15 



Chapter 



THE PACKETS 



N, 



EW YORK in 1815, at the close of the war, was hardly 

 distinguishable from other American seaports. In fact, New York 

 had certain disadvantages from the point of view of sailing-ship op- 

 eration. Before the days of powerful artificial lights and enormous 

 buildings entrance to the harbor was not easy to detect; and the low- 

 lying beaches of Rockaway and Sandy Hook were a constant hazard 

 waiting to trap and destroy any poorly navigated ship. Should the 

 harbor entrance be missed, there was no alternate refuge or harbor 

 entrance able to accommodate even the small ocean vessels of those 

 days in all the whole 100 miles of Long Island's south shore or the 

 longer New Jersey shore from New York City to Cape May. 



Trading ships came and went to New York as they did to many 

 other American harbors, but the advantage of New York and the 

 deep-water harbor was obscured by the dangers. Entrance to the 

 harbor through Long Island Sound and Hell Gate was even more 

 dangerous and quite impractical until the days of reliable steam 

 power. 



Then in a few years three basic ideas altered the history of the 

 whole Atlantic seaboard and led to the development of the world's 

 largest port and metropolitan area. Two of these ideas involved 

 man's use of certain natural resources — one of them was a sheer 

 invention of management. 



Before the Revolution, Benjamin Franklin observed that Amer- 



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