upon the high seas which was to endure for more than
a half century. Wars, embargoes, and confiscations might interrupt but
they could not seriously harm it.

In the three years after 1789 the merchant shipping registered for the
foreign trade increased from 123,893 tons to 411,438 tons, presaging a
growth without parallel in the history of the commercial world. Foreign
ships were almost entirely driven out of American ports, and ninety-one
per cent of imports and eighty-six per cent of exports were conveyed
in vessels built and manned by Americans. Before Congress intervened,
English merchantmen had controlled three-fourths of our commerce
overseas. When Thomas Jefferson, as Secretary of State, fought down
Southern opposition to a retaliatory shipping policy, he uttered a
warning which his countrymen were to find still true and apt in the
twentieth century: "If we have no seamen, our ships will be useless,
consequently our ship timber, iron, and hemp; our shipbuilding will be
at an end; ship carpenters will go over to other nations; our young men
have no call to the sea; our products, carried in foreign bottoms,
will be saddled with war-freight and insurance in time of war--and the
history of the last hundred years shows that the nation which is our
carrier has three years of war for every four years of peace."

The steady growth of an American merchant marine was interrupted only
once in the following decade. In the year 1793 war broke out between
England and France. A decree of the National Convention of the French
Republic granted neutral vessels the same rights as those which flew the
tricolor. This privilege reopened a rushing trade with the West Indies,
and hundreds of ships hastened from American ports to Martinique,
Guadeloupe, and St. Lucia.

Like a thunderbolt came the tidings that England refused to look upon
this trade with the French colonies as neutral and that her cruisers
had been told to seize all vessels engaged in it and to search them
for English-born seamen. This ruling was enforced with such barbarous
severity that it seemed as if the War for Independence had been fought
in vain. Without warning, unable to save themselves, great fleets of
Yankee merchantmen were literally swept from the waters of the West
Indies. At St. Eustatius one hundred and thirty of them were condemned.
The judges at Bermuda condemned eleven more. Crews and passengers were
flung ashore without food or clothing, were abused