USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. IV > Part 29
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Importers soon saw the advantage to be gained by bringing their Eng- lish goods to this market by steam, and it was not long before the ships were used to the utmost of their limited capacity for cargo.3
When the line was started, the sailing days were the 4th and 19th of each month from Liverpool, and the Ist and 16th from Boston. During the winter season the departures were monthly; all the ships called at Halifax. The " Columbia" came out for the first time in January, 1841 ; the " Hibernia " in May, 1843; and the " Cambria " in January, 1845. In 1842 the February and March packets came only to Halifax, and the pas- sengers and mails were brought to and taken from Boston in the " Unicorn."
1 The company was a private one, and was called the British and North American Royal Mail Steam-Packet Company. In its organiza- tion there were what were called inside and out- side partners. The former were Samuel Cun- ard of Halifax, afterward of London; George and James Burns of Glasgow ; and David and Charles MacIver of Liverpool. They trans- acted all the business and received certain com- missions, sharing the surplus profits with the outside partners, - Thomas Buchanan, Sir James Campbell, John James Kerr, Robert Napier, and others of Glasgow, and Henry and John Bannerman of Manchester, who supplied most of the capital.
2 The amount of duties paid at the Custom House by the first arrivals is worth recording, for the sake of comparison with the figures to which we are now accustomed : -
Ships. Date of Entry. Am't of Duty.
Britannia
July 20
$ 91.58
Acadia
Aug. 18 29.38
Britannia
Sept. 18 274-78
VOL. IV. - 29.
Ships.
Date of Entry. Am't of Duty.
Caledonia
Oct. 2
$ 211.11
Acadia .
Oct. 17
339.88
Britannia
Nov. 3
497.81
Caledonia
Nov. 20
380.65
Acadia
Dec. 22
1,103.80
Total for 1840 $2,928.99
8 The duties collected upon them during the succeeding five years were : -
1841
21 arrivals $73,809.23
1842
18
120,974.67
1843
" 640,572.05
1844
20 916.198.30
1845
20 1,022,992.75
The average in 1845 was about fifty thou- sand dollars for each ship; but two steamers, the "Cambria," in January, and the "Hibernia," in February, brought cargoes, the duty collected on which was more than one hundred thousand dollars each. At the present time the duties col- lected on the cargo of a Cunard steamer amount to about fifty thousand dollars, the character of the goods being coarser and cheaper than those formerly brought by steam.
· 226
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
In July, 1843, the " Columbia " was lost on Seal Island. In January, 1844, an ice embargo, like that which aggravated the situation at the close of the war of 1812, gradually suspended all communication between the har- bor and the bay; and after the arrival of the "Britannia," it looked as though there might be very serious delay in sending her to sea again. As her sailing day, February 1, approached, the papers commented with many misgivings on the ice blockade, which had become complete and threatened long continuance, and on the 30th of January a meeting of merchants was called on the Exchange to consider the situation.1 The mayor, Mr. Martin Brimmer, presided, and after some discussion it was decided that the steamer should be cut out without expense to her owners, and sent to sea as near the advertised time of her departure as possible. A committee to collect the requisite money was chosen, consisting of Benjamin Rich, Caleb Curtis, Ozias Goodwin, Thomas C. Smith, Samuel Quincy, Thomas Gray, Charles Brown, Thomas B. Curtis, and Ammi C. Lombard. A contract was made with Messrs. Gage, Hittinger, & Co., and John Hill, for cutting two canals in the ice,-one from the East Boston Ferry to the open sea, and the other from the Ferry to India Wharf, into which other channels might be opened by such as desired it. For this work the contractors were to receive $1500. It was promptly and effectively completed, and the steamer sailed on the afternoon of February 3, thousands of spectators being on the ice to witness her passage through the canal.2 This vigorous action of the business men of Boston made a very favorable impression on the other side of the Atlantic, and rather astonished the people of New York, who had never regarded the coming of the Cunard ships to Boston with much com- placency, and who, especially since the loss of the " Columbia," had had a great deal to say about the extraordinary perils attendant upon ocean steam navigation at this port.3
The Cunard line was destined to furnish the entering wedge for the overturning of the wall of separation between the United States and British North America. Hitherto the Canadian mails had been landed at Halifax. · As the result of Mr. Cunard's personal efforts at Washington, an act of
1 Persons who started from Boston for New York on Monday, January 29, after staying at Stonington for several days, and being unable either to go through the Sound or to cross over to Greenport to connect there with the Long Island Railroad, returned to Boston on the even- ing of Friday, February 2. As late as February 12 the channel was closed for a mile and a half from the wharves.
2 The scene has been perpetuated by a sketch from the pencil of Mr. King, the sculptor, which was lithographed at the time. Mr. King has told us that he was on the ice with Captain Hewitt of the " Britannia," when it occurred to him to make the sketch, and the only material at hand was a piece of brown parcel-paper. The
dense masses of cloud charged with snow are very finely and, it is said, accurately given.
3 Only once since has a similar work been necessary, and the same public spirit was mani- fested as before. In the month of January, 1857, the steamship "America " went to sea through a canal cut for the purpose; and on the following day the steamship " Arabia," from Liverpool, passed up through the same canal. The writer of this chapter was a passenger in the " Arabia " at the time.
The New York Herald, in commenting on the loss of the "Columbia" in 1843, had said of the dangers of the Boston route : "Four hun- dred and fifty miles of rock, ledge, shoal, fog, and narrow intricate channels."
227
THE TRADE, COMMERCE, ETC., OF BOSTON.
Congress was passed (approved June 15, 1844) which 'authorized the postmaster-general to make such arrangements as might “ be deemed expedient with the post-office department of the British Government, for the transmission of the British mail, in its unbroken state or condition, between Boston and Canada." This prepared the way for the provisions in Mr. Walker's Warehouse Act of 1846, which permitted Canadian impor- tations to be landed at United States ports, and to be sent forward, in transitu, without payment of duty, or more than a nominal examination of the packages. This in turn led to the mutual arrangement for the passage of through trains, under lock and seal, on the international routes of the two countries ; and, as the natural result of all this freedom of intercourse, came the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, which, unfortunately for the people on both sides of the frontier, was abrogated in 1865; but which, we feel sure, will before long be succeeded by another arrangement, more com- prehensive it may be, and more mutually beneficial, than that which pre- ceded it.
Early in the summer of 1844 Mr. Enoch Train, who had been engaged in the leather trade, and in connection with this in the trade with South America, started his celebrated line of Liverpool packets, which for twelve or fifteen years, or until the general use of screw-steamers, proved so val- uable to the trade and commerce of Boston.1 Mr. Train had gone to England in the "Hibernia," in January, and had arranged with Messrs. Baring Brothers & Co. to take charge of the proposed line in Liverpool until" he should establish a house of his own there. On the 2d of May the ship "Dorchester," Captain Caldwell, was advertised to sail for Liverpool June 8, and it was added : " A first-class ship will hereafter be despatched from Boston on the 8th, and from Liverpool on the 24th, of each month." On the 20th of May a new announcement of the line was made, and the fol- lowing ships were named: "Dorchester," 500 tons; "Cairo," 600 tons; " Governor Davis," 800 tons; " St. Petersburg," 800 tons, -" all first-class, Medford-built, copper-fastened, coppered, and fast sailing ships," to begin running from Liverpool June 24, and from Boston July 8.2
1 The Warren line of steamers, now running between Liverpool and Boston, is the direct successor of the old Train line of sailing pack- ets. Mr. Train sent his young partner, Mr. Frederick W. Thayer, to reside in Liverpool in 1848 or 1849; and when, several years later, Mr. Thayer came home, Mr. George Warren was sent out to take his place. On the failure of Mr. Train, and after the death of Mr. Thayer, the firm of George Warren & Co. was formed, and a new and prosperous business was built up on the ruins of the old.
2 The " Dorchester " sailed May 28, and was followed by the barque "Ellen," June 10, and the "Cairo," July 8. Mr. Train's enterprise
fully kept pace with the growth of the business, and he built in rapid succession the "Joshua Bates," "Anglo Saxon," " Anglo American," " Washington Irving,"" Ocean Monarch," " Par- liament," " Daniel Webster," " Star of Empire," "Chariot of Fame," " Staffordshire," "Cath- edral," and " John Eliot Thayer." Through him Donald McKay was first brought into promi- nence as a ship-builder. Among Mr. Train's captains, all men of ability and high character, were Caldwell, Murdock, Thayer, Brown, How- ard, Richardson, and Knowles. [Another well known East Boston ship-builder of this period was Samuel Hall, who, like several others, had established his reputation while his yard was in
228
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
The Cunard and Train lines gave an immediate and very marked impulse to the general trade of the city, and especially to its foreign business. The imports increased from about $14,000,000 in 1840, to $28,659,733 in 1850, and to $44,840,043 in 1857. At no time have there been so many import- ing and jobbing houses in Boston as between the years 1840 and 1857, although a few houses now do a larger business than was done by them all then.1 The coastwise shipping trade during this period was also very large. The supplies of cotton for the mills of New England came by sea ;. also the products of the Southwest, such as provisions, lard, lead, etc. In return we shipped to the Southern ports domestic dry-goods, boots and shoes, furniture and wooden ware; and when everything else failed, there was always a tonnage supply of ice and granite for every vessel seeking a cargo for that direction.
Boston participated largely in the commercial activity created by the discovery of gold in California and Australia, while it lasted. The clearances at this port for those countries were: -
1852
185 16
1853
149
1856
54
1854
1857
47
59 98
Forty-four vessels were built in and about Boston, in the year 1855, with a tonnage amounting to 45,988; and twenty-two more, of 27,877 tons, were on the stocks at the close of the year. The tonnage owned in Boston in 1855 was larger than ever before or since, - 541,644 tons.
From this time forward the foreign trade of the port began to wane, and it was many years before it was able to recover itself, as at length it has fully succeeded in doing. In 1867 the importations and the foreign arri- vals'were no more than they had been in 1857. The changes in ocean com- merce brought to pass by the introduction of steam, and the effect of the Civil War upon the shipping interest, made themselves felt in Boston as at other ports in the United States ; but, independently of all this, causes local and peculiar in their nature had been and were at work here, which as we -
Duxbury. He built the steam-schooner " Midas," which, in 1844, was the first American steamer to pass the Cape of Good Hope. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., September, 1874, p. 327 .- ED.]
1 Among the houses then prominent as im- porters in the foreign dry-goods trade were Adams, Homer, & Co .; Almy, Patterson, & Co .; Geo. B. Blake & Co .; Hovey, Williams, & Co .; Lane, Lamson, & Co .; Little, Alden, & Co .; W. & S. Phipps & Co .; Stoddard & Lovering ; Whiton & March; and, as jobbers, Ammidown & Converse ; Blanchard & Blodget ; Holbrook, Bowman, & Co. (afterward Ammidown, Bowman, & Co .; Blanchard, Converse, & Co .; J. W. Blod- get & Co .; Holbrook, Carter, & Co.) ; James M. Beebe & Co .; Chace, Grew, & Co .; Davis, Bates, & Turner; Dutton, Richardson, & Co .; Gas-
sett, Bullard, & Co .; Jenness, Gage, & Co .; Par- sons, Denison, & Co .; Daniel P. Stone & Co .; Towne, Waldo, & Co .; Wetherell, Whitney, & Co. (afterward Whitney & Fenno).
A few of the larger houses sent their own buyers abroad, but the majority gave orders a season in advance, which were executed by such commission houses as A. & S. Henry & Co .; Thornton, Atterbury, & Co .; and Crafts & Stell of Manchester ; and John Munroe & Co. of Paris. The Messrs. Henry did an enormous business in the United States for many years. One of the partners, Mr. Samuel Henry, was lost in the " Lexington," on Long Island Sound, in 1840. The house was afterward represented in this country by Mr. Wm. F. Schofield, Mr. Nicholas Carter, and Mr. Henry Hitchcock.
229
THE TRADE, COMMERCE, ETC., OF BOSTON.
now look back upon them seem to have been unnecessary and easily pre- ventable, and which therefore are to be especially deplored. It has been said that Boston began to lose its hold upon the Calcutta trade after 1857. Previously to this it had lost the Canton trade, and it had lost it in a very foolish way. It had been the custom to sell China cargoes, immediately on their arrival, at public auction. The Legislature of Massachusetts in 1824, having discovered as it thought a valuable and permanent source of revenue, laid a tax of one per cent ad valorem on all merchandise sold in this way. The merchants remonstrated, and declared that the effect of the tax would be to transfer the China business to New York; but it was all in vain. One by one the ships were ordered elsewhere, until in 1857 there were forty-one arrivals from China in New York (half of these being ships owned in Boston), and only six here.1 In 1849 the auction tax had been reduced on merchandise imported from beyond the Cape of Good Hope, to one quarter of one per cent; and in 1852 it had been repealed altogether. But this remedial legislation had come too late. The set of the current was now in another direction, and it could not be di- verted to the old channel. Mr. John E. Lodge, Messrs. Dane, Dana, & Co., and others would bring an occasional cargo of tea to this port; but New York had possession of the Canton trade, and held it firmly until the com- pletion of the Pacific Railroad and Suez Canal, when another great change in courses and methods was introduced.2
1
Boston suffered much loss from the establishment in New York of branch commission houses for the sale of the manufactured dry-goods of this part of New England. This movement began in 1846; and a report of a special committee of the Board of Trade, in 1858, says that nineteen such houses had then been established, and that their sales amounted in the aggregate to $25,000,000 per annum. The dry-goods importing and job- bing trade, and the West India business, suffered seriously in consequence. The boot and shoe trade was held here by the firmness of the leading men engaged in it. Had they given way to the prevailing impulse, the result to the city would have been most disastrous.
The commercial interests of Boston suffered severely for many years from another cause. The construction of railroads in various directions from Boston had been undertaken at the first with much vigor, but after
1 A similar tax in Philadelphia drove the ships of that port, coming from beyond the Cape of Good Hope, to New York. See an article on " Local Taxation," in the Penn Monthly for May, 1871.
2 Captain Sturgis, in a lecture at the Odeon in February, 1844, before the Mercantile Library Association, gave an account of the changes which had taken place in his day in the Canton trade. Nankeen, he said, was once imported in large quantities. As late as 1820 there was $1,000,000 worth imported ; now there was none.
In 1806 Canton crape was first used; in 1810 ten cases were imported ; in 1816 twenty-one thou- sand pieces ; in 1825 the importation amounted to $1,500,000 ; and in 1844 the article was not imported. Silk was once imported in large quantities from China; one cargo, worth near- ly $1,000,000, was mentioned; now the whole yearly importation amounted to less than $100,- 000. In 1818, $7,000,000 were carried to China, in specie; in 1844 settlements were made by bills of exchange. Boston Daily Advertiser, Feb. 19, 1844.
230
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
certain limitations had been reached, the work came to a premature pause. The Boston & Worcester and Western Railroad Companies, which to- gether furnished the only direct means of communication with the West, seemed to expend most of their interest and energy in fruitless controversies with each other in reference to the proper division of freight earnings and terminal expenses. The former had no track connection with tide-water; and the latter, until 1865, had no bridge across the Hudson River, and was only partially double tracked. In 1867 the Boston & Albany Railroad Com- pany was created by the consolidation of the two connecting and conflicting lines, and this was the beginning of a better state of things. In 1868 the double track between Boston and Albany was completed, and a connection perfected with the wharves at East Boston; and in 1870 an elevator was erected on these wharves, with a grain capacity of three or four hundred thousand bushels, since increased to a million.1
1
The consolidation of the two railroad lines just referred to was largely the result of the long continued efforts of the Boston Board of Trade, which was formed in 1854, with special reference to the radical defects in the transportation system of New England then prevailing, and to the necessity which existed for improved facilities of intercourse with the South and West. We must refer our readers to the reports of the Board for informa- tion as to how much was accomplished by it in the first ten or fifteen years of its history, in reducing rates of transportation by rail, and, what was of equal importance, in securing some approximation to regularity in the con- veyance and delivery of freight, as well as in the promotion and encourage- ment of coastwise steamship lines. Some of the men who were the most active in these efforts, and to whom the present generation of business men in Boston owes much more than it is aware, were James C. Converse, George C. Richardson, Silas Potter, James M. Beebe, Edward S. Tobey, William Perkins, Otis Norcross, Wm. B. Spooner, Jonathan Ellis, Isaac C. Bates, Samuel H. Walley, Avery Plumer, M. Denman Ross, Edward Atkin- son, Joseph S. Ropes, Ezra Farnsworth, and Lorenzo Sabine.
In 1863 the Cunard Company was sending two steamships a month to Boston, the same number as in 1840, and there was no indication or hope that it would attempt anything further in the way of extending the foreign trade of the port. The Board of Trade believed that this trade might be increased almost indefinitely, and it appointed a committee to consider the expediency of establishing an American steamship line between Boston and Liverpool. After much conference with railroad managers and represen- tative men in the various branches of business, it was decided that such a line should be attempted, and a company was organized under an Act of the Legislature, July 6, 1864. Two steamers, the "Ontario," and the "Erie," were subsequently built; but the subscriptions of stock were only about one half what they should have been, and after the " Ontario " had made
1 [See Mr. Adams's chapter in this volume. - ED.]
231
THE TRADE, COMMERCE, ETC., OF BOSTON.
· two trips to Liverpool, in 1867, the company became insolvent and the ships had to be sold. 1
At this juncture the Cunard Company took a step which, so far as its own interests are concerned, has proved to have been a serious mistake, and which for the time was a severe blow to the foreign trade of Boston. Its mail subsidy was to be reduced, and a change in its method of manage- ment was forced upon it. It was feeling the competition of the Inman and other modern lines at the port of New York, and it would seem that it could not have been informed as to the new spirit of enterprise to which our railroad managers were awaking. It determined, therefore, to withdraw its mail steamers from this port at the end of the year 1867, and to send instead cargo steamers, which, after landing their freight here, should pro- ceed to New York to load there for Liverpool direct.2 But this did not dis- courage those who were preparing, by various improvements, for a closer connection with the West, and for an export trade upon a large scale. In 1869 Mr. James Alexander was sent from Glasgow as the agent of the Company here. He at once put himself in communication with the officers of the Board of Trade, and with others competent to give him full and correct information, and after much correspondence with his principals, he induced them to attempt the loading of two or three of their cargo steamers at Boston for Liverpool direct. This was done in 1870. The " Palmyra" sailed September 22, being the first departure of a steamship for Liverpool since the " Africa" left the port in 1868.3 The attempt was so far a success that it was decided to continue it. The Boston & Albany Railroad Com- pany co-operated cordially with the Steamship Company, and joined it in some large purchases of grain, which it was necessary at the outset to make in order to insure full cargoes for the ships. Soon after, Mr. David MacIver (the second of the name), now member of Parliament for Birkenhead, vis- ited this country, and after investigation fully confirmed the judgment of Mr. Alexander as to the commercial capabilities of the port, and the desir- ableness of the Cunard Company's restoring, so far as practicable, the old relations with it, which it had so unfortunately sundered. But, Mr. MacIver's suggestions were not accepted by his partners; and in 1873 he retired from the Company and disposed of his entire interest in it. So indifferent was the Company to the splendid opportunity which lay within its reach here, that a few years later it sent one of its captains to Baltimore, to examine and report upon the shipping facilities of that port; and in the winter of 1879-80 it suspended its trips to Boston for a time. It declined,
1 For a full account of the American Steam- on the second and proceeded on the fifth to ship Company, see Report of the Boston Board of New York, to take her place in the mail line from that port. After this came the cargo steamers. Trade for 1880, pp. 47-50; and for an account of the steamers " Midas," "Edith," and " Massa- chusetts," see Report for 1862, pp. 61, 62.
2 The Steamship "Africa," Captain Mac- aulay, sailed for Liverpool via Halifax, Jan. I, 1863. The "Cuba," Captain Moodie, arrived
3 The line was regularly established in the following spring, when, on the 8th of April, 1871, the "Siberia " sailed for Liverpool from this port.
232
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
also, to begin a service between Boston and Glasgow, as recommended by Mr. Alexander.1
In the mean time other steamship companies were giving their attention to Boston, and were gradually identifying themselves with it. Messrs. War- ren & Co., of Liverpool, had sent, during many years, an occasional steamer to this port, which had proceeded to Philadelphia or some Southern port for a return cargo. They now have a well established line between Boston and Liverpool. The Messrs. Leyland began to send their steamers here in the spring of 1876.2 Branches of the Anchor and Allan lines were estab- lished later; until, in 1880, the departures from Boston for English and Scotch ports were more than one for every working day of the year, repre- senting nine or ten different ownerships. We doubt whether, in the history of commerce, there is to be found a record of such a commercial develop- ment as that over which we have occasion to rejoice in Boston,-an advance from no sailing of a steamship for Europe direct in 1869, to three hundred and twenty-two such sailings in 1880.3
We have mentioned one legislative enactment, the direct effect of which was to drive business away from the port of Boston. It is only just to refer to other and later action by the General Court, which was designed and intended to promote our foreign commerce, and which has more than ful- filled the expectation of those who carried it through. At about the time when the Cunard Company was considering the question of reopening direct steamship communication between Boston and Liverpool, the Inman Company seemed disposed to send some of its ships to Boston, and actually began to do so. For the purpose of strengthening these companies in the disposition thus indicated, the Board of Trade asked the Legislature to repeal, or at least to modify, the law of the Commonwealth which levied a head-money tax on immigrant passengers arriving for the first time within its limits. It was represented by the Board, that to relieve immigration at the port of Boston from a tax which was imposed elsewhere would inev- itably have the effect to increase immigration here, and would offer an additional inducement, and a very strong one, to steamship companies to send their vessels here. Indeed, one of the considerations which had great weight with the Cunard Company in reaching its ultimate decision with regard to Boston was that immigrant passengers brought here by its ships
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