The Way of the Ship: America's Maritime History Reenvisoned, 1600-2000

by Alex Roland

Overview

The history of shipping in America, as traditionally recounted, is based primarily on the fortunes of the American merchant marine. This book offers a global perspective and considers oceanic shipping and domestic shipping along America's coasts and inland waterways, with explanations of the forces that influenced the way of the ship. The result is an eye-opening look at American maritime history and the ways it helped shaped the nation’s history. It features beautiful color images of paintings by today’s premier marine artist, John Stobart.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620458778
Publisher:	Trade Paper Press
Publication date:	11/01/2007
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	556
File size:	24 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

ALEX ROLAND is a Professor of History at Duke University, where he teaches military history and the history of technology. He previously taught at the U.S. Army War College and the U.S. Naval Academy. The author of several books, he is currently writing a biography of Robert Fulton.

W. JEFFREY BOLSTER, a maritime historian, is a Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire. His book Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail was a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year."

ALEXANDER KEYSSAR is the Stirling Professor of History and Social Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is the author of Out of Work: The First Century of Unemployment in Massachusetts, which won the Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians and was a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year." His 2000 book, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, received the Beveridge Prize from the American Historical Association and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     xi
Introduction     1
When Shipping Was King: Colonial Shipping and the Making of America, 1600-1783
The Colonies and the Sea     9
Richard Hakluyt's Maritime Plantations     14
John Winthrop's Godly Society by the Sea     20
Codfish, Timber, and Profit     31
An Infant Industry     37
The Shipping Business in 1700     45
The Eclipse of Boston     57
Coastal Commerce in Colonial America     69
The Sailor's Life     82
War and Transformation     88
A World within Themselves: The Golden Age and the Rise of Inland Shipping, 1783-1861
A Tale of Two Ports     99
Robert Livingston and the Art of the Deal     105
Robert Fulton and the Art of Steaming     113
The War of 1812     123
Henry Shreve and the Taming of the River     130
DeWitt Clinton and the Canal Craze     139
Rushing to San Francisco     148
Steam, Speed, Schedule: A Business Model for the Golden Age     158
Matthew Fontaine Maury and the Growth of Infrastructure     172
Maritime Industry and Labor in the Gilded Age, 1861-1914
The Hinge of War     181
Anaconda, Anyone?     184
Benjamin Franklin Isherwood and the Industrialization of Ship Production     189
The Alabama and Commerce War     194
Cornelius Vanderbilt and the Rise of the Railroad     199
Marcus Hanna and the Growth of Heartland Shipping     205
John Lynch and the Quest for a National Maritime Policy     211
John Roach and the New Shipbuilding     218
West Coast Shipping and the Rise of Maritime Labor     225
Andrew Furuseth, the Unions, and the Law     231
Ships, Steel, and More Labor     241
The Weight of War, 1905-1956
Mahan, Roosevelt, and the Seaborne Empire     255
War and Woodrow Wilson     264
Robert Dollar and the Business of Shipping, 1920-1929     275
A Tale of Two Harrys: The Radicalization of West Coast Labor     284
Hugo Black and Direct Subsidy, 1935-1941     293
The Henry Bacon and the War in the Atlantic, 1941-1945     302
Henry Kaiser and the War in the Pacific, 1941-1945     317
Edward Stettinius and Flags of Convenience     325
Megaship: The Rise of the Invisible, Automated Bulk Carrier, 1956-2000
Daniel K. Ludwig and the Giant Ships     335
Malcom McLean and the Container Revolution     343
Farewell the Finger Pier: The Changing Face of Ports      353
The Shrinking Giant: Maritime Labor in an Age of Mechanization     362
Richard Nixon and the Quest for a National Maritime Policy     372
Hot Wars and Cold     381
Ted Arison and the Fun Cruise for Thousands     390
Conclusion     400
Epilogue     413
World and U.S. Commercial Vessels     419
Value of U.S. Waterborne Cargo, 1790-1994     427
Maritime Labor, 1925-2000     437
U.S. Shipbuilding, 1769-1969     439
Glossary     445
Bibliographic Essay     451
Notes     456
Art Credits     507
Index     509