246 : The Atlantic 



York in 181 8, she had seven steerage passengers. This seems a very 

 trivial beginning for what was later to develop into the great wave of 

 the nineteenth-century immigration. At the beginning, the packet 

 lines were indifFerent about transporting immigrants. Their chief 

 business was the handling of news dispatches, specie and commer- 

 cial paper, fine freights and cabin passengers. Too much accommoda- 

 tion for steerage passengers interfered with the space available for 

 freight. From the financial point of view the carrying of steerage 

 passengers was of marginal assistance. 



During the forty years of packet prosperity there was a slow but 

 steady increase in the number of steerage passengers per voyage. 

 With the arrival of the clippers and the steamers and the intense 

 competition which they created, the interest of the operating packet 

 lines in immigrant service increased in proportion as their previous 

 business declined. 



We must remember that in 1820 the population of New York City 

 was only 152,056 and the population of the United States was only 

 9,638,453 so that even a modest but steady flow of immigrants would 

 have a great effect on population balances. As a matter of fact, in 

 1826 the packets brought into the port of New York from Liverpool 

 less than 300 steerage passengers whereas the irregular "regular trad- 

 ers" brought in 2,000, but the number of packet steerage passengers 

 was to increase enormously before the packets went out of business. 

 The packet Hottinguer, in 1845, for example, carried 397 immi- 

 grants, that is roughly 400 on a single voyage and about 100 more 

 than the total that all the packets carried in 1826. 



Havre liners, almost from the beginning, served as an outlet for a 

 large number of Swiss and German immigrants but few French. The 

 Robinson Line was organized to provide immigration service but this 

 was not a real packet line so much as a collection of traders and tran- 

 sients chartered to sail on scheduled dates. By the 40's and 50's there 

 were a number of special companies operating immigrant service. 



When the transatlantic steamers began regular operation to New 

 York their first effect was to make inroads on the cabin passengers 

 of the packets. The early steamers did not provide for steerage pas- 

 sage and so for a time the packets and other sailing vessels carried the 

 bulk of American immigration. 



The immigrants of this period constituted an important contribu- 

 tion to the working population of America. Human history and phys- 

 ical geography conspired to produce an intense transport service be- 

 tween New York and the English coast. The packet service operated 



