SAIL AND THE STREAM 285 



The continental nature of trade began to show up with 

 increasing exports of wheat from Baltimore and flax seed 

 from New York to Ireland. Congress aided this new oppor- 

 tunity to develop the American merchant marine with a differ- 

 ential shipping tax of fifty cents a ton for foreign shipping 

 and six cents for American. Help was needed. The little port 

 of Gloucester had lost a third of her men during the war. 

 There was also a bounty paid fishermen of five cents a 

 quintal for dried fish and the same per barrel for pickled fish. 

 The jockeying by government for commercial advantage had 

 begun, and was to last until Andrew Jackson, representing 

 the continental needs of the people as a whole rather than 

 the mercantile class, in 1830 re-established the principles of 

 free trade. 



Along with this new seaborne prosperity in New England, 

 the British seaports flourished mightily after the Revolution. 

 The port of London was badly congested with an annual 

 turnover of more than 3,500 foreign voyages to handle, and 

 Liverpool had more than 4,000 vessels clearing port; over 100 

 of these were slavers. A local report reads: 'The great annual 

 return of wealth may be said to pervade the whole town con- 

 tributing to the support of the majority of the inhabitants. 

 Almost every man in Liverpool is a merchant, and he who 

 cannot send a bale will send a bandbox. It will therefore 

 create little astonishment that the attractive African meteor 

 [the slave trade] has so dazzled their ideas that almost every 

 order of people is interested in a Guinea cargo." 



But there was a dark side to this picture of commercial 

 progress for the newborn republic. With no naval force 

 worthy of the name we became a prey to all the other seagoing 

 powers; there was only one international law at the time: 

 Might makes Right. We bought off the Barbary pirates of 

 the Mediterranean with tribute of ships and supplies; we 

 could not so buy off the French and British. They captured 



