In 1800 the whole number of American ships in foreign and coasting trades and the fisheries had reached a tonnage of 972,492.  The growth was constant, despite the handicap resulting from the European wars.  Indeed, it is probable that those wars stimulated American shipping more than the restrictive decrees growing out of them retarded it, for they at least kept England and France (with her allies) out of the active encouragement of maritime enterprise.  But the vessels of that day were mere pigmies, and the extent of the trade carried on in them would at this time seem trifling.  The gross exports and imports of the United States in 1800 were about $75,000,000 each.  The vessels that carried them were of about 250 tons each, the largest attaining 400 tons.  An irregular traffic was carried on along the coast, and it was 1801 before the first sloop was built to ply regularly on the Hudson between New York and Albany.  She was of 100 tons, and carried passengers only.  Sometimes the trip occupied a week, and the owner of the sloop established an innovation by supplying beds, provisions, and wines for his passengers.  Between Boston and New York communication was still irregular, passengers waiting for cargoes.  But small as this maritime interest now seems, more money was invested in it, and it occupied more men, than any other American industry, save only agriculture.

To this period belong such shipowners as William Gray, of Boston, who in 1809, though he had sixty great square-rigged ships in commission, nevertheless heartily approved of the embargo with which President Jefferson vainly strove to combat the outrages of France and England.  Though the commerce of those days was world-wide, its methods—­particularly on the bookkeeping side—­were primitive.  “A good captain,” said Merchant Gray, “will sail with a load of fish to the West Indies, hang up a stocking in the cabin on arriving, put therein hard dollars as he sells fish, and pay out when he buys rum, molasses, and sugar, and hand in the stocking on his return in full of all accounts.”  The West Indies, though a neighboring market, were far from monopolizing the attention of the New England shipping merchants.  Ginseng and cash were sent to China for silks and tea, the voyage each way, around the tempestuous Horn, occupying six months.  In 1785 the publication of the journals of the renowned explorer, Captain Cook, directed the ever-alert minds of the New Englanders to the great herds of seal and sea-otters on the northwestern coast of the United States, and vessels were soon faring thither in pursuit of fur-bearing animals, then plentiful, but now bidding fair to become as rare as the sperm-whale.  A typical expedition of this sort was that of the ship “Columbia,” Captain Kendrick, and the sloop “Washington,” Captain Gray, which sailed September 30, 1787, bound to the northwest coast and China.  The merchant who saw his ships drop down the bay bound on such a voyage said farewell to them for a long time—­perhaps