118 CAPTAIN ZACHARY G. LAMSON 



to navigate the merchant fleet of the United 

 States for that year. Twenty per cent of the 

 seamen on American vessels, however, were 

 foreigners, 1 which would leave 100,000 as 

 the number of American officers and men 

 employed in that year in the United States 

 marine. 



To show how authorities differ in their 

 estimates of the number of sailors employed 

 in any one year we quote the following. 

 "Niles Register," vol. 1, p. 379, gives the 

 number of seamen in the United States 

 in 1804 as 64,000, and in 1809, when the 

 tonnage was much larger, as 55,000. 

 The same authority gives the shipping of 

 Great Britain, Ireland excepted, in 1810 as 

 2,549,680 tons manned by 164,000 seamen, 

 or one man to every fifteen tons. The 



in the Salem and Boston papers for 1807-8, the year of the 

 embargo. One difficulty is that in most cases it is impos- 

 sible to tell whether the number quoted means able sea- 

 men only, or includes officers, supercargo, cook and cabin 

 boy. 



1 Evidence of Mr. William Gray before a committee 

 of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1813. 



