286 THE OCEAN RIVER 



our vessels and the English shanghaied our sailors at will. 

 The official British policy was quietly and persistently hostile. 

 Lord Sheffield wrote in 1784: "It is not probable that the 

 American states will have a very free trade in the Mediter- 

 ranean; it will not be to the interests of any of the great 

 maritime powers to protect them from the Barbary states. 

 They cannot protect themselves, they cannot pretend to a 

 navy." 



The inconclusive War of 1812 to 1815 helped to settle the 

 status of the new nation by convincing Europeans that the 

 Americans were determined to fight for their liberties. After 

 this conflict had petered out, the new growth of the American 

 merchant marine reflected for the first time the impetus of 

 world-wide commerce. Codfish was no longer king. 



The art of shipbuilding and ship handling followed the new 

 demands of world trade on both sides of the Atlantic, but 

 the Yankees made greater progress and held this leadership 

 of the sea until the age of steam, when England once more 

 took the lead and has held it ever since. This cannot be laid 

 to the type or quality of the English seafarers. The handicap 

 to the development of English shipping was the conservative 

 attitude of the Government and the natural conservatism of 

 the English moneyed classes. A naval architect. Captain 

 Cower, in 1796 designed and built at his own expense a four- 

 masted barkentine that in some ways anticipated the narrow 

 and deeper lines of the future clippers. The ship outsailed 

 anything the other English builders could put in the water, 

 and was officially tested and proved out by the Admiralty. 

 But the Navy wouldn't have her; she was too modern. The 

 French also at this time built a ship, Ulnvention, with similar 

 lines, designed by Thibault of Bordeaux. She made the voyage 

 from Gibraltar to Virginia in thirty-seven days; and after fall- 

 ing into British hands sailed from the Channel to St. Johns 

 in twenty days. For 1800 these were fast passages, better than 



