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THE AUTHOR OF "THE NAVAL WAR OF 1812"

A STANCH FRIEND OF THE AMERICAN SHIP

AND THE AMERICAN SAILOR

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

President of the United States

INTRODUCTION

THE war navy of the United States has had many, the merchant navy few, historians. Yet the two services are joined by an intimate relationship: they are indispensable the one to the other; they have the same brave, vigorous traditions, and for many years they were cherished with equal pride by the people of the nation whose flag they bore to victory. Now our war fleet, after a period of neglect and decline, has again grown strong and prosperous, while our merchant fleet on the high seas has shrunk to a mere shadow of its ancient greatness. It is in the firm belief that the renaissance of the merchant navy also will come indeed, is already near at hand that this volume has been written.

There is abundant proof of a quickening of American interest in maritime affairs. For this, our fighting navy, its noble ships, and the dazzling sea triumphs of the Spanish War are chiefly responsible. The United States possesses one of the four most formidable war fleets in the world, but our merchant vessels are so few in number that they convey less than one-tenth of our own sea-borne commerce, and almost none of that of other nations. When the American people once realize the grotesque disparity between the two divisions of the national marine, they will not rest until the same overwhelming power which forced a heedless Congress to build our first steel cruisers and armor-clads has compelled it to clear the way for the creation of an adequate fleet of swift mail ships and heavy freighters. A nation which is reaching out for the commercial mastery of the world cannot long suffer nine

tenths of its own ocean-carrying to be monopolized by its foreign rivals. This is a situation which must appeal to the shrewd Yankee sense of humor, as well as to the Yankee passion of patriotism.

It is the declared purpose of this volume to present both the romance and the history of the American merchant marine. The picturesque aspect of our ocean adventure is not less important than the economic and political. No heroes of the Iliad or the Crusades were bolder than the merchant navigators of the young republic. Our national independence was really won and maintained for us upon the sea by the splendid constancy, valor, and skill of the armed crews of our trading ships, whalers, and fishermen, who in the Revolution were almost as numerous as, and far more effective than, the entire army of Washington. Again, in the Civil War it was the sea power of the Union, composed largely of merchant ships, and four-fifths of merchant officers and sailors, which swung the balance against the seceding States. Even in our short conflict with Spain, the merchant fleet proved a reserve ready and indispensable.

Yankee privateers, Yankee packets, Yankee clippers, sail the seas no longer, but their fame endures and their exploits stand unequalled. More of the romance of the ocean than landsmen know has survived a half-century of steam navigation. Modern liners have a picturesqueness of their own in the long sweep of their steel bulwarks, and the broad wake whitening astern as they drive onward twenty knots an hour. Nor has lofty canvas vanished altogether from the salt breeze, for this very year 1902 has seen the launching of the greatest sailing vessel ever fashioned in America.

Fortunately, the merchant marine of the United States means more than that portion of our fleet engaged in foreign commerce, or shipbuilding and seamanship would have become almost lost arts to the people long pre

eminent in both. The coast and the Great Lake traffic has grown with the growth of the country while our deep-sea ships have been disappearing. Separate chapters of this volume are devoted to these active and thriving interests, as well as to the whalemen and the fishermen, for they are all alike our toilers of the deep, and their place and part in the American merchant marine are officially recognized by the National Government.

A word personal: This work is the outcome of twenty years of such study as the student gives to the theme that lies nearest to his heart-of study supplemented by constant observation of the sea, its ships, and the ebb and flow of its commerce. The author, out of this experience, has reached some positive convictions of his own, but it has been his honest effort to make these pages interesting and informing rather than controversial. As to the causes that have destroyed all but a fragment of our ocean fleet, it is impossible for any American who knows them to speak or write without deep feeling-impossible, certainly, to the first of his race in a long New England line who has not been either shipowner or seaman.

WINTHROP LIPPITT MARVIN.

BOSTON, September, 1902.