For reasons set forth in detail elsewhere in the article on steamship subsidies, the mail subventions were taken away from the Ameri can lines in the crisis of their rivalry wi3 their British competitors, when every adrat tage seemed to favor the flag of the United States. One by one the American lines sinr cumbed— except those to the West Indies and the Isthmus of Panama, which came panic within the protection of the coastwise service The Stars and Stripes had vanished from the regular year-round steam trade of the north Atlantic before the Civil War began. The blow which Congress struck against American steam ship lines was in part responsible for the sinister decrease in American shipbuilding that marked the half-decade from 1855 to 1860.
The Civil War did not destroy the Amer ican merchant marine. That war found oat merchant marine already decreasing. What the war did do was to accelerate a tendency that had already developed. Anglo-Confed erate cruisers like the Alabama and the Florida destroyed only 110,000 tons of Amer ican shipping all told, but created, as it was intended that they should do, such an extraor dinary insurance hazard for other America ships that they could not profitably be sailed beneath the Stars and Stripes — so that in the four years of the war 751,595 tons of ship pinF, or about one-third of our entire fleet registered for deep sea carrying, was sold tr European shipowners. In 1861 our shippini registered for foreign commerce amounted it 2,496,894 tons and in 1866 there remained only 1,387,756 tons. Wreck and wear and tear ac counted for part of the loss, and many Amer ican shipyards had been forced to abandon mer chant work for naval construction.
The Geneva award of $15,500,000 against the British government for British complicity to the work of commerce-destroying probably cov ered the actual value of the ships and came seized by the Alabama and her consorts, hut did not make good the vastly larger sums of money lost by those American shipowners who wer: forced by these depredations to pay excessne insurance rates or accept unremuneranre freight rates or lay their ships up in idleness or sell them at one-half or one-third of their cost to foreigners. That award did not make good what American shipowners suffered from the diversion of their accustomed trade to Euro pean carriers.
The disastrous consequences of active Bested sympathy with the Confederacy and Bnash raiding of our maritime commerce far outlasted the Civil War. Not only were the Alabern
Florida, Shenandoah, etc., British-built, but they were armed with British guns and part!, officered and almost altogether manned from the British naval and mercantile service.
In the Civil, War it was the American mer chant marine that enabled the United States government to maintain that close blockade of Southern ports which was so strong a factor in the final defeat of the Confederacy. More than one-half of the steamships, four-fifths of the officers and five-sixths of the men engaged in this vital work came directly from the mer chant service. Masters and mates of Amer ican steamships and sail ships gave the navy 7,500 volunteers officers, the best educated and most skilful men of their calling in the world, and these officers were followed into the war fleet by more than 50,000 merchant seamen. Without the great resources of the American merchant marine of 1861, the quick and sus tained expansioin of the United States navy would have been impossible. Until new cruisers were built, the fastest and the most efficient steamers of the blockade fleet were vessels from the coastwise and West India lines, and these lines supplied besides an adequate fleet of supply craft and transports. , Stagnation after the a few years after the Civil War, American ocean shipping seemed to gain new headway, though between 1861 and 1865 European shipowners utilized the opportunity to strengthen their grip on the chief trade routes of the world. American merchants and shipbuilders fought with energy and courage, and our registered tonnage rose in 1867 to 1,53,648, and remained at or near that figure for a decade thereafter. In 1878 the total registered tonnage was 1,589,348. American steamships without government aid could not compete on the great mail lines with British or French steamships subsidized by their govern ments. In the case of Great Britain these sub sidies, liberally continued for many years, had given a stimulus to iron shipbuilding and engine and boiler construction, and yards which were originally developed by the de mands of the mail contracts had turned to building steam freighters of the slow but use ful and familiar °tramp') type.