American Merchant Ships and Sailors by Willis J. Abbot

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"In order to meet and frustrate the design of the enemy, the
mate of the ship had one of the quarter-deck guns loaded with
grape and canister shot; he then ordered all the ports on this
quarter to be shut, so that the gun could not be seen; and thus
were both parties prepared when the privateer came boldly up
within a few yards of the ship's lee quarter. The captain, with
a threatening flourish of his sword, cried out with a loud
voice, in broken English: 'Strike, you damned rascal, or I will
put you all to death.' At this moment a diminutive-looking man
on board the 'Louisa,' with a musket, took deliberate aim
through one of the waist ports, and shot him dead. Instantly the
gun was run out and discharged upon the foe with deadly effect,
so that the remaining few on board the privateer, amazed and
astounded, were glad to give up the conflict and get off the
best way they could.

"Soon after this a breeze sprung up, so that they could work
their great guns to some purpose. I never shall forget the
moment when I saw the Star-Spangled Banner blow out and wave
gracefully in the wind, through the smoke. I also at the same
moment saw with pleasure the three gunboats sailing and rowing
away toward the land to make their escape. When the ship drew
near the port, all the boats from the American shipping
voluntarily went to assist in bringing her to anchor. She proved
to be the letter-of-marque ship 'Louisa,' of Philadelphia.

"I went with our captain on board of her, and we there learned
that, with the exception of the captain, not a man had been
killed or wounded. The ship was terribly cut up and crippled in
her sails and rigging--lifts and braces shot away; her stern was
literally riddled like a grater, and both large and small shot,
in great numbers, had entered her hull and were sticking to her
sides. How the officers and crew escaped unhurt is almost
impossible to conceive. The poor captain was immediately taken
on shore, but only survived his wound a few days. He had a
public funeral, and was followed to the grave by all the
Americans in Gibraltar, and very many of the officers of the
garrison and inhabitants of the town.

[Illustration: "INSTANTLY THE GUN WAS RUN OUT AND DISCHARGED"]

"The ship had a rich cargo of coffee, sugar, and India goods on
board, and I believe was bound for Leghorn. The gunboats
belonged to Algeciras and fought under French colors, but were
probably manned by the debased of all nations. I can form no
idea how many were killed or wounded on board the gunboats, but
from the great number of men on board, and from the length of
the action, there must have been great slaughter. Neither can I
say positively how long the engagement lasted; but I should
think at least from three to four hours. To the chief mate too
much credit can not be given for saving the ship after the
captain was shot."

This action occurred in 1800, and the assailants fought under French
colors, though the United States were at peace with France. It was fought
within easy eyesight of Gibraltar, and therefore in British waters; but no
effort was made by the British men-of-war--always plentiful there--to
maintain the neutrality of the port. For sailors to be robbed or murdered,
or to fight with desperation to avert robbery and murder, was then only a
commonplace of the sea. Men from the safety of the adjoining shore only
looked on in calm curiosity, as nowadays men look on indifferently to see
the powerful freebooter of the not less troubled business sea rob,
impoverish, and perhaps drive down to untimely death others who only ask
to be permitted to make their little voyages unvexed by corsairs.

From a little book of memoirs of Captain Richard J. Cleveland, the curious
observer can learn what it was to belong to a seafaring family in the
golden days of American shipping. His was a Salem stock. His father, in
1756, when but sixteen years old, was captured by a British press-gang in
the streets of Boston, and served for years in the British navy. For this
compulsory servitude he exacted full compensation in later years by
building and commanding divers privateers to prey upon the commerce of
England. His three sons all became sailors, taking to the water like young
ducks. A characteristic note of the cosmopolitanism of the young New
Englander of that day is sounded in the most matter-of-fact fashion by
young Cleveland in a letter from Havre: "I can't help loving home, though
I think a young man ought to be at home in any part of the globe." And at
home everywhere Captain Cleveland certainly was. All his life was spent in
wandering over the Seven Seas, in ships of every size, from a 25-ton
cutter to a 400-ton Indiaman. In those days of navigation laws, blockades,
hostile cruisers, hungry privateers, and bloodthirsty pirates, the smaller
craft was often the better, for it was wiser to brave nature's moods in a
cockle-shell than to attract men's notice in a great ship. Captain
Cleveland's voyages from Havre to the Cape of Good Hope, in a 45-ton
cutter; from Calcutta to the Isle of France, in a 25-ton sloop; and
Captain Coggeshall's voyage around Cape Horn in an unseaworthy pilot-boat
are typical exploits of Yankee seamanship. We see the same spirit
manifested occasionally nowadays when some New Englander crosses the ocean
in a dory, or circumnavigates the world alone in a 30-foot sloop. But
these adventures are apt to end ignominiously in a dime museum.

A noted sailor in his time was Captain Benjamin I. Trask, master of many
ships, ruler of many deeps, who died in harness in 1871, and for whom the
flags on the shipping in New York Bay were set at half-mast. An
appreciative writer, Mr. George W. Sheldon, in _Harper's Magazine_, tells
this story to show what manner of man he was; it was on the ship
"Saratoga," from Havre to New York, with a crew among whom were several
recently liberated French convicts:

"The first day out the new crew were very troublesome, owing in
part, doubtless, to the absence of the mate, who was ill in bed
and who died after a few hours. Suddenly the second mate, son of
the commander, heard his father call out, 'Take hold of the
wheel,' and going forward, saw him holding a sailor at arm's
length. The mutineer was soon lodged in the cockpit; but all
hands--the watch below and the watch on deck--came aft as if
obeying a signal, with threatening faces and clenched fists. The
captain, methodical and cool, ordered his son to run a line
across the deck between him and the rebellious crew, and to arm
the steward and the third mate.

"'Now go forward and get to work', he said to the gang, who
immediately made a demonstration to break the line. 'The first
man who passes that rope,' added the captain, 'I will shoot. I
am going to call you one by one; if two come at a time I will
shoot both.'

"The first to come forward was a big fellow in a red shirt. He
had hesitated to advance when called; but the 'I will give you
one more invitation, sir,' of the captain furnished him with the
requisite resolution. So large were his wrists that ordinary
shackles were too small to go around them, and ankle-shackles
took their place. Escorted by the second and third mates to the
cabin, he was made to lie flat on his stomach, while staples
were driven through the chains of his handcuffs to pin him down.
After eighteen of the mutineers had been similarly treated, the
captain himself withdrew to the cabin and lay on a sofa, telling
the second mate to call him in an hour. The next minute he was
asleep with the stapled ruffians all around him."

As the ocean routes became more clearly defined, and the limitations and
character of international trade more systematized, there sprung up a new
type of American ship-master. The older type--and the more romantic--was
the man who took his ship from Boston or New York, not knowing how many
ports he might enter nor in how many markets he might have to chaffer
before his return. But in time there came to be regular trade routes, over
which ships went and came with almost the regularity of the great
steamships on the Atlantic ferry to-day. Early in the nineteenth century
the movement of both freight and passengers between New York or Boston on
this side and London and Liverpool on the other began to demand regular
sailings on announced days, and so the era of the American packet-ship
began. Then, too, the trade with China grew to such great proportions that
some of the finest fortunes America knew in the days before the "trust
magnate" and the "multimillionaire"--were founded upon it. The
clipper-built ship, designed to bring home the cargoes of tea in season to
catch the early market, was the outcome of this trade. Adventures were
still for the old-time trading captain who wandered about from port to
port with miscellaneous cargoes; but the new aristocracy of the sea trod
the deck of the packets and the clippers. Their ships were built all along
the New England coast; but builders on the shores of Chesapeake Bay soon
began to struggle for preeminence in this style of naval architecture.
Thus, even in the days of wooden ships, the center of the ship-building
industry began to move toward that point where it now seems definitely
located. By 1815 the name "Baltimore clipper" was taken all over the world
to signify the highest type of merchant vessel that man's skill could
design. It was a Baltimore ship which first, in 1785, displayed the
American flag in the Canton River and brought thence the first cargo of
silks and teas. Thereafter, until the decline of American shipping, the
Baltimore clippers led in the Chinese trade. These clippers in model were
the outcome of forty years of effort to evade hostile cruisers,
privateers, and pirates on the lawless seas. To be swift, inconspicuous,
quick in maneuvering, and to offer a small target to the guns of the
enemy, were the fundamental considerations involved in their design. Mr.
Henry Hall, who, as special agent for the United States census, made in
1880 an inquiry into the history of ship-building in the United States,
says in his report:

"A permanent impression has been made upon the form and rig of
American vessels by forty years of war and interference. It was
during that period that the shapes and fashions that prevail
to-day were substantially attained. The old high poop-decks and
quarter galleries disappeared with the lateen and the lug-sails
on brigs, barks, and ships; the sharp stem was permanently
abandoned; the curving home of the stem above the house poles
went out of vogue, and vessels became longer in proportion to
beam. The round bottoms were much in use, but the tendency
toward a straight rise of the floor from the keel to a point
half-way to the outer width of the ship became marked and
popular. Hollow water-lines fore and aft were introduced; the
forefoot of the hull ceased to be cut away so much, and the
swell of the sides became less marked; the bows became somewhat
sharper and were often made flaring above the water, and the
square sprit-sail below the bowsprit was given up. American
ship-builders had not yet learned to give their vessels much
sheer, however, and in a majority of them the sheer line was
almost straight from stem to stern; nor had they learned to
divide the topsail into an upper and lower sail, and American
vessels were distinguished by their short lower mast and the
immense hoist of the topsail. The broadest beam was still at
two-fifths the length of the hull. Hemp rigging, with broad
channels and immense tops to the masts, was still retained; but
the general arrangement and cut of the head, stay, square, and
spanker sails at present in fashion were reached. The schooner
rig had also become thoroughly popularized, especially for small
vessels requiring speed; and the fast vessels of the day were
the brigs and schooners, which were made long and sharp on the
floor and low in the water, with considerable rake to the
masts."

Such is the technical description of the changes which years of peril and
of war wrought in the model of the American sailing ship. How the vessel
herself, under full sail, looked when seen through the eyes of one who was
a sailor, with the education of a writer and the temperament of a poet, is
well told in these lines from "Two Years Before the Mast":

"Notwithstanding all that has been said about the beauty of a
ship under full sail, there are very few who have ever seen a
ship literally under all her sail. A ship never has all her sail
upon her except when she has a light, steady breeze very nearly,
but not quite, dead aft, and so regular that it can be trusted
and is likely to last for some time. Then, with all her sails,
light and heavy, and studding-sails on each side alow and aloft,
she is the most glorious moving object in the world. Such a
sight very few, even some who have been at sea a good deal, have
ever beheld; for from the deck of your own vessel you can not
see her as you would a separate object.

"One night, while we were in the tropics, I went out to the end
of the flying jib-boom upon some duty; and, having finished it,
turned around and lay over the boom for a long time, admiring
the beauty of the sight before me. Being so far out from the
deck, I could look at the ship as at a separate vessel; and
there rose up from the water, supported only by the small black
hull, a pyramid of canvas spreading far out beyond the hull and
towering up almost, as it seemed in the indistinct night, into
the clouds. The sea was as still as an inland lake; the light
trade-wind was gently and steadily breathing from astern; the
dark-blue sky was studded with the tropical stars; there was no
sound but the rippling of the water under the stem; and the
sails were spread out wide and high--the two lower
studding-sails stretching on either side far beyond the deck;
the topmost studding-sails like wings to the topsails; the
topgallant studding-sails spreading fearlessly out above them;
still higher the two royal studding-sails, looking like two
kites flying from the same string; and highest of all the little
sky-sail, the apex of the pyramid, seeming actually to touch the
stars and to be out of reach of human hand. So quiet, too, was
the sea, and so steady the breeze, that if these sails had been
sculptured marble they could not have been more motionless--not
a ripple on the surface of the canvas; not even a quivering of
the extreme edges of the sail, so perfectly were they distended
by the breeze. I was so lost in the sight that I forgot the
presence of the man who came out with me, until he said (for he,
too, rough old man-of-war's man that he was, had been gazing at
the show), half to himself, still looking at the marble sails:
'How quietly they do their work!'"

The building of packet ships began in 1814, when some semblance of peace
and order appeared upon the ocean, and continued until almost the time of
the Civil War, when steamships had already begun to cut away the business
of the old packets, and the Confederate cruisers were not needed to
complete the work. But in their day these were grand examples of marine
architecture. The first of the American transatlantic lines was the Black
Ball line, so called from the black sphere on the white pennant which its
ships displayed. This line was founded in 1815, by Isaac Wright & Company,
with four ships sailing the first of every month, and making the outward
run in about twenty-three days, the homeward voyage in about forty. These
records were often beaten by ships of this and other lines. From thirteen
to fifteen days to Liverpool was not an unknown record, but was rare
enough to cause comment.

It was in this era that the increase in the size of ships began--an
increase which is still going on without any sign of check. Before the War
of 1812 men circumnavigated the world in vessels that would look small now
carrying brick on the Tappan Zee. The performances of our frigates in 1812
first called the attention of builders to the possibilities of the bigger
ship. The early packets were ships of from 400 to 500 tons each. As
business grew larger ones were built--stout ships of 900 to 1100 tons,
double-decked, with a poop-deck aft and a top-gallant forecastle forward.
The first three-decker was the "Guy Mannering," 1419 tons, built in 1849
by William H. Webb, of New York, who later founded the college and home
for ship-builders that stands on the wooded hills north of the Harlem
River. In 1841, Clark & Sewall, of Bath, Me.--an historic house--built the
"Rappahannock," 179.6 feet long, with a tonnage of 1133 tons. For a time
she was thought to be as much of a "white elephant" as the "Great Eastern"
afterwards proved to be. People flocked to study her lines on the ways and
see her launched. They said only a Rothschild could afford to own her, and
indeed when she appeared in the Mississippi--being built for the cotton
trade--freights to Liverpool instantly fell off. But thereafter the size
of ships--both packet and clippers--steadily and rapidly increased.
Glancing down the long table of ships and their records prepared for the
United States census, we find such notations as these.

Ship "Flying Cloud," built 1851; tonnage 1782; 374 miles in one day; from
New York to San Francisco in 89 days 18 hours; in one day she made 433-1/2
miles, but reducing this to exactly 24 hours, she made 427-1/2 miles.

Ship "Comet," built 1851; tonnage 1836; beautiful model and good ship;
made 332 knots in 24 hours, and 1512 knots in 120 consecutive hours.

"Sovereign of the Seas," built 1852; tonnage 2421; ran 6,245 miles in 22
days; 436 miles in one day; for four days her average was 398 miles.

"Lightning," built 1854; tonnage 2084; ran 436 miles in 24 hours, drawing
22 feet; from England to Calcutta with troops, in 87 days, beating other
sailing vessels by from 16 to 40 days; from Boston to Liverpool in 13 days
20 hours.

"James Baines," built 1854, tonnage 2515; from Boston to Liverpool in 12
days 6 hours.

Three of these ships came from the historic yards of Donald McKay, at New
York, one of the most famous of American ship-builders. The figures show
the steady gain in size and speed that characterized the work of American
ship-builders in those days. Then the United States was in truth a
maritime nation. Every boy knew the sizes and records of the great ships,
and each magnificent clipper had its eager partisans. Foreign trade was
active. Merchants made great profit on cargoes from China, and speed was a
prime element in the value of a ship. In 1840 the discovery of gold in
California added a new demand for ocean shipping; the voyage around the
Horn, already common enough for whalemen and men engaged in Asiatic trade,
was taken by tens of thousands of adventurers. Then came the news of gold
in Australia, and again demands were clamorous for more swift American
ships. All nations of Europe were buyers at our shipyards, and our
builders began seriously to consider whether the supply of timber would
hold out. The yards of Maine and Massachusetts sent far afield for white
oak knees and pine planking. Southern forests were drawn upon, and even
the stately pines of Puget Sound were felled to make masts for a Yankee
ship.

**Transcriber's notes:
Page 4: Removed extraneous ' after "Corsairs"
Page 41: changed atempt to attempt

CHAPTER II.

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:

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