The Great Republic, built by Donald McKay, was the largest American clipper ship. She was "325 feet long, 53 feet wide and her whole depth is 39 feet." She was "of 4000 tons register and full 6000 tons stowage capacity." She had four masts, the after, or spanker, mast carrying fore and aft sails only. Her main-yard was 120 feet long. After she was loaded at New York for her maiden voyage she was accidentally burned, the total loss, as insured, amounting to $400,000. The sunken hull was raised, rebuilt at a cost of $27,000 and she was then rigged as before. In rebuilding her, a less depth of hull was given, but she was still able to carry 4000 tons dead weight. With 3000 tons in her hold she ran from New York to the coast of England in 12 days. In the Guano trade from the west coast of South America she was credited with making 412 miles in one day. (Admiral Preble in U. S. Serv. Mag., July, 1889.) The Red Jacket once covered 413 sea miles in a day, and the Flying Scud claimed a day's run of 449, but this was disputed. (See Nautical Magazine, June, 1855.) The undisputed record day's run was made by the Lightning, built by Donald McKay, for English capitalists. A letter from McKay which appeared in the Scientific American on November 26, 1859, says:—
"Although I designed and built the clipper ship Lightning, and therefore ought to be the last to praise her, yet such has been her performance since Englishmen learned to sail her, that I must confess I feel proud of her. You are aware that she was so sharp and concave forward that one of her stupid captains, who did not comprehend the principle upon which she was built, persuaded the owners to fill in the hollows of her bows. They did so, and according to their Bullish bluff notions, she was not only better for the addition, but would sail faster, and wrote me to that effect. Well, the next passage to Melbourne, Australia, she washed the encumbrance away on one side, and when she returned to Liverpool, the other side was also cleared away. Since then she has been running as I modelled her. As a specimen of her speed I may say that I saw recorded in her log (of 24 hours) 436 nautical miles, a trifle over 18 knots an hour."
A few records will give an idea of the profits of the best of the clippers. The Sovereign of the Seas received $84,000 freight money for the passage when she was dismasted, and her owner says she earned $200,000 in the first eleven months. The Surprise, Captain Dumaresque, in a voyage from New York to San Francisco and then by way of China home, made a net profit of $50,000 above her cost and all expenses. The Great Republic, according to Preble, received $160,000 freight in a passage from New York to San Francisco. It seems worth noting here that the insurance rates on these hard-driven clippers were far lower than can now be obtained by the best of modern sailing ships.
The most interesting period in the history of the American merchant marine is the clipper ship era. The story has been told over and again, but the interest never flags. And yet while those ships were sweeping the seas and lying in port where their captains walked the piers in suits of lustrous China silks; and while the newspapers of Europe as well as America were printing in leaded lines the details of their wonderful passages, the seafaring people of the United States were living in a fool's paradise. The work that was to drive the American flag from the principal trade routes of the seas had been begun before the keel of the clipper Rainbow was stretched. Our seafaring people saw it, too, and even helped it on, but with but one notable exception, so far as the record shows, they utterly failed to comprehend its significance.
The character and effect of that work shall be described in another chapter. It remains to consider here one other interesting fact about the clippers. It is demonstrable that the shapes of the much-lauded clipper hulls had only a trifling, if any, influence upon the speed attained. Indeed the lines upon which the builders of the most famous of them all relied for speed were inferior, as modern designers know, to those of some ordinary ships wholly unknown to the record.
As a first bit of evidence in proof of this assertion here is the story of the Natchez in which Captain "Bob" Waterman first won fame. In 1843 Waterman sailed her around the world and made the passage from Canton to New York in 94 days. The whole voyage required only 9 months and 26 days. In 1844 he drove her from New York to Valparaiso in 71 days, thence to Callao in 8, and thence to Hongkong in 54. She then loaded teas at Canton and he drove her from that port to New York, 13,955 miles, in 78 days. This last passage was but one day longer than Waterman's record passage of 77 days made in the Sea Witch, "the swiftest clipper of her day." But the Natchez was not a clipper, although she has been described as one. She was built with full lines and a flat bottom in order that she might carry huge loads of cotton from New Orleans, across the shoals at the mouths of the Mississippi, and around to New York; and while engaged in that trade, she had earned the reputation of being one of the slowest ships on the American coast!
As to the lines of the clippers note that while Donald McKay supposed that the Lightning made her great speed because she was "hollow" at the bow, the modern yacht designers, who have tried out the hollow lines for years, have entirely abandoned them. The famous America had hollow lines; no modern yacht has anything of the kind.
The Dreadnought, with her unequalled North Atlantic record, was called a "semi-clipper," in her day. Her lines, as printed in Griffiths's Nautical Magazine, show that she was as full as many ships that were never classed as anything but plain cargo carriers. In connection with this fact recall the records of a ship or two built long before the clipper era—Derby's Mount Vernon, for instance, with her passage of 17 days from Salem to Gibraltar. The Silas Richards, formerly a packet between New York and Liverpool, left New York in June, 1836, for Canton, and she was back in New York at the end of March, 1837. Her run home was made in 91 days. Even the old Desire (high in poop and low in spars, when compared with the clippers) made the passage, away back in 1640, from Boston to Gravesend in 23 days.
Out of 157 vessels that arrived at San Francisco in 1852, no less than seventy had been designed as clippers, of which, however, only three or four made notable passages.
No complete list of the ships built with clipper lines was ever made, nor can one be made now; but out of the 2656 ships and barks launched between 1843 and 1855, which was the clipper era, it is certain that at least 10 per cent—256—were of the clipper model. But only a few more than a score ever made better records than the previously built packets had made. Indeed, many of the leanest and sharpest of the clipper hulls, together with (curiously enough) others that were built from the drawings of some of the successful clippers, were absolute failures, so far as speed was concerned.
This is not to deny that the clippers were in some respects grand ships. They were superior in the strength of hull, in the breadth of beam, and, consequently, in the spread of canvas under which they could stand. In the general proportions of their hulls many of them were right—as was the old frigate Constitution, which had a bow as round as an apple and yet had a record of better than 12 knots an hour. But even when all of that is said, the fact remains that the full-lined Natchez was but a day behind the record from Canton.
If it was not to the model of the ships, to what, then, were the splendid records due? The answer is of the utmost importance in any study of the American merchant marine. The records were due to the fact that our seamen were the most ambitious and the most efficient sailors of the sail that the world has ever seen. While the gale permitted the ship to hold her course, the captain paced the deck the whole night long and caught his sleep by day in short naps under the weather rail in order that he might see that she was kept going. The sheets and halyards of the important sails on those record ships were made of chains, and they were locked fast in place—held by padlocks, so that frightened sailors, unseen by the master, could not let them fly when the ship, rolling to the blast at night, dragged her lee rail through the solid water. When the captain gave an order, the crew ran with all their might to do the work—or they were knocked across the deck with a pump-brake in the hands of the nerve-racked mate. Captain Waterman even shot men off the yards because they seemed to be handling the sails slowly. Studding sails were spread to the zephyrs when the ship crossed the equator, and they were yet seen in place while she sailed with trade-winds so strong that ships from Europe close-hauled were reefed down to the cap. Indeed, all sail was often carried when ordinary ships were seen reefed down on the same course. As Clark Russell notes in one of his novels, the skipper of the ship from Europe, as he paced the deck with anxious eyes upon his shortened canvas, fearing that it would be blown from the bolt ropes, very often saw a tiny white speck upon the horizon, watched it grow into a splendid ship with "every rag set," saw her fling the Stars and Stripes to the gale, as she went roaring by, and then with feelings that cannot be described, gazed after her until she disappeared in the mists far down the lee.
If the two crews thus meeting in mid-ocean could have changed ships, the bluff-bowed hulk from Europe would soon have gone smoking away while the clipper would have rolled her spars over the lee rail before her new crew could have learned the lead of a single sheet or halyard.
It was the man on the quarter-deck—he who had handled ships among the rocks of the South Shetlands, or had lanced whales in the North Pacific, or had skimmed the sands of Cape Hatteras, in order to learn the arts of the sea as handed down from the beginning—it was the master mariner evolved by two hundred years of battle—with the sea and its people—who made the American flag supreme upon all the seas of the whole world.
IN order to comprehend the story of the efforts to establish lines of steam packets under the American flag between the United States and various ports in Europe, it is necessary at this point to review briefly our foreign relations in the period between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, and then to consider what was done by the British in the early development of steam navigation.
In the year 1818, in the course of what is known as the Seminole War, General Jackson, at the head of a strong body of troops, invaded the Spanish territory of Florida, captured a number of fortified places, and ruthlessly hanged one British subject named Arbuthnot and shot another named Ambrister on the unproved charge that the two had been "stirring up the Indians to war with the United States." No war followed this outrage, but the ill feeling which had animated the British after the War of 1812 was greatly intensified.
Trouble over the northeast boundary of the United States followed, and when the king of the Netherlands was asked to arbitrate the matter, he laid down a line which was not satisfactory to the English. At the same time it was exasperating to the Americans, especially to the people of Maine. In fact, open hostilities in a small way occurred near the boundary.
In 1837 the British manner of ruling the Canadian region created so much opposition among the settlers there that a small insurrection broke out. It was suppressed, but only to break out again, and at this time a number of American sympathizers joined the insurgents. A band of the insurgents having taken possession of Navy Island, in the Niagara River, the American sympathizers went in the American steamer Caroline to join them, and carried arms and supplies. The steamer then returned to American waters, but the British loyalists crossed over the line, captured the steamer, set her on fire, and sent her over Niagara Falls. One American was killed in the attack. Later a Canadian deputy sheriff boasted that he had killed the man whose life was taken, and then, in 1840, incautiously came across to Lockport, New York, where he was arrested for the murder. His name was Alexander McLeod. Thereupon the British government, with the aggressive Palmerston in the lead, avowed that the Caroline was seized on the authority of the nation, and peremptorily demanded McLeod's release. The Washington authorities were disposed to yield, but Governor Seward, of New York, declared that McLeod should stand trial; and he did. But having proved an alibi, he was acquitted, and on October 12, 1841, he was returned to Canada. In the meantime an American had been seized as a hostage to abide McLeod's fate. He was of course released at last.
In the course of the year 1841 an American coaster named the Creole, while carrying a cargo of slaves from the breeding grounds in Virginia to the ever eager market in the Southwest, was taken from her officers and crew by the slaves, who then ran the vessels to the Bahamas, where the slaves, 125 in number, were protected. The slave owners of the United States had been restive because of frequent reports that British cruisers, engaged in suppressing the slave trade upon the coast of Africa, had "exercised the right of search" by boarding ships under the American flag, and when the story of the protection of the Creole's cargo reached the country, the excitement rose toward the war heat.
In the meantime, the United States had annexed Florida. Then the Texans set up an independent government, and it was recognized as an independent nation, but with its people openly anxious for annexation to the United States. The statesmen of England saw that annexation was inevitable and that a war with Mexico would follow, with the result that the territory of the United States would be enlarged in the Southwest and along the Spanish Main, where British subjects were looking for a further extension of territory and influence. For at about this time the ancient settlement of logwood cutters at Belize was developed into the colony of British Honduras (1845). Although England had subscribed to and helped to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, her statesmen were looking to an extension of British Honduras as far south as the mouth of the Rio San Juan, in Nicaragua. To secure this extension a protectorate over the Mosquito Coast Indians was declared, and the coast was assumed to be territory entirely independent of Nicaragua. On August 19, 1841, British war-ships captured San Juan del Norte, at the mouth of the San Juan, drove away the Nicaragua officials, and installed Mosquito Indians. The Nicaraguans soon drove away the Mosquito forces, but the interest in the place having been intensified by projects for building an interoceanic canal across the country, the British returned, late in 1847, and on January 10, 1848, placed the Mosquito chiefs once more in possession.
With the rush of emigrants to California, the United States became interested in this aggression. It would never do to allow the British to control such a highway as was then in contemplation. The British naturally held on to what they had secured at the mouth of the San Juan, however, and then, with a view of obtaining control of the other end of the canal route (the Gulf of Fonseca), they began to press Honduras for the payment of certain claims of British subjects, the nature of which is of no importance because the claims were merely a pretext for an aggression that would have been made had no claims been in existence. To back these claims a British warship appeared, but when the Honduranians were in straits, the American envoy to Nicaragua heard of their trouble, hastened to meet them, and then negotiated a treaty (September 28, 1849) by which a part of Tigre Island and a part of the coast of the Gulf of Fonseca were granted to the United States for a naval station. When the British envoy learned how he had been outwitted, he ordered some of the naval force at his command to seize Tigre Island in contempt of the acquired rights of the United States. (See Keasbey's Nicaragua Canal and Pims Panama.) That the British fully expected a war with the United States, is beyond dispute. In fact, they had been prepared for war ever since 1840, but the Nicaragua matter it was supposed would surely bring on the long-looked-for contest.
To add to the dangers of the situation, a dispute had arisen, meantime, over the northwestern boundary of the United States, a controversy commonly referred to in history as the Oregon Question. The United States claimed the territory as far north as the south line of Alaska, then belonging to Russia, in latitude 54° 40'. The British claimed as far south as the Columbia River. The claims created great excitement in this country in 1845, and the cry of "Fifty-four forty, or fight" was heard throughout the nation.
To show the state of feeling in England at that time, here is a quotation from a letter written by Louis McLean, American Minister to London, to the Secretary of State, January 3, 1846.
"I sought an interview with Lord Aberdeen, in order that, in conformity with your instructions, I might bring to his notice the warlike preparations making by Great Britain, and, if possible, ascertain their real character and object.... In introducing the subject I adverted at the same time to the information the President had received from various sources, of the extensive preparations making by Great Britain, and the natural inference upon his part that, in the present pacific state of the relations of Great Britain with all the powers of Europe, they could only look to a rupture with the United States.... Lord Aberdeen said very promptly and frankly that it would be improper to disguise that, with the sincerest wish to avoid it, they were obliged to look to the possibility of a rupture with the United States, and that in such a crisis the warlike preparations now making would be useful and important.... He stated that the most extensive and formidable parts of their preparations were the fortifications of the principal and exposed stations ... and to the increase of the number of steam vessels in lieu of the old craft." (See Cong. Globe, February 6, 1847.)
In short, during the whole period under consideration, the Americans and the British were constantly animated by intense antipathy and even animosity, each toward the other.
While turning, now, to the story of the evolution of British steamships, it will be worth while to recall first what has already been said about the environment that developed the character of the American sailor. From the day when the men of Massachusetts Bay built ships and launched forth in them to catch fish and trade with foreign countries, until such men as Palmer, Samuels, and Waterman made marvellous speed with whatever form of ship they happened to command, the whole environment of the American seafaring population had served to develop excellence in handling ships of the sail.
With this fact in mind, note that steamers made an extraordinary change in the conditions of transportation by ships. These conditions were so far removed from the old that a portrait-painter who had never learned any of the arts of the sea designed the first commercially successful steamer in the United States. The keeper of a bathhouse performed a similar service for the British public. When steam navigation had become an assured success, the splendid skill of the sailor of the sail was no longer needed. The man at the throttle usurped the place of the man on the weather yard-arm, and this is true in spite of the curious and absurd fact that even now the captains of steamships do not reach the bridge by way of the stokehole.
Then recall the fact that while the United States had produced excellent sailors of the sail, there was such a dearth of mechanics in Fulton's day that he was obliged to import the Clermont's engine from England; and Stevens, though he built his own engines, was obliged to train men to work in iron before he could do so. The British had been building efficient engines for twenty years before Fulton bought his. In every application of steam power, the British were that much in advance of the Americans.
As Day points out in his History of Commerce, inventors living in the United States, as well as in other countries, went to England to perfect their inventions, because of the superior facilities afforded in British machine shops; and this was done as late as 1836—even later. Some of the best machinery invented in the United States, in the period under consideration, was first put in use in Great Britain.
The fact that abundant supplies of coal were to be had at low price in Great Britain is not to be overlooked in connection with this argument. With the consequent great progress in factory industries, the time was close at hand when all England was to become "a free port" for all the world, as well as a place for working up the raw materials of all other countries.
Still another important fact is this, that the American capitalists who began to invest in steamships at an early day, found immense stretches of inland waters upon which to develop the carrying trade, while the inland waters of Great Britain were of insignificant extent, and the capitalists there were soon engaged in the coasting trade where the waters were by no means pacific. In 1818 the Rob Roy was put on the route between Glasgow and Belfast, and a little later she was sent to ply between Dover and Calais. In 1822 a line was established between Liverpool and Glasgow, and this was followed in 1826 by a line plying between Edinburgh and London. These last ships were 160 feet long and were provided with engines of 200 horse-power; they were regarded as such marvellous ships that people came from all parts of the kingdom to look at them. And it is to be noted that all the coasters so far mentioned were provided with a form of engine (the side lever) which was efficient for deep-water service.
Following the success of the Glasgow line, other lines were established to various ports of Europe, including one to Bordeaux, the ships of which had to cross the stormy Bay of Biscay and traverse a route 1600 miles long. All of this is to emphasize the fact that while the steamship men of the United States were making records upon the Hudson and other inland waters, those of Great Britain were engaged almost exclusively upon waters with a rending power little, if any, less than that of the Atlantic. The environments of the men engaged in steamboat traffic in the two countries were so different that widely different classes of ships, engines, and engineers were developed. The British had been navigating the Bay of Biscay with success for several years before the Americans put the Home upon the route around Cape Hatteras.
And yet it was an American that first stirred up the British to embark in the transatlantic steamer trade—Dr. Junius Smith, who graduated from Yale in 1802, and then went to London as representative of some American merchants. The success of the British coasters led Smith to believe that transatlantic steamers would prove successful, and in 1832 he came to the United States to look into the matter more fully.
"My friends in New York make no doubt of the practicability nor of the success of such an undertaking," he wrote to a director of the London and Edinburgh Steam Packet Company, "and have assured me that they will build two steam vessels suited to the object in view," provided English capitalists would build two more for use in the same line. Mr. Smith's letter was written to invite the directors of the company to join in the enterprise, and to charter to him one of their steamers for a demonstration trip, to New York. The directors replied with a cold refusal. Smith, however, tried elsewhere, and when his plans were presented in the newspapers, the professional humorists gave much attention to the "Yankee" innovator. In 1836 a noted scientist of the period, Dr. Lardner, in a lecture at Liverpool, declared that any effort to make direct passages from New York to Liverpool would prove "perfectly chimerical, and they might as well talk of making the direct voyage from New York or Liverpool to the moon."
When this lecture was reported in the papers, a number of steamship men showed by arguments drawn from the experience of the coasters that Lardner was wrong, but even with their assistance Smith made two vain efforts to organize a company. But in July, 1836, when the books were again opened, enough shares were taken to enable the company to build a good ship which in time proved successful. But because there were long delays in getting this vessel afloat, Smith's company chartered the steamer Sirius, a packet plying between London and Cork, for a voyage to New York.
The Sirius was of about the size of a large sailing packet of the day. She measured 700 tons and had engines of 320 horse-power. On April 4, 1838, she left Cork for New York.
In the meantime, I. K. Brunel, who was then chief engineer of the Great Western Railroad, had become convinced of the feasibility of transatlantic steam navigation, and with a few associates he had built at Bristol a ship named the Great Western, especially for traffic between Bristol (the end of the Great Western Railroad) and New York. This ship was 212 feet long by 35 wide and 23 deep. She registered at 1340 tons. She was provided with side-lever engines of 440 horse-power, the cylinders being 73½ inches in diameter by 7 feet stroke.
As it happened, the Great Western left Bristol for New York on April 7, and transatlantic steam navigation was thereby begun with a race. The Sirius arrived first, anchoring off the Battery, New York, early in the morning on April 23. The excitement in the city was extraordinary, and the water about the ship was soon covered with small boats carrying people for a look at her. And then at about 11 o'clock, when the throngs around the Sirius were densest, a lookout announced another steamship in sight down below, when the crowd began to shout:—
"The Great Western! The Great Western!"
It was she, and in the middle of the afternoon she anchored off Pike Street.
The British consul, in a letter congratulating Lieutenant R. Roberts, R. N., commanding the Sirius, on arriving first, said:—
"I have a further cause of rejoicing, that the honor of accomplishing the enterprise has been achieved by a son of the British navy, and that it was completed on St. George's Day."
It was five years after this arrival that the keel of the first American clipper was laid, but with the termination of the passages of these two ships the dawn of the day of British supremacy upon the high seas appeared.
Special attention seems due to the Great Western, because she was the first ship built for the traffic. She had steamed 3125 sea miles, making an average of 208 miles per day, or 8.2 knots an hour. The total consumption of fuel was 655 tons, less than a day's consumption in some modern ships. She returned home with a consumption of only 392 tons, prevailing winds and a large spread of canvas helping her to save coal. The cost of this ship was £50,000, of which £13,500 was paid for the engines. She continued to ply regularly on the route, and on September 25, 1838, the New York American had this to say:—
"The arrival of the steam packet Great Western puts us in possession of intelligence to the 8th.... The great success of this enterprise has confirmed the timid and almost crazed the sanguine. She brings one hundred and forty passengers. All her berths were engaged before she arrived at Bristol." Then an article from the London Times is quoted as follows:—
"Upon the eighty-seven passengers home, and the 130 out, at 40 guineas passage money per head in the saloon, and 35 guineas in the cabin, each way, the directors of the Great Western will have received upwards of £8000, exclusive of the benefit derived from the conveyance of goods, of which the Great Western brought from New York to the extent of about 200 tons' measurement."
The Liverpool Albion is then quoted as saying that "the last trip of the Great Western netted £6000."
The Great Western continued in the New York and Bristol and the New York and Liverpool trades until she had made seventy-four passages, and she was then sold for use between England and the West Indies. These facts are of importance to the history of the American merchant marine, because our writers who have favored paying subsidies to American steam lines have asserted that in those days it was not possible to run steamship lines between the United States and England without a subsidy. The Great Western made money without a subsidy. So did many other steamers that followed, as shall appear.
We now come, however, to the story of the first lines of subsidized transatlantic steamships. One Samuel Cunard, a wealthy merchant of Nova Scotia, had been dreaming about steam navigation since 1830, and when the Great Western Company had shown the way, he went to England in order to arrange for a line from Liverpool to Halifax, and thence to Boston. After consultation with eminent men of experience in steam navigation, he gave an order to Robert Napier, the foremost designer and builder of steamships in the kingdom, for four steamships of about 900 tons each. But before the work was begun, Napier convinced him that larger ships would prove more profitable, and as the larger ships would cost more than Cunard had to invest, George Burns, of Glasgow, and David McIver, of Liverpool (both of whom were men of experience), were united with him in forming what is now known as the Cunard Company. The Britannia, the first ship built for this company, was a wooden vessel 207 feet long by 34 wide and 22 deep, registering 1156 tons. She had engines of 423 horse-power. The other three ships built at that time were slightly smaller.
It is to be noted that this company was formed to run ships in opposition to the Great Western and to Smith's lines. They were to depend upon what traffic they could get for success and upon nothing else. But in the meantime the British government had been considering the advisability of employing steamships to carry the royal mail across the Atlantic. Theretofore certain brigs had been employed by the Admiralty for this purpose, and beginning in 1821, government-owned brigs were employed exclusively. This proving expensive, the plan of hiring privately owned brigs was resumed in 1833, and these brigs were in use at that time. The success of the Great Western having proven the efficiency of steamships in the transatlantic trade, the postal authorities, in connection with the Admiralty, decided to use steam, and when Cunard came into the field, bids were invited for a mail service under certain burdensome conditions among which were these: The ships were to be fit for war use, carrying heavy guns, a naval officer was to be carried to care for the mail, and the ships were to be sold to the Admiralty on demand at a valuation. The Great Western, as well as the Cunard people, put in bids. The Great Western did not know that they would have opposition, and bid accordingly, with the result that Cunard made the better offer and got the contract. The full story is told in Lindsay's History of Merchant Shipping. Cunard was to receive at first £3295 per voyage, but, the plans having been modified, the subsidy was raised to £81,000 a year. For this he was to maintain a fortnightly service from Liverpool by way of Halifax to Boston, and with a line of smaller steamers from Halifax to Quebec. The Britannia left Liverpool upon her first voyage on July 4, 1840. No American writer has as yet pointed out that this was "a beautiful coincidence of nominal dates."
A few months later the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company was organized especially to carry the mail to the West Indies, including St. Thomas, Haiti, and Cuba, and to Chagres, to Mexico, and to the south part of the United States, as well. A branch line was to be maintained from the West Indies to Brazil. The contract (made in March, 1841) called for fourteen steamships built so as to carry "guns of the largest caliber" then in use in the navy; and the frames and planking were of a thickness to resist shot as well as a frigate—as, indeed, were those of the Cunard line. The commanders of the ships were to be naval officers. The subsidy paid was £240,000 a year.
It is important to note that this line was to run regularly to Chagres, where there was not enough traffic to pay the expense of the ship while lowering a boat to carry the mail ashore, and, further, that there was not enough traffic anywhere on the route to pay any considerable part of the expense of the line. Indeed, the traffic and subsidy together proved insufficient to pay expenses. Further than that, the time allowed in all the ports was limited—to six hours at the important island of Barbados, for instance, and to twenty-four at Port Royal, Jamaica, where there was an important naval station. It was impossible to handle any valuable quantity of West India cargo in such short periods. It is therefore certain that frequent and swift voyages were wanted in the establishing of this line, rather than the carrying of cargo. And this is to say that it was established for the same reasons that brigs had been used in carrying the royal mail theretofore. It was a political and military service that the ships were to perform.
Consider all these facts in connection with the political complications with the United States that have been mentioned. It was in 1840 that the British government demanded the release of McLeod on pain of war. It was at that time that the people of Maine and New Brunswick took up arms in connection with the boundary dispute. At the same time the British government was looking ahead to an increase of territory along the Spanish Main, including a canal across Nicaragua in contempt of the Monroe Doctrine.
Then recall the fact that the use of steam for driving war-ships was yet in the experimental stage. Many able naval men believed that sails were yet to be preferred, but the English were especially anxious to learn all about the new power in order to keep abreast with the progress of the age—to preserve their naval superiority. It is of significance that young naval officers were detailed to command all of the West India ships and to accompany those of the Cunard line. Further than that, it is to be noted that the Admiralty insisted that the subsidized ships be built of wood not only then, but for years after iron had proved cheaper and more efficient for merchant ships, and this was done because it was fully believed that a wooden ship was best for naval uses.
In short, the subsidizing of ships was begun chiefly as a military and diplomatic measure. Any candid review of the facts shows it. It was done, too, with a full knowledge that paying a subsidy was against the interests of the other owners of steamships that were already plying between Liverpool and New York. In fact, the Cunard line had hardly learned the way to Boston when the Great Western line made such loud complaints about the destruction of private enterprise through the subsidizing of the Cunard that a committee of Parliament took up the whole matter and concluded that the other steamers would not be put out of the trade.
There were men on both sides of the Atlantic who saw at that time that steam would eventually drive sails from the packet routes. E. K. Collins was one of these men. But no one supposed at that time that subsidizing a single mail line from Liverpool to Boston would do it. And even the optimistic Cunard directors made no effort to interfere with the traffic of the New York and Liverpool sailing packets until it was seen that American capitalists were about to put on a line of steamers between New York and Liverpool.
With these facts in mind, we may now comprehend the full story of the first American steam-packet lines that ran across the Atlantic Ocean.
THE success of the British steamers that crossed the Atlantic in 1838 led a number of New York capitalists to form what they called the American Atlantic Steam Navigation Company, of which James de Peyster Ogden was chairman, and on March 22, 1839, calls for subscriptions to the capital stock were published in the New York papers. The answers to the calls were few, and the enterprise was abandoned.
Out of several reasons for this failure, consider these: The American people had but little capital, and there were calls in many directions for every dollar obtainable. The calls from the railroads were particularly insistent, for while the first railroad to use steam (the Albany and Schenectady) was completed in 1833, the steam mileage in 1840 was 2380. The inland water traffic was most attractive. In 1839 the enrolled steamers measured 489,879 tons, and they were worn out so rapidly that every vessel had to be replaced (on the average) within four years. Then the deep-water sailing ships absorbed much capital, the tonnage in 1839 being 829,096, while the coasting tonnage measured 1,032,023 tons, and all these vessels were, on the average, highly profitable.
Of the other attractive calls for capital, nothing need be said, but a brief reference to an attempt to form a company to run transatlantic steamships from Philadelphia may be quoted from Niles's Register of August 25, 1838:—
"At a meeting of the citizens held in the Merchants' Exchange, Philadelphia, to take such measures to forward the plan for a communication by steam between that city and Europe ... the following resolutions were unanimously adopted: ... Resolved that we have learned with lively satisfaction the willingness of our brethren of Great Britain to coöperate with us in this great enterprise" by making a liberal subscription for the construction of "such steamships as might be needed."
The "brethren" were not quite as willing to "coöperate" as was supposed, but the "great enterprise" was taken in hand a few years later by a man named William Inman, with notable results.
In considering their failures to organize transatlantic steamship companies, these business men did not fail to refer to the fact that the British government was paying subsidies to the Cunard and the Royal Mail steamship companies. The fact that the Cunard subsidy was a hardship for the owners of the unsubsidized steamers in the American trade was not dwelt upon. The people were told that subsidies were given in order to build up a steam merchant marine. Then Congress was invited to consider the fact that in subsidizing two lines of steamships Great Britain had secured eighteen fine ships fit to add to her growing steam naval fleet. Naval officers were carried on all those ships, and they were not only learning how to handle steam, but they were learning to navigate American waters—and all this at a period when England and the United States were on the verge of war.
Thereupon Thomas Butler King, chairman of the House Naval Committee, brought forward a plan for a subsidized mail line under the American flag. (Ho. Reps. 681 and 685, 28 Cong. 1 sess.) His arguments in favor of a subsidy were: That a reduction might be made in the rate of postage, and yet the income from the mails would soon pay all the subsidy that would be required. That our naval officers would learn how to handle steam. That we should learn how to build efficient steamships for deep water. That a line to the north of Europe would promote emigration and trade. In connection with this last argument it was stated that the British post-office authorities were in the habit of holding up all mails bound across England to the continent until the British merchants had had time to read and act upon their advices from America, and the newspapers had had time to print all the American news. After considering the matter for four years, Congress acted, on March 3, 1845, in a bill providing—
"That the Postmaster-general ... is hereby authorized ... to contract for the transportation of the United States mail between any of the ports of the United States, and a port or ports of any foreign Power, whenever, in his opinion, the public interest will thereby be promoted ... for any greater period than four years and not exceeding ten years. All such contracts shall be made with citizens of the United States, and the mail to be transported in American vessels by American citizens."
Thereupon the Postmaster-general contracted with Edward Mills of New York, who agreed to build ships to plans approved by the Secretary of the Navy, and run a steam-packet line from New York to Southampton and Bremen, twenty voyages a year, for a subsidy of $400,000. If alternate voyages were made to Havre instead of Bremen, the subsidy was to be $350,000.
Mills and his associates were incorporated (May 8, 1846), as the Ocean Steam Navigation Company. Contracts were let for the building of two steamships, and then the troubles of the company began. On learning that an American company was to enter the transatlantic trade, the Cunard Company began running packets regularly to New York. The opposition of this established line increased the timidity of capitalists so much that in spite of the guaranteed income of at least $350,000 a year, it was impossible to obtain the needed money in the United States, and "money was furnished for the undertaking by the little government of Bremen, and by individuals connected with the enterprise on the other side of the Atlantic, and pretty largely furnished, too." (App. Cong. Globe, September 4, 1850.)
The one deadly misfortune of the company, however, was found in the fact that the Americans had not yet learned how to build ocean-going steamships. Said the Merchants' Magazine, May, 1849, regarding the first ships of the line:—
"The models of the Washington and Hermann were quite defective, particularly so in having a very narrow bottom, which made them load deep and be tender or even crank at all times.... Their engines also were not quite strong or stiff enough."
The boilers were not large enough to furnish an adequate supply of steam and the paddle-wheels were too large for the engines. The Scientific American, October 7, 1848, said:—
"The great cause of our unsuccess in our Atlantic steamers is owing to our short acquaintance with the building of marine ships. There is science and genius among our nautical engineers, but they want experience."
When our first American mail steamer sailed for Europe no practical marine engineers could be found to work her engines. She took a first-class engineer and corps of assistants from one of the New York river packets; but as soon as the ship got to sea, and heavy breakers came on, all the engineers and firemen were taken deadly seasick; and for three days it was constantly expected that the ship would be lost. (Rainey's Ocean Steam Navigation.)
It is to be noted here that John L. Stevens, the ablest American marine engineer of his day, was one of the directors of this company.
The Washington sailed for Southampton and Bremen on June 1, 1847. Her passengers and crew looked forward to a cheering reception on the other side; for when the Sirius and the Great Western arrived in New York the people of the city turned out to honor them, and the city authorities and such bodies as the Chamber of Commerce gave public receptions in honor of the event. Then when the Cunard's first liner the Britannia was frozen in at Boston the merchants of the city contributed $10,000, for which a contractor agreed to saw a channel for her to clear water. The contractor spent $20,000 in doing the work. He spent $10,000 out of his own pocket without a murmur, and the Cunard Company without a murmur let him do it. But the only official action taken on the arrival of the Washington at Southampton was in the sending of a notice to the American mail agent that he would have to pay full sea postage on all mail landed, as well as the usual inland rates. And the only word of welcome spoken in the port was uttered by the officials of the dock company with whom the ship was berthed.
Because of their financial difficulties the company organized a separate corporation to build and run ships to Havre. The Humbolt and the Franklin were put on this route in 1849. The Humbolt was wrecked at Halifax, December 5, 1853, and the Franklin stranded on Montauk Point, July 17, 1854. The Arago and Fulton, built to replace these two, were somewhat better than any ocean-going steamships theretofore built in the United States, and they were able to continue the service until the government chartered them for use in the Civil War (1861). The two Bremen ships were laid up after their subsidy ceased—1859. All six of these ships used by this corporation were slow as well as expensive to operate. The time used in the Bremen passage was about fourteen days; that to Havre, twelve.
The Collins Line (New York and Liverpool U. S. Mail Steamship Company), was the most famous of the subsidized lines. E. K. Collins was a Truro, Cape Cod, boy, who, at the age of fifteen (1817), became a clerk to a New York merchant. Five years later he was sent to sea as a supercargo, and a little later he became a partner in the business. His first memorable stroke of business was made in 1825, when cotton took a sudden rise in the Liverpool market. The news of the rise reached New York on the day that the regular Charleston, South Carolina, packet was to sail, and a number of New York merchants took passage on the ship, intending to buy all the cotton in Charleston before the news of the rise could be learned there. As the packet passed the bar at Sandy Hook, bound out, the merchants on her deck saw a pilot-boat, with young Collins on her deck, head away down the coast; and with one accord they made jeering remarks at the idea of a little schooner trying to beat the regular packet in such a race. But when they reached the Charleston bar they met the boat with Collins on board coming out. He had bought all the cotton.
With money made in that deal and with some obtained by marrying a rich wife, Collins started the New Orleans packet line, and another line thence to Tampico. These having proved successful, he then established the famous Dramatic Line to Liverpool. In 1840, Collins said:—
"There is no longer chance for enterprise with sails. It is steam that must win the day. I will build steamers that shall make the passage from New York to Europe in ten days and less."
In the winter of 1846-1847 Collins and others persuaded Congress to pass the act dated March 3, 1847. It provided for the construction of four naval steamers in place of ten that the naval committee had asked for; for a contract between the Secretary of the Navy and Collins & Co., for transporting the mail between New York and Liverpool; for a contract between the Secretary of the Navy and A. G. Sloo for transporting the mail between New York and New Orleans with a stop at Havana, and from Havana to Chagres, on the Isthmus of Panama—known as the Law Line, from George Law, the leading capitalist; for a contract with unnamed capitalists (C. H. Aspinwall was the leader), for a mail service between Panama and the ports of San Francisco and Astoria.
Collins's company had a paid-in capital of $1,200,000. By his contract, signed in November, 1847, he was to receive $19,250 per voyage for making two voyages per month for eight months of the year and one a month during four winter months. For this service Collins was to build four steamships measuring "not less than 2000 tons each," and complete them ready for sea within eighteen months; also a fifth ship "as early as may be practicable thereafter." Each ship was to carry a naval officer, as mail agent, and four passed midshipmen to serve as deck officers.
Contracts were made for the four ships, and many different statements have been made regarding their size and cost. Chief Engineer Isherwood, of the navy, put the size of the Atlantic and the Pacific at 2686 tons each; the Arctic and Baltic at 2772. Senator Rusk, of Texas, who vigorously supported the line in all its appeals to Congress, said the four measured 11,131 tons in the aggregate. The Merchant's Magazine (Vol. 22, p. 682) rated them at 3500 tons each and said they cost $650,000 each. G. S. Houston, in a speech in Congress on July 7, 1852, quoted the company to prove that the average cost of the ships was $736,035.67 each.
With a paid-up capital of $1,200,000, four ships were built that cost at least twice as much as the money in hand would pay for, and they were each at least 700 tons larger than the contract called for. The builders gave Collins credit, and thereby secured the work on their own terms. And yet while thus paying the highest prices for his ships, and with an ever growing debt staring him in the face, Collins was recklessly extravagant in furnishing his cabins, and in every department of the company's management.
As a result, within six months after the contract was signed with the Secretary of the Navy, Collins was back in the lobby at Washington, "begging and boring" for further help. By the act of August 3, 1848, the Secretary of the Navy was authorized to advance $25,000 a month on each of the four ships until they should be put into commission, and the time for completing them was extended to June 1, 1850. Under a subsequent agreement this advance was paid back in small instalments.
And during all this time Collins walked the streets, telling all who would listen that he was going to run the Scotch-built, Scotch-managed Cunarders off the sea!
When done, the ships were found to have fine models—they rode the waves in a way that excited the admiration of all sailors. But the keelsons under the engines were only forty inches deep, while the keels were 277 feet long, and there was "give" enough to rack the engines to pieces—a fact showing conclusively the ignorance of the designer so far as ocean steamships were concerned. And yet George Steers, the famous designer of the yacht America, was the responsible man! As the Scientific American had said of our engineers, he "wanted experience."
The Atlantic began the service on April 27, 1850. It was in this year that the average American sailing ship was making three voyages where foreign ships made but two. For thirty years our sailing packets had carried the broom on the North Atlantic. The captains of the Canton tea clippers, dressed in raw silk, were strutting about the water front, boasting of passages that were the wonder of the world. And here was a new line of steamers with a managing owner who had won fame as the owner of swift ships, and who had been assuring the whole world that he was going to beat all creation with steam!
In the mind of the captain of the Atlantic the honor of the Stars and Stripes was in his custody, and he could keep it safe only by driving the ship to the utmost limit of speed. And each of the other ships was also driven to the last gasp. In May, 1851, the Pacific ran from New York to Liverpool in 9 days, 20 hours, and 16 minutes. In August, 1852, the Baltic crossed from Liverpool to New York in 9 days and 13 hours. Collins had kept his promise to drive a ship across the Atlantic in less than ten days.
In the meantime, the Cunard Company, to meet the determined opposition, built new ships, and the British government raised the subsidy to $16,500 per voyage. Orders were issued in England to drive the new Cunarders, too, but it was impossible for them to equal the rampant Collins liners at that time.
For a time it seemed to the American people that the supremacy upon the seas was to be maintained with steam, and not a few Englishmen, including the editor of the London Times, took a pessimistic view of the situation. A little later, however, the situation was seen in its true light. On February 15, 1851, when the Atlantic had been in commission but ten months, the Scientific American said editorially that "it is very foolish to push through a steamship on a long passage by dint of coal." The New York Herald, a nautical specialist, was complaining, meantime, that the American firemen were wretchedly inefficient. It was admitted by the company, later still, that for the first twenty-eight voyages of the line the average cost of coal was $8612.28, the amount consumed being well up toward 2000 tons.
And yet the big coal bill was one of the least of the evils of the situation. By driving the engines to the limit on every mile of the route the weak timbers under the engines were needlessly strained, with the result that the engines were racked out of line and torn to pieces. No sooner did a ship get rid of its passengers at the pier than an army of machinists came on board to make repairs; and they were employed in relays, day and night, until the passengers came to the pier for the next passage.
"Either the scale upon which it was planned was not required, and could not be sustained by the country, or it has been most shamefully mismanaged," said Congressman Borland, in a speech in the House, on May 17, 1852, in reference to the Collins Line. Collins had come to Congress for an increase in the subsidy, and a statement of the company's affairs which he submitted shows that Borland was right in both ends of his statement. (See App. Cong. Globe, 32 Cong. 1 sess.) The statement is dated December 15, 1851. It showed that the expenses for the first twenty-eight voyages had averaged $65,215.59. The income was—for passengers, $21,292.65; freights, $7,744.20, subsidy, $19,250,—a total of $48,286.85, leaving a net loss of $16,928.74 per voyage.
Because Collins had broken some records, and because it was believed that his ships would serve in case of war, and because he had reduced the cost of carrying package freight, and because Congress heartily hated everything British, the subsidy was increased to $33,000 per voyage for twenty-six voyages a year. (Act of March 3, 1854.)
For a time thereafter Collins was free to continue his extravagant career. Having luxurious furnishings, he gained in the cabin passenger trade. He also gained somewhat in the package freight business. The advent of the Crimean War (March 27, 1854, to March 31, 1856), helped him because the British government took and used several of the Cunard steamers as transports (as war-ships, even the Cunarders were a sham). The Cunard service was thereby reduced and he thus had opportunity to sail in alternate weeks with the remaining Cunarders. But even then no profits were made. The line never paid a dividend.
In the meantime, the Scotchmen were learning to race their ships, and in 1855 they built the Persia, an iron ship of 3300 tons, and 3600 actual horse-power; and with her, in September, 1856, they crossed in 9 days, 2 hours, and 40 minutes, thus making a new record.
Collins built the Adriatic, the fifth ship under the contract, and the records agree that she was a very swift ship, but by no means a profitable one. Moreover she appeared too late; for by the act of August 18, 1856, Congress gave notice to Collins that the subsidy would be reduced, a year later, to the original sum of $19,250 per voyage. At the same time it became certain that no subsidy would be paid after the end of the original term of the contract—ten years.
In the meantime the line lost the Arctic. While running at a speed of thirteen knots an hour through a heavy fog, forty miles off Cape Race, and making no sort of signal to notify other vessels of her presence in those waters, she was rammed by the French steamer Vesta, and sunk with a loss of 307 lives. It has been asserted that she went down because the modern system of bulkheads had not been invented. As a matter of fact, the Norwich liner Atlantic, a ship built in 1846, had a collision bulkhead, and other ships had been divided by several bulkheads before the time of the Arctic, but experience shows that no system of bulkheads as yet installed has been able to save a ship when rammed in the engine-room. Then on September 23, 1856, a little more than a month after Congress decided to reduce the subsidy, the Pacific sailed from Liverpool, and was never heard from afterward. The two ships thus lost were together insured for $1,250,000, chiefly in England, and the money was paid to the company.
The line continued its service after the subsidy was cut (June 30, 1857), but a financial panic swept over the commercial world in the fall of that year, and with the consequent loss of business the line failed. The last voyage was made in January, 1858. In April, following, the sheriff sold the ships (subject to claims of $657,000) for $50,000. Collins died at his home in Madison Avenue, New York City, in June, 1878, and was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.
"I knew the Collins line very well.... They burned an immense quantity of coal; they were fitted out and fitted up in the most sumptuous manner; they had large crews, a large number of officers and a large number of engineers, for they had most powerful engines. They were run at full speed, and the company had not enough ships on the line to enable them to have proper relays so that they began to deteriorate very rapidly, and they ran them out in a very short time. They had very large buildings in New York, a great many officers and a great many people connected with them. All these had to be paid. Then there were a great many deadheads, so that I used to be astonished how they kept running at all." (Admiral Porter, H. R. Rep. 28, 41st Cong. 2 sess. p. 192.)
Two other lines, subsidized under the act of March 3, 1847, need a brief consideration. One was the Sloo Line, which, as noted, ran steamships from New York by the way of Havana, to New Orleans, with a branch line to Chagres, on the Isthmus of Panama. The subsidy paid was $290,000 a year. The first ship (the Falcon), left New York in September, 1848. The Pacific coast contract went to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company at $308,000 per year. The first ship on this line left New York on October 6, 1848.
In providing for these lines Congress had been influenced chiefly by a desire to meet the British diplomacy in establishing the Royal Mail Line to the West Indies, the Isthmus, and Mexico. But the desire to provide ships fit for war was also in mind, and some enthusiasts supposed that the line would in some way increase American commerce with the countries of the Pacific coast, especially those at the south of the Isthmus, where an American named William Wheelwright had established a coast line with British capital. It is seen now, that neither of these lines could have made money under the contracts, and that none of the hopes of Congress would have been satisfied but for the discovery of gold in California and the consequent rush of emigrants to the gold-fields. Because of the traffic thus supplied both lines were immensely profitable. The Pacific Mail made money in spite of the fact that coal cost $30 a ton (one lot $50), and there were no shops anywhere on the coast for the repair of ships until the company established works of the kind. In fact, the enormous profits brought unsubsidized steamers into competition with both the lines. Commodore C. Vanderbilt, who had earned fame as a steamship man on the Hudson River and Long Island Sound, was one of the "interlopers," and he was paid, at one time, $56,000 a month to keep his ships out of the traffic (Cong. Globe, June, 1858). The Panama railroad, which was completed at midnight, January 27, 1855, was built as a connecting link between these two lines; and one gets an idea of the extent of the traffic thereafter from the fact that in the first seven years it was operated (including the traffic on the uncompleted line beginning in 1852) the earnings amounted to $5,971,728.66 (Otis, Isthmus of Panama).
Brief space will suffice for the stories of the unsubsidized transatlantic steamships of the period. In 1848 the owners of the Black Ball Line of sailing packets attempted to substitute steam for sail by building the steamer United States, a ship of 1904 tons, which they despatched to Liverpool. But because of the competition of the subsidized ships it was not possible to make her pay. The subsidized ships were able to cut rates on all kinds of traffic, of course, and this was naturally done when the new ship was seeking cargo.
This fact seems to be of much importance. It is a fact beyond dispute that subsidies to a few favored lines greatly injured all other shipping trading to the same ports—it injured British as well as American shipping. In fact, the British ship-owners, as already noted, were injured so much that they made emphatic protests to their government, but they were, in the long run, able to survive the effects of the unfair practice. In the United States the paying of subsidies to the few lines simply killed private enterprise on the North Atlantic.
In the meantime, Captain R. B. Forbes, of Boston, built the auxiliary screw steamer Massachusetts (1845), a ship with full sail-power and a screw that could be lifted out of water when the wind served. She made two voyages between New York and Liverpool, after which she was sold to the government for use in the war with Mexico. A number of ships have been built on this principle since then, and there are several in the lumber trade on the Pacific coast at this time (1910), but for some unexplained reason auxiliaries have never become fashionable.
In 1850 William Inman, of England, established the line for which the Philadelphia merchants had hoped in 1837, and two American steamships, the Pioneer and the City of Pittsburg, made a voyage or two each in the service, but they were then withdrawn and used in more profitable traffic on the Pacific coast.
In 1855 Commodore Vanderbilt offered to establish a Liverpool line, to run in alternate weeks with the Collins Line, if a subsidy of $15,000 a voyage were paid him and he were allowed to make no shorter passages than the Cunard Line; if Collins Line speed were demanded, he wanted $19,250 a voyage. This was when Collins was receiving $33,000. The only result of the offer was to help turn public sentiment against Collins. Vanderbilt had already constructed two large steamers (the North Star, called his yacht, and the Ariel) for use in his Isthmian competition, and when he failed to get a subsidy contract, he made a few voyages in the Bremen route and to Havre, omitting, however, all voyages in the winter months. With a view of increasing his service he built a still larger ship, called the Vanderbilt, and he was able to arrange with the Post-office Department for the sea and inland postage on all mail carried. During the four years (1858-1861) during which this arrangement lasted, his mail receipts amounted to $360,730.48, according to Morrison. He made some money, and it is likely that the service would have developed into a permanent line but for the Civil War.