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"IT

DEVELOPMENT OF THE MERCHANT

MARINE

BY EUGENE T. CHAMBERLAIN

T may be said without exaggeration that the great extent and natural increase of international trade, in being the principal guarantee of the peace of the world, is the great permanent security for the uninterrupted progress of the ideas, the institutions, and the character of the human race." If this dictum of John Stuart Mill be accepted, the remarkable development of merchant shipping during the nineteenth century is more than a phase of the world's material growth; it deserves high rank among moral and civilising agencies. Merchant shipping itself testifies to the success of its peacebearing mission.

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At the beginning of the century, vessels in trade commonly were armed against possible national foes as well as against pirates. To this day the American form of clearance, in its phrase "mounted with . . guns," is an antiquated reminder of letters of marque. The four articles of the Declaration of Paris at the middle of the century (April, 1856) were a significant mitigation of the terrors and destruction of war, and as the century closed, the President of the United States requested from Congress authority to invite the maritime Powers to incorporate into the permanent law of civilised nations the principle of the exemption of all private property at sea, not contraband of war, from capture or destruction by bellig

erents. The greatest of sea Powers has demonstrated that the rule of the wave is no longer by force, but by trade. In 1800, British merchant vessels were manned by 140,000 seamen, while in 1803 it took 180,000 men to man the royal navy. This year's naval estimates provide for 82,000 officers and men, and the Board of Trade reports 244,000 men employed on British merchant vessels. The wars of Napoleon, of course, temporarily exaggerated the strength of the navy and diminished the importance of merchant shipping, but as the century moved toward its close the world's trading fleets have surpassed in ever-increasing ratio the world's war fleets. The two great republics are, singularly, exceptions to the rule. Second only to this change has been the adoption of a more enlightened maritime policy on the part of all nations. The century opened with Great Britain still under the Navigation Act of Cromwell, and with laws for discrimination and retaliation in force by many nations against the ships of other nations. To John Quincy Adams the world at large is indebted for the vigorous and successful assault of the young Republic upon England's navigation policy of discrimination, culminating in the treaty of 1815 and the commercial freedom of the

seas.

Doubtless there are men living in whose infancy shipbuilding and navigation, so far as motive power and material of construction were concerned, had not essentially changed since the beginning of the Christian era. The substitution of steam for sail, and of iron and steel for wood, have been the century's contributions to the industry of transportation by sea. They have so revolutionised it in every phase that the facts of 1800, when put beside the facts of 1900, are instructive chiefly to the antiquarian. The following chronological table, prepared by the late Henry Fry of Quebec, at a glance gives the successive steps in this revolution:

1833-Sails to wooden paddles.

(Speed and regularity.)

1843-Wood to iron hulls.

(Strength and capacity.)

1850-Paddles to screws.

(Economy and radius.)

1856-Simple to compound engines.

(Economy, radius, and capacity.)

1879-Iron to steel hulls.

(Economy and capacity.)

1889-Single to twin screws.

(Safety and regularity.)

The dates are those when the various inventions and discoveries involved had attained such a degree of perfection as to be available in ocean navigation. Symington's little Scotch steam launch (1788), Fulton's Clermont (1807), and the Savannah's voyage across the Atlantic, mainly under sail (1819), antedated, but led to the Comet's voyage under steam from Pictou to Gravesend in 1833. The experimental stages of the screw propeller began with the century, and iron hulls were built in its first quarter.

By the application of steam, ocean vessels have obtained increased speed, regularity, and, consequently, greater carrying power. As a carrier, the ocean steamship to-day is reckoned at fourfold the capacity of a sailing vessel of equivalent net tonnage. The growth in volume of the world's tonnage has been moderate, judged by growth in the amount of other products of men's labour; but the capacity of the world's tonnage for carrying freight and passengers has increased over fifteenfold in a hundred years. The tonnage of 1800 (entirely sail), and of 1900 (77 per cent. steam), and the carrying potentiality of the tonnage of 1900 (sail tonnage plus net steam tonnage multiplied by four), follows, stated in thousands of

tons:

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The energy of shipping is measured by entries and clearances in the foreign trade. These rose from 128,200,000 tons in 1860 to 500,000,000 tons in 1898, and include repeated voyages with cargo and in ballast between the ports of the world. At the beginning of the century they could not have amounted to 25,000,000 tons, on the basis of the limited statistics available. To the credit of the Anglo-Saxon race, constituting a firmer link of sympathy than any treaty or alliance could forge, the greatest thoroughfare of shipping has become the North Atlantic, between the United States and the mother country. In 1800, the trade between the United States and England alone comprised 1,054 voyages, 240,564 tons; in 1899, the voyages to and from the United Kingdom were 6,060, the tonnage 14,930,000 (net). These figures throw a sidelight, too, on the magnitude of the boon which De Lessep's seventeen years of persistence and skill bestowed upon men. The voyages through the Suez Canal in 1899 numbered 3,607, the tonnage 9,896,000 (net).

The opening of the Suez Canal (November, 1869) brought Europe nearer by four thousand miles to India, China, and Japan. By permitting economical recoaling en route, it gave to the Asiatic and Australian trade the benefit of quick mail communication and large cargo steamships, involving great reduction in transportation

1 Estimated.

charges. It brought Japan within the circle of modern civilisation. It established finally the screw steamship as the effective agent of ocean commerce. Before the Suez Canal, a new thoroughfare of ocean trade had been opened by the development of Australia. The entries and clearances (1895) of the Australian colonies, 6,900,000 tons, are greater than the total foreign trade of the United Kingdom when Melbourne was founded (1837). The discovery of California gold in 1847 added the last great route to the highways of shipping, and the Pacific coast of the United States, if one may prophesy, is to be the base of operations of the large steamship enterprises of the next half-century. The highest types of sailing vessels were developed by the trade around Cape Horn. The American ship Sovereign of the Seas made the voyage in 1851 from Honolulu to New York, 14,970 miles, in eighty-two days. To-day the world's largest cargo steamships are building for the trans-Pacific trade of the United States. Positive measures towards piercing the isthmus between the Atlantic and Pacific will begin with the dawn of the new century.

Whether shipping owes more to Watt than to Bessemer and Siemens is as yet an open question. We have had sixty years of steam navigation and probably know its possibilities and limitations. Steel ships have been built for twenty-one years, and thus far the only limit in sight to the size of the hulls of that material seems to be the depth and width of harbour entrances. MacPherson reports" 965 vessels, measuring 126,268 tuns," built in British possessions in 1800; during 1899 Lloyd's states that 726 vessels of 1,416,791 tons (excluding warships) were launched in the United Kingdom. The first iron ocean steamship, Great Britain (1843), was 2984 gross

To-day 980 ocean steel steamships, each more than 4000 gross tons, conduct nearly one fourth of the world's sea-borne commerce. The two largest steamships of

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