Capital ship

“ The merchant was then greatly dependent on his captain, who must judge markets, buy and sell, and shape his course without direction from home. So the custom arose of giving the captain—and sometimes other officers—an opportunity to carry goods of their own in the ship, or to share the owner's adventure. In the whaling and fishery business we shall see that an almost pure communism prevailed. ”

“ The challenge to our seafaring we met by skill and hardihood—keener and more polished arms than the weapons of our sea-fathers. The coming of competitors spurred us to sea-deeds in the handling of our ships and cargoes, dispatch in the ports, and activity in the yards, that brought acknowledged victory to our flag. Every sense and thought that was in us was used to further our supremacy. The craft and workmanship of the builders and enterprise of the merchants provided us with the most beautiful of man's creations on the sea—the square-rigged sailing ship of the nineteenth century. ”

“ The growth of manufacturing, the lack of wide public domains open to the “homesteader,” the widespread American interests overseas, all point to a permanent merchant marine, not, perhaps, so great as is Great Britain’s, because America is not so vitally dependent on the sea as is Great Britain, but great because America is great, and growing because America is still developing.
In this development shipping lines are the vital factors. [Pg 276] Individual ships are merely pawns on a world-wide chessboard. A single ship can do nothing in the complex structure of modern commerce. ”

“ Three hundred steamships, employing fifty thousand men earning a million and a half of dollars monthly; these men supporting and educating families, and themselves becoming reserves for their respective countries to call upon for naval service in time of war! Look at the ports from which these vessels wherever built, now hail, and which they enrich by the capital they distribute. ”

“ Building ships and navigating them utilizes vast capital at home; it employs thousands of workmen in their construction and manning; it creates a home market for the products of the farm and the shop; it diminishes the balance of trade against us precisely to the extent of freights and passage money paid to American vessels, and gives us a supremacy upon the seas of inestimable value in case of foreign war.
Our Navy at the commencement of the late war consisted of less than 100 vessels, of about 150,000 tons and a force of about 8,000 men. ”

“ As I write, the actual head of the greatest shipping concern the world has ever known, is a Wall Street banker, whose knowledge of the sea was gained from the deck of a private steam yacht or the cabin de luxe of a fast liner, and who has applied to the shipping business only the same methods of stock manipulating that made him the greatest railroad director in the world before he thought to control the ocean as well. With steam, the sailor has become a mere deckhand; the captain a man of business and a disciplinarian, who may not know the names of the ropes on a real ship ”

“ At that time the commercial greatness of the United States rested upon the splendid qualities shown by her sailing ships and their captains upon the ocean. And after all the only really rational sovereignty of the seas that exists, or has ever existed, is maintained by the merchant marine, whose ships and seamen contribute not only to the welfare and happiness of mankind, but also to the wealth of the nations under whose flags they sail. ”

“ The merchants in the different cities raised large sums of money to build ships by subscription, to be repaid later by the Government, and everywhere the ship-yards were busy getting ready the new fleet. ”

“ The captain was expected to “break his orders in any part,” if he could drive a better bargain than his employer had been able to foresee at a distance of ten thousand miles from the market. Merchants as well as navigators, the old-time shipmaster found compensation for these arduous responsibilities in the “privileges” which allowed him a liberal amount of cargo space on their own account, as well as a commission on the sales of the freight out and back. His own share of the profits of two or three voyages to the Far East might enable him to buy and ship and freight a vessel for himself. ”

“ On the other hand, the Mercantile Marine remained, and still remains, individualistic, each merchant ship-owner, or company of ship-owners, building the sort of vessel best adapted to the particular enterprise in hand. Thus we have sailing from our ports, ships of all descriptions, ocean-going liners carrying passengers, cargoes and mails, as well as tramps, colliers, cold-storage vessels, and an infinity of other types. ”

“ The ships built by the contract companies have far exceeded in speed and other essential qualities the ships constructed by Government. A far greater amount of service was obtained, at a cost much less than would be incurred by Government in building, equipping, manning, and running national vessels for even a partial performance of the same service. Individual and associated skill, enterprise, and capital were called into requisition, and, aided by Government means, contributed to enlarge, extend, and fortify the naval and commercial power of England. ”

“ Its commerce is speculative but vast and successful. It is a frequent circumstance that a ship goes out without a cargo for a voyage around the world. In such a case the captain puts his elder children to school, takes his wife and younger children and starts for some semi-barbarous place where he procures some odd kind of cargo which he exchanges with advantage for another somewhere else; and so goes trafficking around the world, bringing home a freight of the highest value. ”

“ That statute, that in its day may have [68] sufficed to set a standard of law and order to the moderate crews of our sailing ships, is utterly inadequate to control effectively the large ship's company of our modern steam vessels. The men, too, are changed—the sailormen, perhaps, not greatly—but, with the thundering evolution of steam-power, we have drawn grown men to the fires, ready-made men, uninfluenced by traditions of sea-service. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For our people were then essentially a maritime people. Their greatest single manufacturing industry was ship-building. The fisheries—whale, herring, and cod—employed thousands of their men and supported more than one considerable town. The markets for their products lay beyond seas, and for their commerce an undisputed right to the peaceful passage of the Page 25ocean was necessary. Yet England and France, prosecuting their own quarrel, fairly ground American shipping as between two millstones. ”

“ This enabled me to take my seat at the table with an easy conscience, for though there can be no doubt as to the humanity and hospitality of the British shipmaster, the British ship-owner, on the other hand, I have always heard spoken of as a person eminent for thrift and economy, as is made manifest by the slenderness of the crew he ships, the unsavoriness of the provisions he supplies them with, and the very small wages he gives to his captains and mates. ”

“ Several ships were ordered, but the citizens would have been quite at sea had they attempted to supply a ship, and a composition in money was demanded as an easier method of satisfying the wants of the Government. ”

“ The increase of the bounty on sailing-ships was made in the expectation that it would check their falling off, which had been rapid since the development of steamship building; merchant sailing-ships were regarded as the best school for seamen, all of whom in French commerce, up to the age of forty-five, are subject at any time to draft into the national navy. ”

“ Take the taxes off goods, let exchange go on, and the carrying trade comes as a consequence. If we have goods to carry, we shall build or buy ships in which to carry them. If we have merchant ships, we shall need and shall keep up a suitable navy. If we need canals, we shall build them, as, in fact, private capital is now building one and taking the risk of it. ”

“ So the true measure of a nation’s merchant marine is its earning capacity, not merely the number or tonnage of its ships; and judged by this standard, the merchant marine of the United States was at this time far in advance of the merchant shipping of the whole British Empire. ”

“ They fully recognized the importance of the home ship-building industry, and did everything possible to encourage it, but they also perceived that ship-owning is of vastly more importance to a nation than shipbuilding, and that fleets of ships are not commerce but only the instruments with which commerce performs its work; likewise, that the nation owning the best and cheapest ships, no matter where or by whom built, must and will, other things being equal, do not only most of its own carrying trade, but also a considerable portion of that of other nations. ”

“ The insurance companies make their money, not on the ships' hulls, but on the cargoes which the ships carry. A single ship in one season will carry dozens of cargoes. We are the shuttles which carry backwards and forwards the cargo values on which the companies earn their rates. In fact, we help to earn their money for them. Where would be the cargoes without the ships? 'Gin Plimsoll had his way he'd wipe all the British ships off the seas, but we're no so bad as he wad paint us. ”

“ Even now, the private yacht-builders produce some of the fastest sailing vessels in the world; the merchant ship-builders send out fine ships, of the frigate size, and the private steam-ship builders are unrivalled; while we have continual complaints of the deficiencies of the vessels built in the royal dockyards. ”

“ In 1721 all the supercargoes of four ships were given the 'allowance' and the 'privilege', but, in lieu of the 'permission', they had the option of paying a definite additional sum (in the case of the chiefs £1,000 each) into the Company's stock on board, and on this the court guaranteed them 80 per cent. profit, subject only to the ship's safe return to England. ”

“ The economy begins with the construction, for the original cost of an iron ship is less than that of a wooden one, and, apart altogether from her superior capacity for cargo, it runs on with the course of the ship’s service as the result of several causes ”

“ Keeping the direction in its own hands, the Government started with a preconceived theory of the standard ship—a theory that might be of great value to a builder of revolutionary ideas laying the foundations of a prosperity to be enjoyed twenty years hence, but is of considerably less value to a nation that is losing steamers at the rate of fifteen or twenty a week, and wants new steamers now. ”

“ Their duty is to look after the cargo and the traffic, and if they kept to that, it would not be so bad; but they interfere with everything else and everybody, studying little except their own comforts; in fact, they play the king on board, knowing that we dare not affront them, as a word from them would prejudice the vessel when again to be chartered. The Company insist upon their being received with all honours. ”

“ While able men guided the affairs of State, the merchants, shipbuilders, and seamen turned their attention toward developing commerce, and creating a mercantile marine, the cheerful ring of the top-maul and the caulking-iron soon enlivening the seaports along the Atlantic coast; each in turn became famous for her ships and seamen. And although shipbuilding had been carried on, to some extent, in colonial times, yet with the birth of the new Nation, men wrought with new energy and with new purpose. ”

“ These men were not willing any longer to sacrifice the carrying trade of their country in order that a few comparatively unimportant shipbuilders, grown incompetent through long years of monopoly, might continue to thrive at the expense of the nation. ”

“ With competition the transatlantic voyage has been cut from forty days to little more than four. Giant ships plough every sea and offer their magnificence to every passenger who cares to pay the passage money. No longer do silks and spices fill the holds of the argosies of the deep. Iron ore or polished motor cars, bales of cotton or crates of textiles, toys or machinery, hides or shoes, lumber or furniture—it matters not. ”

“ That vessels can be built more cheaply in foreign ports is well known, as also that American ship owners build or purchase their ships in Europe, sail under English colors, and use English papers, assigning as a reason therefor their inability to pay the duty upon the materials used in ship building. ”

“ Their crews were nearly four times as numerous as would be required for modern merchant sailing-ships of similar size.
At the close of the great wars in the early part of this century commercial pursuits naturally received a strong impetus. Great competition arose, not only between individual owners, but also between the shipowning classes in various countries. This caused considerable attention to be paid to the improvement of merchant-ships. The objects sought to be attained were greater economy in the working of vessels and increased speed combined with cargo-carrying capacity. ”

“ Let it suffice to remark that already the nation has a direct financial interest in the great steamship lines, through its mail subsidies and Admiralty loans with corresponding claims for service in war; that intellectually the nation, by its pride in its magnificent mercantile fleet, regards it as a national possession, and declines to consider our shipping as the mere private property of the shareholders of the steamship companies; and finally, that our navy is maintained at enormous public expense expressly to protect the mercantile fleet, which at present is mainly private property. ”