A little over a century ago American merchant ships captured first position on the seas of the world and so far outdistanced competition that there was no second. Previously, for three centuries, domination of the valuable trade routes of the oceans had been the ambition of all the great nations. Sailing ships were the only means of ocean transportation and the United States designed and built the type of vessel known as the “clipper ship”—the fastest ship afloat. Thus began the “clipper ship” era in which we Americans were able to deliver goods to any part of the world faster than any other nation. Our Merchant Marine enjoyed great prosperity and won great prestige with ships which carried more canvas on taller masts and longer spars than any of their competitors. The hard-bitten, swashbuckling clipper crews were admired and envied in all ports of the globe.
Our supremacy of the seas, however, did not long endure. The year 1839 brought the steam vessel and from that year our Merchant Marine began to lose the prestige so hardly won. This loss was in no small measure due to the smug attitude and lack of foresight on the part of our ocean transport companies. They greeted the first steam vessels with open derision. Often one of their “clippers” would leave port after the steamer, overhaul her at sea, and with a figurative thumbing of the nose, rapidly draw away. Our sailing men believed not only that they were supreme but that they would remain supreme; that this new type of ship could not possibly outdo them. They were incredulous when they heard that steamers of twice the size and speed of the “clippers” were being contemplated. They continued to rely on their first love.
On the other hand the British, fired with the determination to push us off the seas, slowly but surely developed the steam vessel and almost immediately began to break our transatlantic crossing records. In 1839 our sailing ships made the westbound crossing in 22 days and east- bound in 18 days, but steam, in the same year, propelled two British ships across in 13 days.
American shipping soon faded into obscurity while England captured first place, with Germany, France, and other nations challenging her position. During the last century each American generation has heard the cry “Britannia rules the waves,” but as Mark Twain remarks about the weather, “did nothing about it.” The advantages of steam over sail were so great, and the victory won by the foreign nations in capturing important trade routes of the ocean was so complete, that America gave up seafaring and turned to the development of its domestic railroads and its internal resources.
The battle waged by foreign countries for greater speed along the ocean trade routes continued—paddle wheels with single screw—higher speed, improved power plants with twin screws—greater and greater speed, superheated steam, turbine engines and quadruple screws— until today we have the superliners, Queen Mary, Normandie, Rex, and Euro pa, all crossing the North Atlantic in 4 to 5 days.
Today—1938—the United States of America faces a greater need for international trade than ever before in its history. World markets are necessary to take care of manufactured and agricultural surpluses, and yet in the face of this serious situation we have to depend to a great extent on the ships of other nations to carry our commercial mails, commercial salesmen, and cargoes. Instead of being supreme as of old and having the cream of ocean shipping, our Merchant Marine is in the doldrums.
However, change is the essence of all things and once again America is in a position to take first place in world commerce, this time through aviation. The battle for supremacy and domination of the valuable trade routes across the ocean is being renewed with added vigor. The lanes of traffic above the ocean will soon be utilized to transport passengers, mail and express, in the new and ultramodern vehicle of commerce—the ocean air transport.
There can be no doubt that a new era in aviation and transatlantic shipping is at hand, for the giant flying boat, with its speed, its load-carrying capacity, its long cruising range and excellent performance, puts the United States face to face with another important problem in its foreign trade and maritime transportation system.
If our Merchant Marine is to keep pace with the type of service demanded by the traveler, shipper, and mail user, we must take advantage of the added speed made available by these giant flying boats so that we can offer a well-rounded transportation service, through the proper coordination of the airplane with improved and more economical ocean vessels.
Intelligent consideration of the possibilities of speeding up travel and commerce across the Atlantic by the use of airliners does not lead one to think that the steamship will ever be entirely supplanted by air-borne vessels, but does indicate that steamships will have to concede certain advantages to airliners which offer much greater speed in transportation and communication over great distances. Herein lies the all-important question as to how these two forms of transportation may be co-ordinated in the interest of our foreign trade and our national defense.
It is reasonable to assume that before many years have elapsed our transatlantic transportation will be most successfully operated with several types of craft which will not only make it a more economical type of transportation, but afford better and more flexible service to the public. We have every reason to forecast at this stage that in the not-far-distant future a large percentage of the first-class transatlantic passenger travel will move with first-class mail in aircraft. Other passengers with time and leisure at their disposal, or those desiring to travel more cheaply, will be transported in speedy and more economically operated steamships. Freight will continue to be transported in slower types of cargo vessels.
How can aviation across the Atlantic Ocean be an adjunct to American flag shipping? The answer is that whether or not it becomes a separate and independent unit or a part of the existing Merchant Marine, it will have to be co-ordinated with the Merchant Marine if we are to have a sufficiently strong unified overseas transport system with which to obtain and keep the lead over the keen competition of European nations. These nations have not only challenged our position on the sea with highly subsidized palatial liners like the Queen Mary and the Normandie, but they are now planning to win their place in the battle for supremacy in the air lanes across the ocean with air transports.
The Maritime Commission, in its recent studies of aircraft as applied to merchant shipping, found that a fleet of 18 flying boats on a daily service of three planes a day would offer the same total passenger capacity per year as a superliner, at a production cost for building the planes estimated at $18,000,000, as against an American production cost of $50,000,000 for a superliner of the Queen Mary type. Herein we get a glimpse of the economic possibilities of flying-boat operation from the standpoint of investment alone. We have no reason to ridicule the thought of eventually operating three or more schedules a day across the Atlantic, when we recall the fact that there are now 12 schedules a day operated across the North American Continent by our domestic airlines over routes that offer fewer potential passengers and represent approximately the same flying distance as the route from the Atlantic seaboard of the United States to that of continental Europe.
If we conclude that the best interests of the nation and the traveling public will be served by operating ocean air transports in co-operation with our Merchant Marine, we shall be encouraged to find numerous existing facilities of our maritime system which can be contributed to facilitate successful flying-boat operation, and such co-operative operation of the water and air vessel into a co-ordinated transportation system would enable us to win our way back to a leading place in foreign commerce. Practically all of these facilities, if not used in such a program, will have to be duplicated at considerable expense as we develop our overseas flying as a separate merchant marine of the air.
All of our Merchant Marine units operating on regular trade routes have established harbor facilities; they have built up adequate long-range radio communication which could, at small additional cost, be extended to gather and report weather information for aircraft; they have long standing diplomatic relationships with European countries; and last but not least, they have experienced personnel throughout Europe trained in international transportation. These facilities are all part and parcel of our Merchant Marine and are essential elements to overseas aircraft operation.
In any national planning for the future of our overseas flying, we should bear in mind that now as never before we have an opportunity to make the United States the greatest overseas transportation nation in the world, whether by means of an independent aerial marine, or one coordinated with and operated as a unit of the nation’s Merchant Marine service. This opportunity depends on the proper handling of our negotiations with foreign nations in the matter of reciprocal arrangements or permits for flying boats to operate to and from our shores. Many of our friendly neighbors across the Atlantic with their supersteamships and larger merchant fleets are planning to supplement their ocean services with flying boats. England has already sent one of the best of its aerial merchant marine units to our shores, and it is now operating in regular service between the United States and Bermuda. The French, the Germans, and the Italians are making preparations for experimental transatlantic flights this year. Our Merchant Marine, therefore, not only faces competition composed of larger and faster surface vessels, but potential competition in the air.
The thing for us to consider now is, shall we let the important aerial trade routes be taken over by foreign flag airlines and be developed to the point where we cannot economically operate our own seaplanes in these trades because of prior ample service provided by the aforesaid nations; or shall we insist that at least one half of the overseas potential air business be transported in American equipment? It is the American traveler and American commerce that our foreign neighbors are after, and why should they not be after it since we’ve permitted them to carry the bulk of it for the last one hundred years.
Shouldn’t we guard very zealously these new trade routes of the air and see to it that for every schedule the American government allows a foreign flag aircraft to America, we reserve the right to operate at least a like number of schedules with American aircraft and personnel to those nations? Think what an opportunity that would give the United States to protect its transportation interests and foreign trade relations, on every trade route.
Suppose we had done this in the early days of our Merchant Marine. We would now be superior to any single nation and on a par with all Europe as a group, and America would be the leading maritime power of the world. Aviation, properly co-ordinated and encouraged, can put us in this shining position on the orbit of world shipping. Are we to let this opportunity escape us? We think not. The United States of America cannot fail to take advantage of it after waiting one hundred years for just the chance now presented.
The situation therefore is not primarily a matter of “how transatlantic aviation may become an important adjunct to merchant shipping,” but how, when, and to what extent the United States will take advantage of the developments in long- range ocean air transportation and thereby regain the supremacy which this nation enjoyed by its own unaided merit throughout the “clipper ship” era—an era during which the United States was first on the seas of the world and there was no second.
We have the engineers, the designers, the manufacturers of the planes; we have the skilled and experienced personnel; and we have the financial ability to develop and operate these sea air routes. We need legislation and must have it in order to insure orderly progress and advancement of ocean air transportation.
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AIRCRAFT AND THE MERCHANT MARINE
Transoceanic aviation looms as an important competitor of express passenger vessels of the superliner type. Flying boats, carrying 40 to 50 passengers and capable of crossing the Atlantic Ocean in 20 hours, are promised for the near future. These vessels, it is claimed, will reduce the cost of carrying a passenger to Europe to about half that of the superliner, while carrying him there six times as fast. Except for a possible loss of mail revenues, it is not believed that the flying boat will injure to any appreciable extent the type of passenger vessels recommended for the American Merchant Marine. So far as freight vessels are concerned, aviation is obviously of no importance at this time.
In view of the fact that aircraft has a definite place in overseas trade, and in view of the further fact that there is a close relationship between shipping and over-water flying, it is recommended that the responsibility for developing this new form of transport be lodged in the Maritime Commission.—Joseph P. Kennedy. Press Release.