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The staple trade of the merchants was with the West Indies, to which they sent fish and coal and lumber, receiving in return sugar and rum and molasses. Most of this sea-borne commerce centred at Halifax, rather to the detriment of the rest of the province, for from Halifax inland the ways were rough and difficult. But gradually the other coast towns won their privileges and became ports of entry.
It was inevitable that as the new movement of opinion gathered force it should carry with it a conviction that for operating against sea-borne trade sporadic attack could never be so efficient as an organised system of operations to secure a real strategical control of the enemy's maritime communications.
But in fulness of time the estuary of the Cull silted up, and a bar formed at the harbour mouth; so that sea-borne commerce was driven to seek other havens. Then the Cull narrowed its channel, and instead of spreading itself out prodigally as heretofore on this side or on that, shrunk to the limits of a well-ordered stream, and this none of the greatest.
In either case the sea-power of Minoan Crete was a reality which endured, not for one reign, but for many reigns; and it is practically certain that, during a long period of history, the whole sea-borne trade of Europe, Asia, and Africa, was in the hands of these, the earliest lords of the ocean.
To Englishmen, the growing commercial power of the United States is a new phenomenon, not yet altogether recognised and only half-understood; for they have been for so long accustomed to consider themselves the rulers of the sea-borne trade of the world that it is with difficulty that they comprehend that their supremacy can be seriously threatened.
The second is, that the difficulty of defending sea-borne trade is also as its volume that is to say, the larger the amount of the trade, the larger must be the force devoted to its protection.
It is only by means of sea-borne commerce, for instance, that Americans can live in the way Americans wish to live. "General welfare" means more than mere existence. A mere existence is the life a savage lives.
Mine-sweeping operations were at once commenced in the roadstead, a pier was erected, and, on the 24th, the supply ships from Port Said began unloading stores and supplies. The lie of the land gives unlimited opportunity to a power having the command of the sea to supplement his other means of bringing forward supplies by landing sea-borne goods upon the open beach.
This extraordinary progress, of which we have far from seen the limits, has been founded and supported by a position which every commercial change, every new invention relating to sea-borne coasting trade, or inland conveyance, has strengthened.
Hence civilization followed the path of the sea. Even in these early beginnings it is easy to see that sea-borne commerce leads to the founding of colonies and the formation of an empire whose parts are linked together by trade routes, and finally, that the preservation of such an empire depends an the naval control of sea.
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