Saturday, February 8, 2014

Britain Grows Stronger While U.S. Shipping Wanes Thanks to Commerce Raiders

FEBRUARY 6TH, 1864:

Special Commissioner of the Confederate States A. Dudley Mann wrote Secretary of State Benjamin from London: "The iron hull is superceding the wooden hull just as steam is superceding canvas.

The rich and exhaustless ore fields and coal mines of the 'Island Giant', her numerous workshops and shipyards, the abundance and constant augmentation of her seamen, will probably in less than a score of years produce for her a mercantile navy three times as large as that of all the world besides.

The old American Union was her only rival in bottom carrying. That rival has disappeared."

Mann was referring to the fact that U.S. merchant vessels were increasingly sailing under foreign registry because of Southern commerce raiders.

--Old B-Runner

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