The Story of Our Merchant Marine

INTRODUCTORY-PLIGHT OF THE United StaTES IN 1914-AN ENORMOUS DEMAND AND NO SHIPS TO MEET IT-THE EARLIER HISTORY OF OUR MERCHANT MARINE-THE AMERICAN SHIP AND THE AMERICAN SAILOR-NEW ENGLAND'S LEAD ON THE OCEAN-THE EARLIEST AMERICAN SHIP-BUILDING SHIPBUILDING IN THE FORESTS AND ON THE FARM-SOME EARLY TYPES THE FIRST SCHOONER AND THE FIRST FULL-RIGGED SHIP-JEALOUSY AND ANTAGONISM OF ENGLAND THE PEST 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.

HEN Robinson Crusoe after long and painstaking work had completed the pinnace by the aid of which he expected to escape from his desolate island he suddenly awoke to the fact that he had built it far from the water and had no possible way of transporting it to its true element. DeFoe, author of that immortal story well depicts the bitter disappointment and self-accusing wrath with which the luckless castaway was overwhelmed on recognizing the fatal effect of his initial blunder. But he makes Crusoe meet the disaster like a man, square his shoulders and set about the building of another boat straitway. A great shock tests the quality

of a man and of a naton. It awakens each to a sense of

some grave error, a recognition of some fatal defect by which their fortune or perhaps their lives may be endangered. If man or nation has courage, determination, the

ability to withstand adversity and to surmount obstacles -in brief what we call backbone-such a reverse is in the end an advantage, for it brings out all that is bravest

and best in the sufferer and enables him to mount on a stairway of new and wiser endeavor to heights never before attained.

When the great war in Europe broke out in 1914 the United States was in somewhat the position of Robinson Crusoe with his boat. It had food and products of every sort which were eagerly desired by the belligerent nations, and which our people no less eagerly desired to sell. But we had practically no ships in which to carry our products to the foreign markets. Most happily for the Allied cause-which after almost three years of hesitation we joined-Great Britain had a prodigious merchant marine and an invincible navy with which to protect its cargo ships. Had the condition been reversed, had Germany possessed at sea the power she wielded on land, the result of the war would inevitably have been German victory. For as, during our years of neutrality our foodstuffs and our manufactures were equally at the disposal of any belligerent who was able to carry them away, Germany would then have monopolized our products and swiftly starved England into subjection.

Without a navy adequate to meet that of Great Britain in combat, Germany endeavored to accomplish this end with her submarines, and in due time the lawless procedure of her U-boats forced this country into war. Then indeed the nation awoke to the error which had allowed its merchant marine to languish through more than half a century of government neglect. We could, and did, create a monster army in but a few months' time. Our munitions factories which had long been working day and night for our allies could readily divert their activities to furnishing our own men with cannon and shells, airplanes and tanks, rifles, bayonets, grenades, asphyxiating gas and liquid fire. As a workshop our

efficiency was beyond dispute, but we lacked a delivery system.

This situation was the more intolerable because the time had been-as will be shown later in this volumewhen the United States had led all nations on the ocean, when the Stars and Stripes were to be encountered in the most out-of-the-way corners of the world, and when Great Britain herself was forced to yield preeminence afloat to the sailors of the land that had thrown off her domination. But the past, however glorious, could not come to our aid in the war-torn present. The clippers of Baltimore and of Salem, the prowling schooners of Maine, the bluff-bowed brigs of New Bedford, the liners with towering masts and clouds of canvas that had once sailed from New York were vanished. We wanted to supply a world with meats, grain and other foodstuffs, to equip battling armies with great guns and high explosives, to send over in due time an army of our own which it seemed might number 5,000,000 men and to keep each of these supplied and equipped. The phantom ships of the past were of no service to this end. We needed huge fleets of cargo carriers at once. Men estimated that three tons to the man in the field was the amount of shipping needed. One million men was the least we thought of for the first year's contribution of the United States to the Allied armies in France. That made 3,000,000 tons of shipping. All the ocean-going ships under American registry at the moment amounted to 2,191,000 tons. Whence were we to obtain the other 900,000 tons?

Indeed, that is not a fair statement of the proportions of the problem. For we had not only to create a gigantic merchant fleet, but we had to maintain it at its fullest size. And when we entered the war the Germans

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The Story of Our Merchant Marine: Its Period of Glory, Its Prolonged ...