American Merchant Ships and Sailors | Page 3

OF THE STEAMBOATS--CAPRICIOUS RIVER--FLUSH
TIMES IN NEW ORLEANS--RAPID MULTIPLICATION OF
STEAMBOATS--RECENT FIGURES ON RIVER
SHIPPING--COMMODORE WHIPPLE'S EXPLOIT--THE MEN
WHO STEERED THE STEAMBOATS--THEIR TECHNICAL
EDUCATION--THE SHIPS THEY STEERED--FIRES AND
EXPLOSIONS--HEROISM OF THE PILOTS--THE RACES
CHAPTER IX.
303
THE NEW ENGLAND FISHERIES--THEIR PART IN EFFECTING
THE SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA--THEIR RAPID
DEVELOPMENT--WIDE EXTENT OF THE TRADE--EFFORT OF
LORD NORTH TO DESTROY IT--THE FISHERMEN IN THE
REVOLUTION--EFFORTS TO ENCOURAGE THE
INDUSTRY--ITS PART IN POLITICS AND DIPLOMACY--THE
FISHING BANKS--TYPES OF BOATS--GROWTH OF THE

FISHING COMMUNITIES--FARMERS AND SAILORS BY
TURNS--THE EDUCATION OF THE FISHERMEN--METHODS OF
TAKING MACKEREL--THE SEINE AND THE TRAWL--SCANT
PROFITS OF THE INDUSTRY--PERILS OF THE BANKS--SOME
PERSONAL EXPERIENCES--THE FOG AND THE FAST
LINERS--THE TRIBUTE OF HUMAN LIFE
CHAPTER X.
341
THE SAILOR'S SAFEGUARDS--IMPROVEMENTS IN MARINE
ARCHITECTURE--THE MAPPING OF THE SEAS--THE
LIGHTHOUSE SYSTEM--BUILDING A LIGHTHOUSE--MINOT'S
LEDGE AND SPECTACLE REEF--LIFE IN A
LIGHTHOUSE--LIGHTSHIPS AND OTHER BEACONS--THE
REVENUE MARINE SERVICE--ITS FUNCTION AS A
SAFEGUARD TO SAILORS--ITS WORK IN THE NORTH
PACIFIC--THE LIFE-SAVING SERVICE--ITS RECORD FOR ONE
YEAR--ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT--THE PILOTS OF
NEW YORK--THEIR HARDSHIPS AND SLENDER
EARNINGS--JACK ASHORE--THE SAILORS' SNUG HARBOR
**Transcriber Notes on Table of Contents:
Chapter V
reads "Effects on the Revolutionary Army";
Chapter on
page 155 reads "Effect on the Revolutionary Army";
Chapter VII
reads reads "Beginning of Navigation",

Chapter on
page 233 reads "Beginnings of Navigation"

American Merchant Ships and Sailors
CHAPTER I.
THE AMERICAN SHIP AND THE AMERICAN SAILOR--NEW
ENGLAND'S LEAD ON THE OCEAN--THE EARLIEST
AMERICAN SHIP-BUILDING--HOW THE SHIPYARDS
MULTIPLIED--LAWLESS TIMES ON THE HIGH
SEAS--SHIP-BUILDING IN THE FORESTS AND ON THE
FARM--SOME EARLY TYPES--THE COURSE OF MARITIME
TRADE--THE FIRST SCHOONER AND THE FIRST
FULL-RIGGED SHIP--JEALOUSY AND ANTAGONISM OF
ENGLAND--THE PEST OF PRIVATEERING--ENCOURAGEMENT
FROM CONGRESS--THE GOLDEN DAYS OF OUR MERCHANT
MARINE--FIGHTING CAPTAINS AND TRADING
CAPTAINS--GROUND BETWEEN FRANCE AND
ENGLAND--CHECKED BY THE WARS--SEALING AND
WHALING--INTO THE PACIFIC--HOW YANKEE BOYS
MOUNTED THE QUARTER-DECK--SOME STORIES OF EARLY
SEAMEN--THE PACKETS AND THEIR EXPLOITS.
When the Twentieth Century opened, the American sailor was almost
extinct. The nation which, in its early and struggling days, had given to
the world a race of seamen as adventurous as the Norse Vikings had, in
the days of its greatness and prosperity turned its eyes away from the
sea and yielded to other people the mastery of the deep. One living in
the past, reading the newspapers, diaries and record-books of the early
days of the Nineteenth Century, can hardly understand how an
occupation which played so great a part in American life as seafaring
could ever be permitted to decline. The dearest ambition of the
American boy of our early national era was to command a clipper
ship--but how many years it has been since that ambition entered into

the mind of young America! In those days the people of all the young
commonwealths from Maryland northward found their interests vitally
allied with maritime adventure. Without railroads, and with only the
most wretched excuses for post-roads, the States were linked together
by the sea; and coastwise traffic early began to employ a considerable
number of craft and men. Three thousand miles of ocean separated
Americans from the market in which they must sell their produce and
buy their luxuries. Immediately upon the settlement of the seaboard the
Colonists themselves took up this trade, building and manning their
own vessels and speedily making their way into every nook and corner
of Europe. We, who have seen, in the last quarter of the Nineteenth
Century, the American flag the rarest of all ensigns to be met on the
water, must regard with equal admiration and wonder the zeal for
maritime adventure that made the infant nation of 1800 the second
seafaring people in point of number of vessels, and second to none in
energy and enterprise.
[Illustration: THE SHALLOP]
New England early took the lead in building ships and manning them,
and this was but natural since her coasts abounded in harbors;
navigable streams ran through forests of trees fit for the ship-builder's
adze; her soil was hard and obdurate to the cultivator's efforts; and her
people had not, like those who settled the South, been drawn from the
agricultural classes. Moreover, as I shall show in other chapters, the sea
itself thrust upon the New Englanders its riches for them to gather. The
cod-fishery was long pursued within a few miles of Cape Ann, and the
New Englanders had become well habituated to it before the growing
scarcity of the fish compelled them to seek the teeming waters of
Newfoundland banks. The value of the whale was first taught them by
great carcasses washed up on the shore of Cape Cod, and for years this
gigantic game was pursued in open boats within sight of the coast.
From neighborhood seafaring such as this the progress was easy to
coasting voyages, and so to Europe and to Asia.
There is some conflict of historians