ian neighbors. The fishing fleets were regarded as a source of
national wealth and the nursery of prime seamen for the navy and merchant
marine. In 1858 the bounty system was abandoned, however, and the fishermen
were left to shift for themselves, earning small profits at peril of their
lives and preferring to follow the sea because they knew no other
profession. In spite of this loss of assistance from the Government, the
tonnage engaged in deep-sea fisheries was never so great as in the second
year of the Civil War. Four years later the industry had shrunk one-half;
and it has never recovered its early importance.[22]

[Footnote 22: In 1862, the tonnage amounted to 193,459; in 1866, to 89,386.
[Author's note.]]

The coastwise merchant trade, on the other hand, has been jealously guarded
against competition and otherwise fostered ever since 1789, when the first
discriminatory tonnage tax was enforced. The Embargo Act of 1808 prohibited
domestic commerce to foreign flags, and this edict was renewed in the
American Navigation Act of 1817. It remained a firmly established doctrine
of maritime policy until the Great War compelled its suspension as an
emergency measure. The theories of protection and free trade have been
bitterly debated for generations, but in this instance the practice was
eminently successful and the results were vastly impressive. Deep-water
shipping dwindled and died, but the increase in coastwise sailing was
consistent. It rose to five million tons early in this century and makes
the United States still one of the foremost maritime powers in respect to
salt-water activity.

To speak of this deep-water shipping as trade coastwise is misleading, in a
way. The words convey an impression of dodging from port to port for short
distances, whereas many of the voyages are longer than those of the foreign
routes in European waters. It is farther by sea from Boston to Philadelphia
than from Plymouth, England, to Bordeaux. A schooner making the run from
Portland to Savannah lays more knots over her stern than a tramp bound out
from England to Lisbon. It is a shorter voyage from Cardiff to Algiers than
an American skipper pricks off on his chart when he takes his steamer from
New York to New Orleans or Galveston. This coastwise trade may lack the
romance of the old school of the square-rigged ship in the Roaring Forties,
but it has always been the more perilous and exacting. Its seamen suffer
hardships unknown e