WILLIAM FLAYHART

The American Line

The largely unknown early history (1870-1900) of the American Steamship Company—an extremely colorful and eventful time replete with disasters and triumphs.

The American Line tells the story of the first successful American steamship line after the Civil War to rival the great European transatlantic companies—an important and glorious chapter in the history of the American Merchant Marine.

In the years between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, American sailing ships carried the Stars and Stripes around the world with honor to the nation and profit to their owners. But the success of Confederate commerce raiders during the Civil War and the concurrent change from sail to steam and wooden hulls to iron brought disaster to many American shipping companies. By 1870 there was not a single American-flag passenger line on the North Atlantic—a sad blow for a nation that a short time earlier had boasted one of the finest merchant fleets in the world.

1873 saw the first attempt at establishing a new American-flag steamship line to carry passengers and cargo across the North Atlantic from Philadelphia to Liverpool: the American Steamship Company, which began with the financial backing of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and the Philadelphia Quaker community. It would eventually evolve into the great American Line (1893), which succeeded in restoring American prestige on the North Atlantic, and became the founding unit of the International Merchantile Marine, the giant shipping trust of 1902.

At the same time, if the task of operating a fleet under the American flag seemed too difficult, other American Quaker merchants (also in Philadelphia and also with the backing of the PRR) sought to establish another steamship line under a flag-of-convenience. Thus the International Navigation Company, more familiarly known as the Red Star Line, began operations in 1873, flying the Belgian flag, using British-built ships, and running them with foreign crews between Antwerp and Philadelphia.

Focusing on the largely unknown but highly eventful early history of the American Line and the Red Star Line, this book offers insight into both the triumphs and the setbacks of American shipping companies in the last three decades of the nineteenth century.