The Story of the American Merchant Marine

by John Randolph Spears

When our first American mail steamer sailed for Europe no practical marine engineers could be found to work her engines. She took a first-class engineer and corps of assistants from one of the New York river packets; but as soon as the ship got to sea, and heavy breakers came on, all the engineers and firemen were taken deadly seasick; and for three days it was constantly expected that the ship would be lost. (Rainey's Ocean Steam Navigation.)

It is to be noted here that John L. Stevens, the ablest American marine engineer of his day, was one of the directors of this company.

The Washington sailed for Southampton and Bremen on June 1, 1847. Her passengers and crew looked forward to a cheering reception on the other side; for when the Sirius and the Great Western arrived in New York the people of the city turned out to honor them, and the city authorities and such bodies as the Chamber of Commerce gave public receptions in honor of the event. Then when the Cunard's first liner the Britannia was frozen in at Boston the merchants of the city contributed $10,000, for which a contractor agreed to saw a channel for her to clear water. The contractor spent $20,000 in doing the work. He spent $10,000 out of his own pocket without a murmur, and the Cunard Company without a murmur let him do it. But the only official action taken on the arrival of the Washington at Southampton was in the sending of a notice to the American mail agent that he would have to pay full sea postage on all mail landed, as well as the usual inland rates. And the only word of welcome spoken in the port was uttered by the officials of the dock company with whom the ship was berthed.

Because of their financial difficulties the company organized a separate corporation to build and run ships to Havre. The Humbolt and the Franklin were put on this route in 1849. The Humbolt was wrecked at Halifax, December 5, 1853, and the Franklin stranded on Montauk Point, July 17, 1854. The Arago and Fulton, built to replace these two, were somewhat better than any ocean-going steamships theretofore built in the United States, and they were able to continue the service until the government chartered them for use in the Civil War (1861). The two Bremen ships were laid up after their subsidy ceased—1859. All six of these ships used by this corporation were slow as well as expensive to operate. The time used in the Bremen passage was about fourteen days; that to Havre, twelve.

The Collins Line (New York and Liverpool U. S. Mail Steamship Company), was the most famous of the subsidized lines. E. K. Collins was a Truro, Cape Cod, boy, who, at the age of fifteen (1817), became a clerk to a New York merchant. Five years later he was sent to sea as a supercargo, and a little later he became a partner in the business. His first memorable stroke of business was made in 1825, when cotton took a sudden rise in the Liverpool market. The news of the rise reached New York on the day that the regular Charleston, South Carolina, packet was to sail, and a number of New York merchants took passage on the ship, intending to buy all the cotton in Charleston before the news of the rise could be learned there. As the packet passed the bar at Sandy Hook, bound out, the merchants on her deck saw a pilot-boat, with young Collins on her deck, head away down the coast; and with one accord they made jeering remarks at the idea of a little schooner trying to beat the regular packet in such a race. But when they reached the Charleston bar they met the boat with Collins on board coming out. He had bought all the cotton.

With money made in that deal and with some obtained by marrying a rich wife, Collins started the New Orleans packet line, and another line thence to Tampico. These having proved successful, he then established the famous Dramatic Line to Liverpool. In 1840, Collins said:—

"There is no longer chance for enterprise with sails. It is steam that must win the day. I will build steamers that shall make the passage from New York to Europe in ten days and less."

In the winter of 1846-1847 Collins and others persuaded Congress to pass the act dated March 3, 1847. It provided for the construction of four naval steamers in place of ten that the naval committee had asked for; for a contract between the Secretary of the Navy and Collins & Co., for transporting the mail between New York and Liverpool; for a contract between the Secretary of the Navy and A. G. Sloo for transporting the mail between New York and New Orleans with a stop at Havana, and from Havana to Chagres, on the Isthmus of Panama—known as the Law Line, from George Law, the leading capitalist; for a contract with unnamed capitalists (C. H. Aspinwall was the leader), for a mail service between Panama and the ports of San Francisco and Astoria.

Collins's company had a paid-in capital of $1,200,000. By his contract, signed in November, 1847, he was to receive $19,250 per voyage for making two voyages per month for eight months of the year and one a month during four winter months. For this service Collins was to build four steamships measuring "not less than 2000 tons each," and complete them ready for sea within eighteen months; also a fifth ship "as early as may be practicable thereafter." Each ship was to carry a naval officer, as mail agent, and four passed midshipmen to serve as deck officers.

Contracts were made for the four ships, and many different statements have been made regarding their size and cost. Chief Engineer Isherwood, of the navy, put the size of the Atlantic and the Pacific at 2686 tons each; the Arctic and Baltic at 2772. Senator Rusk, of Texas, who vigorously supported the line in all its appeals to Congress, said the four measured 11,131 tons in the aggregate. The Merchant's Magazine (Vol. 22, p. 682) rated them at 3500 tons each and said they cost $650,000 each. G. S. Houston, in a speech in Congress on July 7, 1852, quoted the company to prove that the average cost of the ships was $736,035.67 each.