“For serious competition with foreign nations under the conditions now imposed upon ocean navigation, we are practically limited to our registered iron and steam steel vessels, which in all number 124, of 271,378 gross tons.  Those under 1,000 gross tons are not now commercially available for oversea trade.  There remains 4 steamships, each of over 10,000 gross tons; 5 of between 5,000 and 6,000 gross tons; 2 of between 4,000 and 5,000 tons; 18 between 3000 and 4000 tons; 35 between 2000 and 3000 tons, and 33 between 1000 and 2000 tons; in all 97 steamships over 1000 tons, aggregating 260,325 gross tons.”

Most of these are engaged in coastwise trade.  The fleet of the Hamburg-American line alone, among our many foreign rivals, aggregates 515,628 gross tons.

However, we must bear in mind that this seemingly insignificant place held by the United States merchant marine represents only the part it holds in the international carrying trade of the world.  Such a country as Germany must expend all its maritime energies on international trade.  It has little or no river and coastwise traffic.  But the United States is a little world in itself; not so very small, and of late years growing greater.  Our wide extended coasts on Atlantic, Pacific, and the Mexican Gulf, are bordered by rich States crowded with a people who produce and consume more per capita than any other race.  From the oceans great navigable rivers, deep bays, and placid sounds, extend into the very heart of the country.  The Great Lakes are bordered by States more populous and cities more busy and enterprising than those, which in the proudest days of Rome, and Carthage and Venice skirted the Mediterranean and the Adriatic.  The traffic of all these trade highways is by legislation reserved for American ships alone.  On the Great Lakes has sprung up a merchant marine rivaling that of some of the foremost maritime peoples, and conducting a traffic that puts to shame the busiest maritime highways of Europe.  Long Island Sound bears on its placid bosom steamships that are the marvel of the traveling public the world over.  The Hudson, the Ohio, the Mississippi, are all great arteries through which the life current of trade is ceaselessly flowing.  A book might be written on the one subject of the part that river navigation has played in developing the interior States of this Union.  Another could well be devoted to the history of lake navigation, which it is no overstatement to pronounce the most impressive chapter in the history of the American merchant marine.  In this volume, however, but brief attention can be given to either.

The figures show how honorably our whole body of shipping compares in volume to that operated by any maritime people.  Our total registered shipping engaged in the fisheries, coastwise, and lake traffic, and foreign trade numbered at the beginning of 1902, 24,057 vessels, with an aggregate tonnage of 5,524,218 tons.  In domestic trade alone we had 4,582,683 tons, or an amount exceeding the total tonnage of Germany and Norway combined, or of Germany and France.  Only England excelled us, but her lead, which in 1860 was inconsiderable, in 1901 was prodigious; the British flag flying over no less than 14,261,254 tons of shipping, more than three times our tonnage!  It is proper to note that more than two-thirds of our registered tonnage is of wood.