" To foster British
commerce they have undeniably been employed to meet and check foreign
competition on the seas, as the record shows.
In the United States they have taken the form of postal subsidies openly
granted for the two-fold purpose of the transportation of the ocean
mails in American-built and American-owned ships, and the encouragement
of American shipbuilding and ship-using.
CHAPTER II
GREAT BRITAIN
England has never granted general ship-construction or navigation
bounties except in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. Under Elizabeth
Parliament offered a bounty of five shillings per ton to every ship
above one hundred tons burden; and under James I that law was revived,
with the bounty applying only to vessels of two hundred tons or over.[A]
A policy of Government favoritism to shipping, however, began far back
in the dim ninth century with Alfred the Great. Under the inspiration of
this Saxon of many virtues, his people increased the number of English
merchant vessels and laid the foundation for the creation and
maintenance of a royal navy.[B] The Saxon Athelstan, Alfred's grandson,
whose attention to commerce was also marked, first made it a way to
honor, one of his laws enacting that a merchant or mariner successfully
accomplishing three voyages on the high seas with a ship and a cargo of
his own should be advanced to the dignity of a thane (baron).
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