American Merchant Ships and Sailors | Page 8

as Professor Fiske calls it, was indeed a critical period for
American shipping.
The new government, formed under the Constitution, was prompt to
recognize the demands of the shipping interests upon the country. In
the very first measure adopted by Congress steps were taken to
encourage American shipping by differential duties levied on goods
imported in American and foreign vessels. Moreover, in the tonnage
duties imposed by Congress an advantage of almost 50 per cent. was
given ships built in the United States and owned abroad. Under this
stimulus the shipping interests throve, despite hostile legislation in
England, and the disordered state of the high seas, where French and
British privateers were only a little less predatory than Algierian
corsairs or avowed pirates. It was at this early day that Yankee skippers
began making those long voyages that are hardly paralleled to-day
when steamships hold to a single route like a trolley car between two
towns. The East Indies was a favorite trading point. Carrying a cargo
suited to the needs of perhaps a dozen different peoples, the vessel
would put out from Boston or Newport, put in at Madeira perhaps, or at
some West Indian port, dispose of part of its cargo, and proceed,
stopping again and again on its way, and exchanging its goods for
money or for articles thought to be more salable in the East Indies.
Arrived there, all would be sold, and a cargo of tea, coffee, silks, spices,
nankeen cloth, sugar, and other products of the country taken on. If
these goods did not prove salable at home the ship would make yet
another voyage and dispose of them at Hamburg or some other
Continental port. In 1785 a Baltimore ship showed the Stars and Stripes
in the Canton River, China. In 1788 the ship "Atlantic," of Salem,
visited Bombay and Calcutta. The effect of being barred from British
ports was not, as the British had expected, to put an abrupt end to
American maritime enterprise. It only sent our hardy seamen on longer
voyages, only brought our merchants into touch with the commerce of
the most distant lands. Industry, like men, sometimes thrives upon
obstacles.

[Illustration: "AFTER A BRITISH LIEUTENANT HAD PICKED
THE BEST OF HER CREW"]
For twenty-five years succeeding the adoption of the Constitution the
maritime interest--both shipbuilding and shipowning--thrived more,
perhaps, than any other gainful industry pursued by the Americans. Yet
it was a time when every imaginable device was employed to keep our
people out of the ocean-carrying trade. The British regulations, which
denied us access to their ports, were imitated by the French. The
Napoleonic wars came on, and the belligerents bombarded each other
with orders in council and decrees that fell short of their mark, but did
havoc among neutral merchantmen. To the ordinary perils of the deep
the danger of capture--lawful or unlawful--by cruiser or privateer, was
always to be added. The British were still enforcing their so-called
"right of search," and many an American ship was left short-handed far
out at sea, after a British naval lieutenant had picked the best of her
crew on the pretense that they were British subjects. The superficial
differences between an American and an Englishman not being as great
as those between an albino and a Congo black, it is not surprising that
the boarding officer should occasionally make mistakes--particularly
when his ship was in need of smart, active sailors. Indeed, in those
years the civilized--by which at that period was meant the
warlike--nations were all seeking sailors. Dutch, Spanish, French, and
English were eager for men to man their fighting ships; hired them
when they could, and stole them when they must. It was the time of the
press gang, and the day when sailors carried as a regular part of their kit
an outfit of women's clothing in which to escape if the word were
passed that "the press is hot to-night." The United States had never to
resort to impressment to fill its navy ships' companies, a fact perhaps
due chiefly to the small size of its navy in comparison with the
seafaring population it had to draw from.
As for the American merchant marine, it was full of British seamen.
Beyond doubt inducements were offered them at every American port
to desert and ship under the Stars and Stripes. In the winter of 1801
every British ship visiting New York lost the greater part of its crew. At
Norfolk the entire crew of a British merchantman deserted to an

American sloop-of-war. A lively trade was done in forged papers of
American citizenship, and the British naval officer who gave a
boat-load of bluejackets shore leave at New York was liable to find
them all Americans when their leave was up. Other nations looked
covetously upon our great