This fact seems to be of much importance. It is a fact beyond dispute that subsidies to a few favored lines greatly injured all other shipping trading to the same ports—it injured British as well as American shipping. In fact, the British ship-owners, as already noted, were injured so much that they made emphatic protests to their government, but they were, in the long run, able to survive the effects of the unfair practice. In the United States the paying of subsidies to the few lines simply killed private enterprise on the North Atlantic.
In the meantime, Captain R. B. Forbes, of Boston, built the auxiliary screw steamer Massachusetts (1845), a ship with full sail-power and a screw that could be lifted out of water when the wind served. She made two voyages between New York and Liverpool, after which she was sold to the government for use in the war with Mexico. A number of ships have been built on this principle since then, and there are several in the lumber trade on the Pacific coast at this time (1910), but for some unexplained reason auxiliaries have never become fashionable.
In 1850 William Inman, of England, established the line for which the Philadelphia merchants had hoped in 1837, and two American steamships, the Pioneer and the City of Pittsburg, made a voyage or two each in the service, but they were then withdrawn and used in more profitable traffic on the Pacific coast.
In 1855 Commodore Vanderbilt offered to establish a Liverpool line, to run in alternate weeks with the Collins Line, if a subsidy of $15,000 a voyage were paid him and he were allowed to make no shorter passages than the Cunard Line; if Collins Line speed were demanded, he wanted $19,250 a voyage. This was when Collins was receiving $33,000. The only result of the offer was to help turn public sentiment against Collins. Vanderbilt had already constructed two large steamers (the North Star, called his yacht, and the Ariel) for use in his Isthmian competition, and when he failed to get a subsidy contract, he made a few voyages in the Bremen route and to Havre, omitting, however, all voyages in the winter months. With a view of increasing his service he built a still larger ship, called the Vanderbilt, and he was able to arrange with the Post-office Department for the sea and inland postage on all mail carried. During the four years (1858-1861) during which this arrangement lasted, his mail receipts amounted to $360,730.48, according to Morrison. He made some money, and it is likely that the service would have developed into a permanent line but for the Civil War.
CHAPTER XV
THE CRITICAL PERIOD
IF ships under the American flag are ever again to obtain any share of the deep-water carrying-trade of the world, it is of the utmost importance that the American people should learn first of all why American ships lost the trade they once enjoyed.
To enable us to comprehend the reasons for the decadence of our merchant marine it is necessary to have well in mind the fact that we obtained our supremacy by actual merit. It was an economic development, not the result of any kind of political or other stimulation. We did not gain or hold supremacy because we could build ships cheaper than they could be built elsewhere. Cheaper ships could be had in the north of Europe and in Canada. Moreover our most profitable ships were those that cost the most per ton. The American ships were supreme, too, rather because the wages paid were higher then in spite of that seeming handicap. In short, the whole environment of the American seafaring population had evolved a ship and crew which, taken together as a unit, were able to give more ton-miles for a dollar than any other similar unit in the world.
At first the advent of steamships changed these conditions in but one respect; it gave greater regularity of passage. The swiftest sailing ships could cross the Atlantic, now and then, in as short a time as the steamer, and they carried more cargo at the same time. But the steamer instantly commanded the cream of the traffic, and received higher rates for it, because the merchant could calculate, within a day, the time required for the passage. The time of even the swiftest of sailing ships was sometimes extended by adverse winds to fifty or sixty days.
This is to say that even the first crude steamships took the best of the trade because they were more efficient.
With the inevitable improvements in steamships came an encroachment upon the cheaper traffic that had been carried on sailing ships, and the most important of these improvements was made when the screw propeller was adopted.