Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 24.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

“In 1860, two-thirds of the commerce of New York was carried on in American bottoms: in 1863 three-fourths was carred on in foreign bottoms.” And the transfers from the United States to the British flag were enormously large. They were:

War ended in April, 1865.

The mediocre Alabama, a single small and ill-armed ship, was the cause of most of this loss. There were, no doubt, other contributing factors, but the effect of her career is plainly marked in the sudden increase of transfers during 1863, when she was at sea. After she had been sent to the bottom, Yankee skippers recovered their breath. The trade, however, had departed, and the United States has never regained the position which it held in 1860 as a shipping nation. Here again, the destruction of helpless northern ships in nowise benefitted the South. It wrought individual ruin, and it embittered the relations between England and the United States; it had no strategic result, as the North was self-dependent.—Nineteenth Century.