In 1851 the total British steam shipping engaged in foreign trade was 65,921 tons.

The United States only began building steamships in 1848, yet by 1851 its ocean-going steamships aggregated 62,390 tons.

For four years our growth continued so that in 1855 we had 115,000 tons engaged in foreign trade.

Then began the retrograde movement, until in 1860--before the time of the Confederate cruisers--there were; according to an official report to the National Board of Trade, "no ocean mail steamers away from our own coasts, anywhere on the globe, under the American flag, except, perhaps, on the route between New York and Havre, where two steamships may then have been in commission, which, however, were soon afterward withdrawn.

The two or three steamship companies which had been in existence in New York had either failed or abandoned the business; and the entire mail, passenger, and freight traffic between Great Britain and the United States, so far as this was carried on by steam, was controlled then (as it mainly is now) by British companies." And from this condition of decadence the merchant marine of the United States is just beginning to manifest signs of recovery.
When steam had fairly established its place as the most effective power for ocean voyages of every duration, and through every zone and clime, improvements in the methods of harnessing it, and in the form and material of the ships that it was to drive, followed fast upon each other.