The Story of the American Merchant Marine

by John Randolph Spears

A natural evolution of traffic alongshore has been seen in the extension, so to speak, of the railroads across both salt and fresh water. Soon after the Boston and Providence Railroad was opened (June 15, 1835), its directors made an agreement with a line of steamers to New York under which the vessels of rival lines were excluded from the terminal facilities of the railroad, and the passengers from the rival lines had to wait hours for a train on which to continue their journey. In 1845 Daniel Drew, a director of the Providence and Stonington Railroad, became the president of the line of steamers running from Stonington to New York, and the two companies, for the purposes of traffic, were operated as one.

The railroads that terminated on the shores of Lake Erie engaged in the Lake traffic at an early date by establishing ship lines that gathered freight at all Lake ports of importance for transportation to the East, and, of course, carried the traffic from the East to the farthest points on the Lakes. These steamers had a marked influence on the development of the West. Of such lines as that which runs from Galveston and New Orleans to New York in connection with the Southern Pacific Railroad, only mention need be made, but the fact that the extension of railroads in this way across wide stretches of the waters of the country, has had a marked influence upon the prosperity of the country as well as upon that of the railroads, is memorable.

Another notable feature of the coasting trade is a revival of the old system, practised by such merchants as Derby, of Salem, when they built ships especially to carry their own goods to market. Thus, when petroleum was found in Texas, the Standard Oil Company built many vessels to carry the crude oil from the wells to the refineries at New York. The oil was taken through pipes from the wells to the ship, and it was pumped from the ship into tanks at the refineries. With the aid of such port facilities the cost of transportation was reduced to the lowest figure.

The United States Steel Corporation, owning ore beds near Lake Superior and mills near Pittsburg, built a fleet of ships to carry the ore to points on Lake Erie whence it could be shipped on a private railroad to the mills. The ore in the beds was scooped up with steam shovels and dumped into cars, by which it was transported to high trestles on the edge of the harbor. On the trestles it was dumped into pockets, from which it fell through chutes into the vessel, the hatches of which were spaced to correspond with the spaces of the chutes. A cargo of more than 10,000 tons has been loaded in two hours. At the port of discharge other scoops (a sort of dredge), made to operate through the hatches, lift the cargo out of the ship at a rate of more than a thousand tons an hour.

The great coal companies of the East deliver their coal in similar pockets on the coast, but they transport a large portion of it thence to the consumer by means of tugs and barges. In proportion to the coal carried, the tug-and-barge system costs less than cargo-carrying steamers. The tugs, with their high-priced crews, are kept moving; they tow the barges in "strings" to their destinations, dropping one here and another there, until the last is at the pier. Then they return, picking up the barges that have been unloaded, and take them to the pockets for more coal. The barges have small crews of low-priced men. The expense of waiting for the discharge of the coal is therefore less than if a steamer had carried the coal; it is even less than the expense of a schooner lying thus. The systems of handling cargoes in coarse freight trades of the American coast are, perhaps, the most perfect in the world.

Naturally, extensions of the railroad lines have been made across deep water. The Pennsylvania Railroad established the American line from Philadelphia to Liverpool in 1871. The Baltimore and Ohio established the Atlantic Transport line to Europe. The Louisville and Nashville created lines from Pensacola to several countries, including Japan and China. The Illinois Central has lines from New Orleans. The Occidental and Oriental Steamship Company was organized to carry the freight of the Pacific railroads from San Francisco to the Far East. Near the end of the nineteenth century the Southern Pacific Railroad bought an interest in the Pacific Mail. The Northern Pacific was served for years by the Boston Steamship Company, and the Great Northern Railroad built two of the largest cargo carriers in the world for an extension of service across the Pacific. Most of the ships in these extensions of railroads have been of American build.

In oversea traffic the through bills of lading and special terminal facilities gave the ships owned by railroads special advantages in the world's traffic. A great corporation is able to purchase supplies at the lowest prices. Further than that, it is not infrequently advisable to carry freight on ships at an actual loss in order to provide freight for the cars in which it can be carried with profit.

Another American adventure at sea that is of interest here was the evolution of the United Fruit Company. Individual dealers in perishable products of the tropics found it profitable to unite in gathering bananas and other fruits, and in chartering ships to bring them to the United States. As the business continued to increase, the need of swift ships, and for fittings to preserve the fruit in the best condition, led to the building of special kinds of ships (chiefly under foreign flags) and of machinery for loading and unloading the cargoes at the terminals. In the meantime, the speedy ships employed had proved attractive to passengers, and because passengers could be carried without decreasing the efficiency of the ships as fruit carriers, efforts were made to increase this branch of the traffic. In time the company built hotels for the comfort of the passengers at points in the tropics where a comfortable hotel was a surprise to the experienced traveller. Then because the well-contented fruit farmers of the tropics were unwilling to keep up with the demands of the trade in either the quantity or the quality of the fruit, the company bought land and produced the cargoes needed by their ships.

The Standard Oil Company employs nearly a hundred ships (chiefly under foreign flags), which it has built for the purpose, to transport its products to foreign countries. And there are other corporations that own ships as parts of their business equipment.

These American enterprises are of the utmost importance to the story of the American merchant marine, because they are the most modern features of our water-borne traffic. The great corporation is doing an ever growing share of the world's work, and the growth is an economic evolution that must be forwarded as well as controlled. In spite of the prevailing fear of great aggregations of wealth, it is worth while to inquire whether a further combination of corporate interests might not help on a revival of the American merchant marine. Suppose that a ship-building "trust" were united with the steel-making "trust" and the aggregation were to make a traffic agreement with a combination of railroads extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, under which special low freight rates were obtainable; is it not conceivable that this powerful corporation might solve the problem of ships able to compete on deep water? Although the law now prohibits such combinations as this, may we not hope that the American people will yet learn how to preserve themselves from oppression, and the fear of it, without hampering the men who are able and eager to do the world's work on the world's terms?