The Industry.

While the steamboat was the most dramatic maritime innovation of the period, most commerce continued to be carried by sailing ships. Americans had become the world's best builders of boats and ships, and the rise of British maritime power was made possible by American shipwrights, who had delivered to England an average of fifty ships each year before the Revolution. In 1769 shipyards in the American colonies, mainly in New England, but also in New York and the Chesapeake, produced 389 vessels. After the war, with British markets for American ships shut off and merchants excluded from English ports, the industry declined. In 1789 the new U.S. government put a higher tariff on ships built or owned by foreigners which entered American ports, hoping to stimulate the shipbuilding industry. It succeeded, with the total tonnage of American-built ships owned by Americans more than doubling by...