Thus they contended, with redoubled force, that if, in the infancy of commerce, the navigation laws had been wise and salutary, their rigorous enforcement now was more than ever imperative, not only from the amazing increase of foreign shipping, but from the heavy duties to which British shipping was liable. British ships, they said, stood charged with duties not merely on every article necessary for their equipment, amounting to upwards of seven per cent. on their whole value, but double duty was levied on their gross tonnage, denominated a _war tax_, though really the offspring of what was termed “a profound peace.”[262] The ships of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Prussia, they went on to state, could be built and navigated at much lower rates than those of Britain, while many naval stores were the original produce of countries whose ships were not burthened with heavy duties, and where, too, provisions were cheap and wages low. Hence foreigners, it was alleged, “were able to take freight at a lower rate; and, as the smallest difference in that respect determined the preference of the merchant, the carrying-trade of Europe was almost entirely wrested from us.” Whatever may have been the cause that led to this result, it was stated publicly at the end of March 1804, that there was then scarcely a single offer of trade for a British bottom, except such as were employed in the coasting or colonial trades, which were held secure by the strict enforcement of the Navigation Act. The shipowners pointed with dismay to the mooring places in the river Thames, which were crowded with foreign ships in full employ; while British vessels covered the banks or filled the wet docks in a state of inactivity and decay. [Sidenote: Hardships of the pressing-system.] [Sidenote: Apprentices.] Nor did their complaint stop here. The arbitrary system of impressing sea-apprentices, a system which acted with especial injury in the case of those of the watermen on the river who, being liable to be impressed in the fourth year of their apprenticeship, were lost to their masters when their services were becoming remunerative, was severely and justly criticised; indeed it is on record that, before this period, there had been no fewer than thirty thousand watermen, etc., at work on the river Thames, between Westminster-bridge and Gravesend, exclusive of the British and foreign seamen on board the shipping; but that in 1804 there was not a sixth part of that number. The new dock regulations and the employment of carts instead of lighters to carry goods to the merchants’ inland warehouses swelled the general catalogue of grievances, while the erection of the East India Docks, then in progress, was looked on as the crowning act of mischief, and was therefore viewed by the forlorn shipowners with unmitigated horror. [Sidenote: Suggestions to secure the Mediterranean trade,]