American
ports--singularly interesting ships because they were the last bold
venture of the old American maritime spirit, a challenge to the Age of
Steam.

No more of these huge, towering schooners have been built in the last
dozen years. Steam colliers and barges have won the fight because time
is now more valuable than cheapness of transportation. The schooner
might bowl down to Norfolk from Boston or Portland in four days and be
threshing about for two weeks in head winds on the return voyage.

The small schooner appeared to be doomed somewhat earlier. She had
ceased to be profitable in competition with the larger, more modern
fore-and-after, but these battered, veteran craft died hard. They
harked back to a simpler age, to the era of the stage-coach and the
spinning-wheel, to the little shipyards that were to be found on every
bay and inlet of New England. They were still owned and sailed by men
who ashore were friends and neighbors. Even now you may find during your
summer wanderings some stumpy, weatherworn two-master running on for
shelter overnight, which has plied up and down the coast for fifty or
sixty years, now leaking like a basket and too frail for winter voyages.
It was in a craft very much like this that your rude ancestors went
privateering against the British. Indeed, the little schooner Polly,
which fought briskly in the War of 1812, is still afloat and loading
cargoes in New England ports.

These little coasters, surviving long after the stately merchant marine
had vanished from blue water, have enjoyed a slant of favoring fortune
in recent years. They, too, have been in demand, and once again there is
money to spare for paint and cordage and calking. They have been granted
a new lease of life and may be found moored at the wharfs, beached on
the marine railways, or anchored in the stream, eagerly awaiting their
turn to refit. It is a matter of vital concern that the freight on
spruce boards from Bangor to New York has increased to five dollars a
thousand feet. Many of these craft belong to grandfatherly skippers who
dared not venture past Cape Cod in December, lest the venerable Matilda
Emerson or the valetudinarian Joshua R. Coggswell should open up and
founder in a blow. During the winter storms these skippers used to hug
the kitchen stove in bleak farmhouses until spring came and they could
put to sea again. The rigor of circumstances, however, forced others to
seek for trade the whole year t