CHAPTER I.

THE AMERICAN SHIP AND THE AMERICAN SAILOR--NEW ENGLAND'S LEAD ON THE
OCEAN--THE EARLIEST AMERICAN SHIP-BUILDING--HOW THE SHIPYARDS
MULTIPLIED--LAWLESS TIMES ON THE HIGH SEAS--SHIP-BUILDING IN THE FORESTS
AND ON THE FARM--SOME EARLY TYPES--THE COURSE OF MARITIME TRADE--THE FIRST
SCHOONER AND THE FIRST FULL-RIGGED SHIP--JEALOUSY AND ANTAGONISM OF
ENGLAND--THE PEST OF PRIVATEERING--ENCOURAGEMENT FROM CONGRESS--THE GOLDEN
DAYS OF OUR MERCHANT MARINE--FIGHTING CAPTAINS AND TRADING
CAPTAINS--GROUND BETWEEN FRANCE AND ENGLAND--CHECKED BY THE WARS--SEALING
AND WHALING--INTO THE PACIFIC--HOW YANKEE BOYS MOUNTED THE
QUARTER-DECK--SOME STORIES OF EARLY SEAMEN--THE PACKETS AND THEIR
EXPLOITS.


When the Twentieth Century opened, the American sailor was almost extinct.
The nation which, in its early and struggling days, had given to the world
a race of seamen as adventurous as the Norse Vikings had, in the days of
its greatness and prosperity turned its eyes away from the sea and yielded
to other people the mastery of the deep. One living in the past, reading
the newspapers, diaries and record-books of the early days of the
Nineteenth Century, can hardly understand how an occupation which played
so great a part in American life as seafaring could ever be permitted to
decline. The dearest ambition of the American boy of our early national
era was to command a clipper ship--but how many years it has been since
that ambition entered into the mind of young America! In those days the
people of all the young commonwealths from Maryland northward found their
interests vitally allied with maritime adventure. Without railroads, and
with only the most wretched excuses for post-roads, the States were
linked together by the sea; and coastwise traffic early began to employ a