In accordance with the Peace Treaty all German merchant ships of any importance were handed over to the Entente Powers. This, in part, was as compensation for the loss of tonnage during the U-boat campaign. But Germany recompensed her shipping companies for the merchant vessels thus surrendered and gave them every encouragement to build up once more the fleets which meant so much to her, financially and politically. For the Shipping Redemption Agreement of 1921 indemnified these companies, provided labour for the shipyards, and ensured co-operation of the industries inland. The money paid to the companies was taken from the national funds, but its distribution and the supervision of the building programme have been entrusted to a Shipowners’ Trust Company. Thus Germany still realises all that a Mercantile Marine means to her, and she has every intention of building it up again during the coming years. FOOTNOTES: [8] That is, tonnage built during the war. CHAPTER XVIII THE AMERICAN MERCANTILE MARINE Throughout the course of this story the reader will have observed many references to the American Mercantile Marine. Let us now consider how it began, developed, waned and again revived. We have seen how the enterprise of the New England builders was to have a profound effect on British shipping, but we desire now to regard the subject as a whole. So long as a country, wherever situated, has a seaboard, it is very evident that its civilised community will soon begin building craft of some kind. The early colonists in America built a 30-ton vessel as far back as 1607, and it is from this _Virginia_ that we must trace the American Mercantile Marine. Seven years later a small ship was launched at New Amsterdam, as, of course, New York was then called, and by the second decade of the seventeenth century there were over 1000 ships in colonial waters; for numbers of shipwrights had come over from England. During the eighteenth century at Portland, Maine, and elsewhere were built square-rigged ships, privateers, and the first schooners as well as brigantines. This was quite apart from the shipping and timber sent to England, and during the year 1769 the twelve colonies launched 389 ships, representing 20,000 tons. In few countries of the world has the relation between war and mercantile shipping been so accurately reflected, as we shall see as we go on. The immediate result of the American revolution was to throttle the Atlantic trade, and five of the first eleven Acts of Congress were laws to encourage American shipping. In 1789 the State gave special privileges to shippers engaged in the East Indian and China trades. Many of these shippers and owners were located in Massachusetts, and made fine profits, as, for instance, the _Mount Vernon_ of Salem, which in 1799 made a profit of $100,000 in a single round trip to China; and one ship made 700 per cent. on a cargo of pepper from Sumatra.