Merchant navy

“ I add, to the end that all men should understand somewhat of the great masses of treasure daily employed upon our Navy, how there are few merchant ships of the first and second sort, that being apparelled and made ready to sail, are not worth one thousand pounds, or three thousand ducats at the least, if they should presently be sold. What then shall we think of the Navy-Royal, of which some one vessel is worth two of the other, as the shipwright has often told me. ”

“ It is true that the merchant service has the power of rendering certain services in war, especially the power of providing auxiliary vessels, and of furnishing men accustomed to the sea; but as time goes on the power contributable by the merchant service must steadily decrease, because of the relatively increasing power of the naval service, and the rapidly increasing difference between the characteristics of ships and men suitable for the merchant service and those suitable for the naval service. ”

“ One of the chief tasks of the Navy League for the future must be to work for a merchant marine, organized and conducted on American principles, without undue help from the Government, and without undue hindrance from unwise laws.
After the present war an American merchant marine is essential to the prosperity of the country. A large part of our products, including both manufactured articles and raw materials, must be exported. ”

“ Yet, while this is true, our American merchant marine has been steadily declining until it is now lower, both in the percentage of tonnage and the number of vessels employed, than it was prior to the Civil War. Commendable progress has been made of late years in the upbuilding of the American Navy, but we must supplement these efforts by providing as a proper consort for it a merchant marine amply sufficient for our own carrying trade to foreign countries. The question is one that appeals both to our business necessities and the patriotic aspirations of a great people. ”

“ The larger merchant ships of the great ports were, indeed, better fitted for the purpose. In those times of insecurity at sea they generally went armed, even in peace. Accordingly, we find that until the middle of the seventeenth century pressed or hired merchant ships were always to be found in great fleets. But their inferiority to the vessel built for war was early recognised. Queen's officers were found to declare that the merchant ships were of little use, except to make a show, in the fight with the Armada. ”

“ Indeed, we have not seriously attempted any great practical scheme for their education or for the amalgamation of the services of the Royal Navy and those of the mercantile marine, which, while invaluable to us as a nation, would tend so much to elevate the social position of that neglected portion of their class, who, not having the good fortune to be enrolled in the Navy or on the lists of the large Shipowners, must seek their daily bread at sea in any ship where employment can be found. ”

“ Our Merchant Service. Hitherto the protection of commerce has been treated as if we were entirely dependent on ships built expressly for war. But the maritime resources of this country are not confined to the Royal Navy. Splendid and powerful as our ships may be, we must inevitably, in time of peace, be deficient in point of numbers. For the tremendous exigencies of war, the fleet might be supplemented and expanded, so as to acquire undisputed ascendency, by equipping and arming our ocean mail steamers. ”

“ When we are confronted with a declining merchant marine, when the carrying trade is passing into the hands of foreigners, when we remember that our whaling fleet, which twenty years ago numbered 600 ships with 18,000 sailors, the best sailors on the globe, disciplined and educated in voyages of three and four year's duration—is now reduced to 163 vessels with less than 5,000 men, we may well inquire, where are we to look for experienced seamen to man our navy in case of foreign war? ”

“ Merchant seamen have always been what they are now, from their earliest days, before the Royal Navy had been fashioned out of the material they furnished for the hands of kings and statesmen. Their work has made them, as work undertaken with single-minded devotion makes men, giving to their achievements that vitality and continuity in which their souls are expressed, tempered and matured through the succeeding generations. In its simplest definition the work of merchant seamen has been to take ships entrusted to their care from port to port across the seas ”

“ Our commerce the special object of attack. The protection of commerce would certainly be a difficult task for our Navy in the event of war. The ablest officers in the French service have abandoned the idea of contending, to use the words of Baron Grivel, with the '20,000 guns of our fighting Navy.' Their aim would be to pursue the '50,000 merchant ships' which are continually engaged in transporting the wealth of England over the watery plain. ”

“ When a ship, after two or three years' service, comes into port, she is immediately paid off, and a new set of sailors, wholly ignorant of war, are slowly got together by the next captain who gets that or a corresponding ship; who in their turn, when they begin to become expert at their new duties, are displaced to make way for a third body of untrained men! What should we say to a manufacturer, a merchant, or a general, who should conduct things in this manner? Yet, such as it is, it is the system of the British navy. ”

“ For the moment English mercantile effort took a direction that did not bring it into conflict with larger interests, but when the natural expansion of trade and shipping brought the country into collision with other powers the struggles of centuries, which had shaped and hardened a skilful and dauntless maritime population, bore their natural fruit in a school of seamen able to use and direct the instruments which the increasing wealth and ambition of the nation placed in their hands. ”

“ Every navy is argus-eyed, and in crises such as these, when the very existence of the nation was perhaps at stake, it was first and principally towards the crews of the country's merchant ships that the eyes of the Navy were directed; for, shipboard life and shipboard duty being largely identical in both services, no elaborate training was required to convert the merchant sailor into a first-rate man-o'-war's-man. ”

“ No new vessels were built during the first years of the reign. Theoretically, with the assistance of the hired merchantmen available, the Royal Navy was sufficient for the duties it was called upon to perform. Practically, it was found that even those that were seaworthy were too slow under sail, as were also the merchantmen, to deal with the plague of Dunkirk privateers and Moorish pirates, who swarmed in the narrow seas, and who almost blockaded the coasts except for large and heavily-armed ships. ”

“ The merchant service affords ample opportunity for the exercise of a man’s courage and determination. Though I respect the officers and men of the Royal Navy, who are engaged in fighting for their king and country, I have a very different opinion of privateersmen, who go forth to plunder the harmless merchantmen of other nations merely for the sake of enriching themselves. ”

“ Instead of enjoying a pleasant spell ashore they would be hurried aboard a King’s ship, to all the miseries of a gun-deck. It was the custom to say that a sailor was better situated on a man-of-war than on a merchant-vessel; that he had better food, better treatment, and better [Pg 123] money. As a matter of fact the merchant-seamen regarded the Royal Navy with dread and loathing. There can be little doubt that the thought of the press-gangs, and the fear of service in the navy, drove many of our best merchant-seamen into American ships, where they were rather less subject to impressment. ”

“ First, the Auxiliary Cruisers, which are swift merchant liners quickly armed and manned by trained Reservists, who are mostly merchant seamen and fishermen in time of peace. These cruisers do scouting and escort duty, and sometimes have a hard fight with the enemy; though they are not strong enough for regular battles between great men-of-war. Secondly, the Supply Vessels of every size and every kind, which keep the Fleet supplied with food and fuel, munitions and repairs, and everything else a great fleet needs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And there is the likelihood that as our new merchant vessels are launched and put into commission, they will be manned by reserves from the navy training-schools with officers furnished by the Deck School at Pelham Bay and the Engineers' School at Hoboken. The government, of course, is in complete control of the merchant marine; but in our present condition many American ships have to be manned by aliens. ”

“ Throughout the middle ages, the nations of the Mediterranean depended for the constitution of a navy on their merchant shipping almost as much as England. The sovereigns of Europe and the Italian republics had each, no doubt, some ships of their own, though generally these were too few for carrying on war with rival nations of any maritime position. The great barons also, during the feudal system, owned vessels as well as castles; and those especially who lived on the sea-shore possessed one or more ships, which they employed for war or commerce, in accordance with their tastes or ambition. ”

“ Notwithstanding piracy, warfare, and the risks of navigation in little known seas, the returns show a steady increase in the size and number of English vessels. The necessities of [170] distant trading explain the increase in size both in view of a relatively smaller cost of working and a larger number of partners interested in the cargo, and the results of successful maritime war were shown in a carrying trade which it may almost be held to have founded. But an extension of commerce was sometimes thrust unwillingly on the English merchants. ”

“ The expense is as nothing compared to the advantage to be achieved. The reestablishment of our merchant marine involves in a large measure our continued industrial progress and the extension of our commercial triumphs. I am satisfied the judgment of the country favors the policy of aid to our merchant marine, which will broaden our commerce and markets and upbuild our sea-carrying capacity for the products of agriculture and manufacture; which, with the increase of our Navy, mean more work and wages to our countrymen, as well as a safeguard to American interests in every part of the world. ”

“ The apportionment of men to supply the wants of the navy shall be made according to the actual sea-faring population, and the quota furnished in accordance herewith by each state shall be credited to the army account. Article 54. The merchant vessels of all states of the confederation shall form a united commercial marine. The Empire shall determine the process for ascertaining the tonnage of sea-going vessels, shall regulate the issuing of tonnage-certificates and sea-letters, and shall fix the conditions to which a permit for commanding a sea-going vessel shall be subject. ”

“ Privateers were equipped not with large objects but to secure profits for owners and crews. It sometimes happened that this purpose was at issue with the wider views of the admiral in command, and the voyage became ineffective where a similar number of men-of-war subject to discipline might have done important service. The enormous increase in the merchant marine which, it will be shown, characterised the reign, was in one way disadvantageous since it induced the government to rely more on a guerre de course than on the sustained and systematised action of the Royal Navy. ”

“ There is hardly a reign, down to and including that of Elizabeth, in which men-of-war were not hired by merchants, and the earlier trading voyages to Italy and the Levant during the last quarter of the fifteenth century were nearly all performed by men-of-war let out for the voyage. The Navy was mainly made up of sailing vessels even before the reign of Henry III, and by that period many of them possessed two masts, each carrying a single sail. ”

“ From the merchant marine the personnel of the navy in war must come, and it is a fallacy to believe that by a small addition to our ordinary naval resources we would be able to cope with the navies of other maritime powers, or that in a long war an efficient and numerous reserve is not of greater importance than a few more seamen permanently maintained in the navy during peace. ”

“ More attention should be given to merchant ships as an auxiliary of the Navy. The possibility of including their masters and crews in the Naval Reserve, with some reasonable compensation, should be thoroughly explored as a method of encouraging private operation of shipping. ”

“ Thus, in the maintenance of a nation's merchant marine on the high seas, its navy exercises one of its most vital functions. There can, therefore, be no naval supremacy for a nation unless [xxiv] its commerce is assured of immunity from considerable losses through the attack of its enemy. It is idle for us to speak of our naval supremacy over Germany, when our navies are failing in one of their most important functions, and when our commerce is suffering such serious losses. The persons best qualified to judge are those who are most anxious regarding the present losses in mercantile tonnage. ”

“ Few people realize what a vast number of merchant vessels are required to attend on the fleet to supply it with coal, oil, provisions, clothing, ammunition, new guns, repairs, etc., and to bring away from the fleet wounded and ill men, and the guns and machinery which need repairs. It is a fact that today more than half of the available merchant tonnage of the world is employed in supplying the fighting fleets. To support the armies which we ought to send to the front will require at least six million more tons of shipping than we have available. ”