Maritime nation

“ In the meantime, I have laid my shoulder to the opening the markets of this country to our produce, and rendering its transportation a nursery for our seamen. A maritime force is the only one, by which we can act on Europe. Our navigation law (if it be wise to have any) should be the reverse of that of England. Instead of confining importations to home-bottoms, or those of the producing nation, I think we should confine exportations to home-bottoms, or to those of nations having treaties with us. ”

“ With the opening of ocean routes and the discovery of America, a rivalry in world trade and colonial expansion set in which has continued increasingly down to the present time, forming a dominant element in the foreign policies of maritime nations and a primary motive for the possession and use of navies. The development of overseas trade, involving the factors of merchant shipping, navies, and control of the seas, is thus an integral part of the history of sea power. ”

“ The geographical conditions of the Atlantic seaboard are so favourable for the development of naval power, that it is evident that the United States have every possible natural advantage placed at their disposal to enable them to become a great maritime nation.
There is, however, a difficulty for them to surmount. Serviceable American-born men do not readily volunteer to join their ships of war, and, consequently, the crews are largely composed of foreigners, chiefly of English and German origin. ”

“ The only nation who persists in the support of this doctrine, as making part of the law of nations, is the first maritime power of Europe, whom their interest, as they are the strongest, and as there is hardly a maritime war in which they are not involved, leads to wish for a continuation of a custom which gives additional strength to their overbearing dominion over the seas. ”

“ Some nations more than others, but all maritime nations more or less, depend for their prosperity upon maritime commerce, and probably upon it more than upon any other single factor. Either under their own flag or that of a neutral, either by foreign trade or coasting trade, the sea is the greatest of boons to such a state; and under every form its sea-borne trade is at the mercy of a foe decisively superior. ”

“ It is a fact worthy of consideration that all maritime nations have looked to their fisheries as the nursery of hardy seamen for the merchant service in time of peace and for the navy in time of war, and as a great question of national policy (aside from the inducement to encourage this branch of business as an unfailing source of natural wealth) it is deemed worthy of the fostering care of all commercial nations. ”

“ Its enactment will ensure that United States flag merchant ships will maintain their role in carrying a significant portion of our vast trade and that American ships and American seafarers will continue to provide reliable sealift support in national emergencies.
Our Nation is charting a new course, reinforcing our heritage as a great maritime power and supporting our interests as the world's leading international trader. ”

“ If the protection of their coasts in time of war might become a great strain upon our navy, this disadvantage is largely balanced by the importance of distant maritime possessions to every nation that desires to maintain an efficient fleet ”

“ The maritime law as generally accepted by maritime nations leaves the matter untouched and in practice each of them has applied the same rule for the sea which it maintains on land. The Harrisburg, 119 U.S. 204, 213, 7 Sup. ”

“ As yet all maritime nations have been short-lived; their rise has been swift, often surprisingly so; but they have never remained long at the zenith of prosperity, and, as a rule, their decay has been as rapid as their elevation to power. The cause of the fall of all maritime nations [Pg 380] has been the smallness of their basis, their foreign possessions, widely separated from one another and difficult to defend, and their dependence upon these foreign possessions. ”

“ Let us start from the fundamental truth, warranted by history, that the control of the seas, and especially along the great lines drawn by national interest or national commerce, is the chief among the merely material elements in the power and prosperity of nations. It is so because the sea is the world’s great medium of circulation. From this necessarily follows the principle that, as subsidiary to such control, it is imperative to take possession, when it can be done righteously, of such maritime positions as contribute to secure command. ”

“ This is an unfortunate alternative, but it is one which will not admit of compromise or arbitration: we consider an absolute superiority on the seas essential to the safety of our shores, the prosperity of our commerce, and the security of our colonies; they manifest a determination to contest our maritime supremacy, and to create a force which shall give them even a preponderating influence. ”

“ We have, by letters to our correspondents at the several ports, done all in our power to prevent such mischiefs for the future, a copy of which we herewith send you. The European maritime powers embarrass themselves, as well as us, by the double part their politics oblige them to act; being in their hearts our friends, and wishing us success, they would allow us every use of their ports consistent with their treaties, or that we can make of them without giving open cause of complaint to England ”

“ The reason we rule the seas at the moment—if we do rule them—is because we are an island country, and because our past necessities have forced us to stride far ahead in maritime affairs of all other nations, while they possessed no full realization of the value of sea power. But the late war has shown us that now, at last, every country in the world understands to the full the necessity for wresting from any one Power the dominance of the seas. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How far are we willing to go to sustain the Open Door policy in the Far East? Are we determined to resist the immigration of Asiatics? Are we bound to hold against conquest our outlying possessions,—the Philippines, Guam, Hawaiian Islands, and Alaska? Shall we play a "lone hand" among nations, or join an international league? Until there is some answer to these questions of foreign policy, our naval program is based on nothing definite. In short, the naval policy of a nation should spring from its national policy. ”

“ And thus it happens, that, from the general practice of commercial nations in making the same general law the basis and groundwork of their respective maritime systems, the great mass of maritime law which is thus received by these nations in common, comes to be the common maritime law of the world. ”

“ Spain, Russia, England, Canada, and the new-born United States were the contestants in the arena. What has reached its climax in the sluicing of two oceans together at Panama began in the pursuit of sea-otter and seal after the voyages of Bering and of Cook.
The United States had an added motive. On the principle of protecting native shipping, American ports discriminated against British ships, and British ports discriminated against American ships. It was absolutely necessary to their existence as a nation that the United States should build up a merchant fleet. ”

“ The bare statement of the condition in which the United States would be placed, after having surrendered the right to resort to privateers, in the event of war with a belligerent of naval supremacy will show that this Government could never listen to such a proposition. The navy of the first maritime power in Europe is at least ten times as large as that of the United States. The foreign commerce of the two countries is nearly equal, and about equally exposed to hostile depredations. ”

“ To other states the land, with its privileges and its glories, is the chief source of national prosperity and distinction. To Great Britain and the United States, if they rightly estimate the part they may play in the great drama of human progress, is intrusted a maritime interest, in the broadest sense of the word, which demands, as one of the conditions of its exercise and its safety, the organized force adequate to control the general course of events at sea ”

“ If it be true that Great Britain's maritime policy now is imposed to some extent by the present necessities of the little group of islands which form the nucleus of her strength, it is not true that any such necessities first impelled her to claim her share of influence in the world, her part in the great drama of nations. ”

“ Owing to the conflict of claims which grew out of the controversy, maritime states had to moderate their demands and base their pretensions to maritime dominion on the principle that it extended seawards from land. ”

“ The Ships and Vessels of Nations that rest neuter and at Peace with the World during a War with other Nations, have a Right to navigate freely on the Seas as they navigated before that War broke out, and to proceed to and enter the Port or Ports of any of the Belligerent Powers, with the consent of that Power, without being seized, searched, visited, or any ways interrupted, by the Nation or Nations with which that Nation is at War. ”

“ That by the Law of Nations every State when at war has the right to capture its enemy's property at sea, of whatever nature it be and in whatever vessels it is found. That every State has also a right by the Law of Nations to arm and commission private vessels as an auxiliary to its naval force. ”

“ Navigation of the seas outside of territorial waters must be made free to all nations. Exceptions are made by international agreement. To landlocked nations access to the sea must be secured by an international agreement ”

“ Ships of the allied and associated powers shall for five years, and thereafter under condition of reciprocity, unless the league of nations otherwise decides, enjoy the same rights in German ports as German vessels and have most favored nation treatment in fishing, coasting trade, and towage, even in territorial waters. Ships of a country having no sea coast may be registered at some one place within its territory. ”

“ It grew up out of the fact that the ocean is not the territorial property of any nation, but the common property of all; that vessels engaged in commerce between the different nations ought, so far as possible, to be subject to a uniform law, and not annoyed by the conflicting local laws and customs of the several nations which they visit. ”

“ Our maritime power will always be sufficient to protect our islands. Our naval forces will never want anything so long as we shall have divers markets, where our vessels may go. The northern powers of Europe, and the northern States of America, will be competitors to serve us, so long as we preserve the superiority upon the sea, and while, by means of our manufacturers, we can pay for them, or make an advantageous exchange, with the one and the other. ”

“ Beyond the three-mile limit, the ocean is "common ground," belonging not to one nation but to all. Each nation has jurisdiction, however, over its merchant ships on the high seas, but not in a foreign port, and over its war ships everywhere. ”

“ It is not probable that the American States will have a very free trade in the Mediterranean. It will not be to the interest307 of any of the great maritime powers to protect them from the Barbary States. If they know their interests, they will not encourage the Americans to be carriers. ”

“ Foreign necessaries or luxuries must be brought to its ports, either in its own or in foreign ships, which will return, bearing in exchange the products of the country, whether they be the fruits of the earth or the works of men's hands; and it is the wish of every nation that this shipping business should be done by its own vessels. The ships that thus sail to and fro must have secure ports to which to return, and must, as far as possible, be followed by the protection of their country throughout the voyage. ”

“ Upon a principle much more just in itself and more temperately applied, maritime States have claimed a right of visitation and inquiry within those parts of the ocean adjoining to their shores, which the common courtesy of nations has for their common convenience allowed to be considered as parts of their dominions for various domestic purposes, and particularly for fiscal or defensive regulations, more immediately affecting their rights and welfare. ”

“ We cannot protect our commerce on the ocean. Our ships have vexed every sea—we trade to all parts of the world; of course, to protect our commerce, our ships of war must abandon our coasts and encounter all the force of the enemy or those of Europe. The ports we have in view are European. ”

“ What has Great Britain to rely on in such a crisis but the energy of its seamen and the might of its navy, which might at least enable it to preserve its connexion with its own colonies, and maintain, as during the Continental blockade, its commerce with Transatlantic nations? And yet this is the moment which our rulers have selected for destroying the Navigation Laws, so long the bulwark of our mercantile marine, and permitting all the world to make those inroads on our shipping, which have already been partially effected by the nations with whom we have concluded reciprocity treaties! ”