American histories have, almost without exception, glorified these privateers. They note that Dodsley's Register for 1778 recorded the capture of 733 British ships by American cruisers, of which 559 were brought into port. What these prizes sold for is not recorded, but it appears that the British loss was estimated at £2,600,000. Gomer Williams, in his history of the Liverpool privateers, says that the War of the Revolution put an entire stop to the commercial progress of that port. It was the venturesome American privateer who haunted the Irish channel until the Dublin linen fleet sailed under convoy to Chester, that thus injured Liverpool. According to Troughton, another Liverpool historian, "the manners of the common people" of the town "made a retrogression towards barbarism." Mr. Hale estimates that 3000 British ships were captured, and that the losses crippled the commercial prosperity of England severely.
On the other hand, however, while the American cruisers were capturing the 773 British ships, the British cruisers captured and sent into port 904 American ships, which brought the captors £2000 each on the average. The losses of the American owners were, of course, much larger. Worse yet, the American ships were all eventually driven from the seas, save only as a few of the largest and most powerful were able to dodge and outsail the frigates and sloops-of-war which the British sent in pursuit of them. Haraden himself, though he captured more than a thousand guns from the enemy, was at last caught at St. Eustatia by Admiral Rodney's fleet.
If the accounts of gains and losses could be posted ledger fashion, the struck balance would show that while the captured goods[[4]] were at times almost the only resource of the colonists needing goods of foreign manufacture, and while, too, a few individuals were enriched, the losses of the ship merchants as a class, and of the country, far outweighed the gains. American independence was not won, as so often claimed, by the privateers; it was not even forwarded.
There was a further loss, which, though it cannot be measured, was real. There is abundant evidence to show that the successes of the few made gamblers, and even thieves, of many merchants. While two frigates were on the stocks in Rhode Island, the timber belonging to the government was stolen for use in privateers. Still another evil influence is found in the fact that the magnified stories of privateer work made the people believe that the greed of the merchants would serve to defend the new-born nation from foreign aggression better than a navy could do it. And not until after the War of 1812 was brought upon us was the miserable delusion dispelled.
In two respects only did the privateers serve the American merchant marine well: they gave some thousands of individual seamen increased ability to handle ships under difficult conditions, and they improved the speed of the whole fleet.
Captain Elias Hasket Derby, of Salem, was perhaps the first American to make a systematic study of ship models with a view of increasing speed. He established a shipyard near his wharf at Salem; with untrammelled mind he made experiments, and eventually he built 4 ships of from 300 to 360 tons' burden, each of which became noted for strength and speed. One of them (the Astræ, a vessel less than 100 feet long), while on her way to the Baltic, made the run from Salem to the Irish coast in eleven days. In 1783 this vessel crossed from Salem to France in 18 days, and she made the passage home in 19.
Only a few ships remained in commission to float the flag of the "new constellation" at the end of the War of the Revolution, but it was a matter of no small significance that these ships were, on the average, far superior to those that had formed the American merchant marine in colonial days. Indeed, they were literally the best merchantmen in the world. And the conditions under which they were to sail, though harrowing to the owners and to all patriotic Americans, were to maintain the standard of the fleet for many years to come.
CHAPTER VI
EARLY ENTERPRISE OF THE UNITED STATES MERCHANT MARINE
WHEN the War of the Revolution came to an end, the territory of the United States extended along the Atlantic coast from Maine to Georgia, and westward over the Appalachian Mountains as far as the Mississippi River. The population, including slaves, numbered no more than 3,500,000. The settlements have usually been considered in groups—those of New England, of the Middle states, of the Southern states, and, last of all, that most interesting group west of the mountains. Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania were the most populous states. Philadelphia, the largest city, boasted a population of 42,520 in the first census year (1790). New York was second, Boston third, Charleston fourth, and Baltimore fifth. Newport and Portsmouth, though small, were yet ports of importance, and so, too, was Salem.
The interests of the different groups of population of the country were then supposed to be in some ways antagonistic. The Southern states produced tobacco, rice, and indigo for export, and had relatively few ships; wanting low freight rates, they expressed, at times later, the fear of combinations between owners of ships living elsewhere, by which rates would be raised. The seeming antagonisms were magnified by the lack of means of intercourse between them. While roads wide enough for vehicles had been cut from town to town near the coast as far south as Virginia, and a few had been opened into the interior along the routes of armies during the war, the most comfortable way of travelling was by water, and ships were the only means for transporting freight, save only as some goods were carried on mules and wagons into the interior—on one route as far as Pittsburg.