593. Extension of American shipping.—The colonists were as proficient in the sailing as in the building of ships, and carried on a large part of the ocean traffic which served the needs of American commerce. In the first year of the national government considerably more than half of the tonnage entering the ports of the United States from foreign countries was American, and English ships were the only serious competitors. The bulk of American shipping was engaged in the West India trade, but American ships carried also nearly half of the commerce between the United States and Europe, in spite of the adverse policy of European states, designed to exclude American ships from commerce with them and with their colonies. Driven further afield by this policy, American skippers began to seek commercial connections with more distant countries, from which wares had reached them hitherto only through middlemen. An American ship sailed for the first time to China in 1784; in 1788 two ships were advertised as loading at Boston for the Isle of France (Mauritius) and India, and “anybody wishing to adventure to that part of the world may have an opportunity of sending goods on freight”; soon afterward a Philadelphia ship made the round voyage to China in less than a year. A vivid impression of the boldness and skill of American mariners of this period is given by the voyage of the Experiment to China. This boat, a sloop of eighty tons, no larger and no more seaworthy than the sloops which now bring bricks down the Hudson River to New York, carried her crew of fifteen men and boys safely to Canton and back, despite the perils of the sea and of pirates.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. Name another country in which transportation was easier in winter than in summer, before the introduction of railroads.
2. History of the navigation of the Connecticut River. [W. D. Love, Proc. Amer. Antiq. Society, April, 1903, reprinted Worcester, 1903.]
3. Write an essay on the economic, social, and political importance of the country store, in the past and present.
4. Write a biographical sketch of one of the business men named in section 582. [Poole’s Index and continuations; current biographical dictionaries.]
5. What is now the interstate commerce of the State in which you live? To what States does it export its products, what products of other States does it import? How does its commerce with other States compare with its foreign commerce in bulk and value? [Ask questions of railroad and steamship men; visit freight yards.]
6. Comparing the figures of sect. 584 with the figures for total exports, sect. 561, what do you guess formed the bulk of the exports from each State or port?
7. Write a brief commercial history of one of the cities named. [Local histories; Encyc.; commercial cyclopedias.]
8. Episodes of Boston commerce. [M. A. D. Howe, Atlantic Monthly, 1903, 91: 175-184.]