The Old Merchant Marine - Chapters IX-X



CHAPTER IX.
THE STATELY CLIPPER AND HER GLORY.

The American clipper ship was the result of an evolution which can be 
traced back to the swift privateers which were built during the War of 
1812. In this type of vessel the shipyards of Chesapeake Bay excelled and 
their handiwork was known as the "Baltimore clipper," the name suggested 
by the old English verb which Dryden uses to describe the flight of the 
falcon that "clips it down the wind." The essential difference between the 
clipper ship and other kinds of merchant craft was that speed and not 
capacity became the chief consideration. This was a radical departure for 
large vessels, which in all maritime history had been designed with an eye 
to the number of tons they were able to carry. More finely molded lines 
had hitherto been found only in the much smaller French lugger, the 
Mediterranean galley, the American schooner. 

To borrow the lines of these fleet and graceful models and apply them to 
the design of a deepwater ship was a bold conception. It was first 
attempted by Isaac McKim, a Baltimore merchant, who ordered his builders 
in 1832 to reproduce as closely as possible the superior sailing qualities 
of the renowned clipper brigs and schooners of their own port. The result 
was the Ann McKim, of nearly five hundred tons, the first Yankee clipper 
ship, and distinguished as such by her long, easy water-lines, low free-
board, and raking stem. She was built and finished without regard to cost, 
copper-sheathed, the decks gleaming with brasswork and mahogany fittings. 
But though she was a very fast and handsome ship and the pride of her 
owner, the Ann McKim could stow so little cargo that shipping men regarded 
her as unprofitable and swore by their full-bodied vessels a few years 
longer. 

That the Ann McKim, however, influenced the ideas of the most progressive 
builders is very probable, for she was later owned by the New York firm of 
Howland and Aspinwall, who placed an order for the first extremely sharp 
clipper ship of the era. This vessel, the Rainbow, was designed by John W. 
Griffeths, a marine architect, who was a pioneer in that he studied 
shipbuilding as a science instead of working by rule-of-thumb. The 
Rainbow, which created a sensation while on the stocks because of her 
concave or hollowed lines forward, which defied all tradition and 
practice, was launched in 1845. She was a more radical innovation than the 
Ann McKim but a successful one, for on her second voyage to China the 
Rainbow went out against the northeast monsoon in ninety-two days and came 
home in eighty-eight, a record which few ships were able to better. Her 
commander, Captain John Land, declared her to be the fastest ship in the 
world and there were none to dispute him. 

Even the Rainbow however, was eclipsed when not long afterward Howland and 
Aspinwall, now converted to the clipper, ordered the Sea Witch to be built 
for Captain Bob Waterman. Among all the splendid skippers of the time he 
was the most dashing figure. About his briny memory cluster a hundred 
yarns, some of them true, others legendary. It has been argued that the 
speed of the clippers was due more to the men who commanded them than to 
their hulls and rigging, and to support the theory the career of Captain 
Bob Waterman is quoted. He was first known to fame in the old Natchez, 
which was not a clipper at all and was even rated as slow while carrying 
cotton from New Orleans to New York. But Captain Bob took this full-pooped 
old packet ship around the Horn and employed her in the China tea trade. 
The voyages which he made in her were all fast, and he crowned them with 
the amazing run of seventy-eight days from Canton to New York, just one 
day behind the swiftest clipper passage ever sailed and which he himself 
performed in the Sea Witch. Incredulous mariners simply could not explain 
this feat of the Natchez and suggested that Bob Waterman must have brought 
the old hooker home by some new route of his own discovery. 

Captain Bob had won a reputation for discipline as the mate of a Black 
Ball liner, a rough school, and he was not a mild man. Ashore his 
personality was said to have been a most attractive one, but there is no 
doubt that afloat he worked the very souls out of his sailors. The rumors 
that he frightfully abused them were not current, however, until he took 
the Sea Witch and showed the world the fastest ship under canvas. Low in 
the water, with black hull and gilded figurehead, she seemed too small to 
support her prodigious cloud of sail. For her there were to be no 
leisurely voyages with Captain Bob Waterman on the quarter-deck. Home from 
Canton she sped in seventy-seven days and then in seventy-nine--records 
which were never surpassed. 

With what consummate skill and daring this master mariner drove his ship 
and how the race of hardy sailors to which he belonged compared with those 
of other nations may be descried in the log of another of them, Captain 
Philip Dumaresq, homeward bound from China in 1849 in the clipper Great 
Britain. Three weeks out from Java Head she had overtaken and passed seven 
ships heading the same way, and then she began to rush by them in one gale 
after another. Her log records her exploits in such entries as these: 
"Passed a ship under double reefs, we with our royals and studdingsails 
set . . . . Passed a ship laying-to under a close-reefed maintopsail.... 
Split all three topsails and had to heave to . . . . Seven vessels in 
sight and we outsail all of them . . . . Under double-reefed topsails 
passed several vessels hove-to." Much the same record might be read in the 
log of the medium clipper Florence--and it is the same story of carrying 
sail superbly on a ship which had been built to stand up under it: "Passed 
two barks under reefed courses and close-reefed topsails standing the same 
way, we with royals and topgallant studding-sails," or "Passed a ship 
under topsails, we with our royals set." For eleven weeks "the topsail 
halliards were started only once, to take in a single reef for a few 
hours." It is not surprising, therefore, to learn that, seventeen days out 
from Shanghai, the Florence exchanged signals with the English ship John 
Hagerman, which had sailed thirteen days before her. 

Two notable events in the history of the nineteenth century occurred 
within the same year, 1849, to open new fields of trade to the Yankee 
clipper. One of these was the repeal of the British Navigation Laws which 
had given English ships a monopoly of the trade between London and the 
British East Indies, and the other was the discovery of gold in 
California. After centuries of pomp and power, the great East India 
Company had been deprived of its last exclusive rights afloat in 1833. Its 
ponderous, frigate-built merchantmen ceased to dominate the British 
commerce with China and India and were sold or broken up. All British 
ships were now free to engage in this trade, but the spirit and customs of 
the old regime still strongly survived. Flying the house-flags of private 
owners, the East Indiamen and China tea ships were still built and manned 
like frigates, slow, comfortable, snugging down for the night under 
reduced sail. There was no competition to arouse them until the last 
barrier of the Navigation Laws was let down and they had to meet the 
Yankee clipper with the tea trade as the huge stake. 

Then at last it was farewell to the gallant old Indianian and her ornate, 
dignified prestige. With a sigh the London Times confessed: "We must run a 
race with our gigantic and unshackled rival. We must set our long-
practised skill, our steady industry, and our dogged determination against 
his youth, ingenuity, and ardor. Let our shipbuilders and employers take 
warning in time. There will always be an abundant supply of vessels good 
enough and fast enough for short voyages. But we want fast vessels for the 
long voyages which otherwise will fall into American hands." 

Before English merchants could prepare themselves for these new 
conditions, the American clipper Oriental was loading in 1850 at Hong Kong 
with tea for the London market. Because of her reputation for speed, she 
received freightage of six pounds sterling per ton while British ships 
rode at anchor with empty holds or were glad to sail at three pounds ten 
per ton. Captain Theodore Palmer delivered his sixteen hundred tons of tea 
in the West India Docks, London, after a crack passage of ninety-one days 
which had never been equaled. His clipper earned $48,000, or two-thirds of 
what it had cost to build her. Her arrival in London created a profound 
impression. The port had seen nothing like her for power and speed; her 
skysail yards soared far above the other shipping; the cut of her snowy 
canvas was faultless; all clumsy, needless tophamper had been done away 
with; and she appeared to be the last word in design and construction, as 
lean and fine and spirited as a race-horse in training. 

This new competition dismayed British shipping until it could rally and 
fight with similar weapons The technical journal, Naval Science, 
acknowledged that the tea trade of the London markets had passed almost 
out of the hands of the English ship-owner, and that British vessels, well-
manned and well-found, were known to lie for weeks in the harbor of Foo-
chow, waiting for a cargo and seeing American clippers come in, load, and 
sail immediately with full cargoes at a higher freight than they could 
command. Even the Government viewed the loss of trade with concern and 
sent admiralty draftsmen to copy the lines of the Oriental and Challenge 
while they were in drydock. 

British clippers were soon afloat, somewhat different in model from the 
Yankee ships, but very fast and able, and racing them in the tea trade 
until the Civil War. With them it was often nip and tuck, as in the 
contest between the English Lord of the Isles and the American clipper 
bark Maury in 1856. The prize was a premium of one pound per ton for the 
first ship to reach London with tea of the new crop. The Lord of the Isles 
finished loading and sailed four days ahead of the Maury, and after 
thirteen thousand miles of ocean they passed Gravesend within ten minutes 
of each other. The British skipper, having the smartest tug and getting 
his ship first into dock, won the honors. In a similar race between the 
American Sea Serpent and the English Crest of the Wave, both ships arrived 
off the Isle of Wight on the same day. It was a notable fact that the Lord 
of the Isles was the first tea clipper built of iron at a date when the 
use of this stubborn material was not yet thought of by the men who 
constructed the splendid wooden ships of America. 

For the peculiar requirements of the tea trade, English maritime talent 
was quick to perfect a clipper type which, smaller than the great Yankee 
skysail-yarder, was nevertheless most admirable for its beauty and 
performance. On both sides of the Atlantic partizans hotly championed 
their respective fleets. In 1852 the American Navigation Club, organized 
by Boston merchants and owners, challenged the shipbuilders of Great 
Britain to race from a port in England to a port in China and return, for 
a stake of $50,000 a side, ships to be not under eight hundred nor over 
twelve hundred tons American register. The challenge was aimed at the 
Stornaway and the Chrysolite, the two clippers that were known to be the 
fastest ships under the British flag. Though this sporting defiance caused 
lively discussion, nothing came of it, and it was with a spirit even 
keener that Sampson and Tappan of Boston offered to match their 
Nightingale for the same amount against any clipper afloat, British or 
American. 

In spite of the fact that Yankee enterprise had set the pace in the tea 
trade, within a few years after 1850 England had so successfully mastered 
the art of building these smaller clippers that the honors were fairly 
divided. The American owners were diverting their energies to the more 
lucrative trade in larger ships sailing around the Horn to San Francisco, 
a long road which, as a coastwise voyage, was forbidden to foreign vessels 
under the navigation laws. After the Civil War the fastest tea clippers 
flew the British flag and into the seventies they survived the competition 
of steam, racing among themselves for the premiums awarded to the quickest 
dispatch. No more of these beautiful vessels were launched after 1869, and 
one by one they vanished into other trades, overtaken by the same fate 
which had befallen the Atlantic packet and conquered by the cargo steamers 
which filed through the Suez Canal. 

Until 1848 San Francisco had been a drowsy little Mexican trading-post, a 
huddle of adobe huts and sheds where American ships collected hides--
vividly described in Two Years Before the Mast--or a whaler called for 
wood and water. During the year preceding the frenzied migration of the 
modern Argonauts, only two merchant ships, one bark and one brig, sailed 
in through the Golden Gate. In the twelve months following, 775 vessels 
cleared from Atlantic ports for San Francisco, besides the rush from other 
countries, and nearly fifty thousand passengers scrambled ashore to dig 
for gold. Crews deserted their ships, leaving them unable to go to sea 
again for lack of men, and in consequence a hundred of them were used as 
storehouses, hotels, and hospitals, or else rotted at their moorings. 
Sailors by hundreds jumped from the forecastle without waiting to stow the 
sails or receive their wages. Though offered as much as two hundred 
dollars a month to sign again, they jeered at the notion. Of this great 
fleet at San Francisco in 1849, it was a lucky ship that ever left the 
harbor again. 

It seemed as if the whole world were bound to California and almost 
overnight there was created the wildest, most extravagant demand for 
transportation known to history. A clipper costing $70,000 could pay for 
herself in one voyage, with freights at sixty dollars a ton. This gold 
stampede might last but a little while. To take instant advantage of it 
was the thing. The fastest ships, and as many of them as could be built, 
would skim the cream of it. This explains the brief and illustrious era of 
the California clipper, one hundred and sixty of which were launched from 
1850 to 1854. The shipyards of New York and Boston were crowded with them, 
and they graced the keel blocks of the historic old ports of New England--
Medford, Mystic, Newburyport, Portsmouth, Portland, Rockland, and Bath--
wherever the timber and the shipwrights could be assembled. 

Until that time there had been few ships afloat as large as a thousand 
tons. These were of a new type, rapidly increased to fifteen hundred, two 
thousand tons, and over. They presented new and difficult problems in 
spars and rigging able to withstand the strain of immense areas of canvas 
which climbed two hundred feet to the skysail pole and which, with lower 
studdingsails set, spread one hundred and sixty feet from boom-end to boom-
end. There had to be the strength to battle with the furious tempests of 
Cape Horn and at the same time the driving power to sweep before the sweet 
and steadfast tradewinds. Such a queenly clipper was the Flying Cloud, the 
achievement of that master builder, Donald McKay, which sailed from New 
York to San Francisco in eighty-nine days, with Captain Josiah Creesy in 
command. This record was never lowered and was equaled only twice--by the 
Flying Cloud herself and by the Andrew Jackson nine years later. It was 
during this memorable voyage that the Flying Cloud sailed 1256 miles in 
four days while steering to the northward under topgallantsails after 
rounding Cape Horn. This was a rate of speed which, if sustained, would 
have carried her from New York to Queenstown in eight days and seventeen 
hours. This speedy passage was made in 1851, and only two years earlier 
the record for the same voyage of fifteen thousand miles had been one 
hundred and twenty days, by the clipper Memnon. 

Donald McKay now resolved to build a ship larger and faster than the 
Flying Cloud, and his genius neared perfection in the Sovereign of the 
Seas, of 2421 tons register, which exceeded in size all merchant vessels 
afloat. This Titan of the clipper fleet was commanded by Donald's brother, 
Captain Lauchlan McKay, with a crew of one hundred and five men and boys. 
During her only voyage to San Francisco she was partly dismasted, but 
Lauchlan McKay rigged her anew at sea in fourteen days and still made port 
in one hundred and three days, a record for the season of the year. 

It was while running home from Honolulu in 1853 that the Sovereign of the 
Seas realized the hopes of her builder. In eleven days she sailed 3562 
miles, with four days logged for a total of 1478 knots. Making allowance 
for the longitudes and difference in time, this was an average daily run 
of 378 sea miles or 435 land miles. Using the same comparison, the 
distance from Sandy Hook to Queenstown would have been covered in seven 
days and nine hours. Figures are arid reading, perhaps, but these are wet 
by the spray and swept by the salt winds of romance. During one of these 
four days the Sovereign of the Seas reeled off 424 nautical miles, during 
which her average speed was seventeen and two-thirds knots and at times 
reached nineteen and twenty. The only sailing ship which ever exceeded 
this day's work was the Lightning, built later by the same Donald McKay, 
which ran 436 knots in the Atlantic passage already referred to. The 
Sovereign of the Seas could also boast of a sensational feat upon the 
Western Ocean, for between New York and Liverpool she outsailed the Cunard 
liner Canada by 325 miles in five days. 

It is curiously interesting to notice that the California clipper era is 
almost generally ignored by the foremost English writers of maritime 
history. For one thing, it was a trade in which their own ships were not 
directly concerned, and partizan bias is apt to color the views of the 
best of us when national prestige is involved. American historians 
themselves have dispensed with many unpleasant facts when engaged with the 
War of 1812. With regard to the speed of clipper ships, however, involving 
a rivalry far more thrilling and important than all the races ever sailed 
for the America's cup, the evidence is available in concrete form. 

Lindsay's "History of Merchant Shipping" is the most elaborate English 
work of the kind. Heavily ballasted with facts and rather dull reading for 
the most part, it kindles with enthusiasm when eulogizing the Thermopylae 
and the Sir Launcelot, composite clippers of wood and iron, afloat in 
1870, which it declares to be "the fastest sailing ships that ever 
traversed the ocean." This fairly presents the issue which a true-blooded 
Yankee has no right to evade. The greatest distance sailed by the Sir 
Launcelot in twenty-four hours between China and London was 354 knots, 
compared with the 424 miles of the Sovereign of the Seas and the 436 miles 
of the Lightning. Her best sustained run was one of seven days for an 
average of a trifle more than 300 miles a day. Against this is to be 
recorded the performance of the Sovereign of the Seas, 3562 miles in 
eleven days, at the rate of 324 miles every twenty-four hours, and her 
wonderful four-day run of 1478 miles, an average of 378 miles. 

The Thermopylae achieved her reputation in a passage of sixty-three days 
from London to Melbourne--a record which was never beaten. Her fastest 
day's sailing was 330 miles, or not quite sixteen knots an hour. In six 
days she traversed 1748 miles, an average of 291 miles a day. In this 
Australian trade the American clippers made little effort to compete. 
Those engaged in it were mostly built for English owners and sailed by 
British skippers, who could not reasonably be expected to get the most out 
of these loftily sparred Yankee ships, which were much larger than their 
own vessels of the same type. The Lightning showed what she could do from 
Melbourne to Liverpool by making the passage in sixty-three' days, with 
3722 miles in ten consecutive days and one day's sprint of 412 miles. 

In the China tea trade the Thermopylae drove home from Foo-chow in ninety-
one days, which was equaled by the Sir Launcelot. The American Witch of 
the Wave had a ninety-day voyage to her credit, and the Comet ran from 
Liverpool to Shanghai in eighty-four days. Luck was a larger factor on 
this route than in the California or Australian trade because of the 
fitful uncertainty of the monsoons, and as a test of speed it was rather 
unsatisfactory. In a very fair-minded and expert summary, Captain Arthur 
H. Clark,(*) in his youth an officer on Yankee clippers, has discussed 
this question of rival speed and power under sail--a question which still 
absorbs those who love the sea. His conclusion is that in ordinary weather 
at sea, when great power to carry sail was not required, the British tea 
clippers were extremely fast vessels, chiefly on account of their narrow 
beam. Under these conditions they were perhaps as fast as the American 
clippers of the same class, such as the Sea Witch, White Squall, Northern 
Light, and Sword-Fish. But if speed is to be reckoned by the maximum 
performance of a ship under the most favorable conditions, then the 
British tea clippers were certainly no match for the larger American ships 
such as the Flying Cloud, Sovereign of the Seas, Hurricane, Trade Wind, 
Typhoon, Flying Fish, Challenge, and Red Jacket. The greater breadth of 
the American ships in proportion to their length meant power to carry 
canvas and increased buoyancy which enabled them, with their sharper ends, 
to be driven in strong gales and heavy seas at much greater speed than the 
British clippers. The latter were seldom of more than one thousand tons' 
register and combined in a superlative degree the good qualities of 
merchant ships. 

It was the California trade, brief and crowded and fevered, which saw the 
roaring days of the Yankee clipper and which was familiar with racing 
surpassing in thrill and intensity that of the packet ships of the Western 
Ocean. In 1851, for instance, the Raven, Sea Witch, and Typhoon sailed for 
San Francisco within the same week. They crossed the Equator a day apart 
and stood away to the southward for three thousand miles of the southeast 
trades and the piping westerly winds which prevailed farther south. At 
fifty degrees south latitude the Raven and the Sea Witch were abeam of 
each other with the Typhoon only two days astern. 

Now they stripped for the tussle to windward around Cape Horn, sending 
down studdingsail booms and skysail yards, making all secure with extra 
lashings, plunging into the incessant head seas of the desolate ocean, 
fighting it out tack for tack, reefing topsails and shaking them out 
again, the vigilant commanders going below only to change their clothes, 
the exhausted seamen stubbornly, heroically handling with frozen, bleeding 
fingers the icy sheets and canvas. A fortnight of this inferno and the Sea 
Witch and the Raven gained the Pacific, still within sight of each other, 
and the Typhoon only one day behind. Then they swept northward, blown by 
the booming tradewinds, spreading studdingsails, skysails, and above them, 
like mere handkerchiefs, the water-sails and ring-tails. Again the three 
clippers crossed the Equator. Close-hauled on the starboard tack, their 
bowsprits were pointed for the last stage of the journey to the Golden 
Gate. The Typhoon now overhauled her rivals and was the first to signal 
her arrival, but the victory was earned by the Raven, which had set her 
departure from Boston Light while the others had sailed from New York. The 
Typhoon and the Raven were only a day apart, with the Sea Witch five days 
behind the leader. 

Clipper ship crews included men of many nations. In the average forecastle 
there would be two or three Americans, a majority of English and 
Norwegians, and perhaps a few Portuguese and Italians. The hardiest 
seamen, and the most unmanageable, were the Liverpool packet rats who were 
lured from their accustomed haunts to join the clippers by the magical 
call of the gold-diggings. There were not enough deep-water sailors to man 
half the ships that were built in these few years, and the crimps and 
boarding-house runners decoyed or flung aboard on sailing day as many men 
as were demanded, and any drunken, broken landlubber was good enough to be 
shipped as an able seaman. They were things of rags and tatters--their 
only luggage a bottle of whiskey. 

The mates were thankful if they could muster enough real sailors to work 
the ship to sea and then began the stern process of whipping the wastrels 
and incompetents into shape for the perils and emergencies of the long 
voyage. That these great clippers were brought safely to port is a shining 
tribute to the masterful skill of their officers. While many of them were 
humane and just, with all their severity, the stories of savage abuse 
which are told of some are shocking in the extreme. The defense was that 
it was either mutiny or club the men under. Better treatment might have 
persuaded better men to sail. Certain it is that life in the forecastle of 
a clipper was even more intolerable to the self-respecting American youth 
than it had previously been aboard the Atlantic packet. 

When Captain Bob Waterman arrived at San Francisco in the Challenge 
clipper in 1851, a mob tried very earnestly to find and hang him and his 
officers because of the harrowing stories told by his sailors. That he had 
shot several of them from the yards with his pistol to make the others 
move faster was one count in the indictment. For his part, Captain 
Waterman asserted that a more desperate crew of ruffians had never sailed 
out of New York and that only two of them were Americans. They were 
mutinous from the start, half of them blacklegs of the vilest type who 
swore to get the upper hand of him. His mates, boatswain, and carpenter 
had broken open their chests and boxes and had removed a collection of 
slung-shots, knuckle-dusters, bowie-knives, and pistols. Off Rio Janeiro 
they had tried to kill the chief mate, and Captain Waterman had been 
compelled to jump in and stretch two of them dead with an iron belaying-
pin. Off Cape Horn three sailors fell from aloft and were lost. This 
accounted for the casualties. 

The truth of such episodes as these was difficult to fathom. Captain 
Waterman demanded a legal investigation, but nothing came of his request 
and he was commended by his owners for his skill and courage in bringing 
the ship to port without losing a spar or a sail. It was a skipper of this 
old school who blandly maintained the doctrine that if you wanted the men 
to love you, you must starve them and knock them down. The fact is proven 
by scores of cases that the discipline of the American clipper was both 
famously efficient and notoriously cruel. It was not until long after 
American sailors had ceased to exist that adequate legislation was enacted 
to provide that they should be treated as human beings afloat and ashore. 
Other days and other customs! It is perhaps unkind to judge these vanished 
master-mariners too harshly, for we cannot comprehend the crises which 
continually beset them in their command. 

No more extreme clipper ships were built after 1854. The California frenzy 
had subsided and speed in carrying merchandise was no longer so essential; 
besides, the passenger traffic was seeking the Isthmian route. What were 
called medium clippers enjoyed a profitable trade for many years later, 
and one of them, the Andrew Jackson, was never outsailed for the record 
from New York to San Francisco. This splendid type of ship was to be found 
on every sea, for the United States was still a commanding factor in the 
maritime activities of South America, India, China, Europe, and Australia. 
In 1851 its merchant tonnage rivaled that of England and was everywhere 
competing with it. 

The effects of the financial panic of 1857 and the aftermath of business 
depression were particularly disastrous to American ships. Freights were 
so low as to yield no profit, and the finest clippers went begging for 
charters. The yards ceased to launch new tonnage. British builders had 
made such rapid progress in design and construction that the days of 
Yankee preference in the China trade had passed. The Stars and Stripes 
floated over ships waiting idle in Manila Bay, at Shanghai, Hong-Kong, and 
Calcutta. The tide of commerce had slackened abroad as well as at home and 
the surplus of deep-water tonnage was world-wide. 

In earlier generations afloat, the American spirit had displayed amazing 
recuperative powers. The havoc of the Revolution had been unable to check 
it, and its vigor and aggressive enterprise had never been more notable 
than after the blows dealt by the Embargo, the French Spoliations, and the 
War of 1812. The conditions of trade and the temper of the people were now 
so changed that this mighty industry, aforetime so robust and resilient, 
was unable to recover from such shocks as the panic of 1857 and the Civil 
War. Yet it had previously survived and triumphed over calamities far more 
severe. The destruction wrought by Confederate cruisers was trifling 
compared with the work of the British and French privateers when the 
nation was very small and weak. 

The American spirit had ceased to concern itself with the sea as the vital 
and dominant element. The footsteps of the young men no longer turned 
toward the wharf and the waterside and the tiers of tall ships outward 
bound. They were aspiring to conquer an inland empire of prairie and 
mountain and desert, impelled by the same pioneering and adventurous ardor 
which had burned in their seafaring sires. Steam had vanquished sail--an 
epochal event in a thousand years of maritime history--but the nation did 
not care enough to accept this situation as a new challenge or to continue 
the ancient struggle for supremacy upon the sea. England did care, because 
it was life or death to the little, sea-girt island, but as soon as the 
United States ceased to be a strip of Atlantic seaboard and the panorama, 
of a continent was unrolled to settlement, it was foreordained that the 
maritime habit of thought and action should lose its virility in America. 
All great seafaring races, English, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Dutch, have 
taken to salt water because there was lack of space, food, or work ashore, 
and their strong young men craved opportunities. Like the Pilgrim Fathers 
and their fishing shallops they had nowhere else to go. 

When the Flying Cloud and the clippers of her kind--taut, serene, 
immaculate--were sailing through the lonely spaces of the South Atlantic 
and the Pacific, they sighted now and then the stumpy, slatternly rig and 
greasy hull of a New Bedford whaler, perhaps rolling to the weight of a 
huge carcass alongside. With a poor opinion of the seamanship of these 
wandering barks, the clipper crews rolled out, among their favorite 
chanteys: 

Oh, poor Reuben Ranzo, Ranzo, boys, O Ranzo, Oh, Ranzo was no sailor, So 
they shipped him aboard a whaler, Ranzo, boys, O Ranzo. 

This was crass, intolerant prejudice. The whaling ship was careless of 
appearances, it is true, and had the air of an ocean vagabond; but there 
were other duties more important than holystoning decks, scraping spars, 
and trimming the yards to a hair. On a voyage of two or three years, 
moreover, there was always plenty of time tomorrow. Brave and resourceful 
seamen were these New England adventurers and deep-sea hunters who made 
nautical history after their own fashion. They flourished coeval with the 
merchant marine in its prime, and they passed from the sea at about the 
same time and for similar reasons. Modernity dispensed with their 
services, and young men found elsewhere more profitable and easier 
employment. 

The great days of Nantucket as a whaling port were passed before the 
Revolution wiped out her ships and killed or scattered her sailors. It was 
later discovered that larger ships were more economical, and Nantucket 
harbor bar was too shoal to admit their passage. For this reason New 
Bedford became the scene of the foremost activity, and Nantucket 
thereafter played a minor part, although her barks went cruising on to the 
end of the chapter and her old whaling families were true to strain. As 
explorers the whalemen rambled into every nook and corner of the Pacific 
before merchant vessels had found their way thither. They discovered 
uncharted islands and cheerfully fought savages or suffered direful 
shipwreck. The chase led them into Arctic regions where their stout barks 
were nipped like eggshells among the grinding floes, or else far to the 
southward where they broiled in tropic calms. The New Bedford lad was as 
keen to go a-whaling as was his counterpart in Boston or New York to be 
the dandy mate of a California clipper, and true was the song: 

I asked a maiden by my side, Who sighed and looked to me forlorn, "Where 
is your heart?" She quick replied, "Round Cape Horn." 

Yankee whaling reached its high tide in 1857 when the New Bedford fleet 
alone numbered 329 sail and those owned in other ports of Buzzard's Bay 
swelled the total to 426 vessels, besides thirty more hailing from New 
London and Sag Harbor. In this year the value of the catch was more than 
ten million dollars. The old custom of sailing on shares or "lays" instead 
of wages was never changed. It was win or lose for all hands--now a 
handsome fortune or again an empty hold and pockets likewise. There was 
Captain W.T. Walker of New Bedford who, in 1847, bought for a song a ship 
so old that she was about to be broken up for junk and no insurance broker 
would look at her. In this rotten relic he shipped a crew and went sailing 
in the Pacific. Miraculously keeping afloat, this Envoy of his was filled 
to the hatches with oil and bones, twice running, before she returned to 
her home port; and she earned $138,450 on a total investment of eight 
thousand dollars. 

The ship Sarah of Nantucket, after a three years' cruise, brought back 
3497 barrels of sperm oil which sold for $89,000, and the William Hamilton 
of New Bedford set another high mark by stowing 4181 barrels of a value of 
$109,269. The Pioneer of New London, Captain Ebenezer Morgan, was away 
only a year and stocked a cargo of oil and whalebone which sold for $150,
060. Most of the profits of prosperous voyages were taken as the owners' 
share, and the incomes of the captain and crew were so niggardly as to 
make one wonder why they persisted in a calling so perilous, arduous, and 
poorly paid. During the best years of whaling, when the ships were 
averaging $16,000 for a voyage, the master received an eighteenth, or 
about nine hundred dollars a year. The highly skilled hands, such as the 
boat-steerers and harpooners, had a lay of only one seventy-fifth, or 
perhaps a little more than two hundred dollars cash as the reward of a 
voyage which netted the owner at least fifty per cent on his investment. 
Occasionally they fared better than this and sometimes worse. The answer 
to the riddle is that they liked the life and had always the gambling 
spirit which hopes for a lucky turn of the cards. 

The countless episodes of fragile boats smashed to kindling by fighting 
whales, of the attack renewed with harpoon and lance, of ships actually 
rammed and sunk, would fill a volume by themselves and have been 
stirringly narrated in many a one. Zanzibar and Kamchatka, Tasmania and 
the Seychelles knew the lean, sun-dried Yankee whaleman and his motto of a 
"dead whale or a stove boat." The Civil War did not drive him from the 
seas. The curious fact is that his products commanded higher prices in 
1907 than fifty years before, but the number of his ships rapidly 
decreased. Whales were becoming scarce, and New England capital preferred 
other forms of investment. The leisurely old sailing craft was succeeded 
by the steam whaler, and the explosive bomb slew, instead of the harpoon 
and lance hurled by the sinewy right arm of a New Bedford man or Cape 
Verde islander. 

Roving whaler and armed East Indiaman, plunging packet ship and stately 
clipper, they served their appointed days and passed on their several 
courses to become mere memories, as shadowy and unsubstantial as the gleam 
of their own topsails when seen at twilight. The souls of their sailors 
have fled to Fiddler's Green, where all dead mariners go. They were of the 
old merchant marine which contributed something fine and imperishable to 
the story of the United States. Down the wind, vibrant and deep-throated, 
comes their own refrain for a requiem: 

We're outward bound this very day, Good-bye, fare you well, Good-bye, fare 
you well. We're outward bound this very day, Hurrah, my boys, we're 
outward bound. 

(* "The Clipper Ship Era." N.Y., 1910.)



CHAPTER X.
BOUND COASTWISE.

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.

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. 

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.(***)

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. 

(* 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.)

(** Marvin's "American Merchant Marine," p. 287.)

(*** In 1882, the tonnage amounted to 193,459; in 1866, to 89,336.)



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).