Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/317

 hitherto employed in the trade with China. The discovery of the gold mines in California gave an impetus to their shipbuilding hitherto unknown; and, for that trade, they brought out a class of ships such as the world had then never seen; their dimensions in tonnage being as great as the largest of our old East Indiamen, with a capacity for cargo far greater, and with lines as sharp and fine as almost any Baltimore clipper. The voyage of the first of these celebrated vessels was limited to San Francisco, from which she returned in ballast to New York, having earned sufficient freight on her outward passage alone to amply remunerate her enterprising owners. The others, however, which followed, continued their voyage from California to China, and having the peculiar advantage of their own "coasting trade," from which the vessels of all other nations were excluded, they obtained an immense advantage over all competitors.

Freights from New York to California, which, at first, were exorbitantly high, still averaged somewhere about 5l. per ton: thence, these ships proceeded to China, and there, were able to load cargoes of tea and other produce direct for London or New York, thus securing on the round voyage from 8l. to 10l. per ton freight, while our ships, engaged in the direct trade between London and China, a voyage nearly as long, could only earn out and home little more than half that rate per ton. It was not therefore, surprising, that loud complaints were made by British Shipowners of the disadvantage in which their vessels were placed, when competing with those of the United States.