e 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were soon afterward withdrawn.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 began
building steamships with screws instead of paddle-wheels. For some reason,
however, not easy now to conjecture, shipbuilders clung to the
paddle-wheels for vessels making the transatlantic voyage, long after they
were discarded on the shorter runs along the coasts of the British isles.
It so happened, too, that the first vessel to use the screw in