down Southern opposition to a retaliatory shipping policy, he
uttered a warning which his countrymen were to find still true
and apt in the twentieth century: "If we have no seamen, our
ships will be useless, consequently our ship timber, iron, and
hemp; our shipbuilding will be at an end; ship carpenters will go
over to other nations; our young men have no call to the sea; our
products, carried in foreign bottoms, will be saddled with
war-freight and insurance in time of war--and the history of the
last hundred years shows that the nation which is our carrier has
three years of war for every four years of peace."

The steady growth of an American merchant marine was interrupted
only once in the following decade. In the year 1793 war broke out
between England and France. A decree of the National Convention
of the French Republic granted neutral vessels the same rights as
those which flew the tricolor. This privilege reopened a rushing
trade with the West Indies, and hundreds of ships hastened from
American ports to Martinique, Guadeloupe, and St. Lucia.

Like a thunderbolt came the tidings that England refused to look
upon this trade with the French colonies as neutral and that her
cruisers had been told to seize all vessels engaged in it and to
search them for English-born seamen. This ruling was enforced
with such barbarous severity that it seemed as if the War for
Independence had been fought in vain. Without warning, unable to
save themselves, great fleets of Yankee merchantmen were
literally swept from the waters of the West Indies. At St.
Eustatius one hundred and thirty of them were condemned. The
judges at Bermuda condemned eleven more. Crews and passengers
were flung ashore without food or clothing, were abused,