The maritime history of the United States is a broad theme within the history of the United States. As an academic subject, it crosses the boundaries of standard disciplines, focusing on understanding the United States' relationship with the oceans, seas, and major waterways of the globe. The focus is on merchant shipping, and the financing and manning of the ships. A merchant marine owned at home is not essential to an extensive foreign commerce. In fact, it may be cheaper to hire other nations to handle the carrying trade than to participate in it directly. On the other hand, there are certain advantages, particularly during time of war, which may warrant an aggressive government encouragement to the maintenance of a merchant marine.Harold Underwood Faulkner, American Economic History, Harper & Brothers Publishers, Copyright 1938, p. 672
History
Early history The maritime history of the United States goes back to the first successful English colony was established in 1607, on the James River at Jamestown. It languished for decades until a new wave of settlers arrived in the late 17th century and set up commercial agriculture based on exports of tobacco to England. Settlers brought horses, cattle, sheep and hogs as well as tools and the current technology to the Americas. From the very first days of the founding of the North American colonies shipbuilding was naturally one of the industries that chiefly engaged the attention of the colonists. At the time of the breaking out of the American Revolution and for a long time afterwards more of the people in New England were actually engaged in shipbuilding and ship sailing than in agriculture, even in spite of the restrictions imposed on the building of ships in the English colonies. The statement is made that at one time during this period Massachusetts was estimated to have one vessel for every hundred of its inhabitants. One out of every four signers of the Declaration of Independence was a shipowner or had been a ship captain.
The 18th century As British colonists before 1776, American merchant vessels had enjoyed the protection of the Royal Navy. Major ports in the Northeast began to specialize in merchant shipping. The main cargoes included tobacco, as well as rice, indigo and naval stores from the Southern colonies. From the other colonies exports included horses, wheat, fish and lumber. By the 1760s New England was the center of a flourishing shipbuilding industry. Imports included all manner of manufactured goods.Samuel Eliot Morison, The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783–1860 (1921) excerpt and text search
Revolutionary War The first war that an organized United States Merchant Marine took part in was the American Revolutionary War, which lasted from 1775 to 1783. In 1775 the Continental Congress and the various colonies issued Letters of Marque to privately owned, armed merchant ships known as privateers, which were outfitted as warships to prey on enemy merchant ships. They interrupted the British supply chain all along the eastern seaboard of the United States and across the Atlantic Ocean and the Merchant Marine's role in war began. This predates both the United States Coast Guard (1790) and the United States Navy (1797). During the American Revolution, American ships came under the aegis of France due to a 1778 Treaty of Alliance between the two countries.See First Barbary War.
1783–1790 By 1783, however, with the end of the Revolution, America became solely responsible for the safety of its own commerce and citizens. Without the means or the authority to field a naval force necessary to protect their ships in the Mediterranean against the Barbary pirates, the nascent U.S. government took a pragmatic, but ultimately self-destructive route. In 1784, the United States Congress allocated money for payment of tribute to the pirates.
Also in 1784, Boston navigators sailed to the Pacific Northwest and opened the U.S. fur trade.
In 1785, the Dey of Algiers took two American ships hostage and demanded US$60,000 in ransom for their crews. Then-ambassador to France Thomas Jefferson argued that conceding the ransom would only encourage more attacks. His objections fell on the deaf ears of an inexperienced American government too riven with domestic discord to make a strong show of force overseas. The U.S. paid Algiers the ransom, and continued to pay up to $1 million per year over the next 15 years for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages. Payments in ransom and tribute to the privateering states amounted to 20 percent of United States government annual revenues in 1800.
Jefferson continued to argue for cessation of the tribute, with rising support from George Washington and others. With the recommissioning of the American navy in 1794 and the resulting increased firepower on the seas, it became more and more possible for America to say "no", although by now the long-standing habit of tribute was hard to overturn. A largely successful undeclared war with French privateers in the late 1790s showed that American naval power was now sufficient to protect the nation's interests on the seas. These tensions led to the First Barbary War in 1801.
The only clause in the treaty of peace (1783) concerning commerce was a stipulation guaranteeing that the navigation of the Mississippi should be forever free to the United States. John Jay at this time had tried to secure some reciprocal trade provisions with Great Britain, but without result. Pitt in 1783 introduced a bill into the British Parliament providing for free trade between the United States and British colonies, but the bill did not pass. Instead, Parliament enacted the Navigation Act 1783 which admitted only British-built ships and crewed ships to British West Indian ports and imposed heavy tonnage dues upon foreign ships in other British ports. This was amplified in 1786 by another act of Parliament designed to prevent the fraudulent registration of American vessels, and by still another act of Parliament in 1787 which prohibited the importation of American goods by way of foreign islands. The favorable features of the old Navigation Acts which had granted bounties and reserved the British markets in certain cases to colonial products were gone; the unfavorable alone were left. The British market was further curtailed by the depression there after 1783. Although the French treaty of 1778 had promised "perfect equality and reciprocity" in commercial relations, it was found impossible to make a commercial treaty upon this basis. Spain demanded as her price for reciprocal trading relations that the United States surrender for twenty-five years the right of navigating the Mississippi, a price which the New England merchants would have been glad to pay. France (1778) and the Dutch Republic (1782) made treaties, but not on even terms; Portugal refused the U.S. advances. Only Sweden (1783) and Prussia (1785) made treaties guaranteeing reciprocal commercial privileges.Harold Underwood Faulkner, American Economic History, Harper & Brothers, 1938, p. 182
The weakness of Congress under the Articles of Confederation prevented retaliation by the central government. Power was repeatedly asked to regulate commerce, but was refused by the states, upon whom rested the carrying out of such commercial treaties as Congress might negotiate. Eventually the states themselves attempted retaliatory measures, and during the years 1783–88, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia levied tonnage dues upon British vessels or discriminating tariffs upon British goods. Whatever effect these efforts might have had were neutralized by the fact that the duties were not uniform, varying in different states from no tariffs whatever to duties of 100 percent. This simply drove British ships to the free or cheapest ports and their goods continued to flood the market. Commercial war between the states followed and turned futility into chaos.
The effect of this trade policy upon American shipping was detrimental. After the passage of the U.S. Constitution in 1789 the Congress was petitioned for relief. On June 5, 1789, a petition from the tradesmen and manufacturers of Boston was sent to the Congress which stated "that the great decrease of American manufactures, and almost total stagnation of American ship-building, urge us to apply to the sovereign Legislature of these States for their assistance to promote these important branches, so essential to our national wealth and prosperity. It is with regret we observe the resources of this country exhausted for foreign luxuries, our wealth expended for various articles which could be manufactured among ourselves, and our navigation subject to the most severe restrictions in many foreign ports, whereby the extensive branch of American ship-building is essentially injured, and a numerous body of citizens, who were formerly employed in its various departments, deprived of their support and dependence..."National State Papers of the United States, 1789–1817, Part II Text of Documents, Administration of George Washington, 1789–1797, 1st Congress, 1st Session, Volume I, March 4, 1789 – August 28, 1789 Michael Glazier, Inc., 1985, p. 113 The congress responded with passage of the Tariff of 1789 which established tonnage rates favorable to American carriers by charging them lower cargo fees than those imposed on foreign boats importing similar goods. Coastal trade was reserved exclusively for American flag vessels.
In 1789, when the Constitution was adopted, the registered tonnage of the United States engaged in foreign trade was 123,893. During the next succeeding eight years it increased 384 percent.
The 1790s
In 1790, federal legislation was enacted pertaining to seamen and desertion. In 1796, federal legislation regarding Seaman's Protection Certificates (also known as Protection papers) was enacted. Immediately after the Revolutionary War the brand-new United States of America was struggling to stay financially afloat. National income was desperately needed and a great deal of this income came from import tariffs. Because of rampant smuggling, the need was immediate for strong enforcement of tariff laws, and on August 4, 1790, the United States Congress, urged on by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, created the Revenue-Marine, later renamed Revenue Cutter Service in 1862. It would be the responsibility of the new Revenue-Marine to enforce the tariff and all other maritime laws.
Although tangential to American maritime history, 1799 saw the fall of a colossus of the world's maritime history. The Dutch East India Company, established on March 20, 1602, when the Estates-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia, formerly the world's largest company, became bankrupt, partly due to the rise of competitive free trade.
The 19th century
During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the Royal Navy aggressively reclaimed British deserters on board ships of other nations, both by halting and searching merchant ships, and in many cases, by searching American port cities. Thousands of sailors had deserted from the Royal Navy and found work onboard American merchantmen. The British navy was deeply angered that American authorities refused to return the deserters, and though many claimed to have acquired US citizenship, as papers proving these could be easily forged few Royal Navy officers believed them. As a result, in the 1790s and 1800s the British navy impressed approximately 6,000 alleged deserters off US merchantmen. This was one of the major factors leading to the War of 1812 in North America.