Effect of the war on shipping.
The first effect of hostilities on England’s maritime commerce and shipping seems to have been to reduce the nominal value of the cargoes exported from 41,411,966l. in 1802 to 31,438,985l. in 1803. The next effect was to introduce into the carrying trade of Great Britain an extra supply of one hundred and twelve thousand eight hundred and nineteen tons of foreign vessels, whilst the third was to lessen, by one hundred and seventy-three thousand nine hundred tons, her own mercantile shipping; so that the success which had attended the business of the shipowner during the previous war no longer accompanied him, especially during the earlier period of the renewal of hostilities, the majority of this class suffering heavy losses. The owners of neutral vessels, while enjoying many other privileges, had likewise the advantage of obtaining from the Baltic and elsewhere the materials necessary for the construction of their vessels, at less cost than the British shipowners. The English government also levied a heavy tax on timber, hemp, canvas, and other articles requisite for the conduct of their business, and insisted on licenses being taken out, and bonds given to the commissioners of customs for the construction and navigation of their ships.
Complaints of English shipowners.
Against these and other special burdens British shipowners now loudly, and not without cause, complained. They remarked, with much force, that it was of the last importance that their vessels should trade on equal terms with those of other nations, but that “so long as they continued to be burthened with tonnage, convoy, port-duties, extra insurance, heavy taxes for docks, canals, tunnels, and a thousand other water-brain schemes, they will continue to drag on a miserable existence, till even the profitable concerns of ship-breaking shall be seen no more.”[261] Had their complaints been confined to the special burdens with which they were afflicted, the sympathy of the country would have gone with them; but when they formed an association, which had for its object the maintenance of the old navigation laws in their original integrity, they received no support even from Mr. Pitt, a leading member of whose Administration declared “that however wise and salutary the navigation laws might have been in the infancy of our commerce, he did not perceive the efficacy of them at present, and the necessity of strictly adhering to their original provisions.” This truth was, indeed, at last beginning to break forth upon the world; but it still required many years to convert the shipowners to what they not unnaturally regarded as a heretical doctrine.
Thus they contended, with redoubled force, that if, in the infancy of commerce, the navigation laws had been wise and salutary, their rigorous enforcement now was more than ever imperative, not only from the amazing increase of foreign shipping, but from the heavy duties to which British shipping was liable. British ships, they said, stood charged with duties not merely on every article necessary for their equipment, amounting to upwards of seven per cent. on their whole value, but double duty was levied on their gross tonnage, denominated a war tax, though really the offspring of what was termed “a profound peace.”[262] The ships of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Prussia, they went on to state, could be built and navigated at much lower rates than those of Britain, while many naval stores were the original produce of countries whose ships were not burthened with heavy duties, and where, too, provisions were cheap and wages low. Hence foreigners, it was alleged, “were able to take freight at a lower rate; and, as the smallest difference in that respect determined the preference of the merchant, the carrying-trade of Europe was almost entirely wrested from us.”
Whatever may have been the cause that led to this result, it was stated publicly at the end of March 1804, that there was then scarcely a single offer of trade for a British bottom, except such as were employed in the coasting or colonial trades, which were held secure by the strict enforcement of the Navigation Act. The shipowners pointed with dismay to the mooring places in the river Thames, which were crowded with foreign ships in full employ; while British vessels covered the banks or filled the wet docks in a state of inactivity and decay.
Hardships of the pressing-system.
Apprentices.
Nor did their complaint stop here. The arbitrary system of impressing sea-apprentices, a system which acted with especial injury in the case of those of the watermen on the river who, being liable to be impressed in the fourth year of their apprenticeship, were lost to their masters when their services were becoming remunerative, was severely and justly criticised; indeed it is on record that, before this period, there had been no fewer than thirty thousand watermen, etc., at work on the river Thames, between Westminster-bridge and Gravesend, exclusive of the British and foreign seamen on board the shipping; but that in 1804 there was not a sixth part of that number. The new dock regulations and the employment of carts instead of lighters to carry goods to the merchants’ inland warehouses swelled the general catalogue of grievances, while the erection of the East India Docks, then in progress, was looked on as the crowning act of mischief, and was therefore viewed by the forlorn shipowners with unmitigated horror.
Suggestions to secure the Mediterranean trade,