American Merchant Ships and Sailors | Page 9

body of able-bodied seamen, born within
sound of the swash of the surf, nurtured in the fisheries, able to build,
to rig, or to navigate a ship. They were fighting sailors, too, though
serving only in the merchant marine. In those days the men that went
down to the sea in ships had to be prepared to fight other antagonists
than Neptune and Æolus. All the ships went armed. It is curious to read
in old annals of the number of cannon carried by small merchantmen.
We find the "Prudent Sarah" mounting 10 guns; the "Olive Branch,"
belied her peaceful name with 3, while the pink "Friendship" carried 8.
These years, too, were the privateers' harvest time. During the
Revolution the ships owned by one Newburyport merchant took 23,360
tons of shipping and 225 men, the prizes with their cargoes selling for
$3,950,000. But of the size and the profits of the privateering business
more will be said in the chapter devoted to that subject. It is enough to
note here that it made the American merchantman essentially a fighting
man.
The growth of American shipping during the years 1794-1810 is almost
incredible in face of the obstacles put in its path by hostile enactments
and the perils of the war. In 1794 United States ships, aggregating
438,863 tons, breasted the waves, carrying fish and staves to the West
Indies, bringing back spices, rum, cocoa, and coffee. Sometimes they
went from the West Indies to the Canaries, and thence to the west coast
of Africa, where very valuable and very pitiful cargoes of human
beings, whose black skins were thought to justify their treatment as
dumb beasts of burden, were shipped. Again the East Indies opened
markets for buying and selling both. But England and almost the whole
of Western Europe were closed.
It is not possible to understand the situation in which the American
sailor and shipowner of that day was placed, without some knowledge
of the navigation laws and belligerent orders by which the trade was
vexed. In 1793 the Napoleonic wars began, to continue with slight

interruptions until 1815. France and England were the chief contestants,
and between them American shipping was sorely harried. The French at
first seemed to extend to the enterprising Americans a boon of
incalculable value to the maritime interest, for the National Convention
promulgated a decree giving to neutral ships--practically to American
ships, for they were the bulk of the neutral shipping--the rights of
French ships. Overjoyed by this sudden opening of a rich market long
closed, the Yankee barks and brigs slipped out of the New England
harbors in schools, while the shipyards rung with the blows of the
hammers, and the forest resounded with the shouts of the woodsmen
getting out ship-timbers. The ocean pathway to the French West Indies
was flecked with sails, and the harbors of St. Kitts, Guadaloupe, and
Martinique were crowded. But this bustling trade was short-lived. The
argosies that set forth on their peaceful errand were shattered by
enemies more dreaded than wind or sea. Many a ship reached the port
eagerly sought only to rot there; many a merchant was beggared, nor
knew what had befallen his hopeful venture until some belated consular
report told of its condemnation in some French or English admiralty
court.
[Illustration: EARLY TYPE OF SMACK]
For England met France's hospitality with a new stroke at American
interests. The trade was not neutral, she said. France had been forced to
her concession by war. Her people were starving because the vigilance
of British cruisers had driven French cruisers from the seas, and no
food could be imported. To permit Americans to purvey food for the
French colonies would clearly be to undo the good work of the British
navy. Obviously food was contraband of war. So all English
men-of-war were ordered to seize French goods on whatever ship
found; to confiscate cargoes of wheat, corn, or fish bound for French
ports as contraband, and particularly to board all American
merchantmen and scrutinize the crews for English-born sailors. The
latter injunction was obeyed with peculiar zeal, so that the State
Department had evidence that at one time, in 1806, there were as many
as 6000 American seamen serving unwillingly in the British navy.

France, meanwhile, sought retaliation upon England at the expense of
the Americans. The United States, said the French government, is a
sovereign nation. If it does not protect its vessels against unwarrantable
British aggressions it is because the Americans are secretly in league
with the British. France recognizes no difference between its foes. So it
is ordered that any American vessel which submitted to visitation and
search from an English vessel, or paid dues in a British port, ceased to
be neutral, and became subject to capture by the French.