312 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



significance of steam as applied to shipping. There 

 can be little doubt as to their having possessed not 

 only the first steam vessel, but also the first call upon 

 Ericsson's splendid invention of the screw-propeller, 

 which conservative England would not then look at. 

 Yet, in spite of their undoubted inventive genius and 

 great energy, they did not grasp the occasion offered 

 them of regaining the maritime supremacy they had 

 lost by developing the new motive-power at sea. 

 Instead, they went on building wooden sailing ships 

 while Britain was turning out from her well-equipped 

 building yards iron sailing ships in great numbers, 

 which were faster, more seaworthy, and incomparably 

 better cargo-carriers than wooden vessels could ever 

 be. Side by side with this development of the iron 

 sailing ship came the introduction of steam for ocean- 

 going ships. And when it was too late the Yankees 

 saw what a mighty future was in store for steam. 

 They then tried to compete with the Cunard Line 

 in the beginning of things but made a complete 

 failure, leaving Britain in possession of an almost 

 complete monopoly of the new ocean traffic. Our 

 only other competitors worthy of notice at this time 

 were the hardy and thrifty Scandinavians, for the 

 German Mercantile Marine was practically non-existent 

 owing to the war with France, wherein the superiority 

 of French warships and seamanship had been the only 

 bright spot amid the otherwise universal cloud of 

 French disasters. 



Our position, then, a third of a century ago, was 

 one of apparently unassailable commercial supremacy. 

 We controlled the commerce of the world, for we were 

 almost the only carriers between nation and nation; 



