Steam Titans by William M. Fowler Jr

Author:William M. Fowler Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Collins

Cunard

Payroll for two months

$9,000

$5,400

Consumption coal, one round

Trip @$5 per ton

10,000

7,000

Insurance, depreciation

For two months

23,333

16,068

While each side conjured up its own numbers, on one point there was no disagreement. Collins’s ships were more costly to operate than Cunard’s. The question was whether the United States government ought to pay such exorbitant sums.

Senator Borland answered with a resounding no, and on May 12 he took the floor to launch an attack “against the Collins Line of Steamers and against special legislation—the doctrine of Protection—and all Monopolies.” Borland, known for his colorful prose, compared the Collins Line to a “huge and hungry Boa Constrictor, fast winding its tortuous and fearful folds about the body and limbs of this Congress.” After speaking for more than two hours, the former doctor from Arkansas turned to William King, president pro tem—“My strength has failed me, and I am unable to stand on my feet any longer.” He asked that he be allowed to continue another day. Despite bitter divides within the chamber, on this occasion courtesy prevailed. The senator would be permitted to resume his remarks the following Monday. When obviously refreshed, Borland rose again and “spoke until a late hour,” repeating his opposition to special legislation, monopolies, and Collins.54

Other senators, taking less time than Borland but no less vigorous in their language, spoke in opposition. In the end Collins’s Senate supporters—including Gwin, Rusk, and others—managed to hold the line. On May 31 the chamber approved the amended bill by a vote, 27 to 19. Eighteen of the 19 votes against the measure came from the South and West.55

Although the bill had survived in the Senate, the House—to which the amended measure would have to return—was in doubt. Knowing his line could not survive without the added money, Collins turned to James Brown for help. Brown enlisted the aid of the company representative in Philadelphia, William Bowen, an English Quaker who had been with the Browns for more than twenty years, as their agent first in Manchester and then in Philadelphia. Having spent upward of $10,000 to bring Baltic to Washington, Collins and James Brown decided to double down and supplied Bowen with ample cash (rumors reported upward of $20,000), dispatching him to Washington. Knowing that the amended bill would have to return to the House for approval, Bowen made his first visits to members of the House Committee on Ways and Means, to whom the bill was assigned. He paid particular attention to an influential Philadelphia congressman, John Robbins, to whom he reported he brought “influence from various quarters to vote in favor, if not to keep out of the way.”56 Bowen also launched a charm offensive, calling to the city Jenny Lind’s friend, the gallant Captain James West. Suave, debonair, and handsome, West was quite unlike Collins’s other gruff sea dog commanders, as much at ease in the salon as he was barking orders from the quarterdeck. He was the captain, trumpeted the Baltimore Sun, who had “crossed the wide Atlantic two hundred and eight times!” and who “Jenny Lind remembers in her prayers.

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