The first steamship of war, called the Fulton, was constructed as early as 1815, by Fulton himself, and lost by accident in 1829. One other only was constructed in 1838, a war steamer called the Fulton, that may frequently be seen at anchor in the New York harbor; besides one named the Missouri, recently launched at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and another that is now upon the stocks in Philadelphia. Recent measures have been adopted by Congress, in consequence of the increase of steam navigation, and the multiplication of destructive accidents by its agency, to diminish, if not entirely to prevent them, by national legislation. In December, of 1838, the Secretary of the Treasury communicated to congress a letter, accompanying a voluminous document embracing the prominent statistical facts connected with steam navigation, and also reports of the accidents by steamboats, and the causes of those accidents that had occurred in different parts of the country. During the last session of congress, Mr. Ruggles, from the committee on commerce, submitted a report upon the resolution of the senate, instructing them to inquire whether the law then in existence did not require amendment; and, in accordance therewith, reported a bill for the amendment of the existing law, requiring a particular inspection of the boilers of steamboats, in order to increase the safety of passengers.* We trust that thorough measures will be adopted, if possible, to prevent the disasters of this character which are coming to our ears almost on the arrival of every mail. The bill to which we allude must effectuate that object most successfully, and will probably pass into a law before our remarks go through the press. We The actual condition of steam navigation in this country is a matter of very great interest to the people, inasmuch as it exhibits the rapid progress of this branch of commercial enterprise within the United States. are enabled, by the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, made in December, 1838, to which we have referred, for an authentic statement of the number of steamboats in the different parts of the United States, so far as returned, and their tonnage, down to the date of the report, which we here subjoin, as this report is the latest that has been made, and serves to give particular information on the matter. STEAMBOATS IN EACH STATE. Statement of the number of steamboats, and of the tonnage of the same, in each state, so far as returns have been received, in December, 1838; and statement of the amount of tonnage of steam-vessels in each state, on the 30th of September, 1837, according to the annual statement of the commerce and navigation of the United States, for the year ending September 30, 1837, and of the number built in 1837. In 58 of the above boats, the tonnage not being returned, is estimated at 10,800 tons more-making an aggregate of 137,473 tons in the ascertained boats. What, then, is the influence which steam navigation has produced, and is producing upon the country? The position, it is thought, may be safely maintained, that it has effected a more powerful, physical, and moral revolution, upon this republic, than any agency that has been devised, or could be devised, within the present knowledge of man. In order to ascertain this fact, it will be only necessary to look back at the condition of the country before this agent was introduced, and when the vessels worked by sails were the only vehicles of commerce. What would now have been the extent of colonization in this broad empire had we been shut out from its benefits? We have already seen that, previous to the year 1811, the great navigable waters of the interior were destitute of safe and rapid means of in * No returns. + No returns from these states, except in part with Missouri and Kentucky. ↑ No returns from Wisconsin, except in part with Michigan. tercommunication. The few feeble colonies that had penetrated the forests of the Muskingum, the Ohio, and the Detroit, were in effect cut off from the rest of the world; and even at a later period, the eloquent geographer of the western valley, Mr. Timothy Flint, could creep up the Mississippi in his boat only by grasping the reeds that bordered its banks. What motive was held out for the cultivation of lands, however fertile, when the producer was deprived of a market? What other agent upon the face of the earth, but steam, could stem the current of that flood, and provide convenient access to the plantations scattered along its winding shores? What motive would have been presented for ages for the colonization of the wilderness around the lakes, were the western waters traversed only by the canoe or pirogue of the Indian and fur-trader, or the straggling shallop, cast about by storms, which occasionally made a solitary voyage to the western ports? Where now would have been Buffalo and Cleveland, Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis, had not steam navigation made them entrepots of trade and commerce? How many emigrants would have left their peaceful hearthstones at the east, and have ventured into an unbroken wilderness, removed from the uncertain and inconvenient means of navigation, by months of travel from the firesides they had left? How many golden wheat-fields in that region would have waved with yellow harvests, were the western husbandman deprived of eastern intercourse and an eastern market? Steam navigation colonized the west! It furnished a motive for settlement and production by the hands of eastern men, because it brought the western territory nearer to the east by nine tenths of the distance. It opened new channels of intercommunication, and new markets for its products. A journey from the western borders of New York to Detroit, requires but a little more than two days. Steam palaces float by scores upon almost every point of the western waters. The western farmer can receive his friend, and ship his wheat and cotton and sugar and corn, by steamers, almost within stones-throw of his granary. Steam is crowding our eastern cities with western flour and western merchants, and lading the western steamboats with eastern emigrants and eastern merchandise. It has advanced the career of national colonization and national production, at least a century! Whatever of general benefit is derived from commerce will be enhanced by steam navigation, because steam navigation is the most important agent of commerce. Whatever of intelligence is produced by a free and liberal intercourse between foreign or domestic states; whatever of wealth is furnished by production, and the mutual interchange of agricultural products, between different portions of the same country; whatever of refinement it gives to the taste, or liberality to the mind, or comfort to the physical man, will be augmented by the agency of steam. Does the scholar desire to obtain a valuable work or a newspaper from a distant point? steam will print it, and transport it to his door, wet from the press. Does the gentleman of leisure wish to obtain the latest fashion from the London tailor, of Bond street? steam will not only give him the desired information with the speed of an antelope, but weave the cloth, and send it to him with due despatch. Do the ladies choose to drain the already collapsed pockets of their Cassius-like husbands, by the procuration of gauze veils or shawls from the looms of France? steam will comply with their request, as the Scotchman says, "for a consideration." As regards the consequences that will be derived from the establishment of ocean navigation by steam, from the different ports of Europe to this country, it is obvious that such communication must open to us new sources of wealth and national enlightenment. Recent indications have manifested themselves on the part of the English government towards us, which clearly show that their policy respecting this republic is undergoing a thorough change. They have seen a people sprung from their own soil, subduing a wilderness; at first feeble colonies, but now grown to a mighty empire, proud of our government and confident of our power, and second to them only in commercial strength. It is natural for that monarchy, which has heretofore held the world tributary to her mercantile enterprise, to strive to form an amicable intercourse with this nation, that has long furnished the most valuable market for her products, and which one of her own earls, Lord Chatham, once truly declared upon the floor of the British parliament, even before we had established our independence, could not be conquered. For she has tried twice to subdue us, and has failed. The bitter spirit that was formerly manifested towards this country is obviously softened. The two nations have forgotten their old blows. The leading organ of the crown, the London Quarterly Review, contains at present but little biting sarcasm of our social habits and institutions, or those jeers that once asked "Who reads an American book?" but now, in fact, reviews these books, declaring the "History of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic," a work written by one of our own countrymen, equal to any effort of a similar kind that has appeared within the present age, and even admits into the columns of that journal the papers of regular contributors from this side of the water. The statue of our own Washington adorns the prow of its largest steamship, and the portraits of the successive presidents of our republic grace the walls of its saloon. The heraldic arms of England and America, the eagle and the lion, are intermingled in fraternal union upon the shields of the two nations that are wrought in gilded carving upon its stern, while the stars and stripes of our national flag are advanced at its masthead on its entrance into our port. Are not these facts the harbinger of a more prosperous intercourse between the two nations? Should it not lead to that improved and reciprocal policy on the part of both by which a mutual benefit may be produced-to England by the abolition of the corn laws, and the introduction into that empire of our agricultural products, and to the United States by the free importation into their own country, from her workshops, of a portion of her manufactured goods, without injury to our own manufactures? It is not proposed here to discuss the influence of the steam war-ships that are gradually introducing themselves among the naval armaments of the prominent maritime powers of Europe, and which must prove the most formidable weapons of coast defence, and ultimately prove heralds of peace, by augmenting the destructive powers of men to an extent at which humanity grows pale. Nor will the causes of the difference presented between the light and comparatively fragile steamboats of our empire, constructed only to ply upon the smoother waters of this country, and those solid and black steamships built to encounter the rough storms of the sea, which rush into our ports from the ocean as regularly as clockwork, be particularly described. Our time is to come, to float models of this sort, equal, at least, to any ships that navigate the ocean; for in naval architecture we have never been exceeded. The practical tendencies of the present age are nowhere more prominently exhibited than in the arts that have been applied to commerce by the agency of steam. If the past has been more distinguished in those refined arts that minister to the taste alone, without reference to the useful, and mere artists are too often left to starve, modern times have brought the fine to the aid of the useful arts. If the ancients possessed their statues, and temples, and amphora, and pyramids, it can scarcely be denied that some of their noblest conceptions were derived from the useful arts. Virgil, the bard of Mantua, who flourished before the birth of Christ, it is well known, has in his poem of the Eneid led us into the rock-bound and murky workshop of the one-eyed and fabulous giants called the Cyclops, who, near the Sicilian coast, forged the thunderbolts of Jupiter, and wrought the celestial armory of the gods. The poet shows to us these workmen hammering out the arms that Venus ordered to be wrought by them for Æneas, her warrior son. The entrance into that ancient cave may give us some idea of the blacksmiths of the mythology, and we furnish this admission by the translation of Dryden, which is sa beautiful that we scarcely regret that it is so long. "Sacred to Vulcan's name, an isle there lay, Raised high on smoking rocks, and deep below, Through the brown air precipitates his flight; His broken axletrees and blunted war, And send him forth again with furbished arms, Full on the crest the Gorgon's head they place, With eyes that roll in death, and with distorted face. |