Sea power may be compared to a chain of three gigantic links: commerce, merchant marine, and navy. Its strength is no greater than that of the weakest link.
In past history, nations have pushed their way upward to commanding positions in two ways: first, by military power and second, by sea power. Sparta, Macedonia, the Roman Republic, Sweden, France, Russia, and Prussia owed their prominence to the aggressive use of military power. Tyre, Athens, Carthage, the Dutch Republic, and Great Britain have depended principally on sea power. The Roman Empire owed its stability to an almost perfect combination of military and sea power.
To Americans the development of overwhelming military power is repulsive; while the boundaries of the United States have been pushed westward across the continent by military power, the opposition of Mexicans and Indians has been so slight and the employment of our troops has been on so small a scale that to most Americans the military aspect of our conquest of the West has not been apparent. Due probably to our English tradition and republican ideals, military power, with its idea of strict discipline and compulsory regulation, does not appeal to Americans as a means of advancing our national interests consistent with our character.
The use of sea power as a proper means of increasing national strength and property does not meet with the same objections. We are today, as were our English forebears, a commercial people. While we do not believe in taking territory by force, we can see no reason why we should not compete for trade in every market of the world and why the door of every country should not be open to our traders. If successful in fair competition, it seems perfectly ethical that we should take the resulting commercial advantages for ourselves. If other nations use unfair methods in commercial competition,
or if they dispute our commercial successes by force, then our traders feel perfectly justified in asking for the protection of their legitimate interests by force, and our government repeatedly has used the Navy to afford such protection. Thus, our expanding commerce has required a merchant marine for transport, and both commerce and merchant marine have required a navy for protection.
Let us follow the progress of sea power in the last centuries. The great voyages of discovery were made by the Portuguese and Spaniards. Both these powers were dominated by military rather than commercial instincts. Their ideas were rather to seize territory and enslave the natives than to engage in legitimate trade with them. Thus their conquests of Mexico, Peru, Brazil and the Philippines were rather military expeditions than the exercise of sea power. They had little commerce save forcing slaves to work in silver mines; no merchant marine save a comparatively small number of clumsy galleons manned largely by seamen of other nationalities; no navy save similar galleons on which were marched companies of troops, commanded by generals and colonels. The Spaniards and Portuguese had no instinct for the professions of the manufacturer, the merchant or the seaman. An old writer, referring to a later period, says:
The mines of Brazil were the ruin of Portugal, as those of Mexico and Peru had been of Spain; all manufactures fell into insane contempt; ere long, the English supplied the Portuguese not only with clothes but with all merchandise, all commodities, even to salt-fish, and grain. After their gold, the Portuguese abandoned their very soil; the vineyards of Oporto were finally bought by the English with Brazilian gold which had only passed through Portugal to be spread throughout England.
The Dutch, on the other hand, built up real sea power. They were a commercial rather than a military race, and desired to trade with the newly-discovered peoples rather than conquer them. Great trading companies were organized to support oversea commerce, and large sums were ventured in fitting out expeditions to the far corners of the world. So eager were they to open up new regions to trade and to discover shorter trading routes that, in the midst of a tremendous struggle for independence, their merchants were able to finance at great cost three expeditions to locate a route to China through the ice-fields and inhospitable seas which lay to the northward of the Eurasian continent. The Dutch merchant marine developed rapidly. Their ships were small, seaworthy, and well-handled. Their crews were real seamen.
As the Pope had divided the outlying areas of the world between Spain and Portugal, there was no “open door” for the Dutch merchants. There was none of the fair competition that we desire today. The Dutch had to be prepared to defend themselves while trading with native potentates, and thus their expeditions into the East Indies were both trading ventures and naval campaigns. Their fleets were prepared equally to trade or fight. Herman Wolfert and Matelieff de Jongh conducted splendid naval campaigns in addition to filling their holds with precious spices, and Jacob Van Heemskerk, with two little galleons, took a great Portuguese carrack richly ladened with the produce of China. While these combined trading and war vessels were able to hold their own in distant seas, at home the fleets of Spain, and later England, rendered it necessary that vessels be built exclusively for naval use in order to protect the merchant vessels as they commenced or returned from their extended cruises. The East Indies gradually came under Dutch protectorate, and the exclusive right to trade in those waters was another great asset to their sea power, as it developed commerce and provided naval and commercial bases.
Sea power built up the Netherlands into one of the great powers of Europe. Motley, somewhat condensed, thus described its potent influence upon this little country:
The foundation of the national wealth, the source of the apparently fabulous power by which the Republic had at last overthrown her gigantic antagonist, was the ocean. The Republic was seaborn and sea-sustained. She had nearly one hundred thousand sailors and three thousand ships. The sailors were the boldest, the best disciplined, and the most experienced in the world, whether for peaceful seafaring or ocean warfare. The Republic had the carrying trade for all nations.
Feeling its very existence dependent upon commerce, it had strode centuries in advance of the contemporary world in the liberation of trade. Every article of necessity or luxury known was to be purchased in profusion and at reasonable prices in the warehouses of Holland. In commerce, as in war, the naval supremacy of the Republic was indisputable. It was easy for the states to place two thousand vessels of war in commission, if necessary, of tonnage varying from four hundred to twelve hundred tons, to man them with the hardiest and boldest sailors in the world, and to despatch them with promptness to any quarter of the globe. It is customary to speak of the natural resources of a country as furnishing a guaranty of material prosperity. But here was a republic almost without natural resources, which had yet supplied by human intelligence and thrift what a niggard nature had denied.
In later years the Dutch merchants, rolling in unheard-of riches, forgot that sea power depended upon a navy, and that commerce and a merchant marine alone could not make a country prosperous and great. De Witt wrote in this period of Dutch decadence:
Never in time of peace and from fear of rupture will they take resolutions strong enough to lead them to pecuniary sacrifices beforehand. The character of the Dutch is such that, unless danger stares them in the face, they arc indisposed to lay out money for their own defense.
Once the British Navy, after a long succession of naval wars, was able to gain the edge over their Dutch opponents, the descent of the Netherlands from its position as a great power was inevitable and rapid.
England became a great commercial power slightly after the meteoric rise of the Dutch Republic. At that day, the English race was not so distinctly commercial as the Dutch, and had greater military instincts. Thus their seamen did not at first engage in distant trade to the same degree as did the Dutch. On the other hand, they devoted more of their energy to semi-piratical attacks on Spanish trade and on their outlying possessions, Sir Francis Drake being notable for such expeditions. The British thus at the time of the Spanish Armada were rather farther advanced in naval development than were their Dutch allies. The subsequent rise of Dutch sea power, however, soon inclined naval supremacy also to the Orange standard, and for many years the development of British sea power was held back by the overpowering competition of their continental rivals.
This rivalry between England and Holland for supremacy in sea power caused a long series of wars in which the English finally proved successful. This was due largely to the internal deterioriation of the Dutch Navy toward the end of the seventeenth century. Once the Dutch Navy was vanquished, cruel navigation laws struck down her commerce and ruined her merchant marine. Her ships had to salute the British ensign when met on the high seas. As Great Britain’s sea power rose to unparalleled heights its sagacious statesmen never neglected to increase the Royal Navy, keeping its development in step with the rise of their commerce and merchant shipping. The English had learned how these three great elements of sea power were dependent upon each other. Commerce made financial gains which supported the merchant marine and the navy. The merchant marine fostered commerce, supplied men for naval mobilizations and provided troop and supply ships for military and naval campaigns. The navy protected commerce and the merchant marine in both peace and war. The great colonial development of the British empire likewise strengthened and reenforced all three of these elements of sea power.
In the numerous wars of the two centuries ending with Napoleon’s downfall in 1815 the Royal Navy became the leading element of British sea power, because it was vital to security, whereas commerce was vital only to prosperity. Thus we see the real purpose of the navigation laws was to maintain a merchant marine capable of supporting the navy in war. The fostering of peacetime commerce was a distinctly secondary mission. Whenever the two missions came in conflict the navy was given the precedence. In 1792 Reeves wrote:
Our ancestors considered the defense of this island from foreign invasion as the first law in the national policy. Judging that the dominion of the land could not be preserved without possessing that of the sea, they made every effort to procure to the nation a maritime power of its own. They wished that the merchants should own as many ships, and employ as many mariners as possible. To induce, and sometimes to force, them to this application of their capital, restrictions and prohibitions were devised. The interests of commerce were often sacrificed to this object.
Due to this wise policy the carrying of British trade by vessels under foreign flags decreased from fifty per cent in 1651 to less than eight per cent in 1791.
On many occasions after our independence the British could have greatly increased their
commerce had they permitted our vessels to carry their trade; they consistently refused this because of their fear that increase of our shipping would tend to reduce the number of British merchant vessels and seamen. In 1785 John Adams wrote:
Their direct object is not so much the increase of their own wealth, ships, or sailors, as the diminution of ours. A jealousy of our naval power is the true motive, the real passion which actuated them. They consider the United States as their rival, and the most dangerous rival they have in the world.
The British also were greatly concerned that their merchant seamen should join our ships because of the higher pay and thus deplete the personnel supply for their fleets. This is the reason they so strongly insisted on the right to impress English seamen on American ships. So vital was this policy to Britain’s security that rather than yield they submitted to the adverse commercial effects of Jefferson’s embargo and eventually to the disadvantages of war with the United States when Napoleon, at the height of his power, was commencing the Russian campaign with half a million men under his eagles.
From the very date of their founding the American colonies took to the sea. Their people were seafaring by nature, their precarious hold on the coast depended on their shipping, and forests of America provided the finest timber for planking, beams, and spars. For many years every pine tree over two feet in diameter was marked with an arrow and reserved for the spars of the Royal Navy. Tar, pitch and turpentine were available in unlimited quantities. As early as 1639 New England exempted shipwrights from compulsory military service. In 1668 Sir Joshua Child wrote:
Of all the American plantations, His Majesty has none so apt for the building of ships as New England; nor none comparably so qualified for the breeding of seamen, not only by reason of the natural industry of the people, but principally by reason of their cod and mackerel fisheries, and in my opinion there is nothing more prejudicial and in prospect more dangerous to any mother kingdom than the increase of shipping in her colonics, plantations or provinces.
In 1698 a colonial governor wrote:
I believe I may venture to say there are more good vessels belonging to the town of Boston than to all Scotland and Ireland unless one should reckon small craft, such as herring boats.
In 1700 Boston had 194 seagoing vessels and New York had 124. In 1769 the col-
onies built 389 vessels of 20,000 tons and shipbuilding increased until in 1772 the total tonnage built was 26,544. One-third the vessels flying the British flag were of American construction. When the Revolution broke out Massachusetts had one seagoing vessel for every 100 inhabitants.
During the war our merchant vessels became privateers and, according to Maclay, took three times as many prizes as did our small and generally inefficient Navy. In 1781 there were no less than 449 American privateers scouring the oceans. The war, of course, practically destroyed our commerce and during the uncertain years until the adoption of the constitution our shipping dwindled and our Navy was abolished.
It may be well imagined that we received scant encouragement from Great Britain now that we were independent, when even as colonies the mother country kept our wings clipped. A cynical speech by Lord Sheffield in Parliament in 1784 well shows the British viewpoint. He said:
It is not probable that the American States will have a very free trade in the Mediterranean. It will not be to the interest of any of the great maritime powers to protect them from the Barbary States. If they know their interests, they will not encourage the Americans to be carriers. That the Barbary States arc advantageous to maritime powers is certain.
After the adoption of the Constitution the Congress by the Act of July 4, 1789, laid the foundation of our merchant marine by establishing a tariff on imports and allowing a discount of ten per cent on such duties where the goods were imported in vessels owned and built by American citizens. To specially encourage the tea trade the duty on this product when imported in foreign bottoms was made over twice as much as when carried by American ships. The merchant marine grew like a mushroom as a result of this act. "The growth of American shipping from 1789 to 1807,” said Mr. H. C. Adams, “is without parallel in the history of the commercial world.” The little town of Salem in 1807 alone had 252 vessels of 43,570 tons.
This wonderful expansion was due to several causes. First, our people were seamen by instinct. Second, we had excellent resources for ship building. Third, the great wars in Europe, involving practically all the nations, gave neutrals a great opportunity. In speaking of this wonderful opportunity for American ship-owners, Mc- Master says:
In two years, almost the whole carrying trade of Europe was in their hands. The merchant flag of every belligerent save England fell in their bands.
But this mushroom growth of our merchant service did not rest on a secure basis. First, our shipping was attacked by privateers and pirates. Second, our ships were searched by British naval vessels and our seamen impressed. Third, our shipping was seized by each belligerent for entering the ports of its enemies.
At first we had no Navy whatever to resist these attacks on our shipping. Our prosperity due to increased shipping and commerce would have permitted the building up of a powerful fleet. In 1794 Gouverneur Morris, the noted financier, wrote:
I believe that we could maintain twelve ships- of-the-line, perhaps twenty, with a due proportion of frigates and smaller vessels. And I am tolerably certain that, while the United States of America pursue a just and liberal conduct, with twenty sail-of-the-line at sea, no nation on earth will dare to insult them.
Had our Congress listened to this wise counsel we would soon have built up a sea power which would certainly have had an incalculable effect upon our national development. Finally, upon Washington’s recommendation, six frigates were authorized, with the provision that their construction should be stopped as soon as a treaty was made with the Mediterranean pirates. This treaty was arranged at a cost of about $1,000,000 and in January, 1798, the Crescent frigate accordingly sailed for Algiers. An old newspaper says:
The Crescent is a present from the United States to the Dey as a compensation for delay in not fulfilling our treaty obligations in proper time. The Crescent has many valuable presents for the Dey, and when she sailed was supposed to be worth at least $300,000. Twenty-six barrels of dollars constituted a part of her cargo. It is worthy of remark that the captain, chief of the officers and many of the privates of the Crescent frigate have been prisoners at Algiers.
Surely no captain had a sadder duty than to surrender his ship under such disgraceful conditions.
Fortunately seizures of our shipping by French privateers and cruisers caused three of our frigates and some smaller vessels to be completed and these few ships acted so vigorously that France quickly ordered her vessels to cease their attacks.
Marvin says:
Perhaps the greatest and most enduring result of the ocean war with France was its demonstration of the intimate relationship of a merchant marine and a fighting navy. But for our spirited resistance France in 1798 would have first destroyed our West India carrying, and then turned her cruisers and privateers loose upon our coastwise trade and our profitable traffic with the ports of Britain and North Europe.
Our Navy next tried to solve the difficult problem presented by the Mediterranean pirates and in a long four-years’ war greatly curbed their power. But now Jefferson’s pacifism and his opinion as to the "ruinous folly of a navy,” reduced our naval forces and, while still adequate against pirates, they were helpless against the might of Great Britain. In fact, they could not even keep their own seamen from being forcibly impressed, much less defend our merchant vessels from this intolerable and insulting procedure. New York was blockaded by two British frigates. One of their midshipmen wrote:
Every morning at daybreak we set about arresting the progress of all the vessels we saw, firing off guns to the right and left to make every ship that was running in heave to or wait until we had leisure to send a boat on board to see, in our lingo, what she was made of. I have frequently known a dozen and sometimes a couple of dozen ships lying a league or two off the port, losing their fair wind, their tide, and, worse than all, their market for many hours, sometimes the whole day, before our search was completed.
Jefferson’s answer to these insults was an embargo which in one year brought our foreign trade from $246,000,000 to $79,000,000. An English traveler from New York wrote:
The port, indeed, was full of ships but they were dismantled and laid up; their decks were cleared, their hatches fastened down, and scarcely a sailor was to be found on board; the grass had begun to grow upon the wharves.
As soon as matters were partly patched up with Great Britain, Napoleon showed his contempt for our weakness by seizing at one time 134 American vessels and all our cargoes, a loss to our people of over $10,000,000, for which sum we could have built Morris’ twenty sail-of-the-line. Now the British renewed their seizures and restrictions, and finally in 1812 after all Jefferson’s pacifism, we were driven into the war he so feared. During these years our Navy had been growing weaker and weaker and the war which we ourselves declared found us completely unprepared. A large number of our ships were in no condition for sea and most of them were lacking in personnel. Even the Constitution had to ship a new crew of merchant seamen for her first voyage.
Under such conditions it is not surprising that in 1814 our foreign trade dropped to less than one-twelfth its figure for 1807. Our ports were subjected to such a close blockade that even our naval vessels had difficulty in getting to sea and, of course, commerce under such conditions was impossible. Even the coasting trade was ruined. However, war was better than embargo, for our seamen and ships were ideally fitted for privateering, which both inflicted losses on the enemy and at least paid for the upkeep of our vessels and the pay of the seamen, and in many cases brought fortune to venturesome shipowners. Our 500 privateers roamed every sea and took about 1,500 prizes, valued at $39,000,000. The Grand Turk made no less than thirty prizes; the America took twenty-six and actually brought into American ports property valued at considerably over $1,000,000. These operations, together with the effective cruises of the regular Navy, which forced the British to adopt the costly convoy system, sent up the price of flour in England to $58 a barrel, while even the close British blockade of our ports could not force it above $12 in any part of the United States. The merchants of Glasgow adopted the following resolution:
That the number of privateers with which our channels have been infested, the audacity with which they have approached our coasts and the success with which their enterprise has been attended, have proved injurious to our commerce, humbling to our pride, and discreditable to the directors of the naval power of the British nation, whose flag, till of late, waved over every sea and triumphed over every rival. That there is reason to believe that in the short space of less than twenty-four months, above 800 vessels have been captured by that power whose maritime strength we have hitherto impolitically held in contempt.
On the other hand it must be recognized that the cream of our seamen was drawn into privateering by the higher pay, and for this reason our naval vessels often found difficulty in completing their crews. On the whole, privateering in 1812-15 had a very favorable effect and, due to our lack of a powerful navy, was probably our most deadly weapon.
W. L. Marvin in the following table shows the rise and fall of our foreign commerce and shipping from 1789 to 1814:
Year | Tonnage of | Foreign | Per cent of Commerce |
| |
| Shipping | Commerce | Carried in Our Ships Imports Exports |
| |
1789 | 123,893 | $ 52,253,098 | 17.5 | 30.0 | |
1792 | 411.438 | 67.0 | 61.0 | ||
I79S | 529,471 | 117,746,140 | 92.0 | 88.0 | |
1798 | 603,376 | 129,879,111 | 91.0 | 87.0 | |
1801 | 630,558 | 204,384,024 | 91.0 | 87.0 | |
1804 | 660,514 | 162,699,074 | 91.0 | 86.0 | |
1807 | 810,163 | 246,834,150 | 94.0 | 90.0 | |
l8lO | 981,019 | 152,157,970 | 930 85.0 | 90.0 80.0 | |
1812 | 758,636 | 115,557,236 | |||
1814 | 674,633 | 19,892,441 | 77.0 | 71.0 | |
After the war our merchant marine again had a rapid growth. Our commerce increased with the development of our country and the growth of our shipping. Fortunately there were no great wars for a long period and our Navy was maintained in a condition adequate for protecting our shipping against pirates. David Porter virtually cleared the West Indies of these pests in the early 1820’s. Our whalers covered every sea, so that in 1842 we owned 652 out of the 882 whaling vessels of the world. Our ships were rapidly driving the British from the seas. In 1827 the London Times said:
Twelve years of peace, and what is the situation of Great Britain? The shipping interest, the cradle of our navy, is half ruined. Our commercial monopoly exists no longer; and thousands of our manufacturers are starving, or seeking redemption in foreign lands.
The reason for this was that Americans could both build and operate ships cheaper than the British. In 1836 our foreign commerce reached a value of over $300,000,000. An unusual example of Yankee ingenuity was the shipping of ice on a large scale from Boston to Havana and New Orleans; a ffcw cargoes were carried even to Calcutta. Another was the passage of the steamer Savannah across the Atlantic in 1819, a feat not duplicated for nineteen years. In 1816 we established the first line of sailing packets from New York to Liverpool which sailed on a prearranged schedule. One vessel of this line served for twenty-nine years and made 116 round trips to Europe without, it is said, losing a seaman, a sail, or a spar.
Our warehouses held the products of the globe. Marvin writes:
Very interesting and odorous places were those old Salem warehouses, where under one roof would be gathered the characteristic products of the four corners of the world. Hemp from Luzon, pepper from Sumatra, coffee from Arabia, palm oil from the west coast of Africa, cotton from Bombay, duck and iron from the Baltic, tallow from Madagascar, salt from Cadiz, wine from Portugal and the Madciras, figs, raisins, and almonds from the Mediterranean, teas and silks from China, sugar, rum, and molasses from the West Indies, ivory and gum-copal from Zanzibar, rubber, hides, and wool from South America, whale oil from the Arctic and Antarctic, and sperm from the South Seas. It is probable that no equal population, on a narrow mile of shore anywhere, conducted such a wonderfully varied commerce.
British merchants, seeing that they could not compete with us in sailing ships, turned as a last resort to the steamer; if steam were to supplant sail, their superior facilities for working steel and iron would give them an advantage in construction and operation. In 1839 the British government granted a subsidy of $425,000 to the Cunard Company to establish a trans-Atlantic steamer service and later this subsidy was increased to $850,000. This gave the British an advantage in quick service until 1845, when, as a result of subsidies by our government, we commenced competing with them in steamer service across the Atlantic.
In 1850 the great Collins line of steamers was established under liberal subsidies and soon wrested supremacy from its British competitors, and brought our total steamer tonnage to an equality with that of Great Britain. The California gold rush in 1849 greatly increased the demand for sailing vessels to be used for the long voyage round the Horn and the beautiful clipper ship was the result. The Crimean War of 1854 increased the demand for clipper ships, which the French and British used for troop transport; in 1855 we built 507 sailing vessels for our foreign trade. The clipper ships also became famous in the China trade; the Nanches made the voyage from Canton to New York in the record time of seventy-six days.
Again, however, our merchant marine was to feel the effects of war. As early as 1856 its death-knell was sounded. The South saw that in the approaching conflict the steamers which plied from Northern ports would be used to their disadvantage and the subsidy was reduced. This, coupled with two maritime disasters, threw the Collins line into bankruptcy. British subsidies had won the day. The Civil War gave them the chance to deliver the coup-de-grace. The Florida and Alabama were fitted out in British ports to prey upon our commerce. Our Navy was not powerful enough to threaten retaliation for this unfriendly conduct nor was it sufficient to protect our shipping against the depredations of these swift cruisers. The Florida took fourteen prizes on her first cruise, the Shenandoah thirty-eight. The Alabama literally swept our shipping from the seas. In all, Confederate cruisers destroyed 110,000 tons of our shipping. But this was not the worst. The moral effects were, as usual, greater than the actual results. During the war we sold 750,000 tons of shipping to foreign owners. In 1861 our ocean fleet was 2,496,894 tons; by 1866 it was 1,387,756. Great Britain paid $15,500,000 for her unneutral conduct. It was the best investment this sagacious country ever made. The ruin of our merchant marine would have been a bargain at ten times the price.
While our Navy was thus powerless to save the merchant marine from Confederate cruisers, the merchant marine was furnishing the Navy with half its ships, four-fifths of its officers and five-sixths of its men.
1865: | Tonnage of | Foreign | Per cent of Commerce Carried | |
Year | Shipping | Commerce | in Our Ships Imports Exports | |
1815 | 854,39s | $165,599,037 | 77 | 71 |
1820 | 583,657 | 144,141,669 | 90 | 89 |
1825 | 665,409 | 180,927,643 | 95 | 89 |
1830 | 537,563 | 134,391,691 | 94 | 86 |
*835 | 788,173 | 251,980,097 | 90 | 77 |
1840 | 762,838 | 221,927,638 | 87 | 80 |
184S | 904,476 1,439,694 | 219,224,433 | 87 | 76 |
1850 | 317,885,252 | 78 | 65 | |
1855 | 2,348,358 | 476,718,211 | 77 | 74 |
i860 | 3,379,396 | 687,192,176 | 63 | 70 |
1865 | 1,518,350 | 404,774,883 | 30 | 26 |
The following data, furnished by Marvin, traces the course of our merchant marine during the eventful years from 1815 to after the war the merchant shipping situation grew worse and worse. In the transition from sail to steam and from wood to iron and steel, our builders fell far behind. In 1870, 82 per cent of the vessels building in Great Britain were of iron, as against 8 per cent in the United States. The conquest of the West, with its attendant increase in our natural resources, turned for a time our tide of development across the continent rather than across the seas. Our merchant marine decreased so rapidly that in 1898 practically no merchant ships were available to transport our troops to Cuba; in 1900 only 9 per cent of our foreign commerce was carried in American bottoms. The building up of our coasting and Great Lakes shipping, which was protected by law from foreign competition, to a slight extent counterbalanced the disappearance of our flag from distant seas.
Meanwhile, the Spanish-American War had proved the utility of a navy and when finally we were drawn into the World War, our situation was just the reverse from those which existed in 1812 and 1861, for now we had a navy without a merchant marine.
The German submarine campaign had so decreased Allied merchant shipping that defeat was threatened. The extent to which we could use our Army and Navy in Europe depended upon the number of merchant vessels which could be used for their transport and maintenance. In December, 1917, Lloyd George said:
Victory is now a question of tonnage, and tonnage is victory. Nothing else can defeat us now but shortage of tonnage.
At last we perceived the value of the merchant marine as an essential instrument of war. Our first problem was to build one.
But a merchant marine could not be built overnight. First, we had practically no shipyards. Second, we had very few people who even knew anything about building ships. Third, we lacked the materials for ship construction. Fourth, we had neither officers nor crews to operate the ships once they were constructed.
Numerous shipbuilding plants were built along both our sea frontiers. Workmen were recruited and trained; new cities sprang up to house them. As steel was all- important for every kind of war munitions, we built many vessels of wood and concrete because these materials were more available. The Navy, instead of being assisted by the merchant marine to obtain the officers and men necessary for its war expansion, now had to train the personnel for the expanding merchant marine and to operate its vessels. This we could do only because the Grand Fleet held in port the German surface craft, thus allowing the greater part of our battle fleet to be used as a gigantic training squadron to provide the men for our merchant shipping and destroyers. The expansion of our merchant shipping was a terribly costly and tedious procedure.
Fortunately, two unusually lucky circumstances favored us. First, there was a great fleet of German vessels in our ports and, while their crews made some efforts to wreck their machinery, the Navy quickly effected repairs and put the ships in operation. Second, exercising the right of angary we "took over” a large number of Dutch vessels which, due to the submarine warfare, were lying inactive in our ports.
Our emergency fleet cost us the stupendous sum of $3,500,000,000. It served its purpose in the war and, while mistakes were made, they were less than might have been expected when one considers how completely unprepared we were to build or operate merchant shipping.
After the war we seemed well established as a sea power. Mr. A. H. Haag says:
Many believed that the United States would at last take her place as a maritime nation now that she had this huge fleet of ships. However, only a small percentage of the vessels constructed during the emergency were suitable for competitive purposes in the world's trade routes.
The wood, composite and concrete ships soon deteriorated and even the steel ships, built in great haste in standardized classes, were little adapted to peacetime needs. All were very slow. Of vessels of twelve knots or over we have but 234 to 1,280 for Great Britain. Mr. Haag says:
The gradual trend in the last decade has been toward cargo liner service and today this service constitutes 75 per cent of the world’s shipping. Other nations, realizing this change, lost no time after the end of hostilities in constructing and acquiring suitable types for this service, while we pondered as to how our emergency ships could best be employed.
Aggregate
Country No. Vessels Gross Tonnage
United States 14 136,884
Great Britain 599 3,607,967
Japan 52 250,856
France 72 448,739
Italy 63 505,845
Germany 172 954,447
During the five-year period from 1922 to 1926 the following ocean-going ships over 2,000 tons have been built:
In 1927 we have built or contracted for four ships, while for Germany the figure is forty-nine and for Great Britain 142.
Just as the change from sail to steam had disastrous effects for our merchant marine, now the change from steam to Diesel propulsion is leaving the United States far in the rear, for 48 per cent of the vessels recently constructed have Diesel engines. However, we still are much ahead of our prewar situation; and the Shipping Board through government subsidy has kept in operation many important lines and services. Our coastwise and lake shipping is excellent. Our tanker fleet is well built and efficiently operated.
Just as we feverishly built up a great merchant marine regardless of cost for temporary war use, so during the great emergency did we build great numbers of submarine chasers, eagleboats, and aircraft of no permanent value to the Navy. While the destroyers built were valuable, the great numbers gave us a surplus in this type which might much better have been applied to cruisers. Work on our great program of battleships and battle cruisers was subordinated to the completion of small craft when, after the war, this program again was actually pushed, we saw practically all these invaluable new ships scrapped in accordance with the Washington agreements. We did obtain, however, a theoretical equality with Great Britain in naval power and it is hoped that we may eventually turn this into an actual equality.
The cessation of shipbuilding after 1921 has now virtually ruined our shipbuilding industry and this creates a very serious situation for both the Navy and the merchant marine. This now is the weakest link in the chain of our sea power. Our cruiser contracts are just keeping alive three of the largest companies. They came too late to save the famous firm of William Cramp and Sons, which has built so many splendid ships for the Navy.
The cost of carrying our foreign commerce is now $600,000,000. It is incomprehensible that we would let foreign countries control our railroads and allow us to use them only on their terms. However, merchant shipping is only the extension of our railroads over the high seas to other countries. It is undoubtedly fair that the control of this shipping should be equally divided between two countries thus connected. It is vitally essential that we should transport half our exports and imports in our own bottoms, for only so can we insure fairness in commercial competition and be assured of marketing our exports and obtaining our vital imports.
Today we export nearly $5,000,000,000 worth of American goods annually. It is estimated that an average of 60,000 men in every state are engaged in the production of this surplus for export. If there is a breakdown in oversea transportation, these men will suffer and the industries in which they are employed be ruined. Only twenty-seven per cent of our exports are carried in American vessels.
The only way in which we may be insured against interruptions in transportation is to have under the American flag sufficient bottoms to carry at least one-half our exports and imports. This will provide for ordinary needs and allow for a possible change of routes to cover emergencies. At the beginning of the World War we carried only about ten per cent of our oversea trade under our flag. German shipping was driven from the seas, and a great part of the British merchant marine was used for the transportation of troops and service as auxiliary cruisers. Thus our foreign trade was deprived of most of its carriers and suffered great losses. "It is a conservative estimate in my judgment,” said Senator James, “that our lack of shipping at the beginning of the World War has cost our people more than $7,500,000,000.” Over half our Army was carried to Europe by British vessels. While this was a confession of weakness from a military viewpoint it also cost us heavily financially and gave this business to English shipping companies for good profits.
In 1922 our coal strike created shortages of fuel along the Atlantic coast. Foreign vessels appeared to have our industries in their power and increased their rates for the transportation of coal from England. The Shipping Board then declared its willingness to transport all this fuel at reasonable rates. Although our ships carried only one- third of the amount imported, its competition forced down the rates charged by foreign vessels and thus effected a great saving for the entire country.
In the fall of 1924 an unusually big wheat crop provided 50,000,000 bushels more than could be used in this country. This threatened to force down the price to an amount which would have ruined many wheat growers. The Shipping Board supplied vessels to export the surplus wheat and saved the situation. Again, when the British coal strike compelled foreign vessels to be diverted from their usual routes to bring fuel to England—a real example of “carrying coals to Newcastle”—the Shipping Board provided the necessary vessels to export our cotton and wheat.
The expansion of our merchant marine is necessary also for national defense. In these days the combatant ships of the Navy are absolutely dependent upon vessels of the merchant types for their supply and repair. If a fleet is to leave its home bases it must have oilers to carry its fuel; refrigerator ships for fresh meat; distilling ships for fresh water; cargo ships for general stores; and repair ships and tenders for making emergency repairs. To carry the accompanying expeditionary forces of troops and marines large fast passenger vessels must be converted into transports. Fast vessels of medium size must be used for carrying and laying the mines which have become such an important factor in naval warfare. Large combined passenger cargo vessels are required to carry seaplanes and their operating crews. These vessels correspond to the railroads and motor trucks required to maintain an army in the field and are just as essential. The Navy cannot afford to keep all these non-combatant ships in commission in peacetime and must rely upon the merchant marine to have them available for transfer into the Navy when the emergency arises. The officers and crews of the merchant vessels designated for such transfer should be members of the naval reserve so that when the ships are commissioned by the Navy they will already be manned by crews familiar with their peacetime operation and trained during peacetime for their new naval duties. The limitation of navies by international agreement makes it particularly important that we receive support from our merchant shipping equal to that which the British Navy may receive from its merchant marine.