Chapter XI: Section VII: )

The history of commercial nations admonishes us that no trading people can long maintain their ascendency without using all of the most approved means of the age for prosecuting trade. Portugal was at one time the most powerful commercial nation of the globe; and at another Holland was the mistress of the seas. But while the latter is now only a fourth-rate commercial power, the former has sunk into obscurity, and is nearly forgotten of men. At that time England and France had but a limited foreign trade and scarcely any commercial reputation. France could more easily maintain her existence without a foreign trade, than could England; and yet her matured manufactures and her products of the soil became so valuable that she sought a foreign market. England, to the contrary, had not territory enough to remain at home, and yet be a great power. She matured an immense manufacturing system, and needed a market, as well as the raw material, and food for her operatives. She began to stretch her arms to the outer world, and had made very considerable strides in foreign commerce side by side with France and the German States, and in the face of the steady young opposition of the American States.

It now became a contest for supremacy. Her large navy had enabled her to conquer important foreign territories, which with the supremacy of the seas would make her the mistress of the world. France was still her equal rival, and the United States were becoming formidable common carriers, although they had but little legitimate commerce of their own, and none that was under their positive control. The commercial men of England finding their statesmen ready to aid them in their efforts for national progress, wealth, and glory, directed their attention to steam as an agent of supremacy and power, both in the Navy and the Commercial Marine. They indicated and proved the necessity of drawing the bonds between them and foreign countries more closely; of shortening the distances between them; of providing the means of rapid, safe, and comfortable transit of English merchants between their homes and foreign lands; of regular, rapid, reliable British steam mails to every point with which Englishmen had business, or could create it; and of government agency as the only means by which this desirable, this essential service could be rendered to commerce and to the country. They readily saw that rapid and reliable passenger facilities, and the rapid and regular transmission of commercial and diplomatic intelligence would give to British merchants and to British statesmen the certain control of commerce, and the conformation of the political destinies of many of the smaller nations of the Eastern and Western hemispheres.

It was not a difficult task to convince the British statesman that it was his duty to encourage the commerce, on which the wealth, power, and glory of his country depended, by all the aids known to the constitution; and to uphold the hands of the merchant by the use of the money which his traffic had brought into the public coffers. There was no contest between North and South, East and West. It was the whole of England which was to be benefited directly or indirectly; and they were willing that it should be any part rather than none. The evident advantages which the United States possessed in her more numerous articles of export, (_see page 16_,) as well as the rapid strides which her first clippers were making across the ocean, were reasons urgent enough for the forecasting statesmen of Britain; and they determined to continue or to obtain the profitable dominion of the seas, although it might cost a sum of money far beyond the postal income. They knew that these postal and passenger facilities were needed by every class of community, and that there was no one in the kingdom who would not be in some way benefited by them; and that the sums of money paid for them, although not apparently returned, were yet returned in a thousand indirect channels and by a variety of reflex benefits not calculable as a transaction of exchange.

We, therefore, see to-day, as the fruit of that determination, the proudest and the most profitable postal and mercantile steam marine that floats the seas. Several large companies, authorized to transport the mails to all parts of the world, were immediately organized, and paid liberal allowances for their peculiar duties. Where the practicability of the service was considered doubtful, larger sums were paid, and a greater length of time granted for making the experiment. The contracts were generally made for twelve years; and when their terms expired they were renewed for another term of twelve years, which will expire in 1862. Thus many of the lines have been in operation for the last nineteen years, and have demonstrated the practicability, the cheapness, the utility, and the necessity of such service. The entire foreign mail service is conducted by fifteen companies, having one hundred and twenty-one steamers, with a gross tonnage of 235,488 tons; the net tonnage being 141,293, assuming the engines, boilers, fuel, etc., to be forty per cent of the whole tonnage, which is altogether too low an estimate. The whole number of British sea-going steamers is sixteen hundred and sixty-nine, with an aggregate tonnage of 383,598 tons, exclusive of engines and boilers, and of 639,330 tons gross, including engines and boilers. (_See paper A, page 192._) We must add to this list the new steamer "Great Eastern," whose tonnage is twenty-seven thousand tons, and which will make the entire present mercantile steam tonnage of Great Britain 660,330 tons. The greater portion of these steamers, exclusive of those engaged in the foreign mail service, are employed in the coasting and foreign continental trade; while some few of them run in the American merchant service, and many others in the subsidized mail service of foreign countries, such as the lines from Hamburgh and Antwerp to Brazil, and from those cities to the United States. Some of them are also engaged in the mail service between Canada and England, under the patronage of the Canadian government. (_See paper D, page 199._) If we add to this list the 271 war steamers, the 220 gunboats, and the Great Eastern, we shall find that the British Mail, Mercantile, and War Marine consists of the enormous number of two thousand one hundred and sixty-one steamers, exclusive of the large number now building. Nearly all of these are adapted to the ocean, or to the coasting service, and may be classed as sea-going vessels.

It is interesting to trace this rapid progress of steam since its first application to purposes of mail transport in 1833. An intelligent writer says, "The rise and progress of the ocean steam mail service of Great Britain is second in interest to no chapter in the maritime history of the world;" and while we acknowledge a grateful pride in the triumphs of our transatlantic brethren, we must blush with shame at our dereliction in this great, and civilizing, and enriching service of modern times. The steam marine of the United States, postal, mercantile, and naval, is to-day so insignificant in extent that we do not feel entirely certain that it is a sufficient nucleus for the growth of a respectable maritime power. The few ships that we possess are among the fleetest and the most comfortable that traverse the ocean, and have excited the admiration of the world wherever they have been seen. But their number is so small, their service so limited, their field of operation so contracted, that our large commerce and travel are dependent, in most parts of the world, on British steam mail lines for correspondence and transport, or on the slow, irregular, and uncertain communications of sailing vessels. The question here naturally suggests itself: Have we progressed in ocean steam navigation in a ratio commensurate with the improvements of the age, or of our own improvement in every thing else? And has the Government of the country afforded to the people the facilities of enterprise and commercial competition which are clearly necessary to enable them to enter the contest on equal terms with other commercial countries? (_See Section VII._)

The Ocean Mail Service of the United States, consists of eight lines, and twenty one steamers in commission, with an aggregate tonnage of 48,027 tons. Three of these lines are transatlantic; the Collins, the Havre, and the Bremen. Two connect us with our Pacific possessions, and incidentally with Cuba and New-Granada. They are however indispensable lines of coast navigation. One connects the ports of Charleston, in the United States, and Havana, in Cuba, another connects New-Orleans with Vera Cruz, and another connects Havana and New-Orleans. Beyond these, we have a line of two steamers running between New-York and New-Orleans, touching at Havana, and one steamer touching at the same point between New-York and Mobile. Also four steamers between New-York and Savannah, four between New-York and Charleston, two between New-York and Norfolk, two between Philadelphia and Savannah, two between Boston and Baltimore, four between New-Orleans and Texas, and two between New-Orleans and Key West. All of these are coast steamers of the best quality; and some few of them have a nominal mail pay. We have also several transient steamers which have no routes or mail contracts, and which are consequently employed in irregular and accidental service, or laid up. They are the Ericsson, the Washington and the Hermann, the Star of the West, the Prometheus, the Northern Light, the Daniel Webster, the Southerner, the St. Louis, laid up in New-York; the Uncle Sam, the Orizaba, and the Brother Jonathan, belonging to the Nicaragua Transit Company, and the California, Panama, Oregon, Northerner, Fremont, and the tow-boat Tobago, belonging to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, all lying in the Pacific. Also the Queen of the West, Mr. Morgan's new steamer, in New-York. These, like all other American steamers when unemployed on mail lines, generally lie in port for want of a remunerative trade. (_See Paper A._)

The aggregate tonnage of these fifty-seven steamers is 94,795 tons. Eighteen of them, with an aggregate tonnage of 24,845 tons, are engaged in no service. Twenty-three of them, with 24,071 tons, are engaged in our coasting trade. Fourteen of them, with 19,813 tons, (Gov. register,) are engaged in the California, Oregon, Central American, Mexican, and Cuban mail service; while eight of them, with 25,178 tons aggregate tonnage, are engaged in the transatlantic mail service proper, between this country and Europe. It is thus seen that we have in all but 57 ocean steamers, of 94,795 aggregate tons; while Great Britain has sixteen hundred and seventy, with 666,330 aggregate tons; that we have twenty-two of these, of 45,001 tons, engaged in the foreign and domestic mail service, while she has one hundred and twenty-one, of 235,488 aggregate tonnage, engaged in the foreign mail service almost exclusively; and that we have thirty-seven steamers engaged in the coasting trade and lying still, while she has fifteen hundred and forty-eight steamers engaged in her coasting trade and merchant service. (_See page 167_, for length of British and American mail lines, and the miles run per year.) Comparisons are said to be odious, but it is more odious for such comparisons as these to be possible in these days of enlightened commercial enterprise and thrift; and especially when so greatly to the disadvantage of a country which boldly claims an aggregate civilization, enterprise, and prosperity equalled by those of no other country on the globe. As regards our steam navy, it is too small to afford adequate protection to our commerce and citizens; much less to defend the country in time of war. We have not steamers enough in the navy to place one at each of our important seaports; much less to send them to foreign stations.