Senator Rusk, of Texas, who was chairman of the Senate "Committee on the Post Office and the Post Roads," in the course of a report made to the Senate under date of June 15, 1852, described at some length the difficulties under which the Collins Line was then laboring in spite of the subsidy it was receiving. In laying special stress upon the expense of running these ships he said that it was in part due to "the well-known fact that, at the period when they were commenced, there were no machine shops in this country in which castings of the size required could be made, nor were there on this side of the Atlantic, experienced practical engineers competent to take charge of marine engines of such immense size.... It is not to be supposed that engines of such vast dimensions could have been constructed in a country where there were, as yet, no workshops adapted to the purpose and where labor is very high, as cheaply as in a country where every appliance of the kind already existed and where the prices of labor are proverbially low. Nor can it be reasonably imagined that vessels of this description could have been navigated upon as good terms by men taken from this country." (Sen. Rep. Com. 267, 32 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 3-4).
That the iron screw steamer was steadily driving all American ships from the sea, was plainly seen several years before the war, and sufficient warnings were printed in the periodicals of the day. Said the Scientific American on May 16, 1857:—
"There are no less than thirty steamships now running between New York and different ports in Europe. These are regular steamers carrying passengers and merchandise, beside which there are a number of transient ones that carry cargo only. But ten of them are American vessels, while the Boston, Portland, and Philadelphia lines are entirely European. The Atlantic trade is departing from us, and unless our shipping merchants exhibit more practical wisdom and enterprise they will ultimately be vanished in this contest. The whole number of steamships engaged upon the routes between Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Portland, Halifax, and Quebec, on this side of the Atlantic and the ports of Havre, Bremen, Hamburg, Southampton, London, Liverpool, and Glasgow, on the other side, is fifty-one. Of these only seventeen have paddle-wheels: all the others—thirty-four—are screw propellers with iron hulls. They are the most economical of steamships; their steam power is but small in proportion to their tonnage; they make very regular and quick passages, carry large cargoes, charge but little more freight than sailing vessels, and merchants prefer them for carrying goods. These are the steamers that are fast 'routing out' our sailing craft in the Atlantic trade."
Of the foreign ships mentioned above, only the Cunard received a subsidy.
That was in 1857. On March 31, 1860, the Scientific American again referred to the subject:—
"Three years ago we directed attention to the great increase of foreign screw steamers, and showed clearly how they were rapidly taking away the trade that had been formerly carried by American ships.... Our merchants did not heed this injunction, and, as a consequence, their rivals have grown stronger, while they have become weaker. To-day nearly all the mail and passenger, besides a great deal of the goods, traffic, is carried by foreign ships, the great majority of which are iron screw steamers. These facts are indisputable; how can we account for them but upon the theory that iron screw steamers are the cheapest and best for the traffic?... We exhort our shipping merchants to examine the question candidly for themselves, ... for we assure them that 'the Philistines are upon them!' We have not a single new Atlantic steamship on the stocks, from one end of the country to the other, while in Great Britain there are 16,000 tons of new iron screw steamers building for the American trade."
It was in those days that the "New York interests," as Mr. Cramp says, "carried with them the ship-owners, ship-builders, shipping men, mariners, and all others in general," while they sneered at the screw propeller.
Other quotations to show how and why the British secured supremacy are worth making. Said the Nautical Magazine (New York) for February, 1856, regarding two steamers that had been compared in all particulars:—
"The extraordinary fact which presses itself upon our notice from the foregoing details by trials consists in the difference in power required in the two vessels to produce nearly identical speed ... 2050 H. P., economized by the screw, propelled the Himalaya at about the same speed as 3016 H. P., transmitted by paddles, propelled the Atrato."
The New York Journal of Commerce published the following warning in 1857:—