The Collins line charged from thirty to forty dollar a ton for freight, a charge which all the modern improvements and the increase in the size of vessels, has not materially lessened.  In six years, however, the corporation was practically bankrupt.  The high speed required by the Government more than offset the generous subsidy, and misfortune seemed to pursue the ships.  The “Arctic” came into collision with a French steamer in 1854, and went down with two hundred and twenty-two of the two hundred and sixty-eight people on board.  The “Pacific” left Liverpool June 23, 1856, and was never more heard of.  Shortly thereafter the subsidy was withdrawn, and the famous line went slowly down to oblivion.

It was during the best days of the Collins line that it seemed that the United States might overtake Great Britain in the race for supremacy on the ocean.  In 1851 the total British steam shipping engaged in foreign trade was 65,921 tons.  The United States only began building steamships in 1848, yet by 1851 its ocean-going steamships aggregated 62,390 tons.  For four years our growth continued so that in 1855 we had 115,000 tons engaged in foreign trade.  Then began the retrograde movement, until in 1860—­before the time of the Confederate cruisers—­there were; according to an official report to the National Board of Trade, “no ocean mail steamers away from our own coasts, anywhere on the globe, under the American flag, except, perhaps, on the route between New York and Havre, where two steamships may then have been in commission, which, however, were soon afterward withdrawn.  The two or three steamship companies which had been in existence in New York had either failed or abandoned the business; and the entire mail, passenger, and freight traffic between Great Britain and the United States, so far as this was carried on by steam, was controlled then (as it mainly is now) by British companies.”  And from this condition of decadence the merchant marine of the United States is just beginning to manifest signs of recovery.

When steam had fairly established its place as the most effective power for ocean voyages of every duration, and through every zone and clime, improvements in the methods of harnessing it, and in the form and material of the ships that it was to drive, followed fast upon each other.  As in the case of the invention of the steamboat, the public has commonly lightly awarded the credit for each invention to some belated experimenter who, walking more firmly along a road which an earlier pioneer had broken, attained the goal that his predecessor had sought in vain.  So we find credit given almost universally to John Ericsson, the Swedish-born American, for the invention of the screw-propeller.  But as early as 1770 it was suggested by John Watt, and Stevens, the American inventor, actually gave a practical demonstration of its efficiency in 1804.  Ericsson perfected it in 1836, and soon thereafter the British