But until within a few years the American flag had almost disappeared from vessels engaged in international trade.

Americans in many instances are the owners of ships flying the British flag, for the United States laws deny American registry--which is to a ship what citizenship is to a man--to vessels built abroad.

While the result of this attempt to protect American shipyards has been to drive our flag from the ocean, there are indications now that our shipyards are prepared to build as cheaply as others, and that the flag will again figure on the high seas.
Popular history has ascribed to Robert Fulton the honor of building and navigating the first steamboat.

Like claims to priority in many other inventions, this one is strenuously contested.

Two years before Fulton's "Clermont" appeared on the Hudson, John Stevens, of Hoboken, built a steamboat propelled by a screw, the model of which is still in the Stevens Polytechnic Institute.