Merchant Marines

Shipping - transportation of passengers and goods on waterways. From prehistoric times shipping has had a major influence on human social development. Water routes, unlike roads, did not need building, and the difficulties and dangers were less than those offered by mountains, marshes, and enemy tribes. Therefore many early civilizations developed on navigable rivers or on the coasts of warm Read More...

Shipping in Ancient Times

Ancient peoples famous for their shipping enterprises include the Phoenicians, the Cretans, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. The shipping routes of those highly civilized peoples were chiefly in the Mediterranean, but their voyages extended to India, along the Atlantic coast of Africa, and to Britain, where tin was secured. The goods shipped consisted largely of luxuries, including spices, perfumes, and such fine pottery as the famous Athenian ware; but shipments of grain became important as cities grew in size.

Shipping in the Commercial Revolution

The great modern merchant marines (national fleets of commercial ships) first appeared in the commercial revolution. Leaders in shipping included the Spanish, the Portuguese, and the Venetians. The activities of mariners of SW Europe included discovery and conquest in the New World. In the 13th and 14th cent. the Hanseatic League built up a great trading and fishing fleet, while the Italian city-republics developed marine insurance on modern lines. England's shipping industry was associated with colonization, with the development of manufacturing, and especially with leadership in the Industrial Revolution. The greatest competitors of the British were the French and the Dutch. Both were vanquished in war and strangled in peace by the British Navigation Acts.

The introduction of slave labor into the American colonies made the slave trade one of the most profitable branches of shipping for two centuries. America's vast resources in timber provided an advantage in building wooden ships, and swift sailing vessels of American design, such as the schooner and the clipper, dominated shipping until the mid-19th cent. The introduction of steel steamships enabled Great Britain to reassume the chief place in shipbuilding and shipping.

Shipping in the Twentieth Century

From about 1900 until World War I, Germany held second place in the world in both navy and merchant marine, and its challenge to Great Britain's domination of the sea was an important cause of the war. In the period between the two world wars the principal maritime nations were Great Britain and its dominions, the United States, Japan, Norway, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and France. The United States merchant marine steadily declined, and in order to stimulate shipbuilding the Merchant Marine Act of 1936 created the U.S. Maritime Commission. At the beginning of World War II in Europe, U.S. shipping, handicapped by the Neutrality Act, again declined. American vessels were diverted to trade outside the war zones and many were transferred to other flags, mainly the Panamanian.

After the entry of the United States into the war (Dec., 1941), a huge shipbuilding program rapidly got under way, and standardized vessels were turned out by assembly-line methods. A brief period of United States dominance in world shipping followed the war. Subsequently, however, the U.S. merchant marine again declined steadily; as the expense of American labor and ship construction increased, the cost of operation went beyond competitive levels, despite the fact that the American shipping industry was receiving a large subsidy from the federal government.

Since the 1960s, U.S. ports have modernized their facilities by automating operations, installing computerized tracking systems, and handling containers ("intermodal shipping") that can be transferred directly to truck trailers or rail cars. Older facilities that do not have the room to handle containerized shipping have declined. These changes have greatly reduced the number of jobs in the shipping industry.

Much of the cargo formerly carried in American vessels and in those of other major nations is now carried by so-called flag of convenience fleets. Such lines arose with the tendency of large shippers, especially those of Greece and the United States, to avoid the high taxes of their home countries by registering their ships in low-tax nations such as Panama and Liberia. In 1998 about 1.08 trillion tons of goods were imported to or exported from the United States by ship, but vessels flying the U.S. flag handled only 3% of that shipping.