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An American Transatlantic Enterprise A Real Success Nearly Sixty Years Ago OLAS ee Me ee pee Ne HEN they were on the right track Tee all, that time, just sixty years ago! For this new chapter of the Interna- tional Mercantile Marime’s career, the creation of a great ocean shipping system, to be emphatically American, is but the realization of the ambition that inspired the promoters of the original Philadelphia enterprises of the early 1870’s. Since 1858, when the Collins line collapsed, the pessimistic theory had been gaining ground that ocean ship- ping was not a field in which Ameri- can steamships could hope to prosper, or even pay their way. This unfor- tunate attitude would seem to have been justified by the course of events. The Bremen line had gone out with the Collins line. Commodore Vander- bilt himself disposed of his maritime interests in the earlier 1860’s to take up railroading. His immediate com- petitor on the Atlantic, the older Havre line, which appears to have been perhaps the most ably managed of all those early American lines, suc- cumbed at last in 1867; it had car- ried on for forty-five years, having started back in 1822 as a sailing pack- et service, turning to steam at the close of the 1840’s when it acquired the Havre mail contract rights of the Bremen line. And the several at- tempts during the 1860’s to establish By W. L. Harms new Atlantic lines of American na- tionality lasted no more than a year or two each. One venture of American origin of that decade did prosper and wax to eminence. This was the Guion line, a revival in steam of the old Black Star line of sailing packets. But it operated under the British flag. So, in 1870, when the American commercial interests concerned in the New Orleans-Liverpool trade sought to satisfy their need of a steamship service by themselves organizing one, they felt it advisable likewise to main- tain it with British steamers. This enterprise subsequently branched out into the Canadian trade, becoming known as the Dominion line. Philadelphia Enters the Contest At Philadelphia, however, where a similar movement gathered headway the following year, the American flag was not at all considered so hopeless a business proposition. That port had formerly enjoyed con- siderable distinction as being a trans- atlantic terminal, the Inman line it- self having begun business in the Philadelphia-Liverpool trade. But that company discontinued its Philadelphia calls in 1857 upon entering the New York trade. Thereafter the former port was quite deprived of direct transatlantic service by high class liners, a loss that was felt keenly by its business people. Therefore when at last the Penn- sylvania Railroad Co. sought co-opera- tion toward the creation of a new At- lantic steamship line out of Philadel- phia, in the prospect of augmenting rail traffic through the port as the ef- fect of such an institution, it was al- together successful in enlisting the substantial support of the local mer- chants in the project. There was organized, then, at a capital of $2,500,000 an undertaking to be known, like that earlier Boston line, now defunct, as the American Steamship Co., for which the charter was obtained April 18, 1871. A high- class mail, passenger, and freight service between Philadelphia and Liv- erpool; with the customary call at Queenstown, was the object. - The significant feature of these proceed- ings was the decision to maintain the service with modern iron screw steamers of American build and reg- istry. The first step taken was toward the creation of a fleet of liners. The new company contracted with William Cramp & Sons’ Ship & Engine Build- ing Co., Philadelphia, for the con- struction of four suitable vessels. Much has been heard ot the famous ships of the old Collins line, how their (Continued on Page 52) S. S. Indiana at Libau, Russia, with Cargo of Food for Starving Russians, March, 1892 MARINE REVIEwW—March, 1931 15