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December 1961 | Volume 13, Issue 1
Pioneers At Sea
Text Complexity Grade Level
9
The story of America, we frequently remind ourselves, is the story of the conquest of a continent. It begins at Jamestown, at Plymouth, or wherever one chooses, and goes through forests, mountains, and prairies all the way to the sunset; and it shows a restless, acquisitive, and usually indomitable breed of men converting an immense stretch of land to the uses of a large, energetic, and intricately organized society. The pioneer of course is the hero, complete with such artifacts as the axe, the long rifle, and the covered wagon, going west with prodigious strides, followed presently by the promoter, the sturdy artisan, and the far-seeing man of business. It is a fabulous story, and we could recite it in our sleep. What we sometimes overlook is the fact that before the pioneer could conquer this continent, he first had to cross the ocean. After he had crossed it and settled down to his wilderness-taming, he had to get supplies from the old country, find markets there for the products he was wresting from the new land, make money enough to finance further pioneering, and arrange for a sea-borne transportation system that would intimately link this new country with the larger, older, and wealthier countries beyond the seas. He had to conquer the oceans, in other words, as well as the land, and his salt-water pioneering was as important as anything he did ashore. Along with his seven-league boots he had to have webfeet. This restatement of the obvious is evoked by Carl C. Cutler’s excellent new book, Queens of the Western Ocean , which shows how an important part of that deep-sea pioneering was accomplished and what it meant to America. Mr. Cutler addresses himself chiefly to one aspect: the establishment of regular, scheduled lines of sailing vessels connecting the eastern seaports with England and Europe, and the simultaneous creation of scheduled lines running along the American coast, all the way from New England to Louisiana. Here, he remarks, was one of the most significant chapters in American history. It was a short chapter, running through forty-odd years up to 1860; after that the nation focused its attention on shoreside matters and let someone else do its sea-borne carrying. But while it lasted it represented the extension of a discovery made early in the game—that the colonies, like the young republic which grew out of them, had to build and control their own merchant marine if they were going to prosper. The going was tough. In the colonial period there were restrictive laws designed to keep colonial trade in the hands of British shippers. There were extensive wars, during which naval cruisers and privateers harried the sea lanes; and at all times American vessels had to compete with bigger, richer, better-established shipping firms overseas. As a result—whether he was dodging the king’s revenue cutters, getting away from sea raiders, or simply trying to