The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1898-10-29

Cons uming Fotty-five Days on an
Average N the Procsss-Driven Out by
Steam.
IN. Y. Sum-
A solitary old sailing vessel, the last of
her fleet, is tied up in the Erie Basin
awaiting buyer. The final transactions
Incident to the winding up of business
await settlement at her owners office.
When these matters are attended to, the
old ship sold and the firms name taken
down from over the Office door on South
street where it has stood unchanged for
more than half a century. the last tan
gible evidence of an interesting epoch in
American commerce will have passed out
of existence.
The old saili ng liner, now doomed to
become a coal carrier, or .debased to such
other obscure exigency As her new owner
may choose, represents the best type OF
the thres-masted wooden vessel formerly
in service between this country and
Europe, and doing for the public just
what the first.class iron steamships do
now. She and her sister ships carried
cabir passengers, steerage passengers, the
mail and such cargo as offered, and her
owners were as prominent in shipping
affairs as any one of the foremost owners
of the big ocean liners today. They, like
their contpmpor aries who went out of
business fifteen or twenty years ago, are
constrained to quit, more on account OF
the changed conditions of the times in
their particular world than because of
lack of funds. The determining influences
| in ocean traffic today are so different from
those which obtained under the former
regime that the stanch old shipping line
would have to make itself all over new,
from stem to stern, in order to keep up
with the procession. Conservative, loyal,
the descendants of sturdy down-East
stock of sea CHANGERS and sea lovers, the
partners have chung to the old business
through thick and thin, against odds that
years ago forced their fellow pioneers in
New York shipping ventures one after
another to seek other fields of business
activity.
"The day for 1.-THE American sailor is
over,' said a retired shipmaster, whose
office windows on the eighteenth floor of
a newly completed building command an
unobstructed view. Of the East River
slips, wharyes. and shipping. II can sit
here and look out on the old mooring
grounds of eight or ten fleets, all gone,
scattered to the four winds, and the firms
| that owned and sailed the III have gone
| into other businesses I know the time
| we'll when American commerce was in
| it's heydey, and every body interested and
eager to get clip at it. Fortunes were
made in those days. You see that slip
down there, the one next to the ferry,
| where the British bark Is moored? Well,
| knew a man who without SO much as
an Office or ledger, or even firm name
to consign his cargoes to. and only a
hermaphrodite feet-some square srigged,
some with one mast-made $500, 900 in a
few years out Ct the ships that used to
come in at that slip. He kept accounts
and made calculations on his thumbnail,
ueed any business acquaintance be
CHANGED to have as a consignee, and got
along by giving the shipwrights and sail
makers who helped build his ships an
eighth or quarter interest in their value.
| His vessels were named respectively
North, South, East and West, and were
we'll known. Without expenses and with
the freight charges five times as high as
they are nov. he got rich. That further
| slip is where the Swallowtail line, all tidy
sailing vessels. plying back and forth to
Europe, used to come in. I've taken
many ship out of this port for them.
Then there was the BIackbal and a score
of others, all right in with the cream OF
| trade, and registering people for passage
two and three months ahead.
American commerce was in the hands
of Americans then. Up to 1860 our COM
mer was eqralf to any in the world.
Ii was the civil war that knocked 1t into
smithere ems gave it blow hard to re-
cover from and put thel carrying trade
into the hands of foreigners. This ID.
and D. line remember the sailors
,,sed to call it the Dead and Damned,
although it was always very much alive
is the very last of the old South street and
Wal, street first to give up the ship and
they haven't been doing anything for
five or six years and H. 6 n selling off
their ships as long back as in the eighties.
This old ship over in the basin now, the
Hamilton Fish I think they call her, is
the last one left sout Of successive fleets
that often numbered twenty or more. The
d. & DIS were always steady goers. They
| never resortsd to any subterfuge during
the war to escape the heavy insurance,
| but sailed straight along under the
| American flag and took what came.
| Numbers of American vessels were put
| under foreign flags at the time and the
firm name was changed to that Of some
clerk CT offos employe but the best lines
stuck by the Government. All were
wooden vessels then. 1t was shortly after
| that iron ships, iron and steel, came into
fashion. Now no wooden ships are built
at all, except some few in Maine for the
| J~tro sarviao he TINA tho irri p1