Chapter VI
Liverpool, New York, and Philadelphia Steamship Company—City of Glasgow, 1850—City of Manchester, 1851—Speed of City of Paris and City of Brussels—Exertions of Mr. Inman to improve and facilitate cheap emigration to the United States—Large number of emigrants carried in the Inman steamers—City of Chester, 1873—City of Berlin, 1875—Ocean steamers to Canada, 1853—First mail contract, 1852—Allan line of steamers, 1856—Extent and capacity of its fleet—Speed of these vessels—Galway line a failure—Loss of Connaught, 1860—Rapid passage of Adriatic, 1861—Struggles between sailing-clippers and iron screw-ships—National Steam Navigation Company, 1863—Their splendid ships—Old Black Ball line—The Guion line, 1863—Mississippi and Dominion Company—White Star line, 1870—Strict regulations for safety—Britannic and Germanic—Their great speed—Details of Britannic and form of her screw—Difficulty of estimating real cost of steamers—Pennsylvania Company, 1873—Anchor line from the Clyde, 1856—Prodigious range of their trade operations—The Victoria—Hamburg American Steam Packet Company—North German Lloyd’s.
[Sidenote: Liverpool, New York, and Philadelphia Steam-ship Company.]
The year 1850 proved somewhat remarkable in the history of steam navigation. But among the various undertakings commenced in the course of that year, the Liverpool, New York, and Philadelphia Steam-ship Company, better known as the Inman line, was perhaps the most important.
[Sidenote: City of Glasgow, 1850.]
Mr. William Inman, the managing owner, by whose energy their present large fleet of iron screw-steamers was created, had for some time given his attention to the application of the screw, for the purpose of propelling ocean-going steamers. Impressed with its superiority over the paddle-wheel, he entered into communication with the late David Tod, of the firm of Tod and Macgregor, iron shipbuilders and engineers in Glasgow, who had formed, in common with the owners of the Great Britain, the idea of starting a continuous service of voyages across the Atlantic with vessels built of iron and driven by screws, an experiment at that time considered rather hazardous, and, with that object, had in 1850 launched the City of Glasgow, a vessel of 1600 tons, and 350 horse-power. Subsequently, she was purchased by the Inman Company, and sailed from Liverpool for Philadelphia on the 17th of December, 1850, continuing in that service for many years.
[Sidenote: City of Manchester, 1851.]
In 1851, the Inman Company purchased the steam-ship City of Manchester, of which the following is an illustration, built also by Messrs. Tod and Macgregor,[228] and with these vessels a fortnightly service between Liverpool and Philadelphia was established and continued up to the year 1857. Between 1851 and 1856 the City of Baltimore, the Kangaroo, and the City of Washington, all iron screw-ships, were added to this line.
In the year 1857 the Inman Company enlarged the area of their operations by making New York one of their ports of arrival, and establishing a regular fortnightly line thither. In 1860 they increased the service of their steamers to once a week; in 1863 to three times a fortnight, and in 1866 they sent forth their steamers twice every week during the summer months.
[Sidenote: Speed of City of Paris, and City of Brussels.]
To some extent the failure of the Collins line proved the fortune of the Inman, for, when that unfortunate undertaking collapsed, Mr. Inman at once assumed their dates of sailing, and carried the United States’ mails between England and America for some time afterwards with great regularity. Nor were the vessels of the Inman line less swift than their predecessors. Indeed, their City of Paris,[229] of 3081 tons gross register, and 500 nominal horse-power, and their City of Brussels, of 3747 tons, and 600 horse-power, far surpassed the fastest steamers of the Collins Company, and they in turn were surpassed by the City of Richmond.[230]
[Sidenote: Exertions of Mr. Inman to improve and facilitate cheap emigration to the United States.]
But whatever advantages may have been derived by carrying the United States’ mails, Mr. Inman, apart from these, specially directed his attention to the conveyance of emigrant passengers (who found in his ships greater comfort, and a much more rapid means of reaching the United States than could be obtained in the fastest of the American sailing packets), and thus laid, at the outset, the foundation for the future prosperity of the company he had formed. It was he who first gave to the masses from the overcrowded cities of Europe, more economical and rapid means than they had hitherto enjoyed of reaching a country where their labour was in demand, and, by wise and judicious arrangements in his steamers, supplied what had hitherto been to a great extent wanting, the more complete separation of the sexes on the voyage to the land of their adoption. While reaping the reward to which his meritorious services were justly entitled, he conferred a boon worthy of remembrance on myriads of poor people, and I should ill perform the duty I have undertaken, were I not to specially notice his exertions on behalf of those of the industrious working classes, who felt it necessary to seek for themselves and their children, the means of obtaining honest employment in other and in distant lands.[231]
[Sidenote: Large number of emigrants carried in the Inman steamers.]
In 1856 and 1857, the Inman Company conveyed in their steamers eighty-five thousand passengers, to and from the United States of America, or about one-third of all the persons who crossed the Atlantic in steamships during these two years; and that this company long maintained the favourable prestige they had at first secured, may be seen by the official returns of emigrants landed in New York for the year 1870.[232]
[Sidenote: City of Chester, 1873.]
In 1873 this Company added two magnificent screws to their fleet, the City of Chester, of which an illustration will be found on the following page, and the City of Richmond, each of 4700 gross, or 3000 net register tonnage, and 800-horse power. These vessels were built by Messrs. Caird and Co., of Greenock, and by Messrs. Tod and MacGregor, of Glasgow, and are each 453 feet 6 inches in length over all, with a beam of 43 feet, and a depth of hold of 36 feet. They are spar-decked, have iron masts and solid iron bulwarks, and they are ship-rigged. In midships, there are long rows of centre and side houses, for a portion of the passengers and crew, and where accommodation is likewise afforded for the steering gear which is wrought by manual labour or steam power. There are also “the galley-saloons,” providing cooking apparatus sufficient for 1500 persons; while five of the side houses are devoted to the purpose of male and female hospitals. The engines of these vessels are compound with inverted cylinders and surface condensers; the large cylinder being 120 inches, and the smaller one 76 inches in diameter; the length of stroke of the piston is 5 feet; and their speed on trial was 16 knots an hour.[233]
[Sidenote: City of Berlin, 1875.]
But the Inman Company has recently launched from the yard of Messrs. Caird and Company a still larger and more magnificent vessel, the City of Berlin, being the longest and perhaps the largest merchant steam-vessel afloat, the Great Eastern alone excepted. Her dimensions are: length over all, 520 feet; breadth 44 feet; and depth to spar deck, 37 feet; her gross register is 5500 tons; she is supplied with two direct-acting high and low pressure engines (compound condensing) of 900 nominal, but indicating, as proved on trial, 4799 horse-power; her cylinders being 120 and 72 inches diameter respectively, with a piston stroke of 5 feet 6 inches; she has twelve boilers and thirty-six furnaces; and she has accommodation for 202 first-class passengers, and 1500 intermediate passengers and emigrants.[234]
A list of the Inman Company’s vessels on the 1st of January, 1875, will be found in the Appendix.[235]
The success which had attended the British steamers engaged in the trade with the United States, led to further projects for extending this beneficial agency to the British North American Colonies, and induced the attempt to introduce a regular line of steam-ship communication between Liverpool and Canada by means of the natural estuary of the St. Lawrence. Magnificent, however, as this river unquestionably is, when looked on as an artery of commerce between the rich agricultural and mineral districts along its margins, and the vast tracts of fertile country around its lakes, its navigation is attended with many difficulties and presents numerous dangers. Not the least of these arises from the ice, which, on breaking up, is apt to choke the river, and at the same time to cause the elimination of quantities of watery vapour, which, partially condensed by the surrounding low temperature, is converted into dense fog, so thoroughly impervious to the sun’s rays, as to bewilder the most skilful mariner, and incalculably to increase the dangers to which voyaging in these waters is otherwise exposed.
[Sidenote: Ocean steamers to Canada, 1853.]
But the indomitable spirit of British shipowners refuses to recognise dangers or to acknowledge difficulties save with a resolution to combat and overcome them; and so it has fared with the suggestion made in June, 1852, for applying steam-ships to carry on the mail and other rapid traffic with British North America. Previously, the trade between this country and Canada, had been carried on by a superior class of sailing-ships, many of which during its early history were commanded by their owners or their sons. Among these early merchant traders to Canada, Mr. Alexander Allan, the father of the family that gives its name to the present Allan line of steamers, had a prominent place.[236] When the success of screw-steamers upon the Atlantic had been assured, the members of the Allan family turned their attention to the advantages to be derived from their employment of such vessels, and established a line of them to run between Liverpool, Quebec, and Montreal during the period of open navigation, and between Liverpool and Portland when the St. Lawrence is icebound.[237]
[Sidenote: First Mail Contract, 1852.]
Before, however, their vessels were finished, the Canadian Government advertised (June, 1852) for the conveyance of their mails between this country and Canada in summer, and Portland in winter. For this service a contract was concluded with Messrs. McKean, McLarty, and Lamont of Liverpool, who formed a company and opened the line in the spring of 1853, with a vessel of 500 tons register named the Genova: the line was continued for about eighteen months by means of the steamer Cleopatra, of 1467 tons, and two smaller vessels, the Ottawa and Charity, and the Canadian, the first steamer built for Messrs. Allan, who had chartered her to the company.
[Sidenote: Allan Line of Steamers, 1856.]
[Sidenote: Extent and capacity of its fleet.]
But the service, which was conducted with varying regularity, proving unprofitable, was transferred to the Allans, who undertook with the fleet they were building, specially for this trade, to carry on a fortnightly service to Quebec in summer, and a monthly voyage to Portland (Maine) in winter, for the annual subsidy of 24,000_l._ The Crimean war, however, occurring in 1854, offered more remunerative employment to the steamers of the fleet of both contractors. And, consequently, the regular mail service by the Allan line (which at the first was designated the Montreal Ocean Steam-ship Company) was not commenced until April, 1856. Since then it has been maintained with unbroken regularity, with the exception of various serious losses, which might almost have been anticipated in the early history of the service, considering the dangerous character of the navigation. From a fortnightly line in summer, and a monthly line in winter, the operations of the company have been expanded into a regular weekly service, supplemented by an additional fortnightly mail service between Liverpool and Halifax, extending during summer to St. John’s, Newfoundland, and continued, monthly, during winter by means of an iceboat, between Halifax and St. John’s, when the latter port cannot be approached by ocean steamers.
Steamers of the Allan fleet also trade between Liverpool and Baltimore, and a weekly line of this company is maintained between Glasgow and Canada in summer. A list of the Allan steamers will be found in the Appendix:[238] and I must add that they are now unsurpassed in their efficiency and regularity by any of the Atlantic lines.
Their steamer, the Hibernian, built in 1861, was the first in the Atlantic trade, where the deck-houses were covered by a promenade deck, stretching from stem to stern, which prevents a sea, when it breaks on board, from filling the passages between the deck-houses and bulwarks. Indeed, so highly was the plan approved by Government, that the unproductive spaces under this deck were made, by order of the Board of Trade, the subject of a special exemption from tonnage measure by the deck-shelter clause of the Merchant Shipping Act of 1854. Other Atlantic lines adopting this protection obtained like privileges, but, difficulties arising in connection with ships of somewhat different construction which however claimed the same exemption, Government was obliged to abolish all such immunities.
[Sidenote: Speed of these vessels.]
Some of the vessels of this line are remarkable for their speed. For instance, in October, 1872, the Polynesian on her first voyage, made the passage between Quebec and Londonderry in seven days eighteen hours and fifty-five minutes; while her sister ship, the Sarmatian, was engaged by Government to convey the 42nd Highlanders to the Gold Coast, in the recent Ashantee war.
The Hungarian, one of the earliest of these steamers, made the passage from Quebec to the Rock Light in nine days six hours and thirty-five minutes, or from land to land in six days. Another, the Peruvian, completed one of the fastest round voyages on record in any Atlantic line; on the 16th of December, 1864, she left Moville (port of call, near Londonderry in Ireland, for the Allan boats) at 6.24 P.M., discharged her cargo at Portland (State of Maine, United States), took in her homeward cargo, and sailing, arrived back at Moville on the 10th of January, 1865, at 9.15 A.M., thus making the passage out and home, including detentions at Portland, while discharging and loading her cargoes, in twenty-four days fifteen hours.
In the limited space at my disposal it would be impossible for me to notice all the lines of steamships now traversing the ocean, and I must, therefore, in a great measure, confine my remarks to those which have led the way and have become either famous by their success or conspicuous by their failure, so that my readers may, it is to be hoped, learn in their day and generation, wisdom from them both, seeing, in the former, what they ought to imitate or if possible improve on; in the latter, what they had better avoid and condemn. Thus, in the Parliamentary Report[239] on the “Royal Atlantic Steam Navigation Company,” better known as the “Galway line,” will be found an account of the brief career of one of the most unfortunate and disastrous of these undertakings.
[Sidenote: Galway line a failure.]
Having in view the success of the three British lines of steamers to which I have just referred, but at the same time paying no heed to the warning presented by the Collins Company in their endeavours to traverse, with unusual speed, the fickle and stormy Atlantic, a company of English and Irish gentlemen, most of whom had little knowledge and, certainly, no experience of the business they were about to undertake, proposed to the British Government, in January 1859, to carry Her Majesty’s mails from Galway to Portland, Boston or New York, viâ St. John’s, Newfoundland, or otherwise, for the sum of 3000_l._ per voyage, “such voyage being the passage out and home.” The great attraction, however, of the offer lay in the further condition that “they would undertake to convey telegraphic messages from the United Kingdom to British North America and the United States in six days, casualties excepted,” the Atlantic cable being then only in contemplation: that is, they offered to make the passage between Galway and St. John’s, Newfoundland, at all seasons of the year, in the unprecedented short time of six days. A contract based on this proposal was entered into on the 21st April, 1859, to which a table was annexed[240] of the time in which this company further agreed to deliver letters at New York and at Galway. With the object of carrying out this contract, the “Royal Atlantic Steam Navigation Company concluded, on the 10th June, 1859, an agreement with Messrs. Palmer of Newcastle, for the construction of two ships at a cost of 95,000_l._ each, and, on the 15th June, they entered into another contract with Messrs. Samuelson of Hull, for the construction of two other ships at a cost of 97,500_l._ each. These vessels were to be built according to lines, plans, and specifications approved by the Admiralty, and were to be delivered within eleven months from the date of the agreements, the commencement of the postal service according to contract having been fixed for June 1860.”[241]
The dimensions of these ships were 360 feet long, 40 feet beam, and 32 feet depth of hold. They were each 2800 tons measurement, with engines of about 850 nominal horse-power; in model and equipment they were somewhat similar. Indeed, the Connaught and the Hibernia, built by Messrs. Palmer, were “precisely the same;”[242] a clause in their agreement with the company requiring, “that each of the said vessels when completed was, on a fair and proper trial thereof, to accomplish a speed at the rate of 20 statute miles per hour in smooth water, and to consume not more than 8800 pounds of fuel per hour.”[243] But, on the trial of the Connaught, the Government inspector reported that the speed of this “vessel was about thirteen knots; the average revolutions of the engines, 16·6; the average pressure of steam in the boilers being 22½ lbs. on the square inch, and the vacuum in the condensers 24½ inches.”[244]
[Sidenote: Loss of the Connaught, 1860.]
Difficulties and differences of various kinds having arisen, none of these vessels were delivered within the time agreed upon, and the company was consequently obliged to start the service with a hired vessel—the Parana—which sailed from Galway on the 27th of June, 1860, arriving at St. John’s in seven days thirteen and a half hours, and at New York in eleven days seventeen and three-quarter hours after her departure, or fifteen hours and three-quarters behind the contract time for the delivery of the mail bags at her final destination, and one day thirteen and three-quarter hours beyond the stipulated time for delivering the telegraph messages at St. John’s. The Connaught followed, in her case direct for Boston, on the 11th of July, and was twenty-two and a half hours over time in reaching that place. But serious disasters soon befell these steamers: the Connaught was totally lost on her second voyage in October, of this year when approaching Boston, she having, on this occasion, been one day and twenty and a half hours behind time in reaching St. John’s. One voyage had, consequently, to be omitted altogether. The second ship belonging to the company, the Hibernia, encountering a severe gale on her way from the Tyne to Galway was so thoroughly disabled that she never entered the service at all,[245] while their third new ship, the Columbia, which sailed for the United States on the 9th of April from Galway, returned in May disabled by ice,[246] after making the slowest passage outwards of any of the fleet, having been ten days seven and a half hours in reaching St. John’s, and seventeen days twenty and three-quarter hours before she arrived at Boston.[247]
[Sidenote: Rapid passage of the Adriatic, 1861.]
The steamship Prince Albert was chartered to take the place of the Connaught, and in February 1861 the Company purchased the Adriatic, one of the most famous ships of the Collins line. The transfer of this ship to the British flag does not seem to have reduced her speed or detracted from her celebrated sea-going qualities, for she made the run from Galway to St. John’s in six days, the specified time, and, having completed the passage to New York in one day fifteen hours and a quarter less than the contract time, returned from St. John’s to Galway in five days nineteen hours and three-quarters, perhaps the quickest passage on record from port to port across the Atlantic.[248]
But, having, within six months, lost one of their vessels, while another was disabled by storm, and a third rendered unfit for the mail service in her encounter with ice off Newfoundland, the Company, finding it impossible to raise fresh capital in the face of such disasters, had no course left but to abandon their undertaking and terminate their contract in May 1861. The return[249] of the earnings and costs to Government of the Galway line of mail steamers shows a heavy loss to the public, but, though I have no means of knowing the amount of the losses of the company itself during its brief career, these must have been far greater; indeed, it was currently reported that the shareholders lost in eighteen months nearly all, if not the whole, of their capital.
[Sidenote: Struggles between the “clippers” and the iron screw-ships.]
But, however disastrous the results to the American shareholders of the Collins line on the one hand, or to the British shareholders of the Galway line of steamers on the other (both these undertakings being, it should be remembered, largely subsidized), the ardour of private and unsubsidized energy in no way abated. The ocean race for supremacy in the carrying trade of the Atlantic was still maintained; and the struggle continued with quite as much spirit as ever between the American owners of sailing-clippers and the British shareholders of iron screw-steamers. It was a brave fight: but the wooden clippers of America had no chance against the iron screws of Great Britain, although the race was not then so unequal as might appear, arising from the fact that the current expenses of the clippers were far less then than those of the steamers, while their capacity for cargo was far greater. Indeed, for a time, it was questionable whether the clippers did not yield their owners quite as good returns on the capital invested as the steamers. The wooden clipper, however, had reached perfection, (the world having never previously seen a more splendid class of sailing-ships than the “Yankee liners of that day,”) whereas the screw, being still in its infancy, moved onwards with the progress of science, improvements in machinery tending to reduce the current expenses and to increase the capacity of the ship by reducing the consumption of fuel, so that the sailing-ships were obliged to succumb. At last, the screw-steamers slowly but surely obtained an almost complete supremacy, and have now no competitors (except among themselves) in the more valuable portion of the carrying trade across the Atlantic.
[Sidenote: National Steam Navigation Company, 1863.]
The success which had attended the Inman and the Allan lines of steamers induced others to follow their example; and various undertakings of a similar character were started in rapid succession. Thus, with the view of availing themselves of recent legislative measures for the encouragement of mercantile associations, a number of Liverpool merchants and shipowners established, in 1863, the National Steam Navigation Company with a capital of 700,000_l._ The original intention of the promoters of this undertaking was to provide for the large trade they felt assured must arise between this country and the Confederate States whenever the lamentable war then raging in America should have exhausted itself, and when peace returning should have showered down its many blessings on that fertile and teeming land; their first plan, therefore, was to carry on a regular periodical line of first-class steam-ships between Liverpool and the Southern States. The anxiously hoped for peace between the contending parties in America did not, however, arrive so soon as they had anticipated, and, as the requisite capital had been obtained, and their ships were ready for service, they sent forth their steamers to compete for a portion of the passenger and goods trade of the Northern States, which the Cunard, Inman, and Allan lines were now carrying on with great success.
[Sidenote: Their splendid ships, and complete success.]
The first vessels of the National Company dispatched to ply between Liverpool and New York, were the Louisiana, the Virginia, and the Pennsylvania screw-ships of a gross tonnage, respectively, of 3000 and 3500 tons; at that time being the largest vessels afloat. In 1864, the company added to its fleet the Erin, the Queen, and the Helvetia, each of an increased tonnage. With these six vessels the company was enabled to lay the foundation of so successful a trade that, at the conclusion of the war, the directors found the utmost capacity of their vessels insufficient to accommodate the rapidly increasing traffic between the two nations. In 1865, their fleet was again increased by the further addition of the England and the Denmark, of 3723 tons, and these vessels, again, were followed in 1866, by the France, of nearly similar dimensions. In 1868, the Italy, of 4300 tons, was placed on the line, and was the first in that trade in which engines on the compound principle were placed. The Holland, of 3847 tons, followed in 1869. The year 1870 proving to be one of great prosperity to the company, the Egypt and the Spain, of 4669 and 4512 tons respectively, were added to the fleet. These vessels were built by the Liverpool Shipbuilding Company, and by Messrs. Laird of Birkenhead, and are justly considered very fine specimens of naval architecture.
This Company now maintain a weekly service, leaving Liverpool every Wednesday and New York every Saturday; and a fortnightly service from London to New York viâ Havre. Following the example of the Cunard Company, the commanders of the ships are required to navigate at certain seasons within fixed limits of latitude, and to furnish a chart to the Company with the lines of their course during each voyage laid down upon it. Stringent regulations are also issued and enforced, and, to the credit of the Company, they have not during their existence, lost a single passenger through negligence or any accident of the sea.
[Sidenote: Old Black Ball line.]
It is a curious fact that, as a rule, the owners of the principal American clipper lines of sailing-ships were among the last to see that their vessels, however splendid, were being daily eclipsed by the screw steamers of Great Britain. Thus, conspicuous among the lines which bravely contended against the new motive power, and long maintained itself in full force, may be mentioned the Old Black Ball line, which, when I remember it, a quarter of a century ago, possessed upwards of twenty of the finest sailing-packets I ever saw. They were grand ships of their class, and admirably fitted for the trade in which they were engaged, carrying, during some of the later years of their career, a thousand passengers every week, during the summer months, from our shores to the United States. But even the Black Ball was at last obliged to give in, having previously merged into or formed part of the Guion line of sailing-ships, which in their day were equally celebrated for the regularity of their passages.[250]
[Sidenote: The Guion line. 1863.]
In 1863, however, Mr. S. B. Guion, the chief owner of the line bearing his name, finding it no longer possible to contend against the screws, though evidently still doubtful of their permanent success, entered into an arrangement to supply, through his old connections and agents in America, the Cunard and National Companies, with emigrants and cargo for their steamers; but in 1866, he and his co-partners, most of whom are citizens of the United States, started a steamship of their own. In August of that year, their Manhattan, built in this country of iron and fitted with the screw, to their orders, sailed from Liverpool for New York, being the pioneer of their new fleet of liners. The Minnesota, Nebraska, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, vessels each of about 3000 tons, and built of iron, specially for this trade, followed in rapid succession. In 1873, they added the Montana, another fine vessel of 3500 tons, to their fleet, which, in 1874, was further increased by the addition of the Dakota, and two similar vessels, so that the Liverpool and Great Western Steam-ship Company, better known as the Guion line, already possesses a fleet of very fine steam-ships.[251]
Although the American sailing-packets engaged in the trade between Great Britain and the Northern States were, about the year 1860, obliged, in a great measure, to give way to steamers, they maintained their position undisputed for ten years longer between Liverpool and New Orleans; steamers, it was thought, not being able to compete with sailing-vessels in the transport across the Atlantic of such bulky articles as cotton, the chief article exported from New Orleans to Europe. But in 1870, the American merchants and shipowners engaged in the trade of that place found it desirable, if not necessary, to substitute for some of their sailing-vessels a line of screw-steamers similar in many respects, though smaller, to those of the other lines already described, their merchants forming themselves into an association known as the “Mississippi and Dominion Steam-ship Company (Limited).”
[Sidenote: Mississippi and Dominion Company.]
This company now trades between Liverpool and New Orleans in the winter when the cotton crops are shipped and, in the summer season, between the former port and Canada with passengers and general cargoes. Like the Guion line, their ships are chiefly, if not entirely, owned by Americans and managed by them. On their passages to the south, they usually call at Bordeaux, Corunna, Lisbon and Havana, and thus secure a considerable number of the emigrant passengers who find their way from the southern portions of Europe to that portion of the New World where the climate is not unlike their own, and where the character of the labour is more in accordance with their habits and abilities than would be that of the Northern States.
[Sidenote: White Star line, 1870.]
But another important line of steamers has been added, which in speed has since surpassed, and in other respects is equal to, any of the great Transatlantic lines now competing for the traffic of the New World. The White Star Line, under the management of Messrs. Ismay, Imrie, and Co. who have adopted the name of a once celebrated line of sailing-packets,[252] commenced running their steamers from Liverpool to New York in 1870: they now maintain a weekly communication with these ports, with extra boats available for intermediate sailings as the requirements of the trade demand, the regular days being Thursday from Liverpool (calling at Queenstown, Ireland, on Friday), and from New York on Saturday.
[Sidenote: Strict regulations for safety, &c.]
These vessels, which are nearly uniform in size and speed, were designed and built with a view of affording the public an extra supply of steamers, such as would best attain the three-fold purpose of safety, speed, and comfort; and certainly their performances have realised the objects and expectations of their enterprising owners. Built of iron with watertight and fire-proof compartments, they afford in their strength every guarantee for safety, nor are their owners behind their rivals in the caution exercised to avoid the ordinary dangers of rapid navigation.[253] But speed with them, as with all well-regulated navigation companies, appears to be only a secondary consideration, for, not satisfied with a general regulation, Messrs. Ismay and Imrie, in their own interest, as well as in that of the public, have wisely issued to the commanders of their ships a special manuscript letter[254] reminding them, in the most distinct manner, that the safety of the ship under their charge and of all on board of her must ever be their first consideration. That their ships have attained an average rate of speed hitherto unrivalled, combined with great regularity, may be seen by their logs.[255] Their Adriatic[256] has far surpassed the famous American steamship of that name which once belonged to the Collins line, she having attained the extraordinary speed of 455 statute miles in one day.[257] Nor has the comfort of the passengers been in any way neglected.
[Sidenote: Britannic and Germanic.]
At page 278 I furnish a drawing of their newest vessel; and for the information of my nautical readers I may state that the Britannic and Germanic[258] are similar in all respects. These vessels were built of iron by Messrs. Harland and Wolff, Belfast.[259]
[Sidenote: Their great speed.]
The engines of the Britannic are by Maudslay, Sons, and Field; they are 760 nominal, but indicated 5090 horse-power on the trial trip. They have four inverted cylinders, the high pressure above the low; the diameters of the cylinders are 48 inches and 83 inches respectively, and the length of stroke 5 feet. The pressure of steam is 70lbs. per square inch, and the boilers, eight in number, are fired at both ends with thirty-two furnaces. The propeller has four blades, and is 23 feet 6 inches in diameter, with 28 feet to 31 feet 6 inches pitch. The mode of lifting the screw is novel, as may be seen by the drawing on the following page.
[Sidenote: Details of Britannic, and form of her screw.]
The plan is that of Mr. Harland, the senior partner of the firm by whom the Britannic was built. His reasons for introducing this new principle (which he styles, “a lifting-propeller”) are, that in long ships, the pitching in a heavy sea way and the vertical motion of the waves tend to expose the upper portion of the screw as usually fitted, the evil effects arising from this being the ‘racing’ of the engines and its attendant dangers, together with a diminished speed of the vessel.[260]
It is possible, also, that a further advantage may be derived from the fact that, as one-half of the propeller works below the vessel’s bottom,[261] there is a somewhat denser medium of water for it to work against, consequently affording (but to what extent, my limited scientific knowledge will not allow me to offer an opinion) the means of obtaining, as I conceive, an increased power of propulsion.[262] But into such questions as these I will not enter, as I prefer stating the facts and furnishing an account of what has been done, leaving others more competent than I am to deal with them. As scientific men may consider another question of still greater importance, the best form for the midship section of a steamship, to which I have already referred, I furnish (see page 281) a sketch, drawn to scale and supplied by her owners, of the midship section of this magnificent vessel, and, without further comment, give an account of her performances on her first voyage across the Atlantic.[263]
“The average speed of the Britannic is fifteen knots per hour on a consumption of 75 to 80 tons of coals per day, and her approximate cost, built without contract, is 200,000_l._”[264]
These steamers run in connection with the Erie Railway from New York (as do also other of the lines) booking their passengers through to all parts of the United States, as far as Aspinwall and San Francisco, and also to Canada. As their arrangements and scale of provisions for steerage passengers are, in nearly all respects, the same as that of the other Transatlantic lines, a copy is furnished for the information of my readers, together with the conditions on which alone passengers are received.[265]
[Sidenote: Difficulty of estimating the real cost of steamers.]
Recently an American Company have with great spirit sent forth from their own country, a line of steamers to trade between Philadelphia and Liverpool.[266] They consist at present of the Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana, each of about 3100 tons gross, or about 2000 tons nett register; they are all built of iron, on the Delaware (U.S.), and are fitted with screw-propellers. The Pennsylvania, launched 1873, cost, according to the statement of her owners, “ready for sea, about 600,000 dollars” (120,000_l._); who add that, “if built on the Clyde of as good materials, the saving would have been trifling.” In any attempt, however, to estimate the cost of a steamship I may state, for the information of non-nautical readers, that the outlay on one vessel, even of a similar grade or class, when built for the conveyance of passengers as well as cargo, gives but an imperfect idea of the cost of another vessel, of the same tonnage but not so appropriated. If we take simply the hull, the power of the engines, and the ordinary outfit for a sea-going ship of a particular class, the comparative cost of constructing such a vessel in different countries, or even at different ports in any one country, may be easily ascertained, but, in a passenger-ship so much depends on the quality of the outfit and furnishing, and, especially, on the cabin accommodation, varying as these do almost as much as from a cottage to a palace, I should certainly mislead my readers were I to attempt to supply a comparative cost of passenger-ships built in America and in England.
[Sidenote: Pennsylvania Company, 1873.]
The vessels of this line are each 355 feet in length, with 43 feet beam, and 33 feet depth of hold. They have each accommodation for 76 first class, and for 800 intermediate and steerage passengers. The actual steam-power of each of these vessels is given as “2800 horse-power indicated,” but this furnishes, as I have before stated, but a vague idea of the nominal power on which the cost is based, as the actual power depends on the dimensions of the engines, the mean pressure on the piston, and the speed with which the engines move. On the other hand, nominal horse-power is fixed by certain arbitrary rules.
Though the Philadelphia line of steamers has much to contend against, owing to duties imposed by the American Government on all articles required for their construction and outfit, and may, consequently, find it difficult to rival successfully the steam-ships of Europe engaged in the Transatlantic trade, they are supported, if not owned, by one of the largest railway undertakings in the United States of America. The lines of this company cover more than 6000 miles of communication within the interior, extending over States which produce the breadstuffs of the north as well as the tropical fruits of the south with a teeming and almost virgin soil, sufficient in itself to produce cargoes for a fleet of ships far in excess of that it as yet possesses, and affording fields of remunerative employment for hundreds of thousands of persons now huddled together in many of the over-peopled countries of Europe.
Indeed, from the accounts which reach us, the valley of the Mississippi in itself still affords room, and, in time, will give profitable employment for 100,000,000 persons, and if the industrious and frugal of our own people and of Europe, are unable to gain a living by honest means in the land of their birth, they will find, sailing daily from the port of Liverpool, alone, at the present moment, as also from other ports, steam-ships[267] of the finest description, ready to convey them in a hitherto incredibly short space of time, to the United States of America, and at a cost very little more than they would require for their maintenance at home, during a similar period of time to that occupied on the passage.
[Sidenote: Anchor line from the Clyde, 1856.]
But, besides the magnificent lines of steamers which now connect, viâ Liverpool, the Old and New Worlds together by a ferry, easier of accomplishment, and attended with less danger than was even the passage between England and France half a century ago, there are other important lines of steamers from Glasgow and London, as well as from various continental ports, which I must notice. Not the least important of these is the Anchor line from the Clyde, one of the many extraordinary developments, during recent years, of our maritime power, and entirely due to individual energy. Within only a few years Messrs. Henderson Brothers, the managing owners of the Anchor line, have created a fleet of steamships of 71,328 gross tons and of 15,147 horse-power.[268]
[Sidenote: Prodigious range of their trade operations.]
Though this line was established by Messrs. Handyside and Henderson in 1856 (their vessels then sailing from Glasgow to Quebec and the Mediterranean ports), it was not until 1865 that their owners commenced regular communication, every fortnight, between Glasgow and New York. Since then the service has been gradually increased, and a steamer is now dispatched, at all seasons, weekly each way, and, during summer, twice, and occasionally three times a week, according to the demands of the trade. Like many other gigantic concerns, this one had a very humble beginning. Commencing with only one or two vessels, they were steadily and rapidly increased on the well-founded anticipation of a successful trade. With the increase of the New York branch of the service, that of the Mediterranean increased also. Indeed, it supplies the main or American line with a considerable portion of its most valuable employment, and now runs weekly to Lisbon, Gibraltar, Marseilles, Genoa, Leghorn, Naples, Messina, and Palermo; fortnightly to Trieste and Venice; and monthly to Algiers, Tunis, Malta, and Alexandria, thus connecting the whole of the ancient trade of Spain, of the Italian Republics, and of far-famed India itself, with the New World through the medium of the Suez Canal[269] and the Mediterranean.
The Anchor Company also despatches steamers, weekly, during the season of open navigation, to Christiania, Christiansund, and Gottenburg, thus securing another valuable feeder to the New York line of steamers. The Scandinavian and other passengers from the extreme north of Europe are brought across from Gottenburg, to Granton (near Edinburgh) in two days, or from Christiansund in a day and a half, and, as Granton is only about two hours by rail from Glasgow, they can embark on board the Anchor line of steamers for the United States or for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, on the third day after leaving their homes in the far north.
The steamers of this firm also sail from Genoa, Leghorn, Naples, Messina, Palermo, Marseilles, and Gibraltar, once a fortnight, direct for New York, and every month from Trieste and Venice—once the great emporium of commerce in the East—to the still greater commercial emporium of the West; and every fortnight, during the six autumn and spring months, or fruit season, Messrs. Henderson likewise dispatch steamers direct from Malaga, Almeria, Valentia, and Denia to the United States.
[Sidenote: The Victoria.]
In their Victoria may be seen a good specimen of a business ship, perhaps not so swift or so elegantly fitted as some of her competitors from Liverpool, or equal to their own latest ships, the Ethiopia, Bolivia, and Anchora,[270] but a vessel well adapted for the trade on which she is employed. The Victoria is a sister ship to the California, launched from the shipbuilding yard, on the Clyde, of Messrs. Alexander Stephens and Sons, who have constructed a great many vessels for the Anchor Company. She is like all the other steamers now engaged in the Transatlantic trade, built of iron and propelled by the screw.[271] Though of larger capacity, she is said to have cost, complete for sea, somewhere about 100,000_l._ or 20,000_l._ less than the American iron screw ship Pennsylvania, to which reference has just been made, which was built about the same time on the Delaware.
[Sidenote: Hamburg American Steam Packet Company.]
But besides the fleets we have specially named there are other equally fine British steamers, plying between London and New York and Boston direct, and also viâ Southampton and Havre; together with various other lines of first-class steamers engaged in the American trade belonging to France, Hamburg, and Belgium, though most of these are British built: for instance, the Hamburg and American Steam Packet Company have a large fleet of high classed steamers, comprising the Suavia,[272] Pomerania, Thuringia, Hammonia, Westphalia, Silesia, Cimbria, Frisia, and Holsatia, which leave Hamburg every Saturday throughout the year for New York; and another line of eight equally fine steamers, which trade with the West Indies and Mexico every month from Hamburg, calling alternately at Grimsby and Havre.
[Sidenote: North German Lloyd’s Company.]
There are also the steamers of the North German Lloyd’s, an old established company, trading between Bremen, Baltimore, and New York viâ Southampton and Havre; while, besides those engaged in the trade with the United States, two lines of French steamers, most of which were built in England, now maintain a weekly intercourse between the ports of that country and the West Indies and Brazil.
FOOTNOTES:
[228] The dimensions of the City of Manchester are as follows:—Length on deck, 274 feet with 38 feet breadth of beam. She registers 2125 tons, and is propelled by engines of 400-horse power, driving a three-bladed screw. Her two foremasts are of tubular plate-iron.
[229] The City of Paris conveyed, in 1869, His Royal Highness Prince Arthur (now Duke of Connaught) to America in six days twenty-one hours, the quickest passage ever made to any port of the New World from Cork. The Prince attended Divine Service at Queenstown on Sunday, embarked at four P.M. that day, and was landed at Halifax, Nova Scotia, at half-past ten A.M. on the following Sunday in time for Morning Service at that place, which he also attended, much to his credit.
[230] The following is an extract from the logs of the _City of Brussels_ and City of Richmond.
“CITY OF BRUSSELS.”
---------------+---------+--------+----------+---------+----------+------------- Sandy Hook to | | | Distance | | | Queenstown. | Wind. |Courses.| from |Latitude,|Longitude,| Remarks. December, 1869.| | | Sandy | N. | W. | | | | Hook. | ---------------+---------+--------+-------------+---------+----------+---------- Saturday, 4 |Southerly| East. | 37 | 40·30 | 73·09 |{A.M.—9.15, | | | | | |{ passed | | | | | |{ Sandy Hook. | | | | | | Sunday, 5 | ” |N. 85 E.| 330 | 41·27 | 66·00 |{Moderate | | | | | |{ breeze and | | | | | |{ calm. | | | | | | Monday, 6 |Easterly |N. 69 E.| 320 | 43·21 | 59·15 |{Moderate | | | | | |{ breeze. | | | | | | Tuesday, 7 |S. S. W. |N. 67 E.| 336 | 45·32 | 52·00 |{Light | | | | | |{ breeze. | | | | | | Wednesday, 8 | ” |N. 68 E.| 346 | 47·44 | 44·14 |{Light | | | | | |{ breeze. | | | | | | Thursday, 9 | S. W. |N. 72 E.| 371 | 49·42 | 38·18 |{Moderate | | | | | |{ breeze. | | | | | | Friday, 10 |West. |N. 85 E.| 365 | 50·11 | 25·51 |{Moderate | | | | | |{ breeze. | | | | | | Saturday, 11 | N. W. |N. 80 E.| 353 | 51·15 | 16·44 | Fresh gale. | | | | | | | | | | | |{A.M.—6.20, | | | | | |{ past | | | | | |{ Fastnet; Sunday, 12 | To Fastnet 266 | | |{ 10.10, | | | | | |{ Queenstown. ---------------+---------+--------+----------+---------+----------+-------------
“CITY OF RICHMOND.”
---------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+----------+------------- Queenstown to | Wind. |Courses. | Dis- |Latitude.|Longitude.| Remarks. Sandy Hook. | | | tances. | | | December, 1875.| | | | | | ---------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+----------+------------- Saturday, 17 | Calm. |S. 84 W. | 290 | 50·58 | 15·41 |{P.M.—4.10, | | | | | |{ Received | | | | | |{ Mails. | | | | | |{ Calm and | | | | | |{ Cloudy. | | | | | | Sunday, 18 |Variable.|S. 80 W. | 362 | 49·56 | 25·01 | Light airs. | | | | | | Monday, 19 |Variable.|S. 72 W. | 360 | 48·08 | 33·43 | Light airs. | | | | | | Tuesday, 20 | S. E. |S. 68 W. | 380 | 45·42 | 42·18 |{Moderate | | | | | |{ breeze. | | | | | | Wedn’sday, 21 |Variable.|Variable.| 366 | 43·25 | 50·14 |{Light and | | | | | |{ Variable. | | | | | | Thursday, 22 | Calm. |S. 81 W. | 363 | 42·00 | 58·11 |{Light airs | | | | | |{ and calm. | | | | | | | | | | | |{Light airs | | | | | |{ and fog, | | | | | |{ 9.25 A.M. | | | | | |{ Received Friday, 23 |Variable.| | 361 | 41·03 | 66·07 |{ Pilot. | | | | | |{ P.M. 10.00 | | | | | |{ stopped | | | | | |{ and | | | | | |{ sounded. | | | | | | Saturday, 24 |Variable.| | 361 | | |{P.M. 10.30 | | | | | |{ Sandy | | | | | |{ Hook. ---------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+----------+-------------
[231] Mr. Inman was the first to start a regular line of steamers across the Atlantic consisting entirely of iron ships propelled by the screw; and as he and Mrs. Inman, greatly to their credit, made a voyage in one of their earliest emigrant steamers, expressly for the purpose of ameliorating the discomforts and evils hitherto but too common in emigrant ships, my readers may naturally desire to know something of Mr. Inman’s history.
In a few words therefore I may state that he was born at Leicester in the year 1825, where his father (a partner of Pickford and Co.) then resided. Educated at the Collegiate Institution at that place, and at the Liverpool Royal Institution, he, in 1841, preferring business to a profession, entered a mercantile office; passed through various grades of clerkship under the late Mr. Nathan Cairns (brother to Lord Cairns), Messrs. Cater and Co., and Messrs. Richardson Brothers, (all merchants of Liverpool): of the latter firm he became a partner in January 1849, and had the entire management of their fleet of American sailing packets then trading between Liverpool and Philadelphia. Here he first gained an intimate knowledge of the emigrant business which he has since pursued with so much success and public advantage.
Mr. Inman having watched with considerable interest the performances of the City of Glasgow on her first trip to America, was convinced of the advantages she possessed over, not merely their sailing-ships, but over paddle-steamers for the purposes of navigation, and therefore recommended her purchase to his partners. Acting on his advice, they bought and dispatched her with 400 steerage passengers in the winter of 1850 across the troubled waters of the Atlantic, very much to the dismay of that numerous body of men who had still no faith in the screw, and who dreaded the performances of any vessel thus propelled in so stormy an ocean, even though they had seen what the Great Britain had done years before. But the City of Glasgow did her work right well, and completely falsified the prophecies of the foreboders of disaster. The City of Manchester, which followed, “left a profit in the first year of her movements of 40 per cent.” to her enterprising owners, and hence no more has been heard since that time of the inferiority of the screw to the paddle-wheel. One is often surprised to see a man so fully occupied, as he must have been, with his own affairs taking an active part in public matters; but we find Mr. Inman in his useful and busy career (like numerous other active men of business) a member of the Local Marine Board, a member of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Trust, a member of the first Liverpool School Board, a captain of the Cheshire Rifle Volunteers and the holder, too, of prizes, a magistrate for the county of Cheshire where he resides, the chairman of the Liverpool Steam Shipowners’ Association of Liverpool, and an active politician, frequently called on to give evidence before Royal Commissions and Committees of the House of Commons. His life indeed affords an excellent example for the rising generation to follow.
[232] Passengers landed at New York from the United Kingdom in 1870 by the following steamers:—
---------+------+------+---------+------+------- Line. |Trips.|Cabin.|Steerage.|Total.|Deaths. ---------+------+------+---------+------+------- Inman | 68 | 3,635| 40,465 |44,100| 22 National | 56 | 2,442| 33,494 |35,736| 35 Guion | 55 | 1,115| 27,054 |28,569| 18 Anchor | 74 | 1,637| 23,404 |25,041| 19 Cunard | 70 | 7,638| 16,871 |24,509| 10 ---------+------+------+---------+------+-------
[233] On the average of the first seven voyages the City of Chester performed the passage from New York to Queenstown in eight days, eleven hours, and twenty-six minutes. The City of Richmond, too, in her first seven voyages made the same passage on an average of eight days, eleven hours, and fifty-eight minutes; the last-named ship, having on one occasion (April 1874) made the run from Sandy Hook (New York) to Fastnet (60 miles from Cork Harbour) in seven days, twenty-three hours.
[234] To these particulars Mr. Inman, in his evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons (Session 1874, p. 185) on tonnage measurement, adds, “the City of Berlin is about 40 feet (depth) to the hurricane deck, and about seven feet six inches in addition to the poop, and about seven feet to the captain’s bridge above that.... The depth from the main deck is about twenty-four feet.” This ship on her trial trip over the measured mile indicated 5200 horse-power, and an average speed of 14·825 knots per hour.
[235] The City of Berlin has just (Sept. 1875) made the two fastest passages across the Atlantic yet on record. See Appendix No. 13, pp. 611-2.
[236] The founder of this firm, Mr. Alexander Allan, a native of Saltcoats, North Britain, afterwards removed to Glasgow, and owned a numerous fleet of sailing-ships, one of which in early life he himself commanded. His eldest son, James, followed his example, as did also his third son, the late Bryce Allan, of Liverpool. Other two, Hugh (now Sir Hugh Allan) and Andrew, established themselves in Montreal, where they managed the shipping business of the family, and James, when he retired from the sea, formed with Bryce and their youngest brother, Alexander, the now important branch of their business at Liverpool.
[237] The first four steamers of this firm were built by the late Mr. William Denny, of Dumbarton, and the skill of this eminent builder is evinced by the fact that one of these early steamers, the Anglo-Saxon, although designed, for economy of fuel and capacity, for cargo and passengers, rather than for speed, made the passage from Quebec to the Rock Light, Liverpool, in the then altogether unprecedented short time of nine days and five hours.
[238] Appendix No. 14, p. 612.
[239] Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 23rd of July 1861.
[240] TIME TABLE.—(A.) GALWAY TO AMERICA.
Summer Service—Outward Voyages.
From Galway to New York, during the months of April, May, June, July, August, September, and October 11 days 2 hours. From Galway to Boston, during the like months. 11 days 16 hours.
Summer Service—Homeward Voyages.
From New York to Galway, during the like months 10 days. From Boston to Galway, during the like months 10 days 4 hours.
Winter Service—Outward Voyages.
From Galway to New York, during the months of November, December, January, February, and March 13 days. From Galway to Boston, during the like months 13 days 12 hours.
Winter Service—Homeward Voyages.
From New York to Galway, during the like months 10 days 10 hours. From Boston to Galway, during the like months 11 days 2 hours.
[241] See Report of Committee, 1861, p. iii.
[242] See Evidence, Questions 1583 and 1587, p. 139.
[243] Question, 1573, Ibid.
[244] Question 243, p. 25.
[245] The government inspectors, in their Report, state (Question 256, p. 26): “We surveyed the Hibernia in dry dock at Messrs. Laird’s yard, at Birkenhead,” in reference to the Postmaster-General’s communication respecting the leaky state of that vessel, “and we found the whole of the ‘bolts of the flat keel’ and bottom plating, for about 150 feet amidships, very much strained.”
[246] Report of Committee, page iv.
[247] Appendix to Report of Committee, page 298, “Table of Voyages.”
[248] See Appendix No. 6 to the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons.
[249] Paper delivered in by Sir Rowland Hill, K.C.B., 12th July, 1861:—
_Statement of the Earnings and Costs of the Galway Line of Mail Steamers._
Sea postage of correspondence (including newspapers £ and transit letters) from 26th June to 23rd October, 1860, inclusive, when the voyages were suspended (estimated) 1,400 ------- Trips: Out, 7; home, 6 Total, 13. Earnings, 108_l._ per trip.
Cost to Post-Office in same time.
£ Contract payment (less penalties) 14,764 Incidental payments 500 ------- £15,264 -------
(Signed) Frank James Scudamore, 12th July, 1861. Receiver and Accountant-General.
[250] There is still a line of sailing-packets, named the “Old Black Ball” line, trading between Liverpool and New York, sailing from the former port on the 1st and 16th of each month. They are large and fine ships, and are under the management of Messrs. C. H. Marshall & Co.
[251] In 1873 the Wisconsin made the passages from Liverpool to New York and back in each case within ten days.
[252] The White Star Line was originally composed of a fleet of fast sailing American clipper-ships, such as the Champion of the Seas, Blue Jacket, White Star, Shalimar, &c., sailing to Australia: to this line, Messrs. Ismay, Imrie, and Co. succeeded, and they still carry it on with similar fast high-classed vessels built of iron, such as the Belfast, British Commerce, Knight Commander, Houghton Tower, Glengarry, Knowsley Hall, &c., and they have applied the title “White Star” to their New York line of steamers.
[253] Extract from “Book of Regulations” of the White Star line of steamers:
“The commanders must distinctly understand that the issue of the following instructions does not, in any way, relieve them from entire responsibility for the safe and efficient navigation of their respective vessels; and they are also enjoined to remember that, whilst they are expected to use every diligence to secure a speedy voyage, they must run no risk which might by any possibility result in accident to their ships. It is to be hoped that they will ever bear in mind that the safety of the lives and property entrusted to their care is the ruling principle that should govern them in the navigation of their ships, and no supposed gain in expedition, or saving of time on the voyage, is to be purchased at the risk of accident. The company desires to establish and maintain for its vessels a reputation for safety, and only looks for such speed on the various voyages as is consistent with safe and prudent navigation.”
[254] See Appendix No. 15, p. 613.
[255] The First Eleven Passages of the “BALTIC.”
QUEENSTOWN TO NEW YORK. NEW YORK TO QUEENSTOWN. Voyage. Days. H. M. Voyage. Days. H. M. 1. September, 1871 8 19 52 1. October, 1871 8 15 3 2. February, 1872 9 19 22 2. March, 1872 9 3 38 3. March, 1872 8 18 32 3. April, 1872 8 3 58 4. April, 1872 9 3 52 4. May, 1872 8 20 10 5. May, 1872 8 14 35 5. June, 1872 8 22 20 6. June, 1872 9 4 52 6. July, 1872 8 19 8 7. August, 1872 8 13 57 7. August, 1872 8 12 8 8. September, 1872 8 14 40 8. September, 1872 8 10 53 9. October, 1872 8 17 52 9. October, 1872 8 11 50 10. November, 1872 10 17 12 10. December, 1872 7 23 22 11. December, 1872 10 8 11 11. January, 1873 7 20 9
[256] Copy of the “ADRIATIC’S” Log.
QUEENSTOWN TOWARD NEW YORK. -------+-----------+--------+---------+----------+----------+------------------ Date. | Winds. |Courses.|Distance.|Latitude. |Longitude.| Weather. -------+-----------+--------+---------+----------+----------+------------------ 1872. | | | | | May 16 | .. | .. | Left |Liverpool | .. | {5.10 P.M., Rock | | | | | | { Light abeam. | | | | | | May 17 | .. | .. | Left |Queenstown| 11·05 | {A.M., Roche’s | | | | | | { Point abeam. | | | | | | | | | | North. | West. | May 18 | E.N.E. | W. | 381 | 51·22 | 18·12 | {Fresh breeze and | | | | | | { fine weather. | | | | | | May 19 | Northerly |S. 87 W.| 348 | 51·13 | 27·27 | {Mod. breeze and | | | | | | { fine weather. | | | | | | May 20 | Northerly | 75 | 366 | 49·31 | 36·42 | Calm. | | | | | | | | | | | | { Light breeze; May 21 | N.N.W. | 72 | 353 | 37·44 | 45·11 | { dense fogs at | | | | | | { times. | | | | | | | | | | | | { Mod. breeze; May 22 | N.N.W. | 62 | 362 | 44·57 | 52·57 | { dense fogs at | | | | | | { times. | | | | | | | | | | | | {Light breeze; May 23 | W. by N. | 78 | 333 | 43·20 | 60·21 | { dense fogs at | | | | | | { times. | | | | | | May 24 | .. | 68 | 357 | 41·08 | 67·51 | Ditto, ditto. | | | | | | May 25 |To S. Hook,| .. | 278 | .. | .. | {Anchd.off Sandy | | | | | | { Hook, 6 A.M. -------+-----------+--------+---------+----------+----------+------------------+
[257] See Appendix No. 16, p. 614, for particulars of this passage.
[258] The Germanic (June 1875) made the passage from Queenstown to Sandy Hook in 7 days, 23 hours, and 7 minutes actual time. See details of her log, Appendix No. 17.
[259] The following are some of the principal dimensions of the Britannic:
Feet. In. Length between perpendiculars 455 0 Length over all 468 0 Breadth of beam 45 3 Depth of hold 34 0 Net register tonnage 3,174-15/100 tons.
She has accommodation for 1,300 passengers, and 150 crew.
[260] Engineering, weekly journal, London, 20th November, 1874.
[261] On arriving in shallow water or nearing a port the screw is raised, so that the bottom of it is above the level of the keel, and when the blades require examining or replacing, the shaft can be raised still higher, thus exposing the boss and allowing ready access when the ship is in light trim. The last two lengths of shafting are connected with an universal joint which works in a chamber in the after end of the tunnel and is at all times accessible to the engineers. The bush is guided by two cheeks on the stern-post, and raised by means of rods with gearing on the middle deck either by a steam-engine or by a hand winch placed on the upper deck, additional power being always at command through the medium of the capstan. The want of the customary keel pieces joining the inner and outer stern-post conveys an appearance of weakness, but this is amply compensated by the increased width and additional thickness at the head of the screw aperture; and the centre of effort of the rudder being raised above the ordinary height. A false foot is fitted to the bottom of the rudder-post and this foot can be readily removed, allowing the screw boss to be changed without disturbing the shaft, which is another very important feature.—Ibid., 20th November, 1874.
[262] Messrs. Ismay, Imrie, & Co. state: “With regard to the Britannic’s screw propeller, it can be worked at any depth, and need not be stopped whilst the lowering or raising is being proceeded with.”
[263]
Abstract of Log, S.S. “BRITANNIC.”
FIRST VOYAGE FROM LIVERPOOL TOWARDS NEW YORK.
-------+------------+--------+---------+-----+-----+------------------------- Date |Direction of|Course. |Distance.|Lat. |Long.| Remarks. | Wind. | | | | | -------+------------+--------+---------+-----+-----+------------------------- 1874. | | | Miles | | | June 25| .. | .. | .. | .. | .. | Left Liverpool, 5 P.M. | | | | | | | | | | | |{ Anchored in Queenstown June 26| .. | .. | .. | .. | .. |{ Harbour, 11.35 | | | | | |{ A.M. Proceeded at | | | | | |{ noon. | | | | | | June 27| N.W. |Various.| 350 |51·20|17·16|{ Moderate breeze and | | | | | |{ fine weather. | | | | | | June 28| S.E. |S. 87 W.| 351 |51·05|26·34|{ Moderate breeze, | | | | | |{ cloudy, with head sea. | | | | | | June 29| N.E. to S. |S. 76 W.| 352 |49·38|35·25|{ Light breeze, with | | | | | |{ cloudy weather. | | | | | | | | | | | |{ Moderate breeze, June 30| W.N.W. |S. 72 W.| 351 |47·49|43·39|{ cloudy, with head | | | | | |{ sea. | | | | | | July 1| N. to N.E. |S. 66 W.| 367 |45·22|51·42|{ Moderate breeze, with | | | | | |{ dense fog. | | | | | | July 2| N.E. |S. 66 W.| 375 |42·52|59·34|{ Moderate breeze, and | | | | | |{ cloudy. | | | | | | July 3| E.S.E. |S. 72 W.| 376 |40·56|67·32|{ Light breeze, and | | | | | |{ dense fog. | | | | | | July 4| .. |Various.| 285 | .. | .. |{ Sandy Hook abreast | | | | | |{ at 9.15 A.M. -------+------------+--------+---------+-----+-----+-------------------------
[264] Letter from Messrs. Ismay, Imrie, and Company, 3rd December, 1874.
[265] “Passengers will be provided with berths to sleep in, each adult having a separate berth; but they have to provide themselves with a plate, mug, knife, fork, spoon, and water-can, also bedding. Married couples, with their children, will be berthed together; females will be berthed in rooms by themselves.
“Bill of fare.—Each passenger will be supplied with three quarts of water daily, and with as much provisions as he can eat, which are all of the best quality, and which are examined and put on board under the inspection of her Majesty’s Emigration Officers, and cooked and served out by the company’s servants.
“Breakfast at eight o’clock.—Coffee, sugar, and fresh bread and butter, or biscuit and butter, or oatmeal porridge and molasses.
“Dinner at one o’clock.—Soup and beef, pork, or fish, according to the day of the week, with bread and potatoes, and, on Sunday, pudding will be added.
“Supper at six o’clock—Tea, sugar, biscuit, and butter. Oatmeal gruel will be supplied at eight P.M. when necessary.
“Luggage.—Ten cubic feet will be allowed for each adult steerage passenger, and twenty for each adult saloon passenger, free; for all over that quantity a charge of 1_s._ 6_d._ for each cubic foot will be made.
“All passengers are liable to be rejected who, upon examination, are found to be lunatic, idiot, deaf, dumb, blind, maimed, infirm, or above the age of sixty years; or any woman without a husband with a child or children; or any person unable to take care of himself (or herself) without becoming a public charge, or who, from any attending circumstances, are likely to become a public charge. Sick persons or widows with children cannot be taken, nor lame persons, unless full security be given to the United States’ Government, that the parties will not become chargeable to the State.”
[266] In 1866, an American company started a line of steamers between Boston and Liverpool. Two large and elegantly fitted wooden screws built in Boston, named the Erie and Ontario, were the precursors of this line, but were so unfortunate that, after making two or three passages across the Atlantic, the enterprise had to be abandoned.
[267] In the Appendix No. 17, pp. 617-632, will be found a table of the several passages of the steamers of some of the lines employed in the Transatlantic trade during the years 1873 and 1874. I must, however, add (as I am anxious to be impartial and strictly accurate), that the steamers of three of these lines, the “Cunard,” “Inman,” and “National,” adopt the “Lane route,” that is, the route to the south of the Newfoundland banks, which increases the distance of each passage by about 90 miles, or allowing for the favourable Gulf stream by from 50 to 60 miles. I must also direct the attention of my readers to certain figures in these returns where I have placed an asterisk. For instance, one of the Cunard steamers (the Cuba) was on the passage of the 19th January, 1873, about seven days beyond her usual time, no doubt arising from some uncontrollable cause, which would increase the average passages outwards of the steamers of this line for that year by about 3 hours 10 minutes. Similar remarks apply to the steamers of the other lines, as the increased time there noted affects the annual average length of their passages, also, in a greater or less degree. The Canada (National line), 16 January, 1873, was, for instance, about seven days, while three other vessels of this line were three and a half, six and a half, and six days respectively behind their usual time. The America (Bremen line) was on one passage more than eleven days. A steamer of the White Star line, on one occasion, four and a half days; while the Guion line, on four occasions, four, five, six, and ten and a half days respectively; and the Inman line, four and a half, three and a half, four and a half, and ten days respectively longer than their usual time, occasioned, I am informed, by serving ships in distress and other laudable or unavoidable causes. Though some are faster than others, the speed and regularity with which all these lines of steamers traverse the Atlantic is very remarkable, and no better illustration could be given than this table of the perfection we have reached in ocean navigation. Indeed, the time of the arrival of these vessels can be depended on with almost as much certainty as a railway train.
[268] See Appendix No. 18, p. 633.
[269] These steamers, which sail monthly from Glasgow for Alexandria, run in connection with the Peninsular and Oriental, and British India Steam Navigation Companies, by means of which system, passengers can be forwarded from Suez to Colombo, Madras, Calcutta, Rangoon, and Moulmein, and to all the principal towns in India and China. The Anchor Company has also a monthly service of its own vessels between Glasgow, Liverpool, and Bombay, viâ, the Suez Canal, taking goods and passengers for the ports on the West coast of India and the Persian Gulf in connection with the British India Company’s steamers.
[270] These steamers are each 400 feet in length, 40 feet breadth, and 33 feet depth from upper deck. They measure 4000 tons gross. They can accommodate in their cabins, which are fitted in first-class style, 250, and in the steerage 900 passengers.
[271] The Victoria is 361½ feet in length, 40½ feet beam, 24½ feet depth of hold to main, and 32 feet to spar deck; her measurement is 3287 tons gross. She has compound engines of 500 nominal horse-power, with cylinders of 57 inches and 108 inches diameter respectively, having 4 feet length of stroke of piston, and six boilers with eighteen furnaces, consuming, when at full speed, “14 knots per hour on the measured mile, 45 tons of coal per day of twenty-four hours.” She has accommodation for 150 first-class and 900 steerage passengers, besides her crew, and also large cargo space.
[272] The Suavia, which was built in 1874 by Messrs. Caird and Co. of Greenock, is 361 feet in length, 41 feet in breadth, and her depth to the upper spar deck is 34 feet. She measures 3623 tons gross, and has accommodation for ninety-two first-class passengers, eighty-two second-class and 930 third-class passengers, besides her crew of 120 men; she has likewise space for 2000 tons of cargo. The Suavia is the twenty-second steam-ship built by Messrs. Caird and Company for the Hamburg American Steam Packet Company.
Chapter VII
Royal West India Mail Steam Packet Company, 1841—Number of their ships—Conditions of mail contract—Large subsidy—Heavy loss during the first year of their operations—Capital of the Company—Liberal concessions by Government—Complaints of the public—Improved prospects of the company from improved management—Contract renewed, 1850—Its conditions—Fresh conditions, 1857—Contract again renewed, 1864—Further renewal, 1874—The steam-ship Forth—Losses of various ships of the company—Causes of these losses—Loss of the Amazon—Terrible sufferings—Loss of the Demerara—Additions to their fleet, and superior class of vessels.
[Sidenote: Royal West India Mail Steam Packet Company, 1841.]
[Sidenote: Number of ships.]
Soon after the Atlantic Ocean began to be regularly navigated by steam-vessels, the importance of a better means of intercommunication with the West Indies led to the formation of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, which entered into a contract with the Board of Admiralty in March 1841 for the conveyance of the mails between England, the West Indies, and the Gulf of Mexico. This company commenced operations on a much more comprehensive and grander scale than either the Cunard Company or the Peninsular and Oriental. Fourteen large steam-ships were at once ordered to be built for the service; they were to be substantial and efficient in all respects, and of such strength as would enable them to carry guns of the largest calibre then in use on board Her Majesty’s war-steamers, with engines of not less than 400 collective horse-power.
[Sidenote: Conditions of mail contract.]
[Sidenote: Large Subsidy.]
When complete, the conditions of the contract required one of these vessels to be ready to take the mails on board, twice in each calendar month, and to proceed, viâ Corunna and Madeira, to the island of Barbadoes and, after staying there not more than six hours, thence, viâ St. Vincent, to the island of Grenada, where the stoppage was limited to twelve hours, and thence, again, to the islands in succession of Santa Cruz and St. Thomas, Nicola Mole in Haiti, Santiago de Cuba, and Port Royal, in Jamaica. After a stay not exceeding twenty-four hours at Port Royal, the steamer was to proceed to Savannah-la-Mer, in the same island, thence to Havannah, and, on her return thence, to call again at Savannah-la-Mer, thence to Port Royal, and, thence, to Santiago de Cuba, Nicola Mole, and Samana, in the island of Haiti, delivering mails at each place, “care being taken that the said steam-vessel shall always arrive at Samana aforesaid (after performing the said voyage from Barbadoes under ordinary circumstances of wind and weather) on the twenty-second day after the arrival from England of the mails at Barbadoes;” and, after delivering and receiving the mails at Samana, “the steam-vessel shall make the best of her way back from Samana to such port in the British Channel as the said Commissioners of the Admiralty shall from time to time direct.” The scheme, also, embraced other places in the West Indies, the Spanish Main, and the United States, for which mails were to be carried. In consideration of the services thus to be performed, the company was to receive at the rate of 240,000_l._ per annum, in quarterly payments; the contract to commence on the 1st of December, 1841, or at an earlier day if possible, and to continue in force for ten years, subject to twelve months’ notice on either side for its termination.
[Sidenote: Heavy loss during the first year of their operations.]
But this subsidy, large as it doubtless was for the service to be performed, was not sufficient to cover the heavy outlay the company had considered necessary in the construction and equipment of their fleet. Perhaps, too, part of this outlay arose from the fact that, though Mr. McQueen, the projector of the company, was a gentleman who had had considerable experience in the promotion of large undertakings, his knowledge of maritime affairs was limited, while he was not sufficiently conversant with those details, the practical knowledge of which is so essential to the success of all shipping operations. The directors, as a body, were not competent, from previous experience, to manage such an undertaking; while the choice also of commanders, selected from the Royal Navy, with little or no experience of steam, and none whatever of the numerous requirements of a merchant-ship, was unfortunate, and may have in some measure tended to produce a balance sheet which, though embracing to its credit the large permanent subsidy, showed at the close of the first year’s operations a loss of no less than 79,790_l._ 16_s._ 8_d._ to the company!
It may, however, be remarked that the projectors of this undertaking had entered on an entirely new field, and that merchants who had been accustomed to dispatch their produce in sailing-vessels were unprepared to pay the enhanced rates required for steam-ships, while the passenger and goods trade in itself was not then nearly sufficient for a remunerative return on the large capital subscribed.
[Sidenote: Capital of the Company.]
[Sidenote: Liberal concessions by Government.]
Originally, the company was authorized to issue fifteen thousand shares of 100_l._ on which calls of 50_l._ per share had been made up to the time of the first meeting of shareholders, with power to borrow 260,000_l._ But as another call of 10_l._ per share, sanctioned at this meeting, was found insufficient for the requirements of the Company, the directors appealed to Government for further assistance. By the original arrangements, the annual mileage traversed by the company’s ships would have been 684,816 miles. Government, however, in reply to their appeal, generously consented to reduce the distances to be performed to 392,976 miles, and to allow the annual subsidy of 240,000_l._ to remain undisturbed. By these important and liberal modifications the annual expenditure of the company which, according to their own calculations, would have been 360,000_l._ per annum, was reduced to 235,000_l._
It was further conceded that if, at any time, and from causes, in the opinion of Government, of a public and national character, such as war, the insurance on steam-vessels should rise above six guineas per cent. per annum, or on coals above two guineas per cent. on the outward passage, the company was to receive an additional sum to be settled by arbitration, but which was not to exceed 10,000_l._ per annum.
[Sidenote: Complaints of the public.]
In process of time, and notably after the necessity of greater economy in the public finances had been admitted, great discontent was expressed through the press with regard to these very liberal concessions,[273] which was materially aggravated by a statement, the accuracy of which I have no means of testing, that the amount paid for the West India mail service exceeded the sum received for postage by 183,938_l._, and that, though the Brazil branch left a margin of 3478_l._ in favour of the Post-office, the direct loss to the public amounted to no less than 180,460_l._ per annum.[274]
To most of these complaints the company was altogether indifferent, believing them to have their origin in disappointment and jealousy; but there was no answer to the well-founded remonstrances of the colonists that the service was, after all, performed with great irregularity. Indeed, it is beyond cavil that during their earlier operations, the vessels did not arrive at the time named in the tables of routes attached to the contract, that, for instance, the duplicate correspondence from Chagres, sent round by way of New York in American vessels, and thence by the Cunard or American steamers to Liverpool, often arrived in England sooner than the original letters brought directly by the Royal Mail vessels; and, further, that much confusion was constantly caused by the non-arrival of the outward mails till days after the dispatch of the homeward ones. Unnecessary delays also took place in coaling at St. Thomas and in the receiving and transferring freight there and elsewhere. There was also, it was alleged, a want of sufficient steamers for the intercolonial service, while the occasional negligence and incompetency of the commanders of the vessels led to a needless loss of time between port and port; complaints were likewise made of insufficiency of accommodation for passengers on some of the intercolonial steamers, and, also, that a pernicious system of gambling was permitted in the vessels of the main line. Some of these complaints, as frequently happens under similar circumstances, were frivolous and unwarrantable, but too many of them were unanswerable; indeed the bitter attacks on the company might naturally have been expected considering the numerous favours supposed to have been conferred on it, and, above all, the notorious fact, that the contract for the conveyance of the mails was never exposed to public competition.
[Sidenote: Improved prospects of the Company]
On the other hand, the company had great difficulties to contend against, while its shareholders, so far from receiving any dividend on their capital, sustained during the first year of its operations a heavy loss. Moreover, though liberal concessions had been made by the Government, together with various unusual allowances, these were more than counterbalanced by the loss of two valuable ships during the second year of its operations. Yet, taking into account these and other losses, to which reference will hereafter be made, the trade increased so rapidly as to recoup the disasters of the company, and to leave, in 1843, a surplus of receipts over expenditure of 94,210_l._ and in 1844 of 147,749_l._: the directors were therefore enabled to recommend a dividend on the half-year ending 31st December, 1844, of 30_s._ per share; in October, 1846, 35_s._; and in April, 1848, 2_l._ per share.[275]
From this time the prospects of the company steadily improved, and when, in 1850, various capitalists in the United States projected the construction of a railway across the isthmus of Panama—a project which promised extensive additions to its business—the company was in a position to render this new undertaking considerable assistance by advancing, in the course of the year 1851, the sum of 25,480_l._ towards its completion. At that time, too, the direct and most advantageous route to the Australian colonies appeared to be across that Isthmus; indeed the Panama route was recommended by a Committee of the House of Commons who inquired into this subject in the session of 1849. But, apart from the Australian trade, that of San Francisco was then being rapidly developed by the discovery of the gold mines, by attracting (as these did) large numbers of passengers from Europe, and, thereby, laying the foundation of the present enormous traffic in grain and other produce from California, perhaps the most fertile district of the United States—the valley of the Mississippi not excepted.
[Sidenote: from improved management.]
From that period the operations of the company have from various causes yielded a very fair return to its shareholders, some of these, doubtless, being due to the rapid increase of the trade, to the knowledge the directors have gained from experience, and, not the least, to the fact that their ships are now commanded by men who have been either trained in their own service, or have acquired, while employed by other shipowners, the sort of knowledge essential for the successful management of merchant-steamers.
[Sidenote: Contract renewed, 1850.]
[Sidenote: Its conditions.]
In 1850, Government granted a renewal of the mail contract to the company for a further term of ten years from the 1st January, 1852, the conditions being, that the subsidy should be raised from 240,000_l._ to 270,000_l._ per annum, and that the company, on its part, should undertake the additional cost and expense of a monthly service to the Brazils, thus increasing the mileage to be performed from 389,448 to 547,296 miles, and, at the same time, reducing the mileage rate from 12_s._ 3_d._ to 9_s._ 10_d._ per mile. The company was also required to accelerate the speed on the West Indian line from 8 knots an hour, as originally agreed, to 10 knots an hour, and to add five new steamers to their fleet, each of 2250 tons burden and 800 horse-power. Besides an increased outlay of capital, these conditions entailed on the company a very considerable increase in the wear and tear of ships and machinery; hence their general expenditure rose in the course of the year, after these new arrangements came into force, from 264,802_l._ to 403,769_l._ per annum.
[Sidenote: Fresh conditions, 1857.]
In 1857, other changes were made in their contract. The first condition—a somewhat extraordinary one—had reference to an amalgamation with the European and Australian Mail Company for the conveyance of the mails, viâ Egypt, to and from Australia, which subsequently proved a great failure, this Company having altogether broken down; the second required an acceleration of the mails between England and Rio Janeiro from sixty-six days twenty-two hours, the time hitherto allowed for the performance of the round voyage, to fifty-five days nineteen hours. The company was, also, ordered to provide three more vessels, of 3000 tons and 800 horse-power, for the West India and Atlantic service, and a fourth of smaller dimensions to increase the speed of the mails between Rio Janeiro and the River Plate. These changes proved to be of considerable public advantage, as the time of the post between England and the isthmus of Panama was thus reduced from fifty-nine to forty-two days, while, as the homeward mails arrived three days before the departure of the outward ones, the mercantile community obtained important additional facilities for transacting their business with that part of the world.
[Sidenote: Contract again renewed, 1864.]
When the second contract expired in January 1864 fresh arrangements were made whereby the annual subsidy was reduced to 172,914_l._ and the speed increased on the West India Transatlantic service to 10½ knots an hour. In 1866 it was further agreed that each alternate fortnightly packet should proceed from St. Thomas direct to Colon instead of touching first at Jamaica, thus shortening the route between England and Panama. In 1868 another and, in this case, most important modification, was suggested in the conditions of the contract. Hitherto, the steamers of this company had been propelled, principally, by paddle-wheels, its directors being, perhaps, among the last to see the advantages to be derived from the application of the screw. But, though now convinced of the many advantages of the screw over the paddle, before entering on the large expenditure required for such a change, they naturally wished to know the intentions of Government with regard to the continuation of their mail contracts; the result of this application being the extension of the period till 1874, with, however, the condition, that Government should participate in all profits beyond eight per cent.
[Sidenote: Further renewal, 1874.]
As a considerable amount of discontent had, in the meantime, again found expression through the medium of the public press with regard to the very large sums of money which this company had received for the conveyance of the mails, and, as different members of the House of Commons had insisted that the service should be thrown open to public competition, the directors were obliged to consider the alternative of either abandoning it altogether, or of conducting the service for a much less amount than they had hitherto received: they wisely adopted the latter course, and, on public tenders being invited, undertook to convey the West India mails for the annual subsidy of 84,750_l._, not much more than one-third of what they had originally received—a sum, however, subsequently supplemented by 2000_l._ per annum as a recompense for the ships calling at Plymouth and there landing the mails, instead of at Southampton, their final port of destination.[276]
In subsidizing the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company during the earlier portion of its career to the large extent I have named, the British government were evidently actuated by reasons similar to those, which induced the government of the United States to make the like liberal concessions to the unfortunate Collins line; and there can be no doubt that the original vessels of this company were well adapted for one of the objects Government had then in view—the creation of a fleet of a class of large and strongly built merchant-steamers, which could be made use of in the event of war. Hence, all these vessels were built to carry heavy guns when necessary, so as to be serviceable for the purpose of the navy at a comparatively small subsequent outlay. A drawing is furnished on the following page of one of those ships which, in nearly all respects, resembled the government steamers of the period.
[Sidenote: The steam-ship Forth.]
[Sidenote: Losses of various ships of the company.]
The Forth was altogether a very fine vessel of her class, and the largest of any of the original fleet of the company. She was somewhere about 1900 tons gross, or builders’ measurement, 1147 tons register, and 450 nominal horse-power. She was built at Leith in 1841, by Messrs. Menzies and Co., and, as Government reserved its right of purchasing any of these ships at a valuation, she was, like the others, constructed in accordance with a specification from the Admiralty, under the survey and immediate control of officers appointed for this purpose. Indeed, the fleet of the Royal Mail Company consisted of the finest class of vessels of that description built of wood which, previous to 1841, had been sent to sea either for naval or mercantile purposes. Nor were they inferior to any vessels then afloat either in the completeness of their equipment, or in the elegance and convenience of their accommodation for first-class passengers. But, from some cause or other, arising either from those I have already ventured to suggest or from the unavoidable dangers of the ocean, the company at first was most unfortunate in the number of losses they sustained. Nor can it be urged that such disasters were due to any special dangers in their line of navigation, for they had no fogs and ice to fear, like their more northern Transatlantic voyagers: with the exception of occasional hurricanes among the West India Islands, their course was a comparatively safe one, and, yet, no fewer than six of the West India Royal Mail Company’s packets were lost in the first eight years of their career.
Besides the Isis which, on the 8th of October, 1842, sank off Bermuda, having previously struck on a reef, the company lost, on the 15th of April, 1843, the Solway, 20 miles west of Corunna. She was one of their finest vessels. Her captain, the surgeon, various passengers, and a portion of the crew, consisting in all of sixty persons, perished with the ship. The Tweed, another of their first-class vessels, of 1800 tons burden and 450 horse-power, was totally lost on the 12th of February, 1847, on the Alicranes reefs off Yucatan, in the Gulf of Mexico, while on her voyage to Vera Cruz. Her loss was most disastrous, and caused great excitement at the time. The crew and passengers amounted to 151 persons (seventy-two of whom were drowned), and their sufferings, as graphically described by one who had escaped,[277] formed a subject of conversation for a longer period than such calamities now do. After five days’ suffering, the remainder of the passengers and crew were rescued from the barren reef of rocks on which they had been cast. Again, on the 1st of February, 1849, the Forth was also completely lost on the same rocks which had caused the total destruction of the Tweed; while, in the following year the Actæon was wrecked in rounding the point near Carthagena on a shoal extending, as was alleged, much further into the sea than had been laid down on the Admiralty charts. Nor must the loss of the Medina, wrecked on the 12th of May, 1844, on a coral reef near Turks Island, be omitted, as this was, certainly, one which ought not to have occurred.
[Sidenote: Causes of these losses.]
Some of these disasters, no doubt, arose from the intricate nature of the navigation among the West India Islands, and others may have been caused, as the supporters of the company alleged, “by those sudden changes of the weather, hurricanes, squalls, northers, &c., with which the West India Islands, Spanish Main, and Gulf of Mexico are so frequently visited,” but the rocks and shoals of the Gulf could have had nothing to do with the loss of the Solway off Corunna, and, as the company has met with much fewer disasters of late years, I may be allowed to suspect that incompetency had too much to do with the almost periodical losses of the first eight or ten years of its career.
[Sidenote: Loss of the Amazon.]
But by far the greatest disaster which befell any of this company’s ships was the destruction of the Amazon by fire at sea; indeed, nothing could be more terrible than the loss of this ship and the sufferings of those who perished with her.
The Amazon was built by Messrs. R. and H. Green, at Blackwall, and launched from their yard on the 28th of June, 1851: she was the largest wooden merchant steam-ship which had up to that time been constructed. An illustration of her, as she lay at anchor ready for sea, on her first and only voyage, will be found on the following page.[278]
When surveyed by the Admiralty before her departure from Southampton, she was reported capable of carrying fourteen 32-pounders, and two 10-inch pivot guns of 85 cwt. each on her main-deck; her coal bunkers were constructed to carry 1000 tons of coals, or upward of sixteen and a half days’ consumption at the rate of 2½ tons per hour for her twenty-six furnaces. Her engines were fitted in a framework independent of the vessel, so that little or no perceptible vibration was felt when they were at work: moreover, allowing 12 superficial feet for each man, she had accommodation in her lower decks for 360 soldiers, besides elegant cabins for first-class passengers. Her cost, when ready for sea, was somewhat over 100,000_l._
On the 2nd of January, 1852, the Amazon, under command of Captain Symons, took her departure from Southampton with the usual mails for the British and foreign West Indies, the Gulf of Mexico, Spanish Main, &c., fifty passengers, and a large and valuable cargo. Her crew numbered 110, exclusive of the Admiralty officer in charge of the mails. The Amazon was the first of the direct line of steam-ships arranged by the company to run fortnightly between Southampton and Chagres, touching only at St. Thomas, at which place various lines of branch packets for the accommodation of the West Indies, the Gulf of Mexico, &c., were to meet, diverging thence to the different islands and ports embraced in the new arrangements with Government, and thus establishing, as it was termed at the time, “a great steam ferry between Europe and the Isthmus of Panama.”
In the course of the day after her departure, when steaming at the rate of about 9 miles an hour against a stiff south-west gale, the bearings of the paddle-shafts became so hot from the excessive friction of the new machinery, that on two occasions the engines had to be stopped to cool them, in one case for two and a half hours; after which everything appeared to be in order. But at midnight of the evening of the 4th January, when the Amazon was somewhere about 110 miles west-south-west of the Scilly Islands, the watch on deck, to their dismay, discovered that a fire had broken out suddenly on the starboard side forward between the steam-chest and that portion of the deck whereon the galley stood, the flames at once rushing up the gangway in front of the foremost funnel. So sudden, indeed, was the conflagration that when the alarm bell, instantly sounded, brought the captain upon deck, it was only to witness the inevitable destruction of his ship; the force of the gale then blowing having spread the flames with such rapidity that every appliance, by means of wet swabs, buckets of water, and at last the fire pumps (for they had not been ready), proved alike utterly futile to check the progress of the fire.
The most terrible consternation and confusion now prevailed. Passengers and crew rushed on deck in the wildest dismay, while the gale which raged overhead increased their fears. To add if possible to the terrors of this awful calamity, the smoke and flames had driven the engineers from their stations, so that the machinery could not be stopped; consequently the Amazon dashed through the waves at full speed. Thus the raging fire, made more fearful by the storm, consumed everything animate and inanimate within its reach, spreading with the most alarming rapidity over the deck of the ship and extending to the cabins below, where many of the passengers were either suffocated by the smoke or consumed by the flames.
Recourse was now had to the boats: of these there were nine, including four life-boats. As too often happens in cases of emergency, the boats were neither clear nor ready for lowering. In this instance, too, the life-boats had been fitted with crutches on which their keels rested. These fittings now obstructed their clearance from the sides of the ship, and but for this fatal arrangement so serious a loss of life might have been lessened. To make matters worse, the two best and largest boats had been stowed on the top of the sponsons, which were now surrounded by the flames and could not be approached. When the mail-boat was lowered, it was immediately swamped with twenty-five persons on board, all of whom perished; the pinnace, when lowered, sheered across the sea before the people in her could unhook the foretackle, and they too were all washed out and drowned, except two men who had clung to the thwarts and were enabled to scramble back to the deck of the ship: the boat itself, which hung by the single tackle, was soon afterwards dashed to pieces against the side of the vessel. By extraordinary efforts fourteen of the crew and two of the passengers were enabled to remove from the cranes and lower in safety one of the starboard life-boats, while nineteen of the crew and six of her passengers escaped in another: these, with a young midshipman, named Vincent, who displayed great bravery and intrepidity, the chief steward, one passenger (a young lady), and two of the seamen, who had managed to lower without accident a small boat, the dingy, were the only persons saved out of the 161 who had embarked on board the Amazon only two days previously. All the others perished, including the captain, either by the flames or the waves; and, perhaps, in the melancholy annals of the sea, there is no shipwreck more appalling than that of the Amazon.
[Sidenote: Terrible sufferings.]
No writer of romance in the wildest dreams of fancy could have pictured a scene more terrible than this reality. Young Vincent, in his vivid narrative, describes two passengers rushing from their cabins enveloped in flames and falling lifeless upon deck. He speaks of a lady, with an infant in her arms, entreating some one to take care of her child, heedless of her own safety, but before assistance could be rendered perishing with her child amid the flames. Others, he says, fled from them, only to be engulfed in the ocean. One lady passenger, who had been lifted into the boat, was so terrified by the waves which dashed over the sides of the ship that she preferred death among the flames, and wildly rushed back to her destruction. Others fell through the burning decks or hatchways, and were instantly consumed, while some resigned themselves calmly to their terrible fate; when Vincent left the ship he states that “some of those who yet lived were kneeling on the deck in prayer, while others, almost in a state of nudity, were running about screaming with terror.”
Between three and four o’clock in the morning the masts of the vessel fell over her sides; the foremast on the port and the mainmast on the starboard, but the mizen still stood while the fire raged from stem to stern. One poor fellow then appeared perched on the extreme end of the jib-boom, the only living thing amidst the burning mass; but he, too, perished. About five in the morning, when the life-boat was “passing the ship in a leewardly direction,” the gunpowder in her magazines exploded, and in about twenty minutes afterwards, the mizenmast went by the board; the vessel herself then making a heavy lurch, as if eager to escape from the flames, went down, her funnels still standing, but red hot, with everything on board which the fire, in its fury, had left unconsumed.
[Sidenote: Loss of the Demerara.]
The destruction of the Amazon following so quickly upon the stranding of the Demerara at Bristol (another of the five additional vessels which the company had just launched), materially inconvenienced the directors in the fresh arrangements they had made with Government for the more expeditious delivery of the mails. They had now only the Oronoco, Magdalene, and Parana to conduct the direct service between Southampton and the isthmus of Panama; but these misfortunes appear to have stimulated the shareholders to renewed exertions. Other vessels were engaged and fresh contracts entered into for the construction of steamers of a still finer description.[279] When, at length, Government relieved the company from the condition of building wooden vessels adapted for purposes of war, and the directors themselves discovered that iron was preferable to wood and the screw a better mode of propulsion than the paddle-wheel, they produced vessels equal to most of those now engaged in Transatlantic navigation. Of late years, their average of loss, until very recently, has been comparatively small.
[Sidenote: Additions to their fleet,]
There are not now many finer steamers afloat than their Tagus and Moselle, which were launched in the year 1871 from the yard of Messrs. John Elder and Co. The former, a vessel of 2789 tons builders’ measurement and 600 horse-power, attained a mean speed of 14·878 knots per hour on the occasion of her official trial; while the Moselle, a sister ship, of about 3200 tons gross register, surpassed her, having made 14·929 knots per hour as the average of four runs over the measured mile. Equally satisfactory results have attended many of their other vessels, and not the least remarkable is the case of the Tasmanian, an iron screw-vessel they purchased from the unfortunate European and Australian Steam Navigation Company. This vessel, which was also fitted in 1871 by Messrs. John Elder and Co. with engines on the compound principle, accomplished her first voyage to St. Thomas in 338 hours (14 days, 2 hours) on a consumption of only 466 tons of coal, though she formerly consumed 1088 tons on a run of 349 hours (14 days, 13 hours).
[Sidenote: and superior class of vessels.]
An entire change of management combined with a superior class of vessels have had a very material effect on the prosperity of the company, enabling the directors at their last meeting to declare a dividend of 10 per cent. per annum. Their fleet[280] is now a large and excellent one, and well adapted, on the whole, for the due performances of the various mail services[281] undertaken by the company. It is further only just to the company, before closing this sketch of its operations, to record the services which it rendered to the British Government in placing some of its finest ships at the disposal of the naval department for the conveyance of troops during the Crimean War, more especially as the operation was carried out with only a trifling interruption to the contract mail service.
FOOTNOTES:
[273] See articles in the Civil Engineer and Architects’ Journal, 1862, pp. 174 and 242, and other journals of the period.
[274] It should, however, be added that these figures apply to an estimate made during the time of high postage rates, when as few letters as possible were sent through the Post-office.
[275] “Our Steam Fleets,” Liverpool Journal of Commerce, October 26th, 1874.
[276] “The mail services of the company on the West India, and Brazil and River Plate lines are now (1875) carried on under arrangements with the Government, involving a still further reduced subsidy;” and the Directors in their report of the 28th April last, add:—
“Since the last Report a contract has been entered into by the Company with her Majesty’s Government to carry on the Brazil and River Plate Mail Service, from the 1st January, 1875, for a payment according to the weight of letters, etc., conveyed by the packets. The contract is terminable at six months’ notice on either side, and is for a service twice a month from Southampton; the vessels, which have for a considerable time past left on the 24th of the month, being thus placed on the same footing as those dispatched by the company under the previous contract on the 9th of the month.”
[277] Vide Times newspaper, 9th April, 1847.
[278] The dimensions of the Amazon were 300 feet in length, 41 feet in width, and 32 feet in depth; she was about 3000 tons burthen or 2256 tons register. Her engines, of 800-horse power, were constructed by Messrs. Seaward and Capel of Millwall, Poplar, the diameter of the cylinders being 96 inches each and the stroke 9 feet. The engines made fourteen revolutions of her wheels (which were 41 feet in diameter) per minute, giving a speed by log of 11 knots an hour on her trial trip, at a draught of 19 feet forward and 19 feet 9 inches aft.
[279] The following is a return of the vessels which were added to the fleet of the Company between 1851 and 1860 inclusive:
-------------------+-----------+-------------+------------ | Number of | Tonnage. |Horse-power. | Vessels. | | +-----+-----+------+------+-----+------ |1851.|1860.|1851. |1860. |1851.|1860. +-----+-----+------+------+-----+------ Under 1,000 tons| 5 | 4 | 2,949| 2,838|1,030| 900 1,000 to 1,500 tons| Nil | 2 | .. | 2,371| .. | 680 1,500 to 2,000 tons| 9 | 6 |16,593|11,057|3,900| 2,510 2,000 to 3,000 tons| 1 | 6 | 2,069|14,683| 440| 4,120 Over 3,000 tons| Nil | 3 | .. |10,070| .. | 2,400 +-----+-----+------+------+-----+------ | 15 | 21 |21,611|41,019|5,370|10,610 -------------------+-----+-----+------+------+-----+------
[280] See Appendix No. 19, p. 634.
[281] These services from Southampton with mails, passengers, and cargo, are as follows:
2nd of each month—for West Indies, Cuba and Mexico, Colon (Aspinwall), Savanilla, Panama, Central America, South and North Pacific, San Francisco.
9th and 24th of each month—for Brazil and River Plate Routes, viz. Lisbon, St. Vincent (Cape de Verde), Pernambuco, Bahia,[282] Rio de Janeiro, Monte Video, Buenos Ayres.
17th of each month—for West Indies, Belize, Grey Town, Colon (Aspinwall), Savanilla, Panama, Central America, South Pacific, Acapulco, Mazanillo, San Francisco, British Columbia, Japan, China.
An additional steamer also leaves Southampton the 10th of each month for Barbadoes, Trinidad, La Guayra, Porto Cabellos, Curaçoa, Santa Marta, Savanilla, and Colon.
[282] The steamers of the 24th of each month do not call at Pernambuco or Bahia.
Chapter VIII
Pacific Steam Navigation Company—First steamer on the Pacific, 1825—Mr. Wheelwright—Obtains a charter, 1840—First vessels, the Chili and Peru—Warm reception at Valparaiso—The Company persevere—Appointment of Mr. Just, 1846—Extension of contract, 1850—Marked improvement in the prospects of the Company, 1860—New lines—Vast increase of capital, 1867—Further increase of capital to 3,000,000_l._, 1871—Capital increased, to 4,000,000_l._, 1872—Extent of fleet, Iberia and Liguria—Chimborazo, 1871—Too rapid increase—Loss arising therefrom—Modification of mail contract and reduced services—West coast steamer Bolivia—Future prospects of the Company—Trade with Mexico—First line of steamers from Liverpool to Chagres—West India and Pacific Steam Navigation Company—Liverpool, Brazil, and River Plate Steam Navigation Company.
[Sidenote: Pacific Steam Navigation Company.]
About the period when the West India Steam Line was in course of formation, another company, destined to surpass it in importance, had obtained from the British Government a charter for establishing “steam navigation along the shores of North and South America in the Pacific Ocean,” as well as between those shores and China, the Australasian Colonies, and certain ports in the West Indies and in the Atlantic Ocean.
To establish a line of steam-ships for the purpose of carrying on efficiently the large and valuable, but hitherto undeveloped, commerce within the area named was indeed a bold undertaking, and one requiring extensive and varied knowledge, with a large amount of experience and judicious management combined with the necessary amount of capital. These various requisites were not, however, readily obtained at a period when ocean steam navigation was comparatively in its infancy, and were rendered still more difficult by the knowledge that the endeavours of the original projectors of steam navigation on the shores of the Pacific had not been attended with success. Indeed, the first of those undertakings proved most unfortunate, and was, also, accompanied by a good deal of romance.
[Sidenote: First steamer in the Pacific, 1825.]
So early as 1825, when the struggles among the republics of the South Pacific for supremacy were at their height, a few merchants resident in Panama formed themselves into an association for the purpose of trading along those shores, but they had so many difficulties to overcome that a long time elapsed ere they could obtain the required capital. The first steamer on the Pacific coast was a small craft named the Telica, commanded and owned by a Spaniard named Mitrovitch; but his career and that of the vessel under his charge was a short and melancholy one. In a fit of despair at his want of success, with some further annoyance from the complaints by his passengers, caused chiefly by delay, and his inability to find a sufficient supply of fuel, he fired his pistol into a barrel of gunpowder, blowing up his vessel in the harbour of Guayaquil, and destroying himself and all on board except one man. An occurrence of this lamentable nature, though it happened ten or fifteen years previously, would, in most cases, have destroyed, for many years subsequently, any attempts, by means of steamers, to trade between Valparaiso and Panama, had not a gentleman, then resident in Guayaquil and familiar with the trade of the coast, taken up the business with the determination to carry it through at all hazards.
[Sidenote: Mr. Wheelwright.]
William Wheelwright,[283] an American citizen, and at that time United States’ Consul in Guayaquil, was no common man. He saw the advantages to be derived from developing the rich resources of the eastern shores of the Pacific, and the facilities which steam communication would afford to the more frequent and more rapid intercourse between the then rival republics. Nor was he mistaken in the views he entertained, though he had many difficulties to overcome. Steam, while it eventually became the chief means of settling the petty wars which had so long raged, offered, at the same time, so many new sources of profitable employment, with the opening up so many new channels of trade, as happily to direct the attention of the native inhabitants from the struggles of war to the peaceful pursuits of commerce. Studying the wants of those countries and the most efficient means of affording profitable employment to the people, Mr. Wheelwright spent six of the best years of his life in arranging plans for steam communication between the different republics, and, at last, obtained from the Peruvian, Bolivian, and Chilian Governments the privilege of thus navigating their coasts for the term of ten years. He then made a journey to England for the purpose of endeavouring to influence the wealthy merchants of this country to aid him in the undertaking.
[Sidenote: Obtains a charter, 1840.]
Here, however, he had still many difficulties to overcome, for the trade he proposed to develop was then comparatively unknown, and the little wars between the republics of the Pacific naturally led English merchants to hesitate, ere they embarked their capital in a company whose prospects were at that time far from encouraging. Nevertheless, he succeeded in his object, and, on the 17th of February, 1840, obtained, under letters patent, a charter for the establishment of the undertaking now known as the Pacific Steam Navigation Company, together with a small subsidy for the conveyance of the mails.
This contract differs from all others, in this respect, that the vessels employed under it do not touch at any port of Her Majesty’s dominions, although, practically, it may be considered as providing a continuation of the line from Southampton. The extension of British influence and British commerce was, doubtless, the chief inducement for supporting this communication between the republics of New Grenada, Bolivia, Peru, and Chili; the nature and extent of that traffic rendering it necessary for the English to maintain mercantile establishments in the chief ports and towns on the western coast of the Pacific, and thus justifying Government in incurring this expense.[284]
The capital of the Pacific Company at first was limited to 250,000_l._ in 5000 shares of 50_l._ each. Though the whole capital, after a good deal of labour, was subscribed, only an amount was called up sufficient at the time to enable the directors to provide two boats, the Chili and the Peru, which were dispatched to commence operations towards the close of the year 1840.
[Sidenote: First vessels, the Chili and Peru.]
[Sidenote: Warm reception at Valparaiso.]
These vessels were built of wood by Messrs. Charles Young and Co. of Limehouse, London. They were sister ships, each of about 700 tons gross register, though with a capacity of not half of that tonnage, and with engines of about 150 horse-power constructed by Messrs. Miller and Ravenhill. Through the courtesy of the directors, I am enabled to furnish the following illustration of the Peru, whose dimensions were 198 feet extreme length and 50 feet extreme breadth. They were at that time considered fine vessels and certainly they have a comfortable business-like appearance. No wonder, therefore, that, on their arrival at Valparaiso, they were received with great rejoicing and with “salvoes of artillery, everybody wishing to visit them, the President of the Republic, accompanied by his ministers, being among the first to welcome the steam-ships to the shores of the Pacific.”
[Sidenote: The Company persevere.]
[Sidenote: Appointment of Mr. Just, 1846.]
But here again, Mr. Wheelwright had many difficulties to overcome, the scarcity of fuel, as in the case of the Telica, being one of the greatest. Under these circumstances, the Company, during the first five years of its operations, sustained a loss of no less than 72,000_l._ upon a paid-up capital of 94,000_l._ In the face, however, of these heavy losses, the shareholders resolved to persevere with their bold undertaking, seeing in it the germs of future success. Under the impression that the business of the Company could be better conducted in Liverpool, where most of the shareholders resided, the directors, on the 4th May, 1846, obtained a supplemental charter to remove from London to that city, where the head office and general management, have since been conducted by Mr. William Just, who, in January of the following year, was appointed its managing director. In December 1847, the directors were enabled to give to the shareholders for the first time a dividend, though only 2½ per cent., on their paid-up capital.
[Sidenote: Extension of contract, 1850.]
In 1850, the Company obtained an extension of its mail contract of 1845-46, whereby the directors were required to provide not less than six steamers, of at least 170 horse-power each, but, at the suggestion of the Company, the Government, in November of that year, allowed four steamers of 1000 tons and 300 horse-power to be substituted for the six smaller vessels originally contemplated.[285]
The prospects of the undertaking were, however, still far from encouraging, and when, in February 1853, the directors represented to the Board of Admiralty that the expense arising from the greatly increased price of coals rendered the portion of their service between Callao and Panama altogether unremunerative, and asked for an increase of subsidy, they were refused. The directors then solicited permission to employ between these two places vessels of only 100 horse-power and 400 tons, which they considered would be sufficiently large for the passenger traffic, and would restore the balance of profit by reducing the cost of fuel. They also undertook that these vessels should be capable of maintaining an average speed of 10 knots an hour, and that the mail service should not suffer. This proposal Government acquiesced in, temporarily, reserving to itself the right of reverting to the original agreement.
The more frequent and more speedy services had, indeed, become, if not necessary, at least desirable, since the West India Mail Packet Co. had doubled the services of their ships between England and Colon. The Pacific Co. therefore felt that, if they did not run their vessels to and from Panama in connection with the steamers from England, those of the United States of America, now rapidly increasing in the trade of the Pacific, might soon monopolize the lines they occupied from the Isthmus to the southern ports. Consequently, the directors of the Pacific Company were glad to accede to the proposal of the Admiralty to run steamers with the mails monthly from Panama, for the small increase of 5000_l._ per annum to their original contract of 20,000_l._
This Company had now in its service seven vessels of 5719 tons and of 2396 horse-power; but, though they touched at no less than thirteen ports between Panama and Valparaiso inclusive, the average annual amount of receipts for postage, for five years previously to 1860, amounted to only 5441_l._
In 1856, Mr. Just visited the west coast, and re-organized the management and the service generally with very successful results. Towards that success his adoption of the compound engine,[286] then almost a novelty, materially tended, effecting as it did, an enormous saving in the consumption of fuel and, consequently, in the current expenses of the Company.
[Sidenote: Marked improvement in the prospects of the Company, 1860.]
[Sidenote: New lines.]
From 1860, the trade of the Pacific rapidly developed itself. The inhabitants of the coast now saw the incalculable advantages to be derived from regular and increased intercourse between other countries. Steam here, as it has done everywhere else, opened up new and hitherto unthought of branches of commerce; the natives learned what other nations required, and, to meet these demands, they turned to cultivating their fields instead of fighting among themselves. Consequently, the Pacific Company soon found it necessary to increase the number of their fleet. In December 1859, a second supplemental charter was obtained, which extended the incorporation of the Company for twenty-one years from the 17th of February, 1861. On the 15th of June, 1865, a third supplemental charter was applied for and obtained, extending the powers of the Company, to the establishment of lines of communication “between the west coast of South America and the River Plata, including the Falkland Islands and such other ports or places in North and South America, and other foreign ports, as to the said Company shall seem expedient.”
[Sidenote: Vast increase of capital, 1867.]
During these years the profits of the undertaking had been steadily increasing, and at a special meeting of shareholders held in December 1867 it was determined to add to the operations of the company by establishing a monthly line from Liverpool to the west coast of South America, viâ the Straits of Magellan.
This entirely new and important, though hazardous, branch of the service necessitated an increase of the capital of the company to 2,000,000_l._ In furtherance of their views the directors sent their steamer Pacific, of 2000 tons register and 450 horse-power, from Valparaiso, in May 1868, as the pioneer of the new mail line.
[Sidenote: Further increase of capital to 3,000,000_l._, 1871.]
The bold undertaking of dispatching steamers on so distant a voyage, and at so high a rate of speed as that maintained, proved for some years more successful than could have been anticipated, and, in 1869, the profits of the four new steamers, which had made nine voyages from Liverpool to Valparaiso, were so satisfactory that the directors in 1870 determined to make the line bi-monthly, and extend the voyage from Valparaiso to Callao. Seventeen voyages made in the course of that year with still greater success, induced the directors to recommend that the departures thenceforward should be three a month; and, in December 1871, the shareholders authorized a further increase of the capital to 3,000,000_l._, so that the company might be enabled to dispatch every week one of their steamers on this distant voyage.
Considering the then comparatively limited amount of the trade it was a very bold experiment. While directors of undertakings of this nature very properly consider it their duty to meet and even to anticipate the requirements of the public, so as to prevent others occupying their field of operations, and thus avoiding injury from competition, it may well be questioned if this extraordinary increase of steamers could be justified by any reasonable anticipations of the increase of the trade to be developed by these additional facilities, and within so limited a space of time. The result, indeed, soon showed that they were now too far in advance of the requirements of commerce. Though, in 1871, twenty-nine round voyages were performed between Liverpool, Valparaiso, and Callao, the profits, so far from being increased, gave signs of falling off; and, in 1872, thirty-seven round voyages were made with, as the result proved, a further diminished rate of profit, the directors having, in January of that year, recommended at a special meeting of shareholders the addition to their fleet of four more steamers at a cost of 500,000_l._
[Sidenote: Capital increased to 4,000,000_l._ 1872.]
In the course of the following July, a further charter had been obtained authorizing an additional 1,000,000_l._ of capital to be raised, and thus, with power to draw on the shareholders to the extent of 4,000,000_l._, the whole capital of the company, the directors did not hesitate to still further increase their already gigantic fleet!
[Sidenote: Extent of fleet.]
[Sidenote: Iberia and Liguria.]
The company now owns no less than fifty-four steamers, of an aggregate of 119,870 tons, and 21,395 horse-power.[287] Two of these, the Iberia and Liguria, built and supplied with engines by Messrs. John Elder and Co., of Glasgow, in 1873, are each 4671 tons gross register with a capacity for 4000 tons of cargo, besides space for 916 tons of coals, and accommodation for no less than 800 third-class passengers. They are each of 700 horse-power nominal, and attained a speed on their trial trips of 15 knots per hour.[288]
[Sidenote: Chimborazo, 1871.]
[Sidenote: Too rapid increase.]
But, though inferior in power and dimensions, the vessels the company had built previously to this time for their Liverpool and Valparaiso line were equal in other respects to the new ones. Indeed, as may be seen by the following representation of the Chimborazo, launched in 1871, also from the yard of Elder and Company, they were not surpassed by any steamers afloat. She is a sister ship of the Cuzco, built by the same firm, as also of the Garonne built by Robert Napier and Sons and launched the same year. They are each 370 feet in length between perpendiculars, 41 feet beam, 35 feet depth of hold, and about 3850 tons gross register tonnage. They perform their passages on the coast with remarkable speed and regularity, while the voyage from Liverpool to Valparaiso is usually made in forty-two days. But, for the time being, the company has found itself overtaken by severe competition and depression in the west coast trade, and has been obliged to reduce the services on the line from Liverpool to that coast to two voyages each month instead of one weekly; in consequence of which nine of their steamers are, at present, laid up for want of employment.
[Sidenote: Loss arising therefrom.]
Although the loss thus sustained may be attributed in no small degree to the over-sanguine views of the directors in regard to the development of the trade between Great Britain and the west coast of South America, some portion of it is also due to the competition on the coast and to the opposition they met in performing the weekly service for which they had obtained a postal contract from Her Majesty’s Government in December 1872. Bound to a speed in excess of what had been required of other companies, and with a grant of only the sea postage, it was impossible for them to hope to compete successfully with such highly subsidized companies as the Royal Mail and the French Messageries Maritimes, both of which maintain an opposition race to those ports of the Brazils whence the Pacific Steam Navigation Company hoped to derive some advantage by the conveyance of passengers on their way to Valparaiso.
[Sidenote: Modification of mail contract and reduced services.]
Indeed, where a high rate of speed is required, and where heavy penalties are inflicted for any irregularity in the performance of the stipulated service, it is very questionable, unless when highly subsidized, if any advantage whatever is to be gained by the conveyance of mails on so distant a voyage as that which the Pacific Company had undertaken to perform. But, by reducing the number of services and modifying the rate of speed, which the Government at last consented they should do—requiring, however, a reduction in the amount of subsidy—the directors, on the one hand, may hope to secure a sufficient amount of remunerative freight; and, on the other, to effect a saving in the consumption of coal—a matter of the highest consideration on such distant voyages.
Although the anticipations of the directors, in the more recent and expensive portion of their great undertaking, have not been realised, while the services of the steamers on the West Coast have periodically, and especially of late, been subjected to considerable depression, the trade of the Pacific has steadily and, compared with any previous development, marvellously increased since first opened out by the energy of Mr. Wheelwright. Moreover, this trade is likely to go on increasing, especially as the company has now a class of vessels admirably adapted for its still increasing wants, and affording many comforts to passengers who, induced by numerous attractions travel either for business or pleasure, along the shores of the Pacific.
[Sidenote: West Coast steamer, Bolivia.]
The following is an illustration of one of the steamers now engaged on the Pacific coast line; but the Santa Rosa and the many similar vessels belonging to the Pacific Company now trading along these shores,[289] have been greatly surpassed by their screw-steamer Bolivia, of 1925 tons, launched from the building yard of Messrs. T. Wingate & Co., Glasgow, in 1874, and which is perhaps the finest, or at least, one of the finest vessels now afloat on the Pacific. The details of this handsome ship, which has an average speed of 14 knots an hour, as have also those of the other vessels of the company, will be found in the Appendix, together with interesting and instructive returns of the cost of each ship complete for sea.[290]
[Sidenote: Future prospects of the company.]
With the losses this company have sustained during the last few years, the differences between the shareholders and directors, and the charges of mismanagement and extravagance which have been alleged, it is not my province to deal. Companies and nations, like individuals, are frequently too prone to spend more than they ought, if unusual success has attended their efforts, or they find more money at their disposal than they can prudently or wisely expend. It has been so throughout all time and in all countries, and we daily see it in the case of individuals managing their own affairs.
It is, therefore, not surprising, and certainly nothing new to learn that, when the directors of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company were favoured with many years of unusual prosperity, after many years of hard up-hill work, and were able to divide an average of over 20 per cent. per annum among their shareholders, they should have followed the example of individuals, of companies, and of nations throughout all history; and that, in the sanguine hope of being able to maintain this prosperity, they should have expended money in the construction of ships not required, and for, perhaps, even less justifiable purposes.
It should, however, be remembered, of this great undertaking when its failings are noticed, that it has rendered very important services in developing British commerce and that, in bringing so many civilizing influences to bear upon the people of various republics, who, from their constant warfare with each other, were little better than tribes of semi-barbarians, the Pacific Company has essentially aided the cause of progress and the happiness of mankind. These advantages will be felt long after its mishaps are forgotten.
The field which the directors have chosen for their operations, is still only very partially developed, and there is, consequently, a great future for this company, if wisely and prudently conducted. It requires no prophetic vision to see that, as the commerce of the world moves westward, the principal highway to the ever envied and far famed East will be by the route which Columbus sought in vain across the Pacific Ocean. Indeed, San Francisco will soon be a greater entrepôt for trade than ever Venice was, and may, even before long, rival in many respects the now gigantic commerce of Great Britain.
[Sidenote: Trade with Mexico.]
The steady increase of trade along the whole of the western shores of the Pacific has already rendered necessary greatly increased means of intercourse with Europe and the United States of America, which the line of railway across the Isthmus has assisted to develop with extraordinary rapidity. Other channels of trade in that quarter have likewise been recently opened, rich in themselves and capable of vast extension, through the medium of steam.
[Sidenote: First line of steamers from Liverpool to Chagres.]
Although many schemes had been set on foot during the last three centuries, for re-opening the commerce of Central America, and, especially, of that portion of it which has its outlet into the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea,—among these none being so conspicuous as the unfortunate Darien expedition—all attempts proved abortive until the latter half of the present century. Indeed, till the completion of the railway, none of these were worthy of any notice. So rapid, however, has been its increase since then, that the undertakings of more recent years have been attended with considerable success. Perhaps the most important of these is the line of steam navigation between Liverpool and the West Indies, and, thence, by the Isthmus of Panama, to the Pacific Ocean, originally due to Mr. Alfred Holt, of Liverpool, who about the year 1855, dispatched steamers to trade between that port and Colon (the Atlantic terminus of the Panama Railroad) and other ports on the Spanish Main. His first was a vessel of only 535 tons burden, but she was then more than sufficient for any surplus commerce, which the American boats, on the one hand and those of the West India Mail Packet Co., on the other, could not convey. The regularity, however, with which this additional service was performed, created increased sources of employment, so that within a very short time, Mr. Holt considered it desirable to establish a monthly line of steamers of increased size and power, and so rapid was the rise of trade that other steam-vessels were soon engaged in similar traffic. In 1863, Messrs Leach, Harrison, and Forwood of Liverpool, large importers of produce from the West Coast, found it necessary to establish a line of steamers in a great measure for their own requirements, and about the same time, Messrs Imrie and Tomlinson, in association with Messrs Duranty and Co., of Liverpool, who had long been engaged in the trade with Mexico and the West Indies, formed another line of steamers on the limited liability principle. The trade in its various ramifications had now become so large that, towards the close of that year, it was considered desirable to form a public company to amalgamate these three undertakings, and thus more thoroughly to conduct the rapidly increasing commercial intercourse between Liverpool, Mexico, Honduras, Venezuela, and the Windward Islands.
[Sidenote: West India and Pacific Steam Navigation Company.]
The capital of 1,250,000_l._ was at once subscribed, and this new undertaking now known as the West India and Pacific Steam Navigation Company (Limited), finding it necessary to re-organize the whole business and, in addition, to embrace the Colon trade, and other lines of traffic, subdivided the services into five separate branches—one to Belize, one to Tampico, one to Colon, one to St. Thomas, and one to Trinidad.[291] It was also arranged to dispatch steamers to Barbadoes and Demerara. The trunk or principal line of the company is that to Colon, in connection with the Panama railroad, and, by it, with the various steam lines on the Pacific, the company signing through bills of lading for no fewer than seventy ports, at sixteen of which their vessels call to land goods and passengers.
This undertaking, which has met with considerable success, conveys the British mails to Honduras and Mexico. It now owns thirteen steamers of 24,680 tons gross register. Though inferior in size and power to the steam-ships of the other Transatlantic lines, they are a very fine class of iron screw propelled vessels, maintaining an average speed of more than 10 knots an hour, and performing the passage with great regularity from Liverpool to St. Thomas in eighteen, and to Colon in about twenty-two days.
Besides those I have mentioned, various other lines of steam-ships now traverse the Atlantic north and south, as well as casual steamers and large numbers of sailing-vessels, most of the former being the property of associations carrying on business, either under the old law or under the Limited Liability Act.
[Sidenote: Liverpool, Brazil, and River Plate Steam Company.]
Among the largest of these may be mentioned the Liverpool, Brazil, and River Plate Steam-ship Company (Limited), which was formed in 1865, the principal shareholders being Messrs. Lamport and Holt, of Liverpool, by whom the steamers are managed, and a few of their personal friends. There is nothing, however, in their fleet of vessels requiring special notice, except that they are a very fine class of business steamers and have performed their work with great regularity. They are now thirty-one in number, of a gross tonnage of 49,294 tons,[292] and have excellent accommodation, combined with every comfort which passengers can desire, offering all the means of safety in their prudent management, and regularity of system, which can be hoped for in Transatlantic voyages.
Although the vessels of this company are principally engaged out of Liverpool, some of them sail from London and Antwerp, calling frequently at Havre and Lisbon in the course of their trade with the ports of Brazil and River Plate, Pernambuco, and Buenos Ayres. One of them proceeds monthly, up the River Parana to Rosario, and, occasionally, others return from Brazil to the United States with cargoes of coffee. Three are permanently engaged in the service of the Government of Brazil for the conveyance of mails between Rio de Janeiro and the southern ports, while others maintain a direct line of communication with Brazil and Antwerp. The Company is also under contract with the British Government to dispatch, on the 20th of each month, a steamer with the mails from Liverpool to Bahia, Rio Janeiro, Monte Video, and Buenos Ayres, returning with a monthly mail from each of these ports. Steamers are likewise dispatched on the 3rd, 10th, and 12th of each month to the other ports, with extra vessels at such dates as the requirements of the trade may demand. The last new steamer, the Herelius, of 2610 tons register, was built by Messrs. Andrew Leslie and Company, Hebburn-on-Tyne, and her engines, of 300 horse-power nominal, are by Messrs. Robert Stephenson and Co., Newcastle; she is an excellent specimen of a merchant-steamer, being 345 feet in length, 37 feet in breadth, and 27 feet depth of hold from maindeck, with a large capacity for cargo, and a speed on the measured or trial mile of from 11 to 12 knots an hour, on a moderate consumption of fuel.
Though, by an ancient Act of Parliament, the responsibility of shipowners has been limited—no doubt for the purpose of encouraging navigation—to the value of the ship and freight, numerous companies of shipowners have been formed, under the Limited Liability Act of 1862, consisting of a few individuals, as in the case of Messrs. Lamport and Holt’s line, for the purpose of conducting different branches of maritime commerce. Many of these are larger and more important undertakings than the great bulk of the public steam navigation companies, and have generally proved more successful from the fact that their managing directors usually hold themselves a very large amount of capital invested in them. To some of these I shall have occasion to refer hereafter. In the meantime, I must invite the attention of my readers to the trade with the East, as now conducted by steam-vessels.
FOOTNOTES:
[283] Mr. Wheelwright was born at Newburyport, Massachusetts, U.S., in 1798, where his ancestors from Bilsby, in Lincolnshire, had settled so early as the year 1629. His first visit to South America was in command of one of his father’s vessels, where he was wrecked at Cape Corrientes in 1821. In the following year, he sailed as supercargo in a vessel to Valparaiso and thence proceeded viâ Peru to Guayaquil, where he established himself as a commission merchant and was, in 1824, appointed United States’ Consul. Having frequent occasion to make voyages along the Pacific coast, he saw the advantages to be derived from steam communication, which subsequently led to the formation of the Pacific Steam Navigation Co. His intimate connection with that company, as one of its most active managers and directors, continued until 1855, when he directed his attention more especially to the construction of railways in South America, his first line between Caldera and Copiago proving so great a success that “in a few years the dividends paid to its shareholders amounted to double the entire cost.” Subsequently, he, in association with Messrs. Brassey and Wythes, constructed the line between Cordoba and Rosario, which was opened in 1870, when the President, addressing him, said, “The Argentine Republic have not wherewith to acknowledge the greatness of your works.” Mr. Wheelwright died in London, 16th September, 1873.
[284] “A broader and more promising field for steam operations than that which the Pacific affords, does not exist in any part of the world. The prevailing south winds, the calms, and the currents of that ocean render navigation by sailing-vessels tedious and uncertain in the extreme; while the nature of the whole country, from Valparaiso to Guayaquil—presenting a succession of mountains and deep ravines, intersected by sandy deserts—offers every imaginable obstacle to land travelling; and, yet, there are four millions of inhabitants within the proposed line of intercourse ready to participate, to a greater or less degree, in the benefits to arise from the proposed undertaking.”—Pamphlet on ‘Steam Navigation in the Pacific,’ by Mr. Wheelwright: London, 1838.
[285] The four steamers supplied (at a cost of 140,000_l._), in pursuance of the company’s contract with the Admiralty, were the Lima, Santiago, Quito, and Bogota: they were to be employed in the bi-monthly service between Valparaiso and Panama.
[286] The directors of the Pacific Co. by degrees applied the compound engine after 1856 to all their steam-ships, and it is worthy of record that they were not only among the first, if not the first, to adopt the compound engine for ocean-going steamers, but were almost singular in this respect for upwards of fourteen years. This description of engine has now entirely superseded all others for the purposes of steam navigation.
[287] See Appendix No. 20, pp. 635-6.
[288] The length of these steamers is 425 feet between perpendiculars and 449 feet over all. Their breadth is 44½ feet, and their depth of hold 35½ feet. The engines, which are compound, have each three cylinders, one of 4 feet 8 inches diameter and two of 6 feet 6 inches diameter, with 5 feet length of stroke.
[289] The Santa Rosa is 320 feet in length, 38 feet in breadth, and 28 feet deep to the main deck on which a range of cabins extend for nearly the whole length, as may be seen from the drawing, affording the perfect system of ventilation so much required in steamers employed in tropical climates. She is 1816 tons gross register, and is propelled by a screw, although some others of smaller class still use the paddle-wheels.
[290] Appendix No. 20, p. 637.
[291] “Steam Lines of Liverpool,” page 37.
[292] See Appendix No. 21, p. 637.
Chapter IX
Steam to India and overland routes—East India Company establish a Tátar post between Constantinople and Baghdad—First public meeting in London to promote steam communication with India, 1822—Captain Johnston—Calcutta meetings, 1823—The Enterprize, first steamer to India by Cape, 1825—Sold in Calcutta to East India Company—Other steamers follow—Pioneers of overland route viâ Egypt—Sir Miles Nightingall in 1819 and Mount-Stuart Elphinstone in 1823 return home by this route—Mr. Thomas Waghorn visits England to promote the Cape route, 1829-30—Returns to India by way of Trieste and the Red Sea—Still advocates Cape route, 1830—Mr. Taylor’s proposal—Reply of Bombay Government and discussion of the question—Supineness of the Court of Directors—Their views—Official report of the first voyage of the Hugh Lindsay, 1830—Report of the Committee of 1834—Decision of the House of Commons Committee influenced by political considerations—Admiralty packets extended from Malta to Alexandria—Steamers of the Indian navy—Modes of transport across the Isthmus of Suez—Great exertions of Waghorn in the establishment of this route—Suez Canal—Popular errors on this subject—M. de Lesseps—His great scheme—Not fairly considered in England—Commencement of M. de Lesseps’ works in 1857—General details—Partial opening of Canal, April 18th, 1869—Finally opened by Empress Eugénie, November 17th, 1869.
[Sidenote: Steam to India, and overland routes.]
Having in the early portions of this work endeavoured to trace the various commercial routes to the East by land and sea in the most remote periods as well as in the Middle Ages, I now invite my readers to accompany me while I attempt to furnish an outline of the modes by which commercial intercourse is maintained with India and China at the present time, and of the transport service employed in conveying this commerce.
Although nearly the whole of the European trade with the East has, since the time of Vasco de Gama, been conducted by sea round the Cape of Good Hope, caravans through Arabia and Asia Minor and along the shores of the Red Sea, as well as by the more frequented route of the valley of Mesopotamia and the River Euphrates to the Persian Gulf, have never, since the days of Herodotus, altogether ceased. Indeed, during the reign of Elizabeth, and for sometime afterwards, many English merchants preferred the Euphrates route to the sea voyage, the course they then adopted, being apparently through Syria or Asia Minor to Bir, where a fleet of boats or barges, resembling those described by the Father of History, was at all seasons ready to convey them and their merchandise down the Euphrates to Hillah, near the site of Ancient Babylon, or by Mosul to Baghdad, the chief Eastern centre of commerce during the early part of the Middle Ages. From Baghdad their course was down the Tigris to Bussorah, where they embarked in native sailing-vessels for various parts of India.
[Sidenote: East India Company establish a Tátar post between Constantinople and Baghdad.]
An overland route between Europe and India had thus from time immemorial been sustained; and, though there was no established service between England and the East until a comparatively recent period, the East India Company, from the time they first became possessors of land in India, frequently sent despatches by the way of the Persian Gulf, thus creating at length a regular monthly communication between Constantinople and Baghdad, by Tátars, maintained at the cost of the Indian Government. Thus, at last, private letters as well as official despatches, were transmitted by these means, while, on important occasions, special despatches were forwarded by the same route at other than the monthly periods. This, so far as the East India Company was concerned, was the original, and the only official overland line of communication; and so it continued to be till it was superseded by the route through Egypt. Another generation may see it resumed by an iron highway.[293]
[Sidenote: First public meeting in London to promote steam communication with India, 1822.]
[Sidenote: Captain Johnston.]
It was not, however, until steam-vessels began to attract attention that any regular postal service other than by sailing-vessels was seriously considered. But on this subject opinions differed widely, the prevailing one at that time being at first in favour of the Cape route, transferring the conveyance of the mails from the old East Indiamen to steamers. Nothing, however, was definitely proposed till 1822, when a public meeting was held in London with the view of forming a Steam Navigation Company to trade with India, the result of which was the despatch of Lieutenant (afterwards Captain) J. Johnston, to Calcutta to see what could be done to prosecute the object in view. Johnston went through Egypt and became subsequently one of the ardent supporters of the route by Suez, though his own employment and the intention of those for whom he then acted, was more especially the promotion of the Cape route.
[Sidenote: Calcutta meetings, 1823.]
Soon after his arrival in Calcutta, several meetings took place, the most important of which was held in the Town Hall of that city, December 17th, 1823,[294] with Mr. Harrington in the Chair. Various routes were then considered. At the meeting it was announced that the proposal of a more speedy communication with England by means of steam-vessels had met with the cordial approval of Lord Amherst in Council, who was prepared to recommend towards the promotion of the enterprise a “gift of 20,000 rupees” by way of premium “to whoever, whether individuals or a company, being British subjects, should permanently, before the end of 1826, establish a steam communication between England and India, either by the Cape of Good Hope or Red Sea, and make two voyages out and two home, occupying not more than seventy days on each passage.” For this object somewhere about 80,000 rupees were raised in India, of which 12,000 were subscribed by the Rajah of Oude; and, on the news reaching England, another meeting was held in London, at which more money was collected, sufficient on the whole to justify the promoters to order as an experiment, the construction of the Enterprize, the first steamer destined to double the Cape of Good Hope.
[Sidenote: The Enterprize, first Steamer to India, by Cape, 1825.]
Captain Johnston having completed the object for which he had been despatched to India, returned to England in the Eliza by way of the Cape, and, on his arrival in London, the Enterprize,[295] which had been laid down in the yard of Gordon and Co., Deptford, was two-thirds finished. On her completion she was placed under his command, and sailed for Calcutta on the 16th of August, 1825, where she arrived on the 7th December following. Although 113 days on the passage, she was only 103 days under way, as ten were spent in stoppages to replenish her stock of coal; but her greatest average speed, during any twenty-four hours, not exceeding 9·36 miles per hour, accounted for by the large quantity of coals she was obliged to carry,[296] disappointed the expectations of the seventeen passengers who had embarked in her. (An illustration of this vessel is furnished on p. 340.)
[Sidenote: Sold in Calcutta to East India Company.]
The voyage of the Enterprize, ought to have convinced the advocates of the ocean route that it was not advisable, commercially, to persevere in such an undertaking, moreover, though this steamer was admittedly unsuited for so distant a voyage, other considerations, especially at that early period of steam navigation, made it doubtful whether vessels thus propelled, and by a route so long as that round the Cape, could yield remunerative returns. However, the Enterprize, though she did not receive the 20,000 rupees premium, was sold when she arrived at Calcutta, to the Indian Government for 40,000_l._, who then required every ship they could get for the first Burmese war. She was at once appropriated by the East India Company, who employed her in carrying despatches from Calcutta to Rangoon, a service in which she proved of great value in aiding the operations of that campaign.
[Sidenote: Other steamers follow.]
The success thus far of the Enterprize encouraged the introduction of steam-vessels into the local trade of India; the comparatively narrow seas, excellent harbours, and safe inlets, as well as the many large and important navigable rivers of that part of Asia affording almost as large and remunerative fields for the employment of such vessels as the coasts, rivers, and lakes of North America. To this branch of commerce I shall hereafter refer. In the meantime I must ask my readers to accompany me in an attempt to trace the means of more rapid communication between Great Britain and her vast dominions in the East, with some notice of the persons to whom we are indebted for the advantages we have thus derived.
[Sidenote: Pioneers of overland route, viâ Egypt.]
As in other important changes and inventions, I find in my researches many claimants for originality; and though it may appear scarcely necessary to wade through the mass of papers[297] published by persons claiming for themselves or their friends the merit of an overland route which has existed since the dawn of history, I shall endeavour to furnish within a brief space the leading facts relating to the routes which, in our own time, have produced such marked changes in our commercial intercourse with India.
[Sidenote: Sir Miles Nightingall, in 1819, and Mount-Stuart Elphinstone, in 1823, return home by this route.]
Though not so much frequented as that by the Euphrates route, travellers have found their way from time immemorial between Europe and India through Egypt, availing themselves of native vessels for the Red Sea or along its coasts to the once far-famed lands of Yemen and thence to the ever coveted “Cathay” of the East. The first authentic record, in recent times, however, of any journey from India to Great Britain by the Isthmus of Suez, with the object of ascertaining whether that route could be renewed as a pathway of commerce, or, if not, for the transmission of despatches, was a passage made in 1819, by Sir Miles Nightingall, then Commander-in-chief of the Bombay army (for whom, however, no claim of originality has been made), who, on relinquishing that command, returned to England viâ the Red Sea accompanied by Lady Nightingall.[298] Sir Miles and his wife left Bombay in the East India Company’s cruiser Teignmouth, and after many troubles reached Suez and thence found their way home.
But the first distinct official proposal of this route as one practicable for the regular conveyance of despatches and the mails was made by the Hon. Mount-Stuart Elphinstone, who, when Governor of Bombay in 1823, recommended steam communication between that place and England, remarking that the passage “might be done in thirty-four days, all stoppages included.” The Court of Directors, however, paid no heed to this suggestion; and as these sagacious rulers of our Eastern Empire paid quite as little attention to his further communication to them on the same subject in 1826, he thought it advisable to give them a practical illustration of the value of this route by returning home, when he relinquished the Government of Bombay in the following year, with his staff and other friends, by way of the Red Sea and Mediterranean.[299]
His immediate successor in the Government of Bombay, Sir John Malcolm, by returning home viâ Suez (to which reference shall hereafter be made), followed up the good work of his predecessors; and was zealously seconded by his brother, Sir Charles Malcolm, then superintendent of the Indian Navy; while another brother, Sir Pulteney Malcolm, naval commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, also took an active part in promoting the isthmus of Suez route.
The fact of such men having thus personally and practically directed their attention to the subject, naturally led merchants and others interested in the trade of India to direct their attention with increased vigour to the best means of obtaining more rapid communication with the East. In their researches they were materially assisted by the report of Major C. F. Head,[300] who made the voyage from India to England through the Red Sea early in the year 1829, as again in 1830, being, at the same time, still further encouraged by the successful performances of the Enterprize and other steam-ships by this time employed in India. Nor did they relax their efforts, dragging with them the Court of Directors, until this great object was accomplished by the establishment of a regular overland mail service.
[Sidenote: Mr. Thomas Waghorn visits England to promote the Cape route, 1829-30.]
[Sidenote: Returns to India by way of Trieste and the Red Sea.]
Among the most zealous supporters of steam communication with the East, and subsequently one of the most arduous and conspicuous agitators of the overland route, was Mr. Thomas Waghorn.[301] He had been a mate in the Bengal pilot service, and, having piloted the Enterprize on her arrival at Calcutta, at once saw the advantages to be derived from the extension of steam-ships to India. In 1827 he became associated with the committee which had been formed in Calcutta for the prosecution of steam communication with England, and in the following year was accredited by that association to persons in authority at Madras, Ceylon, the Mauritius, the Cape, St. Helena, and London. Failing, however, to obtain sufficient patronage for a regular service by way of the Cape of Good Hope, he resolved to return to India by the Isthmus of Suez, as he had heard that the Enterprize was to be despatched up the Red Sea. With that object in view, he waited upon Lord Ellenborough, then President of the Board of Control, and also upon Mr. Lock, at that time Chairman of the Court of Directors of the East India Company, and offered to act as a courier to the East. His services having been accepted,[302] he left London on the evening of the 28th of October, 1829, crossed the continent of Europe to Trieste, and arrived at Alexandria on the 27th of November, at 8 A.M., passing through five kingdoms of Europe in nine and a half days; three days and seventeen hours of this arduous journey having been spent in stoppages. His orders were to meet the Enterprize at Suez, and to convey in her despatches for Sir John Malcolm, then governor of Bombay, but, this steamer having broken down on the passage, did not reach her destination.
Though much disconcerted by this misfortune, Mr. Waghorn at once hired an open native boat, and, without chart or compasses, sailed down the Red Sea to Jiddah, a distance of 628 miles, in six days, and, passing on thence, arrived at Bombay, March 21st, 1830, in the East India Company’s sloop Thetis, which had been sent to meet him.[303]
[Sidenote: Still advocates Cape Route, 1830.]
Though Waghorn was probably convinced in his own mind by the experience thus obtained of the superior advantages of the Red Sea route so far as regarded speed, he continued to advocate the establishment of a line of steam-vessels by the Cape in preference to any other,[304] no doubt feeling that, in supporting the views of the people of Calcutta, he was honestly performing his duties to those persons by whom he was employed. But whatever may have been the cause, he did not publicly support the overland route until some time afterwards. However, when free to act as he pleased, he took up the cause of the Red Sea route with his usual warmth and energy, and advocated it with more vigour and, certainly, with greater success than he had done that by the Cape of Good Hope.
[Sidenote: Mr. Taylor’s proposal.]
In the meantime other persons were steadily pursuing their endeavours to induce the East India Company to adopt the overland route, and among these may be mentioned Mr. J. R. Taylor,[305] who had long been as zealously labouring to form a company in London for the establishment of a regular communication by means of steam-vessels on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. “The experience,” he remarked,[306] “afforded by passages made by steam-vessels in certain parts of the route selected, justifies the expectation that intercourse between the two countries may thus be effected in from fifty-four to sixty days;” and, in his letter forwarding a copy of his prospectus to Sir John Malcolm, he adds, “I beg leave respectfully to inform your Excellency, that the requisite number of steam-vessels being already built and equipped, a commencement may be made on the line of communication within three months from the period, when the assent of your Excellency’s Government to my proposition may be made known to me. If, then, I should be honoured by such assent, it is my intention, within the period already specified, to be the means of introducing into British India such a number of first-rate steam-vessels, unexceptionable in point of size and equipment, as will enable me to propose myself to become a general carrier to all the Indian Governments, both for England and in India, and will admit of those Governments maintaining a constant and regular communication with Great Britain, and all principal parts of British India, on the first and fifteenth of every month.”[307]
[Sidenote: Reply of Bombay Government,]
The result of this and other communications addressed by Mr. Taylor to the Government of Bombay, was an official letter from them to the Court of Directors stating that while they considered the Court alone “competent to pass a decision on his proposals,” they strongly commended the project he was endeavouring to accomplish. “We beg to add our opinion that no doubt can exist of the practicability as well as the utility of extending steam navigation to Egypt from Bombay; and that we should consider it a most fortunate circumstance if our attempts to promote this desirable object shall, by indicating such to be the case, induce men of enterprise and capital to embark in an undertaking of the nature proposed by Mr. Taylor.”
[Sidenote: and discussion of the question.]
“The plan proposed by Mr. Taylor,” they continued, “evidently requires great and combined means to give it even a prospect of success; we are of opinion that his calculations are far too sanguine and that his plan is on too large a scale. These are, however, objections to his scheme which may be easily obviated. In the first instance, we must give our opinion as relates to India that the undertaking may and should be conducted on a more limited scale, and subsequently extended according to circumstances. In transmitting these proposals for your consideration, we cannot avoid expressing our decided opinion that almost incalculable advantages may be anticipated from a well established steam communication by the Red Sea, and our earnest hope that, unless other proposals from individuals have been entertained and their plans put in progress, and in case Mr. Taylor’s schemes are viewed as either inexpedient or impracticable, that every support will be afforded by your Honourable Court to maintain this desirable communication by vessels in the public service.”[308]
[Sidenote: Supineness of Court of Directors.]
But the temper of the Court of Directors was still strikingly in contrast with the earnestness of the Bombay Government. They do not seem to have cared much about the development of the commercial resources of their empire, and so the recommendations of the Governor and Council at Bombay were laid aside for future consideration; indeed, it was not until, after nearly two years, that they even acknowledged the letters they had received. The expense, they averred, exceeded the amount they cared to risk; while, in the proposed undertaking, they had evidently little confidence, as they urged that “the loss from defective vessels and engines is as likely to occur as ever.” They, nevertheless, at last affirmed that they were not insensible to the advantages of rapid communication with India nor of the importance of steam for that purpose.
[Sidenote: Their views.]
“We are also disposed to believe,” they added, “that a steam communication by the Red Sea, and still more, if it should be found practicable, by the Persian Gulf and the River Euphrates, would open the way to other improvements, and would ultimately redound to the benefit of this country as well as of India; and, if our finances were in a flourishing state (they were always poor, though ever rolling in wealth), we might probably feel it a duty to incur even the enormous outlay which we have specified (100,000_l._). In the present condition of our resources, we cannot, however, think the probable difference of time in the mere transmission of letters a sufficient justification for the expense. We cannot anticipate that the return in postage and passengers would pay more than a very small portion of the charge.” But happily, after other observations, they concluded by saying that, “at the same time we deem the subject too important to be lost sight of or hastily dismissed.”[309]
[Sidenote: Official report of the first voyages of the Hugh Lindsay, 1830.]
In the meantime the Hugh Lindsay (a war steam-vessel, built of teak at Bombay in 1829 for the service of the East India Company), had fortunately been despatched[310] by the Bombay Government under command of Captain J. H. Wilson, from Bombay to Suez and back—a voyage, I may add, which was twice repeated before the Court of Directors gave any instructions on the subject, though one, too, materially tending to solve some at least of the difficulties they had contemplated. It was on the second of these occasions that Sir John Malcolm and his suite made the overland passage to England.
“When it was determined,” remarks Captain Wilson, “that the Hugh Lindsay should attempt the voyage to Suez, it became necessary to put on board double the quantity of coal the vessel was built to carry, to do which, a great part of the space originally intended for accommodation was appropriated to the stowage of coal; water also was necessary, sufficient for use until the vessel should reach land in the event of a break-down between Bombay and the first depôt; as also stores and provisions for the whole voyage to and from the Red Sea.”[311]
Captain Wilson, however, accomplished the passage from Bombay to Aden, a distance of 1641 miles, in ten days nineteen hours, though only six hours’ coals remained on board when he arrived at that port. At Aden the Hugh Lindsay obtained a fresh supply, coal depôts having been established in anticipation of her arrival at that place, as well as at Jiddah, Cossier, and Suez. Other difficulties, however, had to be overcome, as scarcely a day passed without it being necessary to stop the engines to put the paddle-wheels in order, the boards of which were constantly getting loose. At Aden, Captain Wilson was detained five days and twenty hours in receiving the necessary supply of coal, owing to the want of means at the place for shipping it and other obstacles. The passage from Aden to Mocha roads, where he had despatches to land, was accomplished in twelve hours, and thence to Jiddah, a distance of 557 miles, in four days twelve hours. Here his vessel was detained four days and a half in obtaining a supply of coals; in five days more he reached Suez, having performed the voyage from Bombay to Suez in twenty-one days six hours’ steaming, or, including stoppages, in thirty-two days sixteen hours.
Had a steamer been ready at Alexandria the mails (consisting of 306 letters, the postage on which amounted to 1176 rupees), which could have been conveyed thence in three days, would in twenty-five more days have reached England. Thus, in spite of the delays at the depôts, the communication between India and England could have been accomplished in sixty-one days. The return passage of the Hugh Lindsay to Bombay occupied thirty-three days, including stoppages of nineteen days, or fourteen days’ steaming; and, under all the circumstances, the whole voyage was considered far from unsatisfactory;[312] one of the subsequent voyages, to Cossier[313] (300 miles below the Isthmus), was accomplished in twenty-two days, including five days’ detention at the coaling stations.
Yet, though the practicability of the Red Sea voyage during the north-east monsoon was now demonstrated, it was not certain that the passage could be made irrespectively of the seasons; nor could any argument be drawn from the performances of this pioneer ship, as her construction and power were not suited to contend against the south-west monsoon between Ceylon or Bombay and the Arabian Gulf.
[Sidenote: Report of Committee of 1834.]
Again, as a large number of persons connected with the East India Company, and various merchants interested in trade with the East, many of whom had advocated the Cape route, were now in favour of the Euphrates route, though the public in general preferred the establishment of a mail service by way of Egypt, the discussions, ultimately arising, led to the appointment of the Parliamentary Committee of 1834, the resolution of the House simply requiring its members “to inquire into the means of promoting communication with India by steam.”
But the report of the Committee, after a very full inquiry, was not definite on the point of the really best route. It was, however, resolved, and the Committee could hardly have done otherwise, notwithstanding the lukewarmness of the Court of Directors, that a regular and expeditious communication with India by means of steam-vessels was an object of great importance both to Great Britain and to India; that the practicability of steam navigation between Bombay and Suez during the north-east monsoon had been established by the Hugh Lindsay; but that further experiments were necessary to establish the practicability of the Red Sea route at all seasons of the year. They further recommended that a grant of 20,000_l._ should be made “with the least possible delay,” to examine and test the (steam capabilities of the Euphrates route; the line contemplated being that from Scanderoon on the coast of Syria to Aleppo, and thence to Bir on the Euphrates, the distance between these towns (170 miles) being not greater than that across Egypt.
From the evidence adduced and from the correspondence in the public journals of the period,[314] it is, however, evident that political rather than commercial reasons favoured the Euphrates route. It was then thought, looking to the probability of the opening up of the Indus, to the state of our relations with Persia, and to the necessity of maintaining a squadron, as we then did, to protect our interests in the Persian Gulf, that this line could, while increasing the safety of our East Indian possessions, be maintained at less cost than the Red Sea one.[315]
[Sidenote: Decision of House of Commons Committee influenced by political considerations.]
The other reasons assigned in favour of the Euphrates route were the comparative cheapness with which this object could be accomplished, the channel of the Persian Gulf and the River Euphrates being preferable to that of the Red Sea for steam communication between Bombay and the Mediterranean; moreover, in the then existing state of things it was thought that the route by Syria, Mesopotamia, and Babylonia would be safer than by way of the Red Sea and Egypt. In reference to the dangers which might be encountered from the wandering tribes of Arabs who had so long infested a large portion of the Euphrates route, it was stated that arrangements could easily be made by negotiations with the Porte, Mohammed Ali, or the chiefs of the tribes, who, at a small annual cost, would insure the necessary protection, while it was held that an armed mail-steamer with only letters and ordinary stores on board, would offer no attraction to marauders, as it was not then contemplated to carry either treasures or valuable merchandise by the overland route.[316]
As the Committee of the House of Commons had recommended immediate action for the establishment of a regular overland mail service, the Court of Directors were compelled to take the matter into their serious consideration; but they had determined to leave for future consideration the important question whether the communication should be, in the first instance, from Bombay or from Calcutta, or according to the combined plan suggested by the Bengal Steam Committee, in which case the net charge should be divided equally between the Government and the East India Company, so as to include the expense of the land conveyance from the Euphrates and the Red Sea respectively to the Mediterranean. After reviewing the relative advantages on the one hand and the physical difficulties on the other of the two routes, with the view of securing a regular communication throughout the year, the Committee suggested an extension of the line of Malta packets to such ports in Egypt and in Syria as would enable the communication between England and India to be tested experimentally by both routes.
[Sidenote: Admiralty packets extended from Malta to Alexandria.]
In accordance with these recommendations the Admiralty extended, in February 1835, the service of their mail-packets from Malta to Alexandria; while the Court of Directors sent out instructions to the Governor-General of India to forward the Hugh Lindsay at appointed periods to Suez. The character of the Euphrates route was also still further explored by Colonel Chesney,[317] under the direction of the East India Board, to whom this work had been entrusted, and, not long afterwards, the home authorities established a dromedary post from Baghdad to Damascus and Beyrout for the transmission of such mails as might be sent by that route.
The beneficial effects of these arrangements were soon felt in India, as would appear by a despatch from the Bombay Government to the Court of Directors (September 1836), wherein it is stated “that the three last overland mails have brought despatches from London to Bombay in thirty-eight, forty-five, and sixty-four days, and those intended for Calcutta have been forwarded in ten days more.” But as the despatch of the 16th of September, which conveyed this information by way of Egypt, did not reach England till the beginning of the following year, owing to various delays between Bombay and Suez, it was resolved to place larger and more powerful steamers on the Red Sea route—chiefly, as it would seem, because neither the Hugh Lindsay nor the Enterprize could perform the passage against the south-west monsoon.
[Sidenote: Steamers of the Indian Navy.]
The result was that the Court of Directors placed on this station (that by the Euphrates presenting greater difficulties) two vessels of much superior power, the Berenice and Atalanta, which had been laid down in 1835 for their naval service. The particulars of these vessels and of their cost, as well as those of the steamers on the Red Sea service which followed, will be found in the Indian navy list supplied by the East India House to Lord Jocelyn’s Committee of 1851, from which see extract.[318]
A regular steam service having now been established between England and her Eastern empire by ships of the East Indian navy on the one side of the Isthmus of Suez, and by the Admiralty packets on the other, I shall glance at the various means of transit across this neck of land, before describing the great mercantile steam lines which now maintain the communication throughout.
[Sidenote: Modes of transport across the Isthmus of Suez.]
[Sidenote: Great exertions of Waghorn in the establishment of this route.]
At the outset they were of the most original and multifarious description, and the few passengers who then made the overland passage found their way as best they could on camels, dromedaries, or donkeys. Towards the improvement in all its stages of this rude mode of transport there was no one more conspicuous than Thomas Waghorn. He was the moving genius of the whole undertaking, and its most zealous and successful agitator. Whatever may be said of his prudence, or however much we may lament his failings, his industry was unwearied and his zeal unbounded. It may be that he was only a convert to a scheme long contemplated by others; but, when once undertaken, his efforts never ceased until the object he had in view was accomplished. Though the first resting-places across the desert were constructed at the expense of the Bombay Steam-fund Committee by Hill and Raven,[319] under the orders of Colonel Barr,[320] the route itself was organized by Waghorn, and he was the first who undertook and carried on by a regular system for three years the conveyance of the mails across the Isthmus of Suez.[321] Sir Gardner Wilkinson (‘Modern Egypt,’ pp. 306-7) and various other competent witnesses bear ample testimony to this important fact, and it is one which must ever hold a prominent place in the records of the origin of the modern overland route to India.
Though camels are capable of carrying a weight of from 9 to 10 cwt. each at a rate of 2½ miles an hour[322] for twelve or sixteen consecutive hours, it became necessary to adopt other modes of transit as the traffic increased. Two-wheeled vans drawn by four horses, and fitted to carry eight persons, were therefore introduced to transport the passengers from Suez to Cairo, whence they were embarked in sailing boats on the Nile to Alexandria; Mr. Waghorn subsequently organizing, in connection with the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, a line of small steamers which took the place of these boats. In course of time caravansaries and hotels were substituted for the original stations and resting-places on the route. These were completed in February 1843, and received the passengers from the Hindostan steamer on her first trip in the regular mail service from Calcutta, Madras, and Galle to Suez, by which time this branch of the business had been undertaken by the Egyptian Transit Company. But, in the organization of all these important works, Mr. Waghorn took the leading part, and their completion, under many difficulties, was in a great measure due to his indefatigable exertions.
So early as 1834, Muhammed Ali, seeing the advantages to be obtained by a railway between Cairo and Suez, instructed Mr. Thomas Galloway to make arrangements for its construction, and, with this object in view, the rails, locomotives, and plant, were ordered from England;[323] but, owing to the opposition of France, the formation of this line was continually postponed,[324] and subsequently abandoned. A railway was, however, commenced in 1852 by Robert Stephenson from Alexandria to Cairo, and completed in 1857. Subsequently, it was continued from that city to Suez, branching off at Benha to Zaga-Zig, and following the course of the old canal to Suez, by which a considerable saving of distance was effected over the Cairo route as originally proposed. The line throughout was completed and opened for traffic in 1870.
[Sidenote: Suez Canal.]
But the grand work, the greatest and grandest connected with maritime commerce, either in ancient or modern times, was the cutting of the Suez Canal, between the town so named at the head of the Red Sea and the shores of the Mediterranean at a place in the Bay of Pelusium, now known as Port Said: this gigantic undertaking is about 100 miles in length, and runs in nearly a straight line almost due north from Suez, passing through various lakes, marshes, or swamps, the principal of which are called Birket Menzaleh, Birket-el-Timsah, and the Bitter Lakes.
Previously to the commencement of this great work, at least two erroneous impressions had prevailed: of these the first, that the Mediterranean was from 25 to 30 feet below the level of the Red Sea at Suez,[325] has been exploded by the completion of the canal; but, as the second (reflecting on the originality of M. de Lesseps’ undertaking), though a much less important one, seems still to exist, I may state that the course of his canal is quite different from that of the fresh-water one said to have been navigable in the reign of the Pharaohs (its course is still traceable here and there), which ran from a point on the Nile a little below Cairo in a north-easterly direction, towards Lake Timseh, and, thence, almost due south by the west side of the Bitter Lakes to Suez. This canal had no connection, or rather water communication, with the Mediterranean except by the easternmost branches of the Nile below Cairo, and, though the Nile at that city is ten feet above the Red Sea at Suez, it may be doubted whether this ancient canal was ever used except during the rainy season, though Herodotus states there was width on it for two triremes to row abreast. Certainly, no mention, direct or indirect, records the passage of any craft worthy of the name of a ship between the Mediterranean and Red Sea.[326] The great ship-canal (see map, p. 364), now in use, does not go near Cairo or the Nile, but cuts through the narrowest part of the isthmus at a point about 100 miles east of Alexandria.
[Sidenote: Popular errors on this subject.]
[Sidenote: M. de Lesseps.]
A popular error also prevails that this vast undertaking was only contemplated a few years ago. Nor do these popular errors here end, for everybody supposes that M. Ferdinand de Lesseps, to whose genius and energy the world is indebted for this great work, was an engineer, whereas he was really a diplomatist,[327] and was obliged to make himself master of the art of engineering to be in some measure able to cope with the host of engineers, professional and theoretical, who opposed his marvellous scheme.
The idea of a canal across the Isthmus of Suez by the route adopted by M. de Lesseps is a very old one. So far back as A.D. 638-40, Amrou, soon after the conquest of Egypt,[328] wrote to his master the Khalif Omar recommending the establishment of a communication between the two seas, the intervening country being, as he describes it, “an undulating green meadow with ploughed fields—such is the delta of the Nile; a dusty desert, a liquid and clayey plain, a black slush—such is the isthmus to cut through.” But the Khalif objected to the piercing of the isthmus, “fearing it would open out the country to the influence of foreigners,” a fear that prevailed also with one or two leading statesmen of our own country and in our own time.
Though the project had been occasionally mentioned, the work itself was never seriously contemplated except in one instance [329] until M. de Lesseps, about the year 1840, conceived a definite plan for carrying it out. Scientific men, indeed, in most parts of the world, considered the undertaking altogether impracticable. They alleged that the difficulties of the desert could never be surmounted, and that nothing stable could be erected on treacherous sands doomed by nature to sterility and desolation.[330] Indeed, Sir Daniel Lange,[330] the oldest and most earnest friend and colleague of M. de Lesseps in this country, and, from its commencement until now, the representative of the Suez Canal in England, remarks that so general was this opinion, that the captains of the small craft who first received orders to proceed to Pelusium with materials for the prosecution of the work, smiled with incredulity, but resigned themselves to what they thought a fool’s errand.
[Sidenote: His great scheme.]
[Sidenote: Not fairly considered in England.]
Nor were these doubts surprising, for the site of ancient Pelusium is upon a low flat shelving sandy coast where sea and land seem to blend with each other, and where the long roll of the surf over a flat beach forbids even the approach of a boat. No wonder therefore that the indefatigable M. de Lesseps was unable for years to induce either governments or individuals to provide the requisite means; indeed, his own countrymen, when he issued the prospectus in 1857, were nearly if not quite as lukewarm about it as foreigners, while in England on the other hand, a great outcry was created, mainly by Lord Palmerston, against the project on political grounds. It is not, however, my province to enter upon these; but, surely, England, with her vast possessions in the East and with the command of the sea, was far more interested than any other nation in removing Egypt from the envy it had long been of powerful European nations, and, in cutting a ship canal—a great highway—through it, which would be open to the vessels of all nations like the Sound or the Dardanelles. Indeed, every increased facility for reaching our Indian possessions must be a far greater gain to us than to any other nation.
But strange to say the political opposition raised by England[332] proved the chief means of enabling M. de Lesseps to raise the requisite capital, and secured him support he would otherwise not probably have obtained. Foreign capitalists, especially in France, now came forward to subscribe, not that they had much faith in the commercial success of the canal, but because they felt grieved or annoyed that an undertaking, which could not fail to benefit mankind, even if it did not pay the original subscribers, should be opposed on narrow and jealous grounds by one of the most conspicuous, if not in all matters the most enlightened, of English statesmen.
[Sidenote: Commencement of M. de Lesseps’ works, 1857.]
But, even with the requisite capital at command, M. de Lesseps had a most arduous and herculean task to perform. It was necessary, remarks Sir Daniel Lange, previously to entering on a work of such magnitude, to prepare dwellings, storehouses, factories, forges, and a lighthouse; indeed, all the accessories indispensable for putting in motion the huge mechanical appliances intended to be used. All this was done in the newly erected “Town of Port Said.” But before this place could be formed, the marshes had to be raised 10 feet above the sea-level, so as to form an area of sixty-seven acres of solid land; and from this basis piers had to be carried out into the open sea, the western one for a distance of one and three-quarter miles, and the eastern a mile and one-third in length, composed of not less than 250,000 blocks of concrete, weighing about thirty tons each. Between these piers a harbour was formed with a surface of 132 acres, the excavations from it amounting to 4,669,943 cubic mètres.[333]
[Sidenote: General details.]
But among the many obstacles encountered, none were half so formidable as the formation of the channel through Lake Menzaleh, which extended 21 miles from Port Said to Kantara. The sands and other insurmountable obstacles which had been prophesied were as nothing to this work, arising from the fact that the mud and slush had actually to be thrown up by the hands alone (just as children in their amusements make mud-heaps) of the thousands of natives employed to form a dyke;[334] indeed, had it not been for the powerful Egyptian sun, which dried up the mud so exposed in a few hours, the task would have been impracticable, as ordinary mechanical appliances must have failed to overcome such an obstacle.
When something like an opening had been made through many miles of “black slush,” and clear water began to flow in, rafts were constructed, and on these the men slept under tents made of mats. In this work, about fifteen thousand fishermen from the neighbourhood were employed, a class of men who, from time immemorial, had been accustomed, in their ordinary avocations, to spend a large portion of their time half immersed in the water.
When a passage of sufficient dimensions had been scooped out with their hands, dredging-machines were introduced. By degrees this trench was widened until it reached the dimensions of 330 feet wide, and 26 feet deep; the sides, from the rapid drying of the mud, soon becoming almost as solid as walls of masonry and quite as durable.
It was between these new banks that floating dredging-machines of a novel construction, with shoots 220 feet in length, were placed, thus enabling M. de Lesseps to dispense with the previously expensive mode of conveying the silt raised by the dredgers in hopper-barges to sea; the new machines discharged the stuff excavated from the channel over the embankments on to the low and marshy land on either side:[335] by these means two good results were attained; the channel of the canal was economically cleared, and the mud thus excavated employed in greatly strengthening its banks on each side.
The cutting of the channel through Birket-el-Ballah, which was more of a swamp than a lake, for a distance of twelve miles, though in itself a very difficult work, was comparatively easy to the excavation of Lake Menzaleh, nor were there any serious obstacles to encounter except in clearing a passage through various mounds of earth extending for a distance of 6 miles, all of which had to be removed or pierced. This difficulty, however, was overcome, after a passage had been cut, by the aid of an ingenious machine called an elevator, which lifted the soil to a height of 56 feet, and carried it along a kind of railed bridge to the places of deposit on either side of the excavated mounds. Eighteen of these elevators, with 700 boxes, were employed on that portion of the works where the banks of the canal were too high to allow the earth cut from the channel to be otherwise disposed of. One of these mounds, that of El Guisr, 61 feet in height, presented a most formidable rampart, which had to be removed in order to allow the waters of the Mediterranean to flow into the vast local depression immediately beyond it known as Lake Timsah, by Ismailia, the interior port of the canal, so named in honour of the Khedive. Here a flourishing new town has been built, surrounded by gardens growing in a fruitful soil, on a site for many centuries a bleak and sterile desert.
In the work of removing these mounds, or cutting through them, so as to form the channel of this great maritime highway, where ships of 4000 tons now safely navigate, every conceivable description of machinery suitable for the purpose had to be prepared beforehand, together with not less than 20,000 workmen, including a perfect army of Fellaheen, the usual designation of the rural population which the Government of Egypt had agreed to supply, and various tribes of Arabs and Bedouins from the countries bordering the Syrian deserts. These men were divided into gangs, and their work apportioned with great order and regularity; in each division a notice in Arabic was posted indicating the quantity of earth to be dug, and the wages paid per cubic mètre for its completion. Nor were the wants and social comforts of these men overlooked. Large encampments were provided, and arrangements made for an abundant supply of provisions and fresh water, the latter alone during some portions of the work having to be brought twenty miles, thus affording constant employment to 2000 camels, each of which carried about 50 gallons or about 500 pounds weight of fresh water. From Timsah to the Bitter Lakes the excavations through the district called Serapeum, were hardly less formidable. “Historians,” remarks Sir Daniel Lange,[336] “tell us that these lakes were in ancient times, the limit of the Gulf of Suez. One thing is certain, that the shells and fossils found here are of the same species as those in the Red Sea. The conjecture the least contradicted is, that an earthquake caused the upheaving of these parts and the sea to recede to Suez, leaving the lakes and interior basin which in process of time have evaporated.”
[Sidenote: Partial opening of Canal April 18th, 1869.]
These lakes are 16 and 9 miles in length, respectively: the first descending from the heights of Serapeum, being 34 feet below sea-level, and the second 24 feet. In both, isolated water lines of high and low tides are easily discerned, with remains of gravel, and of a horizontal bank of agglomerated fossil shells about 7 feet thick. M. de Lesseps found them completely dried up, with the exception of the lowest portion, which still retained enough humidity to make the earth moist and in some parts swampy. To fill these deep basins, water was drawn, by means of sluices from the Red Sea and from the Mediterranean; and, on the 18th of April, 1869, when these were opened in the presence of the Khedive of Egypt, the waters of the two seas, for the first time embraced each other, though it was not till the 15th of August that the great maritime canal was open throughout. The inauguration of their complete union was celebrated at Suez, and, on the 28th September, M. de Lesseps steamed from sea to sea in fifteen hours, having accomplished by his genius and unwearied industry one of the greatest engineering works the world has ever seen, and given to posterity, as a great benefactor of the human race, another imperishable name.
[Sidenote: Finally opened by Empress Eugénie, November 17th, 1869.]
On the 17th of November, this important maritime canal was formally opened for ships of all nations with much state by the Empress Eugénie of France, in the presence of numerous distinguished men from all countries.
The cost complete, was somewhat about 20,000,000_l._ sterling, consisting of 8,000,000_l._ subscribed capital, 4,000,000_l._ debenture stock, and 8,000,000_l._, in further loans and indemnities paid by the Khedive for retrocession of lands, &c.
To the traffic now engaged upon it I shall hereafter refer. In the meantime, I must trace the rise and progress of the first mercantile steam-ship company which developed the trade of England with her Indian possessions by way of the Isthmus of Suez.
FOOTNOTES:
[293] Various plans for reaching India by means of railway communication throughout have been proposed. So early as 1850, Sir R. Macdonald Stephenson brought this matter fully under the notice of the Government. In the Calcutta Review for March 1856 his views are given at length; and his article therein, “The World’s Highway,” was republished in the same year by Weale. In 1859, the same publisher brought out a pamphlet by Sir Macdonald, entitled “Railways in Turkey, &c.,” with beautifully executed plans (the most complete yet in existence) showing the course of these lines from Constantinople to Aleppo, Baghdad and Bussorah, thence along the shores of the Persian Gulf to Bunder Abbas, and thence to Kurachi, Hydrabad, in Scinde and Bombay. Sir R. Stephenson estimated the distance from London to Bombay viâ Paris, Vienna, and Constantinople at somewhere about 5200 miles. He bestowed many years’ labour on this important subject; and had hoped to make it a great international highway, constructed under the supervision of the different states interested. Though unable to overcome the difficulties such a combination would entail, the works he proposed, or others somewhat similar, are being rapidly carried into execution by different persons who have obtained concessions from the respective Governments; more than 2000 miles of the World’s Highway is already made, and when complete the journey from London to Bombay by rail would, at the rate of 30 miles an hour, be accomplished in less than seven and a half days. See also plan of route by Mr. R. H. Galloway, published by Wyld, 1875, in which the distances are given.
[294] Full details of this meeting will be found in the _Bengal Hurkara_, December 19th, 1823.
[295] The dimensions of the Enterprize were 122 feet length of keel and 27 feet breadth of beam; her paddle-wheels were 15 feet in diameter. She was 479 tons register, 120 horse-power. She was supplied with a copper boiler in one piece, weighing 32 tons and costing 7000_l._ Her total cost was no less than 43,000_l._!
[296] The greatest run the Enterprize made by sail in twenty-four hours, was 211 miles, the least 39 miles; the greatest by steam assisted by sail, 225 miles, the least 80 miles; the greatest heat in the engine-room during the voyage, was 105 degrees, that of the air at the same time being 84 degrees and a half; the total distance was 13,700 miles, and the consumption 580 chaldron of coals, being 9 chaldrons per day for 64 days, the rest being under sail; “the speed of the engines, in calm weather, was 8 knots an hour, the log giving 9 from the wash of the paddles.” Evidence, Mr. T. L. Peacock, Select Committee on Steam Navigation to India, 1834.
[297] Despatches of Sir Miles Nightingall, 1819; Mount-Stuart Elphinstone, 1823-26; Lord William Bentinck, 1828 to 1835; “Annual Register;” Colonel Chesney’s Report, 1832; Proceedings of the Royal Asiatic Society; Captain F. Head’s “Eastern and Egyptian Scenery,” 1833; J. A. St. John, “Egypt and Muhammed Ali,” 1833; Report of the Committee of the House of Commons “On Steam Navigation to India,” 1834; “Egypt in 1837,” by T. Waghorn; Ibid. 1838; Waghorn and Co., “Overland Route to India,” 1844 and 1846; “On Steam Navigation to India,” by Captain Grindlay, 1837; Report of the Committee of House of Commons “On Steam Navigation to India,” 1837; Mr. W. D. Holmes’ plan in connection with the Bengal Steam Committee, 1839; “Modern Egyptians,” by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, 1843; “Facts connected with the Origin and Progress of Steam Communication between India and England,” by J. H. Wilson, Commander, Indian Navy, London, 1850; Letter from Mr. R. W. Crawford, M.P. for London, to the Times, November 22nd, 1869; and from Mr. R. H. Galloway to the Illustrated London News, 23rd October, 1872, as well as other communications on the same subject to various journals and periodicals.
[298] See “Facts connected with the Origin and Progress of Steam Communication between India and England,” by J. H. Wilson, Commander Indian Navy, London, 1850.
[299] Captain Wilson says (page 7), writing of this journey, “He (Mr. Mount-Stuart Elphinstone) started from Bombay on the 15th November, 1827, in the Honourable Company’s brig Palinurus, and was accompanied by Mr. C. Lushington, secretary to the Government of Bengal, Mrs. Lushington, Mr. Steele of the Bombay Civil Service, and Messrs. Wallace and Gordon of the Bombay Medical Service. Mrs. Lushington published an interesting account of the journey, thus creating a considerable, though limited, public interest in the route.”
[300] See his evidence before Committee of the House of Commons, 1834, on steam navigation to India; and his book, “Eastern and Egyptian Scenery, &c.,” with notes, maps, and plans, &c., intended to show the practicability of steam navigation from England to India.
[301] Mr. Waghorn, born at Chatham in the year 1800, was brought up in the Royal Navy, where he served four years. He was afterwards, for twelve years a pilot in Bengal in the service of the East India Company, somewhat later rejoining the Royal Navy, wherein he remained till he passed as Lieutenant. Mr. Waghorn had piloted the Enterprize soon after her arrival in India, and from that time devoted his especial attention to steam-vessels. In his evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1834 (page 209), he says with regard to himself, “I was selected in 1827 by the Indian Government (Calcutta Steam Committee) for the purpose of establishing steam navigation between England and India.... My first object was the Cape of Good Hope.... I went to London, Liverpool, and to Manchester; I stated my plans in various parts of the kingdom, and all the success I received after three years’ toil, was the loan of two fifty horse-power engines from the East India Company.” In 1842 he recommended the European route now in use by way of the Adriatic, dying, at length at Pentonville, January 7th, 1850, utterly broken down, and leaving his widow without any means beyond a small pension allowed to her by Government and the East India Company.
[302] See “Annual Register,” October 1829.
[303] Mr. Waghorn, in his evidence before the Committee of 1834, says that, had he met the Enterprize at Suez as he expected, he would have conveyed his despatches from London to Bombay in fifty-three days.
[304] In the Bombay Courier of the 10th April, 1830, there will be found the following notice from Mr. Waghorn: “The undersigned feels it his duty to state, for the information of the public throughout the Presidencies of Bombay, Madras, and Bengal, that he is not in any way connected with any scheme for steam-packet navigation with India, except that which he had the pleasure to lay before the Madras and Calcutta Committees in the year 1828, and that any use of his name in reference to it in any prospectus, &c., is perfectly unauthorized by him.
“His motive in wishing this to be generally known is that it may not be supposed by those, on whom he depends for encouragement and support, that he has in any degree departed from his former engagements.” (Signed) “Thomas Waghorn.”
See also Bombay Gazette, 21st April, 1830, where there will be found the report of a public meeting held on the 17th of that month, where Mr. Waghorn advocated the Cape route in preference to that viâ Red Sea.
[305] Mr. Taylor was one of the earliest proposers and founders of the Red Sea route, and had, in 1823, been associated with Lieutenant Johnston, who subsequently commanded the Enterprize, and with the Calcutta Steam Committee, from whom he seceded because they relinquished the Red Sea route for that of the Cape of Good Hope. Indeed, he was the first to adventure capital on this route, and is said to have lost not less than 12,000_l._ in an endeavour to combine steam-tugs and sailing-vessels.
[306] Prospectus of an establishment of steam-vessels, dated 1st December, 1829.
[307] Letter from Mr. J. W. Taylor, to Sir John Malcolm, Governor of Bombay, 1st December, 1829.
[308] Letter from the Bombay Government (the Marine Department) to the Court of Directors, dated 18th April, 1830.
[309] Letter from the Court of Directors to the Governor in Council at Bombay, Public Department, 14th March, 1832. To this opinion of the Court I may add that Mr. Peacock, the “senior assistant examiner in the East India House,” in his evidence before the Committee of 1834 (pp. 3 and 4) when asked, if he thought any returns might be anticipated for postages and passengers to justify an expenditure of 100,000_l._ per annum in establishing and maintaining a quarterly steam service overland by way of Suez between England and India, would pay, replied: “I think nothing to pay the expense; something certainly, but not above one-fourth of the amount.” The gross earnings of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company alone between 1856 and 1874, inclusive of the amount received for the conveyance of mails, passengers, and cargo, amounted to 41,546,818_l._
[310] The Hugh Lindsay sailed for Suez on her first experimental voyage on the 20th of March, 1830, the day before Mr. Waghorn arrived at Bombay in the Thetis; and she continued in that service under command of Captain Wilson, making one voyage annually, during the north-east monsoons till April 1836, when Captain Wilson was appointed Controller of the dock-yards at Bombay as an acknowledgment of his services, for it is unquestionable that he did much to “educate” the Governments of England and India on the importance of the overland route, as appears by the official correspondence of the period.
[311] See note (310), p. 352.
[312] For an account of the voyages of this ship in detail see Report of the Committee of the House of Commons, 1834.
[313] Cossier, which is about 100 miles from the Nile, was one of the ports of departure for the vessels of ancient times engaged in trade with the East.
[314] The reasons for preferring the Euphrates route, are given at great length in the Bombay Gazette, 7th August, 1833.
[315] To question 64, p. 6 (Committee, 1834) “Would there be any political or other advantages in our opening the line of the Euphrates?” Mr. Peacock replies: “I think it would be highly serviceable, if possible, to prevent Russia pre-occupying it and excluding us; it would be exceedingly easy for Russia to follow the steps of Trajan and Julian, construct fleets in Armenia, and float them to Bussorah; they have the possession, at least the command, of the Armenian part of the Euphrates now.”
“Would there not (question 65) be more danger to be apprehended from the Russians from their making use of the Oxus and Caspian, than by making use of Bussorah, where they would be met by the nation which happens to have the pre-eminence at sea?”—“But the pre-eminence at sea,” Mr. Peacock replies, “is not a talisman; it is to be kept up by constant watchfulness, and the exertion of adequate force. I know there is danger by the Oxus, but there is also danger by the Euphrates, and I would stop both doors, if I could.” In reply to further questions (66) he says: “The first thing the Russians do, when they get possession of, or connection with, any country, is to exclude all other countries from navigating its waters;” and in reply (question 67) to “How the establishment of steam along the Euphrates would serve in any respect to counteract Russia?” he says, “It would give us a vested interest and a right to interfere;” adding “they (the Russians) have been long supposed to have designs on Baghdad; they have had emissaries there a good while; the Pashalic of Baghdad is a very valuable possession, and would pay for protecting it, either to them or to us.”
Mr. William J. Bankes (and others) entertained similar opinions. In reply to (question 2626) “What is your opinion of the political advantages between the one and the other?” he says, “It is very much in favour of the Euphrates.” “Will you state in what respect?” (question 2627) “I think by anticipating the Russian, you will exclude him; I think he will afterwards, perhaps, do that by force which you could now, perhaps, do by treaty.”
[316] For Colonel Chesney’s elaborate report on the advantages of the Euphrates route, I must refer my readers to the Appendix of the Report of the Committee of 1834.
[317] In furtherance of these instructions Colonel Chesney made a most elaborate survey, and wrote a voluminous book with maps, for which he, some time afterwards, was compensated by a grant of 4000_l._
[318] Return of the number, cost, ages, power, tonnage, and speed of steam vessels forming the Indian Navy, distinguishing the vessels employed on the Bombay mail line, so far as the same can be made out. (They were all built of wood, and propelled by paddle-wheels):
---------------+-------------+----------+------+--------+-----+-------------- Names of | Cost. | Ages. |Horse |Tonnage.|Speed| —— Vessels. | | |Power.| | | ---------------+-------------+----------+------+--------+-----+-------------- | | | | |Knots| | | | | | per | | | | | |Hour.| | £ s. d.| | | | | Acbar |76,373 9 8 |built 1841| 350 | 1,143 | 8½ | } Employed on Ajdaha |80,515 16 5 |built 1847| 500 | 1,440 | 8 | } the Bombay Atalanta |36,651 17 10 |built 1835| 210 | 616 | 7¼ | } Mail Line. Auckland |43,052 3 2 |built 1840| 220 | 946 | .. | } General | | | | | | } Service. Berenice |40,123 11 6 |built 1835| 230 | 664 | .. | { | | | | | | { Employed on Feerooz |67,219 0 0 |built 1846| 500 | 1,440 | 8⅔ | { the Bombay | | | | | | { Line. Medusa (iron)| 9,972 18 1 |built 1840| 70 | 432 | .. | } Moozuffer |81,576 9 6 |built 1846| 500 | 1,440 | .. | } General Queen |44,409 17 11 |built 1839| 220 | 760 | .. | } Service. Semiramis |43,447 12 8 |built 1840| 300 | 1,000 | .. | } Sesostris |52,388 8 2 |built 1839| 220 | 876 | .. | } | | | | | | { Employed on Victoria |39,820 15 6 |built 1839| 230 | 714 | 6⅝ | { the Bombay | | | | | | { Mail Line. ---------------+-------------+----------+------+--------+-----+--------------
[319] Hill was an engineer, and Raven a wheelwright in the service originally of Galloway Bey, and, subsequently, in that of the Pasha of Egypt, Muhammed Ali, who, when they were in difficulties to carry on their work, rendered them pecuniary assistance.
[320] Mr. Waghorn, in his evidence before the House of Commons Committee of 1837, says (question 53), “I can send Mr. Hill and other men of the service at an hour’s notice from Cairo,” &c., by which it appears they were then, at least, under his orders.
[321] In a note I received from Sir Daniel Lange (12th March, 1875), he remarks: “M. de Lesseps often told me how he met Waghorn struggling with man and beast in the desert to carry his mails across, and that it served as an example to him in after-life with the Suez Canal.”
[322] See evidence before Committee of 1834 by Mr. Peacock, pp. 2 and 3.
[323] Messrs. Galloway Brothers (see evidence before Committee of 1837) had established at Boolak (a suburb of Cairo) an extensive iron manufactory, and were in a position to carry out the Pasha’s railway, for which they had imported plant by his orders to the value of 200,000_l._ Whether any portion of this was used by Mr. Stephenson, who subsequently constructed the railway, does not appear.
[324] Pamphlet by Mr. R. H. Galloway (pp. 15 and 17), published by Willis, Sotheran, and Co., London, 1871.
[325] Evidence of Major Head, Mr. T. T. Peacock, and others, before the Select Committee of 1834.
[326] The truth about these ancient canals seems to be as follows:
1. According to Herodotus, Pharaoh Necho commenced one from the Nile to the Red Sea (ii. 158) which he says was completed by Darius the son of Hystaspes (iv. 39). This canal, we may fairly presume, was open when Herodotus was in Egypt, as he states it was four days’ journey in length, and wide enough for two small triremes to row abreast; it is doubtless the one attributed by Aristotle, Strabo, and Pliny to Sesostris—an identification confirmed by the fact that, in recent times, tablets bearing the name of Rameses (Sesostris) have been found on the site of its present dried up bed. As far as can be now ascertained, it would seem that this canal left the Nile at or near the city of Bubastis (now Tel Basta). The discovery of a Cuneiform inscription of Darius near Suez, gives colour also to the traditional story which refers to him. Diodorus, notices the proverbial opinion of the height of the waters of the Red Sea (i. 33) and adds, that this canal was completed by Ptolemy when he built Arsinoe.
2. There is no doubt that this canal continued in some use under the Roman Emperors, as Trajan formed a new connection for it by a cutting at Babylon (Old Cairo) (Ptol. Geogr. iv. s. 54), and, further, Sir Gardner Wilkinson has shown that the whole line from the Nile to the Gulf was restored by the Khalif Omar, and was in use for a century and a half after his time. The work of Necho appears also to have included a canal from the head of the gulf to the Pelusiac mouth of the Nile, as of this considerable remains still exist.
3. It may be further remarked, that the bed of the Bitter Lakes was, even in the time of Strabo (xvii. p. 804), filled with Nile water, as the same fish were noticed in both. At the same time, we may be sure that nothing like a ship (in our sense of the word) ever passed through the isthmus until M. de Lesseps completed his great work.
[327] Ferdinand de Lesseps in his youth was attached to the Consulate at Lisbon, and then, in 1828, to the Consulate-General at Tunis. In the following year he was appointed Vice-Consul at Alexandria, and in 1832 he was advanced to be Consul at Cairo, where he remained for seven years. In 1842, he received the appointment of Consul-General at Barcelona; in 1848 he went to Madrid as French Minister Plenipotentiary; and later on, to an important mission in Rome, after which he retired to Berri (France) to mature his plans for the Suez Canal, which had been the almost constant subject of his thoughts since his residence in Cairo.
[328] See a very interesting paper read by Mr. (now Sir Daniel) Lange before the Society of Arts, London, April 27th, 1870.
[329] It is fair to recollect that my old friend and colleague on the Harbour of Refuge Commission, Captain Vetch, R.N., more than thirty years ago (and therefore before M. de Lesseps) proposed a ship canal from Suez to Tineh, on the Mediterranean, a distance of about 75 miles, to be carried out by British capital. At that time the idea of the height of the water at Suez above that of the Mediterranean prevailed. Captain Vetch therefore calculated that, with a canal 180 feet wide at the top, 96 feet at the bottom, and 21 feet in the depth, the steady descent of the water along this gradient would produce scourage sufficient to clear away the sand and mud accumulated at the Mediterranean end. No doubt Captain Vetch’s observations and details tended to satisfy M. de Lesseps of the feasibility of some such canal.
[330] Some preparatory steps had also been taken which, by getting rid of unscientific hypotheses, facilitated in some degree M. de Lesseps’ views. Thus, at the suggestion of the Viceroy, the English, French, and Austrian Governments had sent in 1847 a joint commission of scientific men to take the various levels on the isthmus of Suez, especially as regarded the relative heights of the water in the two seas. Mr. Robert Stephenson represented England; M. Talabot, France; M. Negretti, Austria; and Linant Bey, the Pasha. Stephenson watched the rise and fall of the tide at Suez and Negretti at Tineh, the result being the demonstration that the two seas have exactly the same level within a few inches. A full account of the plan developed by M. Talabot from the observations of this commission will be found in the “Révue des Deux Mondes,” and there seems little doubt that, but for the determined opposition of Mr. Robert Stephenson, whose imagination (to the day of his death) was perpetually haunted with ideas of the sand, silt, and mud with which he maintained any canal must be filled up, the great work, which was the glory of M. de Lesseps, would have been carried out by English enterprise some years earlier than 1869.
[331] Sir Daniel Lange was knighted after the opening of the Suez Canal. He is a native of London, and the holder of various foreign honours. He unsuccessfully contested Midhurst in 1868.
[332] Not however by all her statesmen, for Mr. Gladstone, Lord Russell, Sidney Herbert, Mr. Cobden, Mr. Bright, Mr. Milner Gibson, and others strenuously objected to any hostile interference on the part of Government with the project.
[333] My readers will find an excellent account of the early works of the Suez Canal, in a little book published by Mr. A. K. Lynch, entitled “A Visit to the Suez Canal,” Lond. 8vo. 1866, with several excellent lithograph drawings of Port Said, Ismailia, and other places on it. A French mètre is 39 English inches or 1-19th more than an English yard.
[334] Herodotus (132) speaks of the vast amount of forced labour employed in the construction of the great Pyramids; hence various writers, recalling the hardships these “slaves” had to endure, protested against the employment of “similar bodies of men” in the construction of the Suez Canal, commenting on the scandalous treatment to which they were subjected. But I have enquired minutely into this question, and I cannot find any just grounds for these complaints. On the contrary, the men employed appear to have been free labourers, fairly remunerated according to the work they performed, and, on the whole, kindly treated.
[335] Besides the dredging-machines and men employed, there were at work upon the canal during the last six months of 1864, 42,929 camels, 9350 horses, 2489 mules, and 2835 donkeys.
[336] Paper read to Society of Arts, p. 7.