CHAPTER XIII

THE UNITED STATES


While a navigation code founded in 1790 and 1792, and developed in 1816,
1817, and 1820, after the model of the then existing English code,[FS]
has been retained in modified form through enactments in subsequent
years, a system of general ship-subsidies, though repeatedly proposed,
has never been adopted by the United States. From 1793 to 1866 bounties
were given to fishing vessels and men employed in the bank and other
deep-sea fisheries,[FT] but no subsidies to the merchant marine were
granted till 1845, and these were only postal subsidies--payments in
excess of an equivalent for services to be rendered in ocean
mail-carriage. The law enacted that year had for its declared purpose
the encouragement of American ocean steamship-building and running. With
this act, therefore, the real history of Government aid to domestic
shipping in this country begins.

At the time of the adoption of this policy America was still leading the
world in ocean sailing-ships with her splendid fleets of fast-sailing
packets and "clippers", while England had taken the lead in steamships.
The law of 1845 was the culmination of a move begun in Congress in 1841,
the year after the first Cunarder had crossed from Liverpool to Halifax
and Boston. Its aim was to parry England's bold stroke for maritime
supremacy with her State-aided steamship lines, and directly to "protect
our merchant shipping from this new and strange menace."[FU] The first
move of 1841 was for an appropriation of a million dollars annually for
foreign-mails carriage in American-owned ships.[FU]