American Merchant Ships and Sailors by Willis J. Abbot

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"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 reestablishment. 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.

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