" The requirement in the old law of 1793 as to the composition of
the crews of French merchant ships was modified, reducing the proportion
of sailors who must be Frenchmen.
French-built ships were privileged to chose between the shipping and the
navigation bounties. To obtain the shipping bounty for the maximum of
three hundred days steamers must make during the year a minimum of
thirty-five thousand miles if engaged in the overseas trade, or
twenty-five thousand if in "_cabotage international_."[CA] Shipowners
agreeing to maintain on routes not served by the subsidized main
steamers a regular line, performing a fixed minimum of journeys per
year, with vessels of a certain age and tonnage, were permitted to
claim, in lieu of the regular bounties, a fixed subsidy during the term
of their agreement, equal to the average of the bounties to which the
vessels in commission would be entitled for the whole of the journeys
performed. The new tonnage to be admitted to the benefit of the law was
limited to three hundred thousand gross tons of steamers and one hundred
thousand gross tons of sailing-ships; of which new tonnage freight-built
ships could form two-fifths. The appropriation for the payment of the
bounties was also limited, to guard against a too heavy burden upon the
national treasury.
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