The Cross-Border Tugboat War

Few people are aware that under the unfair administration of the Dominion Coasting Acts, the towing interests of this port and province are in danger of extinction. Something like $200,000 has been invested by enterprising citizens in towboats of a superior class, and the owners now learn that they have no protection against the invasion by American tugs of rights which belong to our citizens. At this moment, the local fleet, comprising the Alexander, Hardy and Pilot, lie comparatively idle, while nearly everyday the American tug Holyoke, or some other steamer from the other side, has picked up a British ship and towed her to Burrard Inlet, Nanaimo or Departure Bay. Then, in a few days, follows the same tug—or another American tug—and tows the vessel to sea. An American tug has earned thousands of dollars towing ships through British waters to British ports of entry. During the same period the British Columbia fleet towed no vessels to the coast and lumber ports. As a witty Western writer proposed that as the grasshoppers had eaten every green thing in the Kansas country, the people should retaliate by eating the grasshoppers, the first question that will naturally occur to any person who may read this article is, why don't the British tugs retaliate by towing ships into American waters? The answer is the same as we made when it was proposed to eat the grasshoppers. They can't. The American coasting laws do not permit a British tug to tow a vessel whose last port of departure was American into an American port. American coasting laws are very strict. They are also very unfair, as they do not allow our tugs to do in American waters what the American tugs do in ours.