CHAPTER III
Foreign Commerce in 1865—The “Clyde” and “George W. Clyde,” and Introduction of Compound Engines—Commerce of 1870—Merchant Marine—Lynch Committee—Mr. Cramp and Committee—Lynch Bill—American Steamship Company—Visit to British Shipyards—John Elder—British Methods—Interchange of Methods—Merchant Marine continued—Dingley Bill—Defects—Act of 1891, Providing Registry for Foreign Ships—“St. Louis” and “St. Paul”—Extract from Forum—Remarks on Article—Committee of Ship-builders and Owners—New Bill Introduced by Frye and Dingley—North Atlantic Traffic Association—New Ship-yards—Tactics of North Atlantic Traffic Association—Our Navigation Laws, North American Review—Mr. Whitney—Unfriendly Legislation—Mr. Whitney’s Letter—Effects of Letter—Mr. Cramp’s Letter to Committee of Merchant Marine—International Mercantile Marine.
The return of peace in 1865 found the country without sea-commerce either coastwise or foreign. Such ships as had not been taken up by the government had, with the exception of a few whaling-vessels in the Pacific Ocean, been transferred to foreign flags to save them from the ravages of Confederate pirates or cruisers which, to all intents and purposes, so far as construction, armament, equipment, and crews were concerned, were nothing but British privateers in disguise. In the mean time England had taken every advantage of the situation, and by 1865 had practically absorbed all the magnificent ocean-carrying trade which the United States enjoyed prior to 1860. American ship-building was at a stand-still. The government at once threw upon the market all the ships which it had taken up for gun-boats, auxiliary cruisers, transports, etc., during the war. They were sold for anything that they would bring, and they were bought up as a speculation by new companies unfamiliar with the shipping business, and as a consequence they all failed. The ships were obsolete or worn out and soon passed out of existence. Certain coastwise lines continued to do a small business, but little or no attempt was made to restore our foreign trade; first, because none of the vessels which the government threw on the market were in a condition to undertake it; and, second, because, in consequence of the inflated prices of everything, any attempt to compete either in seafaring labor or material with England would have been absurd. Besides this, the whole energy and capital of the country were immediately directed to an extraordinary expansion of railway systems, so that the attention of the people was entirely diverted from the sea and fixed upon the interior. For the next five or six years little or no ship-building of any description was done anywhere in the United States.
It was at this time that the Cramp Company considered it indispensable to attach engine building to the construction of hulls, as no satisfactory arrangement could be made to secure accurate performance that involved two independent and diverse handicrafts in the undertaking. They secured the services as engineer of Mr. J. Shields Wilson, whose training in the I. P. Morris Company, and at Neafie & Levy’s works had demonstrated his fitness for the post, and as to whose methods they were familiar.
One of the first achievements of the new enterprise was the design and construction of the compound engines for the “George W. Clyde,” finished in the spring of 1872, the first present accepted type of compound marine engines built in America. Immediately following them in 1873 and 1874 were the four ships for the American Line, the “Pennsylvania,” “Ohio,” “Indiana,” and “Illinois.”
The “George W. Clyde” was built for Thomas Clyde, who was the first ship-owner to introduce screw propulsion in ocean commerce in the United States by building the twin-screw steamship, the “John S. McKim,” built in 1844, which he used in the trade of the Gulf of Mexico and as a transport when the war with Mexico occurred.
Having built the first screw steamship, the “John S. McKim,” and the first steamship with compound engines, the “George W. Clyde,” Mr. Clyde responded with alacrity to the recommendations of Mr. Cramp in favor of the use of the triple-expansion engines by building the “Cherokee.”
The “Mascott” for Mr. Plant was built at the same time.
Mr. Clyde had formed the acquaintance of Mr. Ericsson soon after his arrival in this country in 1839, just before the “John S. McKim” was constructed, and became an early convert to his fascinations in exploiting the superior merits of screw propulsions over every other.
The “John S. McKim” and engines were designed by Mr. Ericsson, and built near Front and Brown Streets, Philadelphia.
Mr. Jacob Neafie, of Reaney, Neafie & Co., celebrated engine builders, who began business soon after by constructing propeller engines, had considerable practical experience in the construction of the “John S. McKim’s” engines before Reaney, Neafie & Co. had started business.
Mr. Ericsson had early secured the friendship of Commodore Stockton, and had a boat built for towing purposes by the celebrated ship-builders Lairds, of Berkenhead, called the “R. F. Stockton.” Commodore Stockton had been already biased in favor of screw propulsion on account of the invention of the screw propeller as it practically exists to-day by John Stevens in 1803. Mr. Stevens was the head and front of the organization of the bay, river, and canal navigation between the two great cities of New York and Philadelphia, of which Commodore Stockton was a member.
The successful introduction of screw propulsion in the United States was certainly owing to the combined efforts of Stevens, Ericsson, and Clyde.
Mr. Clyde was always to the front where new improvements were to be made.
The Cramp Company, having taken the lead in these new departures in engine construction at the beginning, have continued to remain there. They have ceased to construct wooden vessels, sail or steam, since the construction of the “Clyde,” of iron. This vessel was for Mr. Thomas Clyde, and preceded the “G. W. Clyde.”
By 1870 the deplorable state of the American merchant marine attracted the attention of the Administration and Congress. The House of Representatives organized a select committee to investigate the causes of its decline, with instructions to submit in its report suggestion or recommendation of remedy. This is known in Congressional history as the “Lynch Committee,” from its Chairman, the Honorable John R. Lynch, Member of Congress, of Maine. This committee surveyed the situation exhaustively, taking the statements of a large number of ship-owners and ship-builders, and while there was considerable divergence of views as to the sum-total of causes, there was little or no diversity of opinion as to the most immediate and effective remedy.
This committee, after thorough investigation and mature deliberation, reported that, in view of the policy of foreign maritime nations, particularly Great Britain, in the way of subsidies and other methods of aiding and promoting their merchant marines, it would be impossible for American ship-owners to compete with them in the absence of similar expedients on the part of our own government. In other words, the Lynch Committee reported in effect that the primary requisite toward a resurrection of the American merchant marine would be the adoption of a policy of subvention, or, as it is commonly termed, subsidy.
However, while the Lynch Committee was logical in its suggestion or recommendation of remedy, its investigations, so far as the sum-total of the causes of decline were concerned, and its estimate of those causes were incomplete and inconclusive, because it started out with the dogma that the then existing depression of the merchant marine was due wholly to the ravages of the war; and it did not take into account the correlative or co-operative facts of the situation, which were much broader and deeper in their application and effect than the mere suspension or destruction of our merchant marine by the war itself. In other words, the Lynch Committee failed to grasp or appreciate the fact that, while the war was wrecking our sea-going commerce, foreign maritime powers, and particularly the English, were making the most gigantic efforts not only to take the place of our ruined trade, but also to provide for a perpetuity of the substitution, so that at any time between the close of the war and the investigations of the Lynch Committee it had become impossible for an American ship-owner to operate a ship or a line of ships in any route of ocean traffic. By means of liberal subsidies under the guise of mail pay, the British had in the interim covered every sea-road and appropriated every channel of ocean commerce. This fact the Lynch Committee seems to have ignored, although it was really the prime factor in the situation, as it stood in 1870. Mr. Cramp, in his statement before the Lynch Committee, went altogether out of the beaten path pursued by most of the other ship-builders or ship-owners who appeared. He said in effect that while the Civil War had been an immediate cause of the destruction of our merchant marine as it existed at the beginning of that struggle, still that was purely a physical cause, and in the absence of other causes need not operate after the war ended.
He called attention to the fact that the war had now been ended five years, but that the condition of our merchant marine, particularly in foreign trade, remained as pitiable as it had been in the height of the struggle. This he said argued the existence of other and more lasting causes than the simple destruction by war, whether by the government taking up our merchant-ships for its own use, or by the transfer of a great many of them to foreign flags to get the benefit of neutrality, or by the actual depredations of Anglo-Confederate privateers.
He explained that during our misfortune the English took every advantage in the way of appropriating to themselves and to their own ships the traffic which our ships had formerly carried; that when the war closed, they had absolute command of the ocean-carrying trade, our own as well as theirs.
He said that not only did the British government subsidize and otherwise aid their ships and ship-owners, but that they also brought to bear all the tremendous resources of their navy to help and encourage British ship-builders. Notwithstanding her enormous and well-equipped public dock-yards, the English government built a very large percentage of its hull construction in private shipyards, and not only that, but all their marine-engine work was let out by contract to private engine-builders, mainly independent establishments.
He stated that the result of this policy had been to develop the industry of marine engine building in Great Britain to a degree unknown anywhere else in the world.
On the contrary, our own government had done little for its navy since the war, and what little it had done had been carried out entirely in navy-yards.
This not only deprived private ship-building of the kind of aid and encouragement which England lavished upon her private shipyards and engine-shops, but the navy-yards themselves were a constant menace to the good order and content of mechanics working in private shipyards.
Moreover, he said that the same class of mechanics who, immediately prior to the war, worked for $1.75 a day, now (1870) demanded and received $3.00 to $3.50 a day; whereas ship-building wages remained the same in England as in 1860.
He warned the committee that the day of wooden ships, particularly steamships, was past, and that the iron ship had come to stay, not only in England but everywhere else in the world.
He said that to enable the business of building iron ships and heavy marine machinery to become firmly established in this country, a very large amount of manufacturing machinery must be supplied, and in view of the present outlook no one would invest any considerable amount of capital in that direction without assurance of some aid and encouragement from the government similar to that which England rendered to her ship-building industry.
He then dwelt at considerable length upon the demoralization among mechanics produced by the government’s policy in confining its naval construction to the navy-yards.
He reviewed briefly the struggle between the Cunard and Collins Lines prior to 1858, and showed conclusively that the downfall of the American Collins Line was due to the persistent and constantly increasing subsidies lavished by the British government upon the Cunard Line, which our government in 1858 met by withdrawing the Collins subsidy and giving them instead the sea and inland postage on mail matter actually carried. In this respect he said Congress indirectly came to the aid of the Cunard Line and helped it to overthrow the Collins Line. He hoped that the committee would give these particular facts their earnest attention. He said that they did not require deep or intricate investigation, because they were matters of common notoriety, known to everybody who was at all conversant with the commercial history of the country.
The admission of material for building iron ships free of duty, he said, would be an advantage, of course, and many believed that if our ship-builders could be relieved from the tariff and get their material free they could compete successfully with foreign builders; but the difference in wages was too great to be entirely overcome by the mere admission of materials duty free. As for materials, he would always prefer American iron for the construction of ships to foreign iron, provided it could be got at the same, or very nearly the same, price. There were many inconveniences, he said, attendant upon sending abroad for iron plates. He informed the committee that it was necessary to get the form of every plate and have it sketched before it was ordered, and if, after doing that, we must send abroad to have them made, very great inconvenience and delay would result.
This statement of Mr. Cramp before the Lynch Committee, of which the foregoing is only a synopsis, was really the key-note to all subsequent argument in favor of government aid to American ship-building and ship-owning. It presented the matter in a new light, or a light which was new in 1870.
ARMORED CRUISER BROOKLYN
It might be remarked here, in referring to his statement that “the form of every plate must be sketched before it is ordered, etc.,” that Mr. Cramp himself was the originator of that system in this country, a system of ordering plates sheared to sizes at the mill. (See “American Marine,” W. W. Bates.) Until he established this innovation, plates for building iron vessels had been rolled as nearly as possible to the sizes required and then sheared and trimmed at the shipyard. This itself was a very remarkable and striking innovation, and was immediately taken up by all iron ship-builders in the country, and is now the universal practice.
The legislative result of the first effort of Congress to take cognizance of the condition of the merchant marine was the bill introduced by Mr. Lynch, February 17, 1870.
Mr. Lynch’s bill, although it may be described as the pioneer effort for the resurrection of the American merchant marine, proposed in concise form and plain, easily comprehensible terms, without any unnecessary verbiage or circumlocution, as practical and as sensible a system of subvention as has ever been put forward since. It was comprehensive in its scope, universal in its application, and liberal in its provisions. Later bills, more elaborately framed and more diffuse in their verbiage, have hardly improved upon the simple matter of fact form in which Mr. Lynch embodied his proposed policy.
This was the beginning of a Parliamentary war between American ship-owners on the one hand and the influence of foreign steamship companies on the other; a war which has at this writing lasted more than thirty years.
One subsidy was granted by Congress at this early date, that of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company; but hardly had that subsidy begun to operate, when an exposure of certain methods by which it was procured brought about a great public scandal, which for the time-being put a peremptory end to the whole policy.
Whether the charge that the Pacific Mail subsidy was obtained by corrupt methods was true or not, the means in obtaining it were no more corrupt than those which have been employed by foreign steamship interests to defeat legislation in Congress favorable to American shipping from time to time ever since.
Notwithstanding these discouraging conditions, a group of Pennsylvania capitalists formed “the American Steamship Company,” and decided in 1871 to try the experiment of an American Line to Liverpool. They contracted with the Cramp firm for four first-class steamships, to be superior in sea speed, comfort, and other desirable qualities to any foreign steamship then in service. These four ships were designed by Mr. Cramp, and built under his superintendence between 1871 and 1873 inclusive, and were put in service under the names of the “Indiana,” “Illinois,” “Pennsylvania,” and “Ohio,” now commonly known as the old American Line. That these ships were designed with the highest degree of ability and constructed with the utmost skill is sufficiently attested by the fact that they are all in serviceable condition at this writing (1903), over thirty years old. These ships broke the record in speed which was held by the “City of Brussels,” and consumed less than half of the coal in doing it.
As soon as the construction of these ships had been awarded to his Company, Mr. Cramp determined to examine the conditions of marine-engine development abroad, and with that object in view sailed immediately for Europe. His narrative of the trip and its results are as follows: