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The Old Merchant Marine; A chronicle of American ships and sailors by Ralph Delahaye Paine
page 80 of 146 (54%)
the pretext being reprisal for the Non-Intercourse Act. More than
two hundred American vessels were lost to their owners, a
ten-million-dollar robbery for which France paid an indemnity of
five millions after twenty years. It was the grand climax of the
exploitation which American commerce had been compelled to endure
through two centuries of tumult and bloodshed afloat. There
lingers today in many a coastwise town an inherited dislike for
France. It is a legacy of that far-off catastrophe which beggared
many a household and filled the streets with haggard, broken
shipmasters.

It was said of this virile merchant marine that it throve under
pillage and challenged confiscation. Statistics confirm this
brave paradox. In 1810, while Napoleon was doing his worst, the
deep-sea tonnage amounted to 981,019; and it is a singular fact
that in proportion to population this was to stand as the high
tide of American foreign shipping until thirty-seven years later.
It ebbed during the War of 1812 but rose again with peace and a
real and lasting freedom of the seas.

This second war with England was fought in behalf of merchant
seamen and they played a nobly active part in it. The ruthless
impressment of seamen was the most conspicuous provocation, but
it was only one of many. Two years before hostilities were openly
declared, British frigates were virtually blockading the port of
New York, halting and searching ships as they pleased, making
prizes of those with French destinations, stealing sailors to
fill their crews, waging war in everything but name, and enjoying
the sport of it. A midshipman of one of them merrily related:
"Every morning at daybreak we set about arresting the progress of
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