If any one with a liking for statistics will apply these facts to the foregoing figures, the seeming advantage of tonnage possessed by the British Empire will disappear and it will be found that the merchant marine of the United States at that time held a commanding position in the maritime carrying trade of the world. Furthermore, the ship-builders of this country still excelled in every branch of merchant marine architecture.
On the North Atlantic in 1851, the American Collins Line steamships Arctic, Atlantic, Baltic, and Pacific were competing successfully with the British Cunarders Niagara, Canada, Asia, and Africa: the Baltic holding the speed record for both the eastern and the western passages between New York and Liverpool; while the New York, Philadelphia, and Boston packet ships still held their own. No sailing ships of other nationalities could compete with them, and though hard pressed by steamships of the various lines, they still retained their popularity with passengers and shipping merchants. American ships from home ports were profitably engaged in the India, China, African, and South American trades; the New Bedford and Nantucket whaling ships were to be found upon every sea; the Mississippi, Hudson River, and Long Island Sound steamboats were the most perfect types of this period for inland navigation; and the Massachusetts fishing schooners, the North River sloops, and the New York pilot-boats were far famed for speed and beauty; while the American clippers were now known and admired throughout the maritime world.
It was in this year also that the Royal Yacht Squadron presented a cup to be sailed for at Cowes by yachts belonging to the yacht clubs of all nations, which, as every one knows, was won by the America, representing the New York Yacht Club.
“To teach the Mistress of the Sea
What beam and mast and sail should be,
To teach her how to walk the wave
With graceful step, is such a lore
As never had been taught before;
Dumb are the wise, aghast the brave.�[14]
Surely De Tocqueville was right when he said: “Nations, as well as men, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years. When I contemplate the ardor with which the Anglo-Americans prosecute commercial enterprise, the advantages which befriend them, and the success of their undertakings, I cannot refrain from believing that they will one day become the first maritime power of the globe. They are born to rule the seas, as the Romans were to conquer the world.�[15]
This day had then come. The victory of the America off the Isle of Wight may be likened to the gilded weathercock at the top of some lofty spire, being highly decorative and at the same time showing the direction of the wind. At that time the commercial greatness of the United States rested upon the splendid qualities shown by her sailing ships and their captains upon the ocean. And after all the only really rational sovereignty of the seas that exists, or has ever existed, is maintained by the merchant marine, whose ships and seamen contribute not only to the welfare and happiness of mankind, but also to the wealth of the nations under whose flags they sail.
In those early days, as the flaming posters in the downtown streets of New York used to announce, it was “Sail versus Steam� and the packet ships justified their claim more than once by beating a steamship from port to port. When, as not infrequently happened, a packet ship running before a strong westerly gale in mid-ocean overhauled a wallowing side-wheel steamer bound the same way, the joyous shouts and derisive yells of the steerage passengers on board the packet, as she ranged alongside and swept past the “tea-kettle,� were good for the ears of sailormen to hear. In those days no sailors liked steamships, not even those who went to sea in them. If a packet captain sighted a steamer ahead going the same way, he usually steered for her and passed to windward as close as possible, in order that the dramatic effect of the exploit might not be lost upon the passengers of either vessel.
The Atlantic steamship lines with which the packet ships had to compete, the Cunard, Collins, Havre, Bremen, and Vanderbilt lines, ran only wooden side-wheel steamers; but when the Inman Line was founded in 1850, and began to run iron screw steamers between Liverpool and Philadelphia, the Atlantic packet ships began to lose their trade. Indeed, from 1840, when the Cunard Line was established, until the Inman Line began to run their fast iron screw steamships to New York in 1857, the rivalry between sail and steam was keen and spirited. During these years the Atlantic mail steamships carried almost as much canvas as sailing vessels, and they continued to do so for many years. Most of the Cunarders were barque-rigged, and the famous Russia of that line carried topmast and topgallant studdingsails. The Allan liners were also barque-rigged, and the Inman steamships were full ship-rigged, while the White Star liners were ship-rigged with a jiggermast. It was not until 1889, when the White Star Line brought out the Majestic and the Teutonic with twin screws, pole masts, and no canvas, that the Atlantic Ocean began to be navigated by vessels propelled entirely by steam; so that the complete transition from sail to steam required very nearly half a century.
It cannot be said that steam competition had any direct effect upon the California clippers, as it is only of late years that there has been direct communication by sea between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and the Pacific Mail Company, after once getting its steamers round into the Pacific, had always carried passengers, the mails, and specie with transshipment at Panama. The demand for the California clippers ceased when rapid transportation of cargoes round Cape Horn became no longer necessary.
Besides the competition between sail and steam, there was also going on for many years, as has already been suggested, the attempt to substitute iron for wood in the construction of vessels, and screw propellers for paddle-wheels as a means of propulsion by steam. In both branches of this transition, which were parallel but not necessarily connected, Great Britain took the lead, and she has rightfully reaped the benefit.