Two years ago, I sold one of the last American offshore drilling vessels to a foreign buyer. The Ocean Titan was an obsolete jack-up rig, an equipment platform for deepwater exploration and development. Over its forty-year lifespan, American shipbuilding had been ravaged by rivals abroad and burdensome regulations at home. Today, the industry falls grievously short of the hope expressed by the drafters of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920: “that the United States shall have a merchant marine of the best equipped and most suitable types of vessels.”