandler's shops,
where the floor is strewn with sawdust, the armchairs are capacious,
and the environment harmonizes with the tales that are told. It is an
informal club of coastwise skippers and the old energy begins to show
itself once more. They move with a brisker gait than when times were so
hard and they went begging for charters at any terms. A sinewy patriarch
stumps to a window, flourishes his arm at an ancient two-master, and
booms out:
"That vessel of mine is as sound as a nut, I tell ye. She ain't as big
as some, but I'd like nothin' better than to fill her full of suthin'
for the west coast of Africy, same as the Horace M. Bickford that
cleared t'other day, stocked for SIXTY THOUSAND DOLLARS."
"Huh, you'd get lost out o' sight of land, John," is the cruel retort,
"and that old shoe-box of yours 'ud be scared to death without a harbor
to run into every time the sun clouded over. Expect to navigate to
Africy with an alarm-clock and a soundin'-lead, I presume."
"Mebbe I'd better let well enough alone," replies the old man. "Africy
don't seem as neighborly as Phippsburg and Machiasport. I'll chance it
as far as Philadelphy next voyage and I guess the old woman can buy a
new dress."
The activity and the reawakening of the old shipyards, their slips all
filled with the frames of wooden vessels for the foreign trade, is
like a revival of the old merchant marine, a reincarnation of ghostly
memories. In mellowed dignity the square white houses beneath the New
England elms recall to mind the mariners who dwelt therein. It seems
as if their shipyards also belonged to the past; but the summer visitor
finds a fresh attraction in watching the new schooners rise from the
stocks, and the gay pageant of launching them, every mast ablaze with
bunting, draws crowds to the water-front. And as a business venture,
with somewhat of the tang of old-fashioned romance, the casual stranger
is now and then tempted to purchase a sixty-fourth "piece" of a splendid
Yankee four-master and keep in touch with its roving fortunes. The
shipping reports of the daily newspaper prove more fascinating than the
ticker tape, and the tidings of a successful voyage thrill one with a
sense of personal gratification. For the sea has not lost its magic
and its mystery, and those who go down to it in ships must still battle
against elemental odds--still carry on the noble and enduring traditions
of the Old Merchant Marine.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
As a rule, American historians like McMaster, Adams, and Rhodes give
too little space to the maritime achievements of the nation. The gap has
been partially filled by the following special works:
Winthrop L. Marvin, "The American Merchant Marine: Its History and
Romance from 1620 to 1902" (1902). This is the most nearly complete
volume of its kind by an author who knows the subject and handles it
with accuracy.
John R. Spears, "The Story of the American Merchant Marine" (1910), "The
American Slave Trade" (1901), "The Story of the New England Whalers"
(1908). Mr. Spears has sought original sources for much of his material
and his books are worth reading, particularly his history of the
slave-trade.
Ralph D. Paine, "The Ships and Sailors of Old Salem: The Record of a
Brilliant Era of American Achievement" (1912). A history of the most
famous seaport of the Atlantic coast, drawn from log-books and other
manuscript collections. "The Book of Buried Treasure: Being a True
History of the Gold, Jewels, and Plate of Pirates, Galleons, etc."
(1911). Several chapters have to do with certain picturesque pirates and
seamen of the colonies.
Edgar S. Maclay, "A History of American Privateers" (1899). The only
book of its kind, and indispensable to those who wish to learn the story
of Yankee ships and sailors.
J. R. Hutchinson, "The Press Gang Afloat and Ashore" (1914). This recent
volume, written from an English point of view, illuminates the system of
conscription which caused the War of 1812.
Nothing can take the place, however, of the narratives of those master
mariners who made the old merchant marine famous:
Richard Henry Dana, Jr., "Two Years Before the Mast" (1840). The latest
edition, handsomely illustrated, (1915). The classic narrative of
American forecastle life in the sailing-ship era.
Captain Richard Cleveland, "Narrative of Voyages and Commercial
Enterprises" (1842). This is one of the fascinating autobiographies of
the old school of shipmasters who had the gift of writing.
Captain Amasa Delano, "Narrative of Voyages and Travels" (1817).
Another of the rare human documents of blue water. It describes the most
adventurous period of activity, a century ago.
Captain Arthur H. Clark, "The Clipper Ship Era" (1910). A thrilling,
spray-swept, true story. Far and away the best account of the clipper,
by a man who was an officer of one in his youth.
Robert Bennet Forbes, "Notes on Ships of the Past" (1888). Random facts
and memories of a famous Boston ship-owner. It is valuable for its
records of noteworthy passages.
Captain John D. Whidden, "Ocean Life in the Old Sailing Ship Days"
(1908). The entertaining reminiscences of a veteran shipmaster.
Captain A. W. Nelson, "Yankee Swanson: Chapters from a Life at Sea"
(1913). Another of the true romances, recommended for a lively sense of
humor and a faithful portrayal of life aboard a windjammer.
There are many other personal narratives, some of them privately printed
and very old, which may be found in the libraries. Typical of them is
"A Journal of the Travels and Sufferings of Daniel Saunders" (1794), in
which a young sailor relates his adventures after shipwreck on the coast
of Arabia.
Among general works the following are valuable:
J. Grey Jewell, "Among Our Sailors" (1874). A plea for more humane
treatment of American seamen, with many instances on shocking
brutalities as reported to the author, who was a United States Consul.
E. Keble Chatterton, "Sailing Ships: The Story of their Development"
(1909). An elaborate history of the development of the sailing vessel
from the earliest times to the modern steel clipper.
W. S. Lindsay, "History of Merchant Shipping and Ancient Commerce," 4
vols. (1874-76). An English work, notably fair to the American marine,
and considered authoritative.
Douglas Owen, "Ocean Trade and Shipping" (1914). An English economist
explains the machinery of maritime trade and commerce.
William Wood, "All Afloat." In "The Chronicles of Canada Series."
Glasgow, Brook and Co., Toronto, 1914.
J. B. McMaster, "The Life and Times of Stephen Girard, Mariner and
Merchant," 2 vols. (1918).
The relation of governmental policy to the merchant marine is discussed
by various writers:
David A. Wells, "Our Merchant Marine: How It Rose, Increased, Became
Great, Declined, and Decayed" (1882). A political treatise in defense of
a protective policy.
William A. Bates, "American Marine: The Shipping Question in History
and Politics" (1892); "American Navigation: The Political History of Its
Rise and Ruin" (1902). These works are statistical and highly technical,
partly compiled from governmental reports, and are also frankly
controversial.
Henry Hall, "American Navigation, With Some Account of the Causes of Its
Former Prosperity and Present Decline" (1878).
Charles S. Hill, "History of American Shipping: Its Prestige, Decline,
and Prospect" (1883).
J. D. J. Kelley, "The Question of Ships: The Navy and the Merchant
Marine" (1884).
Arthur J. Maginnis, "The Atlantic Ferry: Its Ships, Men, and Working"
(1900).
A vast amount of information is to be found in the Congressional Report
of the Merchant Marine Commission, published in three volumes (1905).
End of Project Gutenberg's The Old Merchant Marine, by Ralph D. Paine