ations and sails fast. I shall copper her, put
her in ballast, trim with L1000 or L1500 sterling in cargo, and
proceed to the Isle of France and Bourbon, where I expect to
sell her, as well as the cargo, at a very handsome profit, and
have no doubt of being well paid for my twelve months' work,
calculating to be with you next August."

[Illustration: AN ARMED CUTTER]

In such enterprises the young American sailors were always
engaging--braving equally the perils of the deep and not less treacherous
reefs and shoals of business but always struggling to become their own
masters to command their own ships, and if possible, to carry their own
cargoes. The youth of a nation that had fought for political independence,
fought themselves for economic independence.

To men of this sort the conditions bred by the steam-carrying trade were
intolerable. To-day a great steamship may well cost $2,000,000. It must
have the favor of railway companies for cargoes, must possess expensive
wharves at each end of its route, must have an army of agents and
solicitors ever engaged upon its business. The boy who ships before the
mast on one of them, is less likely to rise to the position of owner, than
the switchman is to become railroad president--the latter progress has
been known, but of the former I can not find a trace. So comparatively few
young Americans choose the sea for their workshop in this day of steam.

If this book were the story of the merchant marine of all lands and all
peoples, a chapter on the development of the steamship would be, perhaps,
the most important, and certainly the most considerable part of it. But
with the adoption of steam for ocean carriage began the decline of
American shipping, a decline hastened by the use of iron, and then steel,
for hulls. Though we credit ourselves--not without some protest from
England--with the invention of the steamboat, the adaptation of the screw
to the propulsion of vessels, and the invention of triple-expansion
engines, yet it was England that seized upon these inventions and with
them won, and long held, the commercial mastery of the seas. To-day (1902)
it seems that economic conditions have so changed that the shipyards of
the United States will again compete for the business of the world. We are
building ships as good--perhaps better--than can be constructed anywhere
else, but thus far we have not been able to build them as cheap.
Accordingly our builde