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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78205 ***
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber’s Note
+  Italic text displayed as: _italic_
+
+
+
+
+_BOOKS ON THE SEA BY_
+
+E. KEBLE CHATTERTON
+
+
+_HISTORICAL_
+
+  Q-SHIPS AND THEIR STORY
+  SAILING SHIPS AND THEIR STORY
+  SHIPS AND WAYS OF OTHER DAYS
+  FORE AND AFT: THE STORY OF THE FORE AND AFT RIG
+  STEAMSHIPS AND THEIR STORY
+  THE ROMANCE OF THE SHIP
+  THE STORY OF THE BRITISH NAVY
+  KING’S CUTTERS AND SMUGGLERS
+  THE ROMANCE OF PIRACY
+  THE OLD EAST INDIAMEN
+
+
+_CRUISES_
+
+  DOWN CHANNEL IN THE “VIVETTE”
+  THROUGH HOLLAND IN THE “VIVETTE”
+
+
+
+
+THE MERCANTILE MARINE
+
+
+The Life of Sir Ernest Shackleton. By _Dr. Hugh R. Mill_. Demy 8vo.
+Illustrated.
+
+  Price about 21_s._ net.
+
+The Life & Letters of Walter H. Page. By _Burton J. Hendrick_. In two
+volumes. Sixth impression. Demy 8vo.
+
+  36_s._ net.
+
+The Letters of Lord & Lady Wolseley. Edited by _Sir George Arthur._
+Second impression, with a new index. Demy 8vo.
+
+  25_s._ net.
+
+Knole & the Sackvilles. By _V. Sackville-West_. With many
+illustrations. Second impression. Demy 8vo.
+
+  25_s._ net.
+
+Woodrow Wilson & World Settlement. By _Ray Stannard Baker_. In three
+volumes. Demy 8vo. Vols. I & II, 36_s._ net. Vol. III (sold separately)
+
+  18_s._ net.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+H.E. INDIA COMPANY’S SHIP “WILLIAM FAIRLIE.”
+
+Commanded by Captain Thomas Blair, leaving the harbour of Prince of
+Wales’ Island. About 1828.]
+
+
+
+
+  THE
+  MERCANTILE MARINE
+
+
+  BY
+  E. KEBLE CHATTERTON
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  LONDON
+  WILLIAM HEINEMANN, LTD.
+
+
+
+
+  _First published, 1923_
+
+
+  _Printed in Great Britain_
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This volume is an attempt to trace the history of the Mercantile
+Marine, and to show the reader how much we owe to our ancestors for the
+ingenuity, enterprise, courage and perseverance by which the Merchant
+Service has been built up for the good of nations, the increase of
+trade and the spread of civilisation.
+
+In other volumes I have endeavoured to trace the history of ships.
+The subject here considered is the birth and growth of a sea service,
+without which the navies of the world become useless and indeed could
+never have been brought into being. It is high time that the public
+appreciated all that is meant by the term Mercantile Marine.
+
+The part played by commercial ships as fighting craft during the recent
+war does not enter into this book. This section was largely treated of
+in my _Q-Ships and Their Story_, and other writers have drawn attention
+to the dangers and difficulties of freighters and passenger ships
+carrying on through the period of hostilities. Those four years form
+so small a chapter in the thousands of years during which the trader
+has been winning its way across the seas, that it is unnecessary to
+deal with them here. Our aim is rather to consider the progress of the
+Mercantile Marine as a whole, from the earliest times to the latest
+liner development.
+
+The story here submitted is the result of many years of research,
+travel and ship study. I have had access to many manuscripts and
+printed books too numerous to mention. I desire to return thanks to
+Messrs. T. H. Parker, 12A Berkeley Street, W., for permission to use
+some invaluable, rare prints; and to the Cunard and White Star Lines
+for certain other illustrations of a magnificent service.
+
+  E. KEBLE CHATTERTON.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+   CHAP.                                                            PAGE
+
+      I.  INTRODUCTION                                                 1
+
+     II.  THE DEMAND FOR MERCHANT SHIPPING                             7
+
+    III.  THE MEDITERRANEAN MERCANTILE MARINE                         17
+
+     IV.  THE MERCHANT SHIPS OF THE NORTH                             30
+
+      V.  THE GROWTH OF THE MERCANTILE MARINE                         42
+
+     VI.  THE MERCANTILE MARINE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY              53
+
+    VII.  FISHERMEN AND MERCHANTMEN                                   62
+
+   VIII.  SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SEAFARIN                                75
+
+     IX.  MERCANTILE SUPREMACY AT SEA                                 90
+
+      X.  MIGHTY MERCHANTMEN                                         103
+
+     XI.  PACKET SHIPS AND BRIGS                                     119
+
+    XII.  THE SAIL-CARRIERS                                          134
+
+   XIII.  CRACKING-ON                                                150
+
+    XIV.  THE TRIUMPH OF STEAM                                       168
+
+     XV.  THE IRON AND STEEL AGE                                     182
+
+    XVI.  THE MODERN MERCHANT SHIP                                   194
+
+   XVII.  THE RISE AND FALL OF THE GERMAN MERCANTILE MARINE          208
+
+  XVIII.  THE AMERICAN MERCANTILE MARINE                             220
+
+    XIX.  THE MINOR MERCANTILE MARINES                               229
+
+     XX.  THE FUTURE OF THE MERCANTILE MARINE                        238
+
+  APPENDIX                                                           246
+
+  INDEX                                                              249
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                           _Facing page_
+
+  H.E. INDIA COMPANY’S SHIP “WILLIAM FAIRLIE”             _Frontispiece_
+
+  SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DUTCH EAST INDIAMEN                             74
+
+  SIGNAL CODE                                                         74
+
+  CAPTAIN THOMAS FORREST                                              90
+
+  BRUNSWICK DOCK, BLACKWALL                                           92
+
+  CAPTAIN HENRY WILSON                                                98
+
+  CAPTAIN HON. RICHARD WALPOLE                                        98
+
+  COMMODORE SIR NATHANIEL DANCE                                       98
+
+  SIR WILLIAM JAMES, BART.                                            98
+
+  A CONVOY OF EAST INDIAMEN                                          112
+
+  A FINE PIECE OF SEAMANSHIP                                         118
+
+  CAPTAIN W. ROGERS                                                  122
+
+  CAPTAIN JOSEPH HUDDART, F.R.S.                                     122
+
+  S.S. “NORTHUMBERLAND”                                              144
+
+  AUXILIARY S.S. “KENT”                                              146
+
+  S.S. “NORFOLK”                                                     148
+
+  SAILING NOTICE OF THE WHITE STAR CLIPPER “RED JACKET”              156
+
+  CRACKING-ON!                                                       158
+
+  SPARS AND STAYS                                                    160
+
+  PORT OF LIVERPOOL                                                  164
+
+  SCREW S.S. “LADY JOCELYN”                                          164
+
+  AUXILIARY SCREW S.S. “INDOMITABLE”                                 166
+
+  LORD YARBOROUGH’S YACHT “FALCON”                                   168
+
+  CLIPPER SCREW S.S. “HELLENIS”                                      170
+
+  S.S. “ORINOCO”                                                     170
+
+  TWO EARLY MAIL STEAMSHIPS                                          180
+
+  S.S. “TRIDENT”                                                     182
+
+  THE “ROBERT F. STOCKTON”                                           184
+
+  AN EARLY CROSS-CHANNEL STEAMER                                     184
+
+  THE FAMOUS “GREAT EASTERN”                                         186
+
+  THE FAMOUS “GREAT EASTERN”                                         188
+
+  S.S. “OCEANIC”                                                     190
+
+  S.S. “SULTAN”                                                      192
+
+  S.S. “ORIENT”                                                      192
+
+  S.S. “SPAIN”                                                       194
+
+  THE “BRITANNIC”                                                    196
+
+  THE “CAMPANIA”                                                     196
+
+  BERTHING A BIG LINER                                               198
+
+  MODERN NAVIGATION                                                  200
+
+  S.S. “BERENGARIA”                                                  202
+
+  S.S. “OLYMPIC”                                                     204
+
+  S.S. “MAJESTIC”                                                    204
+
+  ON THE BRIDGE OF THE WORLD’S BIGGEST SHIP                          206
+
+  BIG SHIP MASTERS                                                   208
+
+  STOKEHOLD OF AN OIL-FUEL CUNARDER                                  216
+
+  STARTING PLATFORM                                                  216
+
+  A FAST-DISAPPEARING SHIP TYPE                                      236
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+It is curious to observe how thoroughly most of us are the slaves of
+habit, how limited we are in our imagination and sympathies until
+something surprising, far-reaching and inevitable upsets our routine,
+introduces a new force into our life and compels us to take note of
+fresh interests.
+
+Until the recent war most people took the Mercantile Marine for
+granted. In a vague sort of way the average person believed in it, but
+rarely if ever stopped to consider what it meant or whether it had any
+history. It was sufficient to concede the fact that there were steamers
+running every week to most parts of the globe, and that passengers
+and goods could be carried as convenient. But there was not the same
+enthusiasm extended to the Mercantile Marine as there was to the doings
+of the Royal Navies; and unless some new mammoth steamship advertised
+herself by her size, speed or luxury, the Merchant Service was allowed
+to continue its all-important work unheeded and almost despised.
+
+But then came the sudden change, which gave an entirely different
+viewpoint. How few of us ever realise our good fortune until it
+is taken away from our hold! The increasing success of the U-boat
+campaign, culminating in the enormous sinkings of merchantmen in April
+1917, and the consequent shortage of food in the British Isles, caused
+the inhabitants for the first time in their lives to appreciate all
+that they owed to the Mercantile Marine. It was then—and not till
+then—they reminded themselves that the food supplies, which formed the
+necessities of life, were brought into the country by a service whose
+very existence had almost been ignored.
+
+Every meal and every food-card, every little inconvenience in regard
+to hunger, henceforth turned people’s minds back to the prime cause;
+and those who had been the most ignorant of seafaring matters now
+began to think in terms of tonnage. From that time the average man and
+woman and school-child have never ceased to be thankful that we had a
+marine, whose duty was not to fight, but to keep us supplied with the
+essentials of existence. Admiral of the Fleet Earl Beatty recently
+said that the Mercantile Marine was a branch of that great sea service
+without which the British Empire would cease to exist. In a normal
+year, he said, the amount of food supplies forming the necessities of
+life which are brought into the British Isles and taken out consists of
+150,000,000 tons. Without the one service to carry these food supplies,
+and the Royal Navy to protect the commercial craft on their lawful
+occasions, the reader can now well imagine how long starvation would be
+kept away.
+
+Thus we are about to trace the story of a service that is not merely
+well deserving of our interest and enthusiasm, but is in itself so
+fascinating that we shall feel almost ashamed that we never conceded
+so much attention until harsh circumstances compelled us to reflect.
+In order to maintain our bread and meat supplies, in order to prevent
+overseas trade from utterly vanishing during those terrible years of
+hostilities, 15,000 men of the Mercantile Marine perished. That in
+itself would be a sufficient reason for inquiring into the history of
+their service; but, quite apart from that, there is the plea that the
+Mercantile Marine is the older of the two branches of the sea service,
+for out of it grew the fighting service only years after man had learnt
+to handle vessels.
+
+Over those far-distant periods when the ancient seaman was groping his
+way towards knowledge we shall not require to spend much time. In other
+volumes I have already traced the evolution of the ship from a crude
+creature to a thing of beauty. Nor shall we need to be concerned with
+the horrors of war. Our task is the pleasant and glorious study of
+watching brave men creating a peaceable marine that will be the means
+of interchanging commerce over seas at first uncharted; bringing back
+new ideas and then taking out civilisation. All the time it is one big
+struggle, varying only in kind and intensity. It is one long, strenuous
+effort to achieve; and because it is all so human it demands our
+attention all the while, as we sympathise with the incessant attempts
+to overcome all sorts of obstacles.
+
+The human race springs from the land: consequently all the arts
+of the sea have to be learnt from the beginning, and this means
+centuries of experience, many disappointments and enormous faith and
+courage. But human aspirations cannot be gainsaid. Progress will not
+be denied. Man is not content to remain where he was, and that is
+the basis of the whole story. The Egyptians created their Mercantile
+Marine almost exclusively for the Nile. It was the Phœnicians who
+felt the overwhelming desire to traverse the Mediterranean, and even
+to go outside the gates we call the Straits of Gibraltar. The Greeks
+inherited from the Phœnicians a ship which they modified but little,
+as the Phœnicians had from the Egyptians.
+
+But whereas the Egyptians were a peace-loving race, and therefore their
+ships were not built for fighting, we find the Greeks constructing
+two distinct types of craft, and it is important to get this quite
+clear at once, as the reader will presently agree. First there was the
+swift-moving galley, relying chiefly on oars. She was built for the
+purposes of fighting, and therefore does not enter into our subject.
+But secondly there was the slow-moving, big-bellied craft, relying
+almost entirely on her one mast and sail, which was used for the
+purpose of trade from spring to autumn, and then laid up until the good
+weather returned once more. Think of her with her great square-sail
+going across to Egypt to bring back corn, calling at Rhodes on the way,
+getting caught in terrible weather, but year after year, century after
+century, doing the same voyages as a new generation of seamen grew up.
+
+So it was with the Roman merchant ships from every March to November,
+blundering on their trans-Mediterranean voyages as corn-carriers. These
+seamen were, as always sailors have been and will be, a race apart. In
+the mind of most people nobody but a fool or a madman ever takes up a
+seafaring career. Seamen were very scarce and had to be allowed special
+privileges; and merchants who travelled in their ships marvelled that
+they could use the stars for finding their way over the dark waters at
+night. But the transportation of goods over the sea had to be done.
+The shipowners formed themselves into corporations, and membership was
+handed down from father to son, much as it is in a fishing village
+to-day.
+
+One of the oldest professions is that of piracy. In those days a pirate
+was not so much a sea bandit as a sea adventurer; the Greek word
+_peirates_ and its Latin equivalent signifying one who _attempts_ or
+_tries_ his fortune on the sea, much as we speak of the Elizabethan
+“venturers.” None the less, until the growth of naval power piracy
+always was the great enemy of the merchant ship; and even in Roman
+times it at length became so serious that drastic measures had to be
+taken to stamp it out, only to keep on recurring like a cancerous
+growth until the age of steam practically wiped it out except in
+Chinese waters. Over and over again in the following chapters we shall
+see the innocent, cargo-carrying ship molested in this manner; but, for
+all that, the seaman’s spirit remained undaunted, and the trade of the
+world continued to be carried over the seas in spite of these known
+risks. As it was in the Mediterranean, so it was later on in the North
+Sea.
+
+From about 580 B.C. right down to the time of the Roman conquest,
+the Liparian Isles were practically a republic of corsairs. The
+Ionians and the Lycians were notorious pirates: the Ægean, the
+Pontus and the Adriatic were the corsairs’ cruising grounds. The
+Cretans, the inhabitants of the Balearic Islands, the Cilicians, the
+Carthaginians, the Illyrians and others, also, were the piratical
+terrors to the Mediterranean merchant ships; and it was only as long
+as Rome maintained a strong navy that the cancerous growth was kept
+under, though not finally eradicated. Thus, in those early periods
+when there was little enough to encourage it, the Mercantile Marine
+of classical times struggled along, comparatively small in numbers
+compared with the fleets of fighting galleys, but historically of the
+highest importance, since from this small flame was to burst a great
+blaze of light that has illumined the world; spread Christianity and
+civilisation, learning, exploration, trade and peace. Those little,
+beamy, single-sail, unhandy craft wallowing in the Mediterranean seas,
+suffering so much at the hands of pirates, buffeted about by storms
+and compelled to spend such long periods away from their home ports,
+were playing a lonely, uphill game; but they were achieving more than
+they could ever realise in the development of the world. Pioneers of
+the sea, undertaking the utmost risks, they have made all subsequent
+centuries their debtors as long as ships continue to be built and
+the seas shall be traversed. Such, briefly, are the first stage and
+the very remote period of the merchant ship in its long and glorious
+evolution of usefulness. Let us now see how, influenced by progressive
+trade, the Mediterranean continued to develop its shipping.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE DEMAND FOR MERCHANT SHIPPING
+
+
+In our own age so many amazing developments have taken place during the
+nineteenth and twentieth centuries that we must not be misled. These
+are the exceptions and not the rule in history. Between the merchant
+ships of the late Roman Empire and of the next few centuries there is
+no evidence to cause us to think the ships materially altered. On the
+contrary, what little evidence we have goes to show that the cargo
+ship, with her mast, yard and square-sail, continued to be much the
+same in the thirteenth century as she was in the third, if we add a
+mizzen-mast and a lateen sail.
+
+But all this time the Mediterranean trade had been developing, and
+collaterally there was developed a Mercantile Marine. As the years
+sped by, there came greater demands for the merchant ship. Thus in the
+epistles of Cassiodorus, who was prætorian prefect under Theodoric
+(A.D. 495-526), there is a dispatch to the tribunes of the “maritimi,”
+or men of the seaboard, bidding them provide for the transport of
+wine from Istria to Ravenna; and there is a reference to the frequent
+voyages over the “immense spaces of the sea.”[1] By the eighth century
+Venice was becoming a great trading port, and its merchants were
+realising what the sea meant to them in regard to wealth. Indeed, they
+even went so far as to sell Christian men as slaves to the Saracens in
+Africa, thus incurring the Pope’s censure.
+
+To Constantinople Venetian merchant ships sailed with goods or
+passengers, as, for instance, in the year 968, carrying Bishop
+Luitprand thither. In fact, by the year 1000 the city of Venice was
+pre-eminent in commerce, and its princes were merchants. Overseas
+trading was at last recognised as a means to wealth, and so,
+inevitably, by about 1171 the Venetian Navy becomes organised. That
+was bound to come as soon as the Mercantile Marine became important;
+but it was arranged rather on the lines of our Naval Reserve. For all
+ordinary occasions it consisted of volunteers, for whose service there
+was payment, and these citizens were also entitled to prize money.
+
+Indeed, throughout nautical history the navies of the world have always
+been based on the Merchant Service. In these early days of Venice,
+while Dalmatia, Istria and other communities supplied the men, Venice
+provided the ships and rigging, the rest of the inventory and the
+crew being forthcoming from the dependencies. Finally, in the time of
+emergency hired seamen were obtained from foreign countries with whom
+the Venetian commercial ships had traded.
+
+He who visits Venice, or is familiar with Ruskin’s _Stones of Venice_,
+or at least has admired in some gallery the paintings of the great
+Venetian masters, must inevitably think of the sea. Those richly
+designed palaces, those luxuriant examples of architecture and art,
+were expressive of a city grown wealthy by reason of her sea trade.
+Her merchants amassed wealth because their ships enabled them to
+trade—the sea is, in fact, the greatest road to riches. And the history
+of Phœnicia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Venice, Portugal, Spain, Holland,
+England in the past, and quite recently Germany, Japan and the United
+States, is the story of overseas trade by means of merchant shipping.
+Most important of all have always been the sea routes to the Orient,
+for Eastern produce has ever fetched high prices in European countries.
+As we look through the centuries of sea trade it was the fascination
+of the East which spurred men to build, fit out and sail ships. It was
+this which gave the incentive to make navigation a science; it was this
+which created the spirit to explore unknown seas; it was this which
+sent Columbus, later on, to the West in the hope of finding the East
+Indies. The whole story of the East India Company—indeed of our Indian
+Empire—is built up on the invaluable products which could be fetched
+thence by peaceable shipping.
+
+It was in the seventh century that the twelve townships decided to
+elect one supreme magistrate, called the “doge.” Venice thus insisted
+on her own independence, and her geographical position enabled her to
+rise into a consummate commercial state. Not merely did she eventually
+dominate the Adriatic, but step by step she absorbed all the carrying
+trade of the world. Keen, enterprising men of vision and foresight,
+these Venetian merchants went far afield, in spite of the difficulties
+and dangers of travel. For centuries the Chinese had been sending
+merchant ships as far west as Ceylon, whence Indian ships carried the
+silk and other goods a stage further west to the Persian Gulf; and
+afterwards, as there was no Suez Canal, a land journey intervened until
+the Mediterranean was reached. Thus, by the early years of the Middle
+Ages, the Venetian ships of commerce brought across the Mediterranean
+and up the Adriatic the costly skins, the peacocks’ tails, the purple
+garments and other enviable articles which had come from India, the
+Caspian shores and elsewhere. In the end, Venice captured the great
+trade to India and China, and Constantinople was left behind in the
+competition.
+
+But that was not all. Already by the seventh century the rise of
+Moslem power had become such that in southern Europe Arab dominion had
+obtained control of the Levant and Egypt. Presently the whole of the
+north African coast, from the Nile to the Atlantic, fell under this
+sway, and during the eighth century the Arabs overran Spain, southern
+and central France, until in the same century they were forced back
+across the Pyrenees. How does this affect the rise of the Mercantile
+Marine? The answer is this. The Arabs were excellent sailors who were
+also expert navigators, and incidentally the very word “admiral,”
+which still survives in the sea service of all civilised powers, is an
+Arabic word. The Arabs took to trading, and that meant the employment
+of ships in the Mediterranean; so they introduced the triangular lateen
+sail from east of Suez, and to this day the lateen has survived as the
+characteristic local sail of Mediterranean craft. Thus between Venice
+and Africa overseas trade was created, business made still further
+business, and that in turn created a demand for shipping and for men
+who would use the sea as a career. Later on it was the Arabs who were
+to teach the Spaniards and Portuguese so much about navigation that
+India and America were discovered.
+
+In the early years of the Middle Ages, then, we have the Arabian and
+the Venetian ships trading about the Mediterranean, though frequently
+the former became corsairs and made havoc of the latter, even going to
+the length of raiding the Adriatic. But so far the peaceable Venetian
+craft were literally merchant ships: they existed for the purpose
+of carrying merchandise. There enters now another element—religion.
+The Catholic faith, trade, pilgrims, crusades and Arabs—all these
+influences had the greatest possible effect on the development of
+merchant shipping. It will be remembered that in the seventh century
+the Arabs had wrested the Holy Land from the Eastern Empire, but it was
+not until the latter part of the eleventh century that western Europe
+was really moved to action. Finally, in 1095, a holy war against the
+infidel was resolved, and there followed the first crusade; and in this
+expedition Venetian ships took part. The most famous crusade of all was
+that in which the English king Richard Cœur de Lion engaged, and this
+ended in a truce with Saladin by September 1192, on the understanding
+that pilgrims should be permitted to visit Jerusalem without being
+interfered with by the Moslems.
+
+Thus, we have in the fact of the Holy Land a magnetic attraction for
+the ship. In order to carry armies and horses and pilgrims, whether
+from England or Venice, to the coast of Syria, you must needs have
+large numbers of ships, and of fair size and seaworthiness. This series
+of voyages created also a much larger body of seamen and amassed a
+tremendous amount of sea-knowledge from experience. In a word, then,
+it was a new and enormous impetus to the development of the world’s
+Mercantile Marine, as opposed to the purely warlike fast-moving naval
+galley. The demand now was for tonnage—to carry human beings as well
+as goods. Thus, notwithstanding that the crusades originated from a
+strictly religious motive, actually they exercised a most remarkable
+stimulus on trade, shipping and travel. Men who had never been
+previously outside their own city or village became acquainted with the
+sea, strange ships, new lands and novel ideas. They returned home with
+fresh aspirations, the desire to carry on extended commerce, and the
+realisation that shipping was the key to future riches.
+
+To trace the fitting out of all the crusades would be to go outside
+the scope of our immediate subject, but it is enough if we look for
+a moment at the direct effect crusading had on the Venetian shipping
+industry. The gates, so to speak, whence middle Europe could gain
+access to the Holy Land were Venice, Genoa and Marseilles. Seven
+years after Richard Cœur de Lion had made the truce with Saladin and
+left Palestine, a new crusade was being prepared for; and inasmuch as
+Venice was so distinguished a seaport, envoys came to arrange for large
+quantities of shipping. Landsmen knew practically nothing about the
+sea and ships. They were no better informed than the farmer of to-day
+resident all his life in the middle of the United States; so they
+arrived asking for advice, information and generally to be put in the
+way of obtaining tonnage sufficient to carry 4500 knights, 9000 squires
+and 20,000 men-at-arms. This was no small order, even for Venice, quite
+apart from the further request for fifty armed galleys to accompany
+and protect the expedition. It meant, in fact, the creation of an
+immense Mercantile Marine at really quite short notice. Indeed it was
+comparatively a much bigger task than the sudden demand for tonnage in
+1917 and 1918, when the thousands and thousands of soldiers had to be
+packed into steamships and brought from North America to Europe.
+
+Venice rose to the occasion, for it was not merely a matter of business
+to provide the shipping, but a matter of religion. The Holy Sepulchre
+was in the hands of the infidels: that in itself was a sufficient
+inspiration. And so about Pentecost in the year 1202 we can see the
+hordes of pilgrims pouring down through the various passes of the Alps
+to Venice. It was a huge business, and action in those days was slow
+and, to our modern minds, dilatory. But the Venetians had got the ships
+ready for the knights and squires and men and horses, though it was
+autumn before they put to sea. Some of the cloth and provisions had
+arrived in Venice in French ships via the Straits of Gibraltar, and
+eventually, on October 9, the galleys and horseboats set forth from the
+Adriatic port, and a month later appeared before Zara.
+
+During the Middle Ages the three great maritime powers were Venice,
+Genoa and Pisa, and between them there was the greatest rivalry, so
+that scarcely ever did two of the parties meet than there was conflict.
+But Venice, being the pre-eminent, incurred the greatest amount of
+jealousy. The part which Venice and Genoa played in maritime history
+is not confined to what they did in any particular century, but lies
+rather in the fact that they kept alive and developed the seaman’s art;
+until, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Venetians made
+a crude map which put into form the ideas that inspired the first
+Italian voyages in the Atlantic, and Genoa in the next century produced
+Columbus, who, after being wrecked in a sea-fight with some Venetian
+galleys off the Portuguese coast, settled down in Lisbon and eventually
+set forth on his historic voyage to the West.
+
+Ever since the second Punic War Genoa had been a big and important
+seaport. Becoming a free city in 958, she had suffered much from
+the Saracen raids, but when these infidel corsairs seemed likely to
+establish themselves in Sardinia at the beginning of the eleventh
+century, the Genoese and Pisan seamen united together against a common
+foe, fitted out an expedition and hurled the Arab chief back to Africa.
+In 1087 the Genoese and Pisans were sent by the Pope to dislodge
+one Temim, a pirate chief who lived south of Tunis. The result was
+important to the shipping industry; for, having beaten him and captured
+his stronghold, the two cities stipulated for the free admission
+of their merchant ships to trade with the Tunisian coast. Thus, in
+clearing the seas of corsairs for a time, they also directly stimulated
+their own commerce.
+
+Pisan merchant ships as far back as 1052 had been trading to Egypt
+and the Levant, and in 1063 Ingulf, Abbot of Croyland in England, had
+returned from a pilgrimage in a Genoese merchant ship he had found at
+Jaffa. But it was not until the year 1090 that the conquest of Sicily
+was effected from the Mussulman hands, and thus the Straits of Messina
+became safe for shipping, and the vessels from Genoa and Pisa could go
+ahead in safety with their Levantine trade. By the twelfth century,
+Genoese, Venetian and Pisan seamen and merchants used to meet at Acre,
+to their great financial benefit, though not without manifestations of
+commercial jealousy. But we must dismiss from our minds all thoughts
+of single ships sailing across from Italy to the Syrian coast when
+they liked. There was hardly a time when there were not some pirates
+or corsairs hovering about; so the seas might be rid of one chief,
+but rendered dangerous by the rovings of another. Thus it was that
+shipowners had to do exactly what British mercantile owners were
+compelled to resort to in the latter part of the Great War, when the
+enemy was attacking so many of our trading craft—the convoy system had
+to be employed.
+
+Thus, from Venice, for instance, at regular intervals a convoy of
+merchant ships would sail for Acre, escorted by as many as thirty or
+forty galleys sometimes, as protection against piratical attack. If
+the Venice-Acre trade route were cut, it would mean that the French,
+the Germans, the Lombards, the Tuscans and other merchants would not
+receive the silks, sugar, pepper and other very valuable Oriental
+produce which the Venetians were bringing across in their ships. Thus
+the navy of Venice was charged with the duty of protecting its merchant
+fleet from the attacks of Genoese, Greek or Arab pirates. Just as
+during our recent war convoys used to collect at Falmouth and other
+ports prior to beginning their ocean voyage, so in the Middle Ages the
+convoy—called a _mudia_—would collect at Venice, bound for Syria or
+Egypt. There were only two convoys in the year, so the number of ships
+was large, and well needed the strong galley protection. One convoy
+left Venice in the spring and got back home in September; the other
+left in August, spent the winter abroad, and returned in the following
+May. In addition to these commercial convoys, there were also the
+pilgrim convoys to Palestine. Genoa sent one convoy a year to Syria and
+Egypt, but during the fourteenth century her ships were cruising in the
+Black Sea and harassing Venetian craft which had penetrated the Sea of
+Azov.
+
+Sea-travel in those mediæval times was thus no pleasure cruise: it
+was comparable only to the anxious experiences of passengers at the
+height of the recent submarine campaign. Except for religion or
+trade, no one ever thought of going to sea. It was too dangerous
+an undertaking, so punctuated with storms, and in all respects so
+thoroughly uncomfortable, that it was to be avoided as far as possible.
+Consequently those who used it as a living expected to be paid very
+handsomely. It is difficult in these modern times, with all the safety
+and luxury which a steamship connotes, to realise the horror with which
+all seafaring was regarded. The result was that artists hesitated
+to depict marine subjects; and even when they did, it was usually
+to show a ship having a dreadful time in heavy weather. It is for
+that reason that illustrations of mediæval ships are so few, either
+in stained-glass windows, carvings, devotional books, or paintings.
+People had no wish to be reminded of what was to them a very unpleasant
+subject, except to those hardened few who preferred ship-life to
+agriculture or trade ashore. Unlike present-day conditions, the
+merchant himself was compelled to go to sea. There was no other means
+of his reaching his markets; but he was heartily thankful to get
+himself and his goods safe into port.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] _The Early History of Venice_, by F. C. Hodgson. London, 1901. I
+wish also to acknowledge indebtedness to the same author’s _Venice in
+the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE MEDITERRANEAN MERCANTILE MARINE
+
+
+It is fortunately possible to obtain from various sources an insight
+into life as it was endured in a mediæval Mediterranean merchant ship,
+and this will assist us considerably to form a sympathetic interest in
+the development which was going on towards the ideal craft that was to
+evolve five or six hundred years later.
+
+On a tomb in a church at Milan, a Pisan artist named Balduccio in
+the year 1339 sculptured, fortunately for our knowledge, a merchant
+ship of his time, and we may regard her as typical alike of Venice,
+Genoa and Pisa. There is remarkably little difference in essentials
+between her and a Roman merchant ship of about A.D. 200: that is to
+say, the trading shipmen, having once found out a suitable type, stuck
+to it, just as to-day there is a more or less standard type of tramp
+steamer or steam trawler or steam drifter. Time had tested and given
+its approval. Thus in Balduccio’s illustration we have a round, beamy
+vessel not unlike the shape of a very fat banana, and with a stern
+sweeping up from the water-line not altogether unlike that of the
+so-called modern “cruiser stern.” The essential difference is that
+this stern culminates in two small decks—a stern-castle, in fact, and
+a forecastle, much smaller, overhanging the bows. There is also a
+fighting-top.
+
+Although this is emphatically a cargo vessel, these castles and
+fighting-top are there for the reasons already indicated by existing
+conditions at sea, and in this elaborate castellation with even small
+galleries aft we have the half-way house between the earlier and later
+Mediterranean merchantman: between the cargo-carrier of Rome and
+the carack, which was to develop into the galleon, thence into the
+East Indiaman, and eventually into the glorious clippers of the late
+nineteenth century. Thus this Pisan ship is for us most interesting,
+and she still links herself to primitive times by the use of one single
+square-sail and the old-fashioned method of steering by means of a
+rudder, not aft, but on the quarter. It is controlled by a tiller, but
+supported by tackles fore and aft, for it is now as heavy as a Thames
+sailing barge’s leeboards.
+
+Everything about this Pisan craft indicates that she was well and
+strongly built, and that expense was not spared. The elaborate work in
+her stern galleries, the influence of contemporary land architecture
+on her forecastle, the stout, thick rubbing strakes under which the
+ends of the beam come flush, the good strong rigging (three shrouds
+each side with tackles), the thick cable and the anchor secured to a
+shelf outside the hull on the starboard side—all these details show
+that the sculptor knew what he was depicting, and that the ship which
+he copied was a real sea-going vessel as used by genuine sailormen, and
+not the inaccurate muddled idea of an imaginative artist. The Pisans,
+the Venetians and Genoese were making plenty of money, and they could
+afford to send to sea a well-built, well-designed and well-found craft
+that would not cause the merchants to feel nervous about their valuable
+Eastern goods in the hold.
+
+With a mental picture before us of this slow, beamy, stout ship, built
+specially for seaworthiness and capacity to carry goods, rather than
+to excel in mobility, we can continue our study, and we shall be able
+to learn a great deal of the conditions prevailing in the mediæval
+Merchant Service if we examine the legal literature of the time. For
+obvious reasons, when there was so much coming and going and so much
+money at stake, maritime law began to assert itself from about the
+seventh century A.D. onwards, until, about six centuries later, we have
+practically every contingency catered for. Between the eighth and the
+thirteenth centuries there was very little alteration in the ships,
+the navigation and the manner of sea-trading. The big change comes
+in the thirteenth century, when the commercial renaissance begins,
+which, thanks to these vessels, made the great literary and artistic
+renaissance possible, gave to the world the new learning, the golden
+age of art, and left behind those wonderful achievements in stone. The
+merchant ship, therefore, is the basis of all in life that we respect
+and venerate.
+
+By 1255 Venice had its maritime law, though it was the old so-called
+Rhodian sea-law,[2] which inspired the regulating of the mediæval
+merchant ships all the time. The size of a ship was reckoned not in
+tons, but in _amphoræ_ or else in _modii_. An amphora represented
+about six gallons, a modios was the equivalent of about two gallons.
+Thus a ship with all her tackle was valued at fifty pieces of gold
+for every thousand modii of her capacity, though this was further
+varied according to her age. Port dues at Ancona, for instance, were
+calculated on the valuation of the ship.
+
+Now it is necessary once more to think of the conditions of service
+afloat in those days as something quite different from those in our
+modern Mercantile Marines, where, in spite of trades unions, the
+captain is supreme and the crew simply carry out his orders, and the
+passengers have to go wherever he takes them. In those days there was,
+comparatively speaking, little knowledge of the sea except what was
+obtained by personal experience. Thus a much-travelled merchant who
+went backwards and forwards each year to the East would be almost as
+competent as the master of the ship. Similarly the crew. The result
+was—and it seems very strange to us moderns—that the ship was run not
+on a well-disciplined principle, as every one obeying blindly the
+master’s orders, but on a communal basis, backed up by the maritime
+law. Sometimes, it is true, the sailors were paid fixed wages, in which
+case they were also given their food; but frequently they undertook the
+voyage on a profit-sharing basis. Thus the master received two shares,
+the steersman one and a half, the master’s mate one and a half, the
+boatswain one and a half, while each sailor got a whole share, and
+the cook half a share. It was therefore to the interest of all to do
+everything to get the ship safely from port to port.
+
+The little difference which existed between master, officers, men and
+merchants enabled them all in an emergency to offer their opinions
+as to weather, pilotage and so on, a decision being arrived at by
+the vote of the majority. All this sounds thoroughly unseamanlike to
+us, but that is because the seafaring art has long since become so
+perfect and systematised, and the division of labour recognised as
+a root essential. It was perfectly legal for the merchants, with
+their valuable goods on board, to insist on the ship being taken into
+a harbour, or to prevent her putting to sea notwithstanding all the
+protests of the _naukleros_ or shipmaster. The identity of ignorance
+among all on board, with the casting vote in favour of finance, bred
+chaos and ill-discipline, that had to be put down with a firm hand
+later on, as soon there arose competent navigators and specialists in
+seamanship; but the time had not yet come.
+
+No one can possibly envy the life in a merchant ship of the Middle
+Ages, with every possible opportunity for friction and the captain
+not allowed a free hand. The passenger came on board in fear and
+trepidation, bringing with him his own bed and bed-coverings, which,
+as happened in 1278, for instance, were stolen from him occasionally.
+A proper cabin he could not have, the sleeping space permitted to him
+being three cubits long and one cubit wide. Under the Venetian statutes
+every merchant or mariner could take on board free one mattress; the
+former could also have one trunk, but this was not allowed to his
+servant. The passengers brought with them for the voyage all their
+food, wine, cooking utensils, and even their firewood, but there were
+special precautions taken to guard against fire, which was one of the
+eternal terrors in all ships even down to the nineteenth century. Thus
+there is a curious regulation preventing passengers in Venetian ships
+from frying fish, and another forbidding them to split wood. Water was
+supplied free both to passengers and crew, but this was controlled by
+measure, for economical reasons.
+
+Arrived on board, the passenger would deposit his gold with the captain
+for safe keeping. He lived on biscuits, salt meat, vegetables, cheese,
+onions, garlic and vinegar, and there was a Barcelona ordinance of 1258
+which compelled the shipowner to keep a supply of food to last fifteen
+days, and this was to include bread, wine, salt meat, vegetables, oil
+and water. As regards victualling, cargo ships found it easier than
+pilgrim ships, for the former could usually hug the shore and put into
+the land for provisions. Indeed it was one of the characteristics of
+a good pilot that he knew where the ship could obtain fresh drinking
+water.
+
+The merchant, with his costly goods, out of which he hoped to make
+big profits, found himself in the company of rough mariners who were
+lacking the innocence of the carved saints in a cathedral. Thieving
+was going on all the time whenever there was a chance. Nowadays you
+sometimes hear one seaman describe another as so dishonest that
+he would steal the ship’s anchor if he could. It is an obvious
+exaggeration, but the expression was perfectly accurate in the times
+of which we are now speaking. There was a passage in the maritime law
+which dealt with this species of theft. Thus, it runs, if a ship not
+under way was robbed of her anchors, and the thief was caught and
+confessed, he was to be flogged and to make good twice the damage.
+Similarly, if a sailor robbed a merchant or the captain, he was to be
+punished, and there are penalties laid down against swearing, blasphemy
+and other vices.
+
+In these wooden ships, which often “worked,” and had to go through
+heavy weather, the merchant would sometimes find his beautiful Oriental
+silks ruined; so there was a regulation that when the water began
+to rise in the hold the captain was to let the merchants know at
+once, so that they could bring their linens and silks up on deck. But
+apart from these risks there were those caused by bad seamanship, the
+attacks by pirates at sea or robbers in harbour, the evil men who did
+not hesitate to cut the cables of the visiting ship or waylay the
+merchants and crew as soon as they came ashore; and there were the
+wreckers who deliberately displayed false lights to lure the ship into
+destruction—surely one of the lowest of all maritime crimes that could
+be devised by the cunning of man.
+
+It was laid down that if a ship “in sail” ran into another ship lying
+at anchor, or which had “slackened sail,” and it was during daylight,
+the damage was to be borne by the captain, by those on board and by the
+cargo. But if the incident occurred at night, the man who “slackened
+sail” should have lit a fire or have shouted. Be it remembered that
+these merchant ships, though the most seaworthy of any craft then in
+existence, were very unhandy and not always under control in narrow
+channels. It was impossible for any regulation of man to prevent them
+encountering bad weather and even experiencing shipwreck, but by laying
+these ships up in November, and not allowing them to sail until the
+following March, the authorities were following the wise custom which
+had been handed down since classical times, and embodied this practice
+in their law. Against the corsair who attacked the ships of his
+country’s enemies, and against the pirate who attacked every ship that
+came his way, there could be no absolute guarantee unless the ship was
+in a convoy escorted by armed galleys.
+
+But these corsairs made no false pretence about their work, and when
+in 1165 the Pisans asked Trepedecinus, a well-known Genoese corsair,
+where he was going, he merely replied that he was going to capture
+them, their goods, their persons and cut off their noses. It was
+therefore not unusual to carry in these trading ships some men-at-arms
+with swords, shields and helmets. Thus, in a charter-party of 1236
+there is laid down that there are to be twenty-five mariners on board,
+of whom ten are to be in armour. Quite apart from the convoy system,
+it was customary for two or more ships to voyage in company for mutual
+protection, the technical term for this being _conservagium_. It was
+an arrangement that was mutual also in quite another manner, for if
+one of the ships was sunk, the loss was spread among the others in the
+consort—a still further instance of the sharing-out principle which was
+so common at sea in these times.
+
+Gradually, then, the Mercantile Marine had become indispensable
+to trade and to intellectual progress, but it was the growth of
+pilgrim traffic which made certain landsmen affluent; for now men
+called _cargatores_, or passenger agents, arranged the business
+of transporting these devout people across the sea, and therefore
+stringent regulations had to be passed to prevent the travellers from
+being fleeced. Thus the _cargatores_ were compelled to supply the
+pilgrims with good and adequate victuals; and, in order to prevent any
+bribery or corruption, they were forbidden to enter into partnership
+with the shipowner in regard to the food. Of course this was no small
+undertaking at a period of the world’s history when there were no
+such things as preserved meats or refrigerating chambers, especially
+when the ships were crowded with a lot of sea-sick landsmen who had
+never previously beheld the sea. All those who voyaged from Venice or
+Marseilles had to carry enough food to last them for fifty days, and
+in those rough ships and the Mediterranean climate you can imagine
+the state of the food at the end of seven weeks. No wonder that a
+pilgrimage was a real act of self-denial!
+
+It was customary in classical times to give names to the Mediterranean
+ships, and this survived through the Middle Ages, where we find such
+names as _Urso_, _Oliva_, _Aquila_, _Christiana_, _Cidona_, _St.
+Blazius_. The Genoese ship went by the name of her shipmaster or owner.
+After she had been built and fitted out, the greatest care was taken
+to see that she was seaworthy and not overloaded. Thus the internal
+arrangements, the ballasting and stowing of goods in the hold were all
+supervised. The Venetian statutes kept a very tight control over their
+shipping, regulating the places where the cabins were to be put, where
+the sail locker should be, where the ship’s tackle was stored, and the
+sleeping arrangements both for the merchants and the sailors. No detail
+seems to have been too small for State supervision.
+
+The stowing of the cargo in the hold was left to the discretion of
+the shipmaster, and there was a kind of Plimsoll mark used in these
+Venetian ships; for this is what happened. On the outside of the hull a
+mark was put, the ship was then loaded and examined officially before
+setting forth on her voyage, and she was not allowed to proceed to sea
+if this mark was more than a certain depth below the water-line, this
+depth varying according to the ship’s age. If the mark were submerged
+too much, a sufficient quantity of cargo had to be taken out until
+she came up to her marks, and then the owner was fined. This was the
+general rule, but exceptions were made in the case of craft sailing
+within the Venetian Gulf or carrying victuals.
+
+The ballasting of the merchant ships was done either by the navigating
+officer or else under the direction of a committee composed of this
+officer and representatives of owners and merchants. But when once the
+vessel had been properly ballasted, it was forbidden to remove any
+ballast except for necessity in entering port, or with the consent of
+the merchants or committee, though certain heavy articles, such as
+lead, were permitted to be substituted for ballast. The heavy goods
+were, of course, placed as low as possible, though such articles as
+wrought silks and other light goods were allowed to be stowed on the
+upper deck, where also food, carpenter’s tools and armour could be
+placed.
+
+The owner of the ship was also at times her master, but when the
+owner did not himself go to sea and himself appointed the master, he
+contracted to carry the passengers and cargo, purchased the tackle and
+engaged the seamen. Right down to Elizabethan times the navigation
+of the ship was not necessarily carried out by the captain, but
+by the pilot, though in the early days of Mediterranean merchant
+shipping the masters seem to have been navigators as well, or, more
+accurately, pilots. If the ship got wrecked there was, according to an
+old constitution of A.D. 380, a practice of obtaining the true facts
+of the incident in a manner far more drastic than a modern Board of
+Trade Inquiry; for certain members of the crew would be selected as
+witnesses, and they were then tortured until they should speak the
+whole truth and nothing but the truth.
+
+The communal idea even went to the length of having sometimes several
+skippers on the same ship, in order that no one should act without
+the consent of the others; and what with the interfering advice and
+remonstrances of the merchants and the not too disciplined crews, no
+mercantile officer of to-day would find mediæval seafaring endurable.
+The mariners could only be kept in check by the drastic law. Thus, if
+one of them injured another, the first was to pay his wages to the
+other during the whole time that the sick man was out of employment
+recovering. Conversely the captain was prevented from maltreating his
+men, and had to look after them. For instance, if the ship’s long
+boat with some of the crew in it should break adrift from the ship,
+the captain had to pay the lost men’s representatives their wages for
+a whole year, in those cases where the men were in receipt of wages
+instead of a share of the profits.
+
+There were plenty of opportunities for disgruntled mariners to forsake
+the ship at the ports of call. In order to check this, the man who
+deserted his ship was liable to forfeit double his wages received or
+due. The usual custom was to engage the hands from the 1st of March
+to the last day of November, and they received their pay on the 1st
+of March, the 1st of June and the 1st of September. This did not mean
+that the vessel necessarily put to sea at the beginning of March, but
+in order to be sure of his men the _naukleros_ hired them before they
+were actually required. Having once been engaged, the mariners were
+forbidden by statute to leave the city, but at Pisa, when the ship was
+about to sail, a crier was sent round collecting the men.
+
+It was not part of their duty to load or unload the cargo: that was
+done by the stevedores, but it did fall to them to ballast the ship.
+Each mariner, on being engaged, took an oath that he would carry out
+his duties, and he had to obey the master. The only occasions on which
+he could justifiably quit his ship were if he were made captain of
+another ship, or if he had made a vow to go on a pilgrimage to St.
+James or the Holy Sepulchre or Rome. On the other hand, he could be
+dismissed for theft, quarrelling, repeated disobedience, blasphemy
+or debauchery. At Pisa, if a mariner made a disturbance on board,
+the captain and other officials could put him into irons, and if he
+resisted they could strike him even to the drawing of blood.
+
+No merchant of the twentieth century sending his goods across the seas
+would have need to inquire into the inventory or seaworthiness of the
+ship. Such things are taken for granted; but even in the carefully
+regulated conditions of these old Mediterranean ships, it was customary
+for merchants before putting their goods aboard to see that the vessel
+was well furnished with sails, yards, anchors and arms, for she should
+carry spare yards and sails of canvas (doubtless for hard weather), as
+well as other gear. The merchants were also to ascertain that the ship
+was water-tight, and the skipper was to fill up the seams with tow. The
+Venetian statutes prescribed that a ship should have so many anchors
+and ropes of a certain length and thickness. And thus, at last, with
+anything from sixteen to forty mariners—according to her size—with her
+merchants, their servants, men-at-arms and pilgrims and cooks, the
+trading vessel was allowed to go forth.
+
+Such, then, were the conditions under which the Mercantile Marine was
+emerging during these interesting years. Like other nations, Venice
+began to lose her commercial supremacy soon after the Cape of Good Hope
+had been discovered in 1486. The future of the overseas trading was to
+be in the hands of Portugal and Spain, then to pass into the control
+of the Dutch, the French, and subsequently into British hands, as some
+day it may fall under the direction of the United States. But the
+important fact to remember all the while is that Venice, Genoa and Pisa
+did demonstrate to the world that civilisation, progress, literature,
+art, riches, exploration all depended on the merchant ship. Having once
+proved the truth of this idea, they have left behind for us in their
+contemporary buildings the most striking expressions of the wealth that
+is obtained only by means of the sea.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] See _The Rhodian Sea-Law_, edited from MSS. by Walter Ashburner.
+Oxford 1909. A scholarly and interesting volume.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE MERCHANT SHIPS OF THE NORTH
+
+
+We can desire hardly any better evidence of the existence of a
+Mercantile Marine than the fact that a body of laws had to be created
+in order to regulate that industry. We have seen that from quite early
+times there was in the Mediterranean a sea-law which in course of time
+was available for any set of circumstances that might arise in regard
+to trading ships.
+
+In like manner there came into being a code of maritime laws for
+western Europe, and this was known as the Laws of Oleron. The code was
+adopted by Alfonso X in the thirteenth century for the settlement of
+disputes in maritime affairs. It was based on the sea-law of Rhodes
+already referred to. Now, one effect of the crusade which Richard Cœur
+de Lion undertook was that he came into contact with a number of ships
+and seamen who had been sent from the island of Oleron to take part in
+the crusade. And among the officers who had come with the fleet from
+Oleron was one of the justiciaries of the navy.
+
+The nett result was that Richard brought home a roll of these laws,
+and ordered them to be observed in English waters. They had been
+framed for the benefit of the Merchant Service, and they were drastic.
+Thus if a pilot lost the ship and the merchants sustained damage, the
+pilot was to make full satisfaction, if he had the means; if he had
+no means he was to lose his head. Now, based on these laws of Oleron,
+came into being what was known as the “Black Book of the Admiralty,”
+which contained the “ancient statutes of the Admiralty, to be observed
+both upon ports and havens, the high seas and beyond the seas, which
+are engrossed upon vellum in the said book and written in an ancient
+hand in the ancient French language,” as a High Court Judge of the
+seventeenth century described them.
+
+This so-called “Black Book” contains the most ancient laws of the sea
+in force in this country, and continued to be the standard authority
+in the Admiralty Court until the end of the eighteenth century, when
+it suddenly disappeared, but in 1874 it was accidentally discovered at
+the bottom of a chest belonging to a former Registrar of the Admiralty
+Court. To-day this book is kept in a glass-topped, locked table in the
+room of the President of the Admiralty Court. It was probably called
+black to distinguish it from other books of reference, but the late
+Sir Douglas Owen, who had examined it about the year 1911, said that
+the cover was now very much the colour of a worn-out leather strap. It
+measures 9½ inches high and 6¼ inches wide, the leaves being either
+thin parchment or a stout tough paper. The first part of the book is
+written in archaic French, but it was not all written at one time nor
+by one person. In other words, as the Merchant Marine of England grew
+in numbers and importance, as the trade with the continent got bigger,
+so the English maritime law kept up with the progress. The first part
+of the “Black Book” belongs to the time of Edward III or Richard II,
+the latter part to the time between Henry IV and Henry VI. Thus, part
+of the book shows that the English Mercantile Marine was of sufficient
+size and importance in the period between 1327 and 1351 to necessitate
+a body of laws.
+
+In character the ships of Northern waters were based on those of the
+Norsemen—that is to say, they were double-ended, long, and propelled by
+one large square-sail, or with oars when necessary. As time went on,
+these craft became beamier, and approximated to the cargo ships of the
+Mediterranean, the twofold objects aimed at being seaworthiness and
+capacity for carrying as much as possible in their holds. But there
+is this important fact to bear in mind, and its value can hardly be
+exaggerated, as we shall presently find. The North Sea has from the
+earliest records until the present day been the home of the herring,
+and on the herring the nations of the North have prospered, built their
+Mercantile Marines, grown rich, created their navies and expanded
+commercially. The fishing fleets have only to put to sea and they can
+extract silver fortunes—it is, so to speak, money for nothing, or for
+very little. That is the broad, general statement, though in practice
+it is modified by the migrations of the herring, which did actually
+alter the trend of history.
+
+As far back as the third century the inhabitants of the Hebrides were
+living on fish and milk, but ignorant of the cultivation of grain, and
+even in the ninth century the Dutch came to Scotland to buy salted
+fish. In the tenth century the Norwegians were fishing with their
+herring-nets near Christiania, and off the East Anglian coast our own
+fishermen were pursuing the industry on a large scale. Before William
+the Conqueror arrived, Beccles, then a fishing town (but now inland
+on the banks of a river), paid as rent to St. Edmund’s Abbey as
+much as 30,000 herrings. In France by 1030 the herring-fishing was a
+well-established occupation, and there were salt works near Dieppe for
+preserving the catches. During the twelfth century our fishermen found
+herrings very plentiful off the Tyne. Further north the English, Scotch
+and Belgic fishermen were getting the herring near May Island off the
+Firth of Forth, and in this same period the herring was being first
+fished for in the Meuse. The Dutch were sending out small vessels to
+use their nets in the North Sea, then later on packing the fish into
+barrels, preserving them by cleaning their insides and thus beginning
+to acquire wealth from the harvest of the sea.
+
+Thus the North Sea fisheries were to build up the Mercantile Marines of
+the North. We were exporting herrings, wool, butter, cheese and cattle
+to the continent via the Rhine, and already during the thirteenth
+century a big Lorraine fleet, carrying cargoes of wine, used to arrive
+annually in England; but it was the impetus given by the herring that
+caused the north European countries to develop the sea instinct. The
+fishing industry developed shipbuilding, created a great seamanhood,
+spread the fascination of the sea as a career, and thus handed down
+from century to century a great and wonderful school, from which in
+Tudor times were to be obtained the crews who ventured forth with Drake
+and others. You cannot suddenly bring into being this seafaring body,
+as you can collect armies. And had it not been that for hundreds of
+years the Englishmen had been out fishing, there would have been no
+expansion of England either commercially or politically. The history of
+the world would, indeed, have to be rewritten.
+
+By the time of Edward III the fishing had become so important to this
+country that a law was passed forbidding any fisherman to give up his
+trade; but, in return for this, fishermen and mariners were exempt from
+serving in any capacity other than that to which they had been bred.
+By the fourteenth century there were literally thousands of vessels,
+each having at least six persons on board, fishing for herrings between
+Denmark and Norway, and more than 300,000 people were in one way or
+another engaged in the industry. In five days no fewer than sixty
+foreign ships during one week came into Great Yarmouth for these fish.
+Thus, side by side with our fishermen there was growing up a carrying
+trade, herrings and woollen cloth being regularly exported to the
+continent. By the fifteenth century ships from the British Isles,
+France, Flanders, Zeeland, Holland and Germany with Scottish herrings
+used to sail to the Mediterranean to sell the fish for the faithful
+during Lent.
+
+Throughout the Middle Ages the herring-fishing of the North Sea was far
+and away the most important of western Europe, especially off Scotland,
+Sweden and Norfolk, whither the Dutchmen came both to use their nets
+and to buy. The trade in salted and smoked herrings helped to make the
+wealth of the Hanseatic and Dutch towns. And it is here that we find,
+in the Hanseatic League, a force which corresponds to that of Venice,
+Pisa and Genoa in the south; for in developing overseas trade it
+encouraged the ship and seafaring.
+
+The word “hansa” signifies a guild or association, and the Hanseatic
+League was an association of towns for the purposes of trade, Bergen,
+London and Bruges being its principal foreign markets in the North Sea.
+From the twelfth to the sixteenth century this trading league existed,
+and, like Venice, had its rise to pre-eminence and then gradually
+lost its supremacy. And, like Venice, too, the Hanseatic League kept
+a tight hand over its merchant ships. Thus as far back as 1391 there
+was an ordinance by the Diet that no merchant should sail from a North
+Sea to a Baltic port, or vice versa, between Martinmas and Candlemas,
+and the only exceptions were that ships carrying beer and herrings
+might sail as late as St. Nicholas Day, December 6. For centuries a
+merchant had signified a townsman, but when, from the beginning of the
+twelfth century, the herring suddenly arrived in great shoals in the
+Baltic, the inland dwellers of Germany came down to the sea, ousted
+the Slav and thus began to get rich. The movements and migrations of
+the herring are little more understood nowadays than they were then,
+but it was sufficient for the Hanseatics that this silvery wealth had
+arrived. Thus Kolberg became a famous emporium for salted herrings, and
+this fishing industry was responsible for the Hansa towns obtaining so
+much of their riches and power. And so it went on until, in 1425, the
+erratic herring decided to forsake the Baltic and spawn in the waters
+of the North Sea. This at once took away from the Hanseatics a large
+portion of their means to wealth, though they were still busy with
+their carrying trade. But what is one country’s loss may be another’s
+gain, and it was so with the herring.
+
+For from the Baltic the herring had moved down to the Dutch coast, and
+so the Netherlands found themselves with the good fortune of a silver
+mine outside their own doors. Riches were there for the asking, and
+they wisely availed themselves of the opportunity. They built more
+ships, and the whole waterside went forth in clumsy, seaworthy craft,
+and thus gradually the fishermen laid the foundation-stone of the Dutch
+nation. It is an old saying that Amsterdam was built upon herrings; and
+as the Venetian palaces were built on Eastern pepper and silks, so the
+Northern capital arose out of the efforts on sea. It is impossible to
+appreciate all that the herring-fishery has meant to Holland until one
+has been through all the picture galleries in the Low Countries and
+explored its harbours. In the former you find the herring busses riding
+to their nets as the subject of any number of paintings, for the reason
+that it was the most important aspect of Dutch livelihood; and around
+the quays to-day you have only to notice the fine architecture in order
+to see the relics of a wealth that came and passed away by means of the
+sea high-road.
+
+There is nothing like trade for the encouragement of shipping, but it
+was not until the end of the thirteenth century that the inland towns
+of the continent required for their trade the highway of the ocean, and
+thus the ports became important and the demand for shipping increased.
+One of the most important of the Hanseatic sea trade routes was from
+Bruges to northern Russia, whither hundreds of craft sailed every year,
+owned by the Baltic merchants. And it was not until the fifteenth
+century that the Dutchmen, Zeelanders and Frisians seriously competed
+with the Hanseatics, for the latter was a very close corporation, whose
+organisation was kept secret, and its ban was regal in its effect.
+By its decree no German merchant was allowed to go into partnership
+with an Englishman, Fleming or Russian, and the result was that for
+centuries our shipping was kept out of the Baltic. All this time the
+Hanseatic trade was doing a great deal to encourage its own shipping,
+for there were needed many craft and seamen to carry eastwards from
+Germany to Russia the produce of the looms and the breweries, returning
+with furs, wax, skins, tallow and fat. Similarly the shipping went
+across to Sweden to fetch the copper and iron, while to Bruges and
+London this Russian and Swedish produce was brought for distribution.
+
+As in the cargo ships of the Mediterranean, so here in the north, the
+merchants accompanied their wares “over sea and sand.” Some of them
+would mutually arrange to charter a ship, and in order to encourage the
+captain to get the goods safely across the sea, they would give him an
+interest in the sales. Otherwise, as soon as pirates hove into sight he
+might feel inclined to hurl the goods overboard, and a similar desire
+was thus checked in the case of the ship labouring in bad weather.
+Piracy in the English Channel, Irish Sea, North Sea and the Baltic went
+on merrily during the Middle Ages, and played havoc with the merchant
+ship, though, as in the south, this kind of activity was less a crime
+than a specialised form of seafaring. In the Cinque Ports dwelt a class
+of seamen commissioned, according to Matthew of Paris, to plunder all
+merchant ships of any nationality other than English as they passed up
+and down the Channel; so in the thirteenth century we find the Scotch,
+Irish, Welsh and French all fitting out vessels to cruise about in
+readiness for a cargo ship full of valuable goods.
+
+The English Channel and the North Sea thus became full of dangers, and
+no merchant ship could put to sea without grave risk of capture. One
+nationality was as bad as another, and a kind of international vendetta
+went on in revenge for the losses by piracy. It became, indeed, a
+matter of high politics, far too serious to be ignored, so that the
+kings of England at various dates had to enter into negotiations with
+the foreign authorities. Thus at the beginning of the fifteenth century
+the Chancellor of England demanded from the Master-General of Prussia
+full restitution and recompense for “sundry piracies and molestations
+offered of late upon the sea.” During the next reign Henry IV, writing
+to the same personage, admitted that both English and Prussian
+merchants had suffered by these pirates “roving up and downe the sea.”
+It was finally agreed that English merchant ships should be allowed
+to enter Prussian ports unmolested, and that if Prussian cargoes were
+captured in the North Sea by English pirates, and this merchandise
+was brought into an English port, the “governour” of the port, if he
+suspected piracy, was to have such goods taken out and put ashore in
+safe keeping. And between this same Henry and the Hanseatic towns a
+similar agreement was made which bound the cities of Lubeck, Bremen,
+Hamburg and others to recompense the injured parties “for all injuries,
+damages, grievances, and drownings or manslaughters” done and committed
+by the pirates.
+
+The following incidents well illustrate the risks which these
+merchantmen ran whilst pursuing their calling. About Eastertide in the
+year 1394 the merchant ship _Godezere_, owned by four Englishmen, set
+out from the Tyne for Prussia, loaded with a cargo of woollen cloth
+and red wine. She was a 200-ton ship, her value with that of her sails
+and tackle amounting to £400; her cargo, plus certain sums of money
+on board, aggregating 200 marks. In the North Sea she encountered a
+Hanseatic ship who gave the English craft such a hot time that the
+_Godezere_ was captured, two of her crew slain, and the rest of them
+were imprisoned for three years. In the same year the Hanseatic pirates
+also attacked the Hull ship named the _Shipper Berline of Prussia_,
+belonging to a Richard Horuse, and from her they took away goods to the
+value of 160 nobles. Next year, off the coast of Norway, they molested
+a ship called the _John Tutteburie_, and relieved her of 476 nobles
+worth of cargo. A year later still, these Hanseatic pirates captured
+the Hull ship _Cogge_, belonging to one William Terry, and took £200
+worth of woollen cloth as well. The pirates were no respecters of ships
+so long as valuable goods were being taken across the North Sea, for
+Dutch, Zeeland and English merchantmen and fishing craft were all made
+to suffer. If the merchants and crew were not killed, they were thrown
+into prison and not allowed their liberty until ransom was paid, so
+altogether the trading ship had quite as exciting a time in the north
+as in the southern sea.
+
+But it was just as bad in the Baltic, where the pirates found it such a
+profitable business that they formed themselves into a corporation, and
+became such a serious and powerful force that in 1392 they were able
+to burn down Bergen and take the bishop prisoner. This much is to be
+said for them: they had a sense of chivalry, and on occasions actually
+gave back the empty ships to merchants after removing the cargoes,
+and wished them a happy return with fresh and fuller freights. But so
+mighty a scourge did these sea-raiders become that for a time they put
+a stop to all fishing. In the spring of 1394 these lawless Hanseatics
+sailed with quite a large fleet to the town of Norbern in Norway, took
+the place by assault, captured all the merchants, together with their
+goods, burnt their houses and put their persons up to ransom.
+
+Matters had now reached a crisis. For three years all fishing had been
+stopped and these rovers had made maritime life impossible, so in
+1394, by means of a tax, the Hanseatic League got together a fleet of
+thirty-five large ships and 3000 men, and by this means broke the power
+of this pirate confederation—for a time; for the scourge continued for
+years after. It was a fine life for those who had run through their
+money and desired adventure, and it attracted men of noble birth who
+had gambled and drunk away their fortunes. Of these none was more
+notorious than Stertebeker, who took part in almost every instance of
+North Sea piracy at this time. Hamburg having denied to this reprobate
+his knightly armour and forbidden him the city precincts, he threw in
+his lot with the notorious pirates known as the Victual Brothers, whose
+leader was Godeke Michelson.
+
+There was no limit to the depredations of this band. On one occasion
+they attacked a ship in the North Sea named the _Dogger_, which was
+lying at anchor while the crew were fishing. These Hanseatics took
+away their fish, beat and wounded both master and crew, and owing to
+the damage done lost the _Dogger_ a whole year’s fishing. Nor did the
+daring of the pirates confine itself to the Baltic and North Sea:
+they even raided the coast of Spain. Stertebeker was one of those
+heavy-drinking Germans who had a curious method of dealing with his
+prisoners; for if among them he found a poor, strong man he would test
+the latter’s powers by resort to drinking. Stertebeker, whose own mark
+consisted of two reversed goblets in a cathedral church, would cause
+his own goblet to be filled with wine and handed to the prisoner. If
+the latter could empty it at one gulp, he was a man after Stertebeker’s
+heart, and was accepted as a comrade, otherwise he was dismissed.
+
+But there came a time when this terror to the merchant ships of all
+nations had reached the limit. In the year 1422 the Hanseatic League
+sent a fleet under Simon of Utrecht to fall upon the pirates, and
+having come out from Hamburg, Simon found the enemy one evening lying
+off Heligoland. So near did the Hamburg fleet get to them that one
+daring fisherman was able to pour molten lead on the rudders of certain
+of the pirate ships, and this loosened the rudders and rendered the
+ships uncontrollable. On the following day the battle began, and went
+on for three days and nights, but in the end Stertebeker was beaten.
+He and seventy of his comrades were captured and carried in triumph to
+Hamburg, where they were all condemned to death and executed, to the
+great relief of the mercantile mariners. The rest of the pirates had
+fled, or been killed or thrown into the sea, and in the captured ships
+were found much linen and wax and cloth, which had been ill gotten from
+unfortunate craft. But when the Hamburgers rummaged the ships all the
+valuable metals they could find were a few goblets: until a carpenter
+broke the mainmast, which was then found to be hollow, and full of
+molten gold. However, this conveniently indemnified the merchants, and
+a golden crown was made and placed on the spire of St. Nicholas church,
+Hamburg. Stertebeker’s friend and accomplice, Michelson, was still at
+large, but Simon went after him, got him, and eighty pirates lost their
+heads.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE GROWTH OF THE MERCANTILE MARINE
+
+
+Chaucer, who flourished in the fourteenth century, has left us a
+description of a merchant “shipman” of his time. He refers to him as
+being a West-countryman living, “for aught I woot,” at Dartmouth, who
+wore a gown of coarse cloth extending to the knee, and had a dagger
+hanging on a lanyard. The hot summer had tanned his face brown, and
+Chaucer describes him as a good fellow, who had drawn many a draught
+of wine while the “chapman” (or merchant) was asleep. No man had such
+skill in reckoning his tides, streams, dangers; and in his knowledge
+of harbours, the state of the moon and pilotage, there was no such man
+between Hull and Carthage.
+
+    “Hardy he was, and wys to undertake:
+     With many a tempest hadde his berd been shake.
+     He knew wel alle the havenes, as they were,
+     From Gootlond to the cape of Finistere,
+     And every cryke in Britayne and in Spayne:
+     His barge y-cleped was the Maudelayne.”
+
+From the mere fact that Chaucer said as much as he did, it is clear
+enough that English merchant ships at this time were trading up and
+down Europe between Sweden and the Spanish coast, and that as a regular
+thing. And some of these seamen were now also navigators. Chaucer, who
+died in the year 1400, has left behind a treatise on the astrolabe by
+which a mariner could “knowe the altitude of the sonne, or of other
+celestial bodies.” An astrolabe was the ancestor of the sextant, an
+instrument which had been used by the Arabs for long years before it
+was used by the Christian seamen of the Mediterranean or the North.
+As far back as the eighth century a learned Rabbi named Messahala had
+written a treatise on the astrolabe, and it was chiefly from that
+author that Chaucer derived his knowledge on the subject. During the
+early Tudor period the cross-staff began to supersede the astrolabe.
+
+The growth of the English Mercantile Marine in the fourteenth century,
+and the friction which occurred between these ships and the vessels
+belonging to Norway, Prussia, Flanders, Scotland, Spain and Genoa, led
+to the assertion by Edward III that his royal progenitors had been
+lords of the English sea “on every side,” and in 1344 he had coined a
+gold noble whereon he was represented standing in a ship crowned, with
+sword and shield, emblematic of his sovereignty of the seas. It was a
+statesmanlike attempt on behalf of the commercial ships to make the
+sea a peaceful highway, when for so long it had been such a dangerous
+thoroughfare. It had its counterpart in the Mediterranean; for the
+raids by the Saracens had caused the Pisans to exercise the rights of
+commercial and naval supremacy on the west coast of Italy; and in 1138
+the Genoese had exercised a similar authority in the Gulf of Lyons.
+Similarly Venice had claimed sovereignty over the whole of the Adriatic
+in the thirteenth century, though prior to that it had exacted a toll
+from vessels passing through that sea.
+
+England, too, had her pilgrim trade to Santiago de Compostela,
+thirty-three miles south of Corunna, where the shrine of St. James
+caused these travellers to cross the Bay of Biscay to Spain. By the
+fifteenth century this transportation of pilgrims had become a regular
+trade, and in 1434 Henry VI granted a licence to carry no fewer than
+2433 such enthusiasts. Indeed the earliest English sea song is that
+which describes the life on board one of these pilgrim ships. The
+manuscript is in the Trinity College Library, Cambridge, and it begins
+by saying that “men may leve all gamys, that saylen to Seynt Jamys,”
+for when these people have joined the ship at Sandwich, Winchelsea,
+Bristol or wherever it may be, their hearts soon begin to fail, “for
+som ar lyke to cowgh and grone, or hit be full mydnyght.” The cook is
+ordered to get food ready, but the pilgrims have “no lust” for eating,
+but lie “with they bowlys fast them by” and complaining that their
+heads would “cleave in three”—“splitting,” as the modern martyr to
+sea-sickness expresses it. Then the carpenter comes along and with his
+gear makes small cabins for the unhappy passengers to sleep in. A sack
+of straw formed the mattress, and in some cases the pilgrims found they
+had to sleep near the pump and bilge-water in the reeking hold. “A man
+were as good to be dede, as smell thereof the stynk.” For there are few
+odours more objectionable than the bilge-stench of an aged ship, and in
+those days, when refuse was thrown into the hold and there was little
+idea of sanitation, a pilgrim’s voyage from England to Spain, across
+the boisterous Bay, could not have been more pleasant than from Venice
+to the Syrian shore.
+
+In this poem just quoted it is interesting to notice, also, the life
+on board the merchant ship as regards the mariners. We see the master
+at once ordering his “shyp-men” to stand by the mast and handle their
+tackle. Then, with the old expression of the sea (still surviving in
+sailing merchant vessels to-day), “Ho! Hissa,” they hoist away, whilst
+one man reprimands another for standing too close to his neighbour to
+allow him room to haul. Then one or two boys go up aloft, out on the
+yard, and unfurl the square-sail, while the rest of the crew haul aft
+the sheets. The captain then orders the boatswain to stow the ship’s
+boat, and next “haul the bowline,” the ship being now on a wind; but
+presently “veers the sheet” to allow her to run before the breeze. The
+steersman is sent to the helm and told to sail no nearer to the wind,
+after which the master calls the steward to bring him a pot of beer,
+which is promised “with good chere.” It is now time to haul in the
+brails of the yard, and one of the crew is admonished for not hauling;
+and then see “howe well owre good shyp sayles.” The steward is told
+to get food ready “and tary not so long,” whilst the ship’s pessimist
+comes and prophesies a storm or squall. He is promptly told to hold his
+“pese” and not to interfere.
+
+    “Then commeth oure owner lyke a lorde,
+     And speketh many a royall worde,
+     And dresseth hym to the hygh borde
+       To see all thyng be well.”
+
+Thus, with the demand for shipping to carry cargo and pilgrims across
+the open sea, there was every chance given to the Mercantile Marine,
+and by the fifteenth century the single-masted ship had begun to be
+displaced by the three-master, for the reason that the merchantman
+was becoming bigger, and it was necessary to split the sails up for
+ease in handling. Thus the big cargo ship now has a small square
+foresail on her foremast, a big square mainsail on her mainmast,
+and a triangular lateen sail on the mizzen-mast. The mere fact that
+the last-mentioned, characteristic, Mediterranean sail was added
+to northern ships during the fifteenth century, is evidence of the
+influence which the Portuguese and Spanish ships were having on our
+distant-voyaging vessels. Sea transportation was becoming the rule, and
+no longer the exception; trade overseas was increasing; merchants and
+seamen were fast becoming imbued with new ideas seen in strange lands,
+and in fact the world was beginning to awake.
+
+The biggest of the ships carried a main topsail, and by this time the
+rudder had been shifted from the quarter to aft, as it is to-day.
+The hull is in a transition state, still feeling the influence of
+the Viking type, but not yet a wholesome creature. The forecastle,
+sterncastle and main topmast castle are still there, but they have
+become amalgamated with the general design of the hull rather than
+being mere additional platforms. There is a contemporary manuscript
+which shows such craft under way, at anchor, and even being towed out
+of harbour by the ship’s boat against a head wind, past a flaming
+beacon which marks a promontory. And even at this time there were such
+things as pilots’ guides for the coasts of England and Wales, as well
+as sailing directions for the Bay of Biscay.
+
+But we must turn our attention south to watch what was going on in
+the Mediterranean. Briefly this is what had happened. Already in the
+thirteenth century merchant ships had become more enterprising, for
+about the year 1270 Malocello had reached the Canary Isles, and in
+1281, Vivaldi had set forth from Genoa to find the East Indies via
+the west coast of Africa, but failed. For you must remember that
+during the latter part of the twelfth century the compass, crude and
+inaccurate, yet of immense utility, had been introduced into Europe
+from the East. Then comes into our story that great man Prince Henry
+the Navigator, son of the King of Portugal, and nephew of Henry IV of
+England. Henry devoted his life to developing the science and art of
+navigation, creating an observatory and nautical school at Sagres,
+near Cape St. Vincent, and doing all he possibly could to encourage
+maritime discovery. The result of this was that the Portuguese became
+great sea-travellers, big shipowners and expanded in commerce and
+colonies. Henry the Navigator was born in 1394 and died in 1460, and to
+his foresight, organisation and enthusiastic intellect can be traced
+the rapid and marvellous Portuguese achievements which followed at
+sea. Thus in 1442 Madeira and the Azores had been discovered in the
+Atlantic, trade with Africa materially increased, especially on the
+west coast, and the traffic in black slaves become very profitable.
+Then in 1486 the Cape of Good Hope was rounded and the sea route at
+last opened to the East Indies, instead of the long and perilous
+overland route to the Levant which had been used always up till
+now. In 1498 Vasco da Gama sailed from Lisbon to Calicut, and two
+years later the Portuguese had landed in Brazil. Thus by the dawn
+of the sixteenth century Portugal had reached a wonderful height of
+prosperity. The great Eastern trade was in her hands; Ceylon, the Sunda
+Islands, Malacca and Ormuz in the Persian Gulf were hers; and all this
+pre-eminence had been won by studying the problems of the sea and then
+applying that knowledge in ships manned by practical navigators and
+sailors.
+
+Portugal had risen up by the twelfth century as a separate kingdom, and
+Spain had been passing through a period of complete anarchy, but on
+the death of the Spanish Henry IV, Isabel and Ferdinand had ascended
+the throne of Castile, and then law and order were restored, the last
+Moorish stronghold was captured in 1492, and a few months later the
+Genoese sailor Columbus, under the patronage of Ferdinand and Isabella,
+was allowed to set forth on his historic voyage which discovered the
+West Indies. He returned home, went across the Atlantic again in 1493
+and discovered Dominica; then made his third voyage, in which he
+discovered the mainland of South America in 1498, and finally, on his
+last voyage, explored the southern shore of the Mexican Gulf.
+
+With the discovery of a sea-route both to the East and West Indies,
+the whole future of the Mercantile Marine was altered. Instead of
+carrying merchandise and pilgrims across Europe, there came the demand
+for great ocean-going vessels that could carry home large quantities
+of rich produce, that would make the European markets surprised when
+they beheld these goods. Thus the Portuguese and Spaniards, like
+the Venetians and Genoese, began to amass great wealth from their
+merchant ships. Noble caracks were built, more and more men embarked
+on a seafaring career, the art of navigation received much more
+careful study, and mercantile maritime supremacy passed to the Iberian
+peninsula. Thus the work of great shipbuilders and sea-carriers,
+discoverers, colonisers and traders had for a time passed into other
+hands.
+
+But success in one party always breeds jealousy in another: indeed,
+if you examine the causes of all the great wars in history, or look
+into the reasons for most private quarrels, you will find usually
+that they come under the heading either of commercial jealousy or
+religious intolerance. And when, as was the case in the sixteenth
+century, you have both these factors united, you have the maximum of
+intense feeling. The English seamen, perfectly naturally, began to be
+jealous and envious of the lectureships and instruction which were
+being given to these southern seamen. At Seville Charles V had founded
+a lectureship on navigation in the sixteenth century. In England Henry
+VIII founded three guilds, at Deptford-on-Thames, Kingston-on-Hull
+and Newcastle-on-Tyne, for the same purpose, and Edward VI selected
+Sebastian Cabot to be Grand Pilot of England. Henry VII encouraged
+his shipbuilders by giving them a bounty on the tonnage built, and
+in Henry VIII’s reign dockyards were established at Woolwich, Erith
+and Deptford, in addition to Portsmouth. Books on the sea arts began
+to be written in English, so that by the time the full force of the
+commercial and religious hatred of the Spanish and Portuguese was
+let loose, the English mercantile mariners were something more than
+mere coastal seamen. From their fishing they had gradually become
+cross-Channel carriers; from this they had risen to the ability to
+trade regularly with Spain, with an occasional voyage even to the
+Mediterranean; but now they were qualified by their ambition and
+their greater knowledge to go wherever the sea existed. And thus we
+get Drake going all the way round the world; the many voyages across
+the Atlantic to the West Indies; the fights with the Spanish treasure
+ships; the capture of the _Madre de Dios_ and _San Felipe_, thus
+discovering the long-kept secrets of the sea-route to India. From the
+captured caracks and galleons which had been built in the Iberian
+peninsula, the English shipwright was able to enlarge his ideas and
+to learn how to build real ocean-going craft bigger than most of the
+Elizabethan ships. The introduction of cannon had been an additional
+reason for making the ship a much stouter, loftier and more formidable
+creature. Thus length, and beam, and draught increased; larger crews
+and more officers were needed, and as each expedition came home with
+strange products, merchant adventurers combined to fit out other
+expeditions to inaugurate trade even in such remote spots as had not
+yet seen a white man.
+
+And never a ship came home from her voyage without adding some valuable
+information in regard to trade or geography or navigation or pilotage.
+You have only to read the travels in Hakluyt, Purchase and elsewhere
+to see how keen these Elizabethans were not to omit a single piece
+of knowledge that would be useful for future voyages. They had been
+able, almost suddenly, to realise that, given pluck, determination,
+enterprise and endurance, the treasures of the world were theirs. They
+could follow the sea for a few long voyages and then return to build
+themselves comfortable mansions in Devonshire. And inasmuch as nothing
+succeeds like success, every time the crew came home and spread the
+wonderful tales of their experiences and showed the valuables they had
+managed to obtain, other men were anxious to go forth and do likewise.
+Nobles and gentlemen and city magnates invested heavily in these
+trading voyages, selected the ablest seamen, and thus, incidentally,
+were helping to build up the Mercantile Marine on a grand scale.
+
+Before Hawkins engaged in his trans-Atlantic voyages he was a Plymouth
+shipowner accustomed to sail to the ports of Spain and the Canary
+Islands with trade. At the Canaries he learns a good deal about the
+West Indies, then goes further south to the west coast of Africa,
+begins transporting niggers thence to America, returns to England with
+plenty of money, and sets every one in the west of England talking and
+anxious to have a share in this great new game. His relative, Francis
+Drake, owner of a small brigantine in which coastal trading has been
+carried on, is fired by Hawkins’ success, and accompanies him on one
+of his expeditions. Young Francis has learnt his seamanship in a rough
+school, having made friends with a shipmaster trading to the Channel
+ports and gone to sea with him, and thus acquired his knowledge, until
+finally the shipmaster dies and leaves him the brigantine in his will.
+Several years of coastal work had followed, Drake had acquired both
+money and reputation, and in the end could not resist selling the
+coaster and buying the brigantine _Judith_, fifty tons, and going with
+his relative across the Atlantic.
+
+What followed? Every time the English seamen came back with terrible
+yarns concerning the treachery of the Portuguese and Spaniards, every
+time the stories of the gallant fights were told, every time the
+jewels and plate and pearls were seen and handled, the West countrymen
+were stirred to their very souls. Religious and commercial jealousy,
+racial hatred and the love of adventure, combined with the possibility
+of becoming rich—all this created such a fire of enthusiasm that
+the English Mercantile Marine was bound to increase in numbers and
+aspirations. The moderate ambitions of the Middle Ages had passed away
+for ever: the dawn of a new order of things had now already come.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE MERCANTILE MARINE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
+
+
+By the middle of the fourteenth century the merchant ships had begun to
+outgrow mediævalism; by the sixteenth they were able to go to windward
+and to keep the sea for months on end. Thus, vessels had at last
+begun to enjoy the freedom of the seas and to be independent of the
+shore. It was a great achievement, considering how limited in size and
+seaworthiness ships had been, and how limited in knowledge mariners had
+remained until they had passed through the Middle Ages and emerged into
+the clear, bright light of science.
+
+Men were getting away from convention and thinking for themselves,
+but some of the old habits were dying very slowly. One very antique
+custom was that of waits attending seafaring men. As late as 1466,
+and probably even after, at the Cinque Ports musicians with fifes
+and trumpets paraded the town and announced which way the wind was
+blowing, so that merchant ships could put to sea if the wind was fair
+for them. The use of the ship’s bell had been introduced into Tudor
+ships before the end of the fifteenth century, for Henry VII’s famous
+_Grâce Dieu_ in 1485 included this in her inventory, and the _Regent_
+in 1495 had two “wache belles.” In a volume printed at the beginning
+of the sixteenth century, showing a typical merchant ship of the time,
+with mast, square-sails, and castles from which to attack pirates and
+other enemies, the artist has actually shown, in a rather conventional,
+but none the less interesting, manner the skipper at the helm and the
+merchants with their bales of goods in the vessel; but the pictorial
+information of these early craft is so slight, and landsmen artists
+dealing with technical marine subjects were so very inaccurate, that it
+is only by most diligent and careful research that a nautical student
+who understands the ways of a ship can follow the development of the
+merchant craft through to the seventeenth century.
+
+Seamen have very rarely been good authors, until we come to
+modern times; and writers have usually been unacquainted with the
+technicalities of seafaring. The difficulty, therefore, has been great.
+The only solution is to regard the efforts of ancient artists and
+authors critically with the eyes of a seaman, and to make allowances.
+With this concession, realising what a ship can do and what she never
+could be asked to do; realising also that the artist’s intention was
+not so much to bequeath to posterity an accurately rigged ship as to
+depict an idea—as, for instance, the progress of a saint, in which
+a ship appeared incidentally—we can find all these quaint artistic
+efforts worth examining, and yielding up information. So it is with the
+writers. Even that fifteenth century French humorist Rabelais helps
+us if we allow for his ignorance of seafaring matters. So long as a
+man writes of what he actually saw with his own eyes, and not what
+he imagined, we have valuable and illuminative truth. Rabelais was
+no seaman, but his description of the handling of the ship in a gale
+is worth preserving. At the approach of bad weather we see the pilot
+shortening sail. The terrified Panurge exclaims with horror that the
+bitts are broken, the tackle is in pieces, the timbers are splitting,
+the mast dipping into the sea up to the truck. His is the attitude
+of the “all-is-lost” landsman who exists through all the ages of the
+merchant ship. Thus he goes on: “Alas! alas! where are our topsails?
+All is lost, by God! Our topmast is under water. Alas! to whom will
+this wreck belong? Friends, put me here behind one of these bulkheads.
+Lads, your top-crane has fallen.” He hears the rudder-pintle creaking.
+“Is it broken?” Eventually the pilot heaves-to under her main-course,
+but later the weather moderates so that the ship can resume her voyage.
+“To the main topsail,” rings out an order. “Hoist! hoist! To the
+main-mizzen topsail. The rope to the capstan. Heave! heave! heave!
+Hands to the halyards. Hoist! hoist! Clear away the tacks. Clear away
+the sheets. Clear away the bowlines. Port tack. Down helm. Haul taut
+starboard sheet. Luff. Full and by. Up helm. (“Up, it is,” replied
+the sailors.) Keep her going. Head for the harbour-mouth.” Thus, with
+the steering tackles manned, and the ship sailing close-hauled on the
+port tack, the pilot makes the helmsman keep her out of the wind and
+straight for their haven.[3]
+
+But those who know their Hakluyt well, and take the trouble to read
+those wondrous voyages with imagination, are richly rewarded by the
+interesting side-lights thrown on the sixteenth-century seamanship
+in the merchant craft. Among the instructions “for the direction of
+the intended voyage for Cathay,” issued by Sebastian Cabot in 1553,
+the “captain-general,” “pilot major,” masters, merchants and other
+officers are first exhorted to be “knit and accorded in unitie, love,
+conformitie and obedience.” Every mariner and passenger took an oath to
+be obedient to the captain-general, and to every captain and master of
+his ship. But even as late as the reign of Edward VI, the old custom
+of the sea, which we have seen in the Mediterranean, prevailed. The
+communal idea was not yet extinct.
+
+“Item,” runs the fifth instruction, “all courses in Navigation to be
+set and kept, by the advice of the Captaine, Pilot Major, masters,
+& masters’ mates, with the assents of the counsailers and the most
+number of them, and in voyces uniformely agreeing in one to prevaile,
+and take place, so that the Captaine generall, shall in all counsailes
+and assemblies have a double voyce.” The fleet was ordered to keep
+together, the merchants “and other skilful persons in writing, shal
+daily write, describe, and put in memorie the Navigation of every
+day and night, with the points, and observation of the lands, tides,
+elements, altitude of the sunne, course of the moon and starres, and
+the same so noted by the order of the Master and pilot of every ship
+to be put in writing, the captaine generall assembling the masters
+together once every weeke (if winde and weather shal serve) to conferre
+all the observations, and notes of the said ships, to the intent it may
+appeare wherein the notes do agree, and wherein they dissent, and upon
+good debatement, deliberation, and conclusion determined, to put the
+same into a common leger, to remain of record for the company: the like
+order to be kept in proportioning of the Cardes, Astrolabes, and other
+instruments prepared for the voyage, at the charge of the companie.”
+
+Thus the merchants, having financed the voyage, still had a
+considerable say in the matter. The steward and cook of every ship
+had to render a weekly account of the flesh, fish, biscuit, meat,
+bread, beer, wine, oil and vinegar consumed. If an officer or seaman
+were found inefficient, he could be put ashore anywhere “within the
+king’s Majesties realme & dominion.” In order to keep discipline over
+the crew—many of them the “bad hats” of the port from which the ships
+had sailed—they were forbidden blasphemy, “ribaldrie, filthy tales or
+ungodly talke, neither dicing, carding, tabling, nor other divelish
+games to be frequented, whereby ensueth not onely povertie to the
+players, but also strife, variance, brauling, fighting, and oftentimes
+murther.” Every morning and evening, service was to be read in the
+flagship by “the minister,” and in the other ships by the merchant or
+some other learned person. “No liquor to be spilt on the balast, nor
+filthines to be left within boord; the cook room, and all other places
+to be kept cleane, for the better health of the companie.”
+
+The merchants were to look after the “liveries in apparel” given to the
+mariners, which were not to be worn except by order of the captain. And
+there was also a “slop-chest,” taken care of by the merchants, from
+which a seaman could obtain “any necessarie furniture of apparel for
+his body, and conservation of his health at such reasonable price as
+the same cost, without any game to be exacted by the marchants.” Nor
+could the merchants exhibit for sale any of their goods to foreigners
+without consent of the captains and other officers.
+
+In this expedition for the purpose of trading there were three ships,
+and from these details we have a fair idea of the way the pick of the
+Mercantile Marine was being conducted on a grand scale, as contrasted
+with the usual small voyages around the British Isles, or across the
+North Sea, English Channel and the Bay of Biscay. Such an expedition
+as the one we are considering aimed at big things: the opening up of
+a new trade route and fresh markets. Thus there were three ships in
+this venture, the 120-ton _Bona Esperanza_, which was the flagship;
+the 160-ton _Edward Bonaventure_; and the 90-ton _Bona Confidentia_.
+In the first was Sir Hugh Willoughby, captain-general of the squadron,
+or, as they called it, the fleet. In that same ship were the master,
+his mate and six merchants, together with the master gunner, boatswain,
+boatswain’s mate, four quartermasters and their four mates, two
+carpenters, a purser, a cook and his mate, two surgeons and others.
+Two men were landed at Harwich for sickness, and one other was ducked
+at the yard-arm “for pickerie,” and then discharged. The _Edward
+Bonaventure_ carried Richard Chancellor as captain and pilot major of
+the fleet, a master, his mate, two merchants, a minister, officers and
+mariners. The little _Bona Confidentia_ carried only a master, his
+mate, three merchants, as well as the usual officers and mariners. Each
+of these three ships had a pinnace and a boat. We know that these ships
+could never lie nearer than seven points from the wind by the statement
+that “the wind veared to the West, so that we could lie but North and
+by West.” Not having charts of the strange unexplored harbours and
+havens, the ship, on approaching the land, used to send her pinnace
+ahead to find an anchorage, and then the big craft could follow in.
+They used their lead for sounding, and consulted the globe, which was
+the only knowledge of geography of distant countries possessed in many
+cases. But it was no unusual thing to find in these exploratory voyages
+that “the land lay not as the Globe made mention.” In this particular
+expedition, whereon, by the way, Sir Hugh Willoughby and the company of
+two of his ships perished in the bitter Lapland regions, there were all
+sorts of anxieties through gales of winds, leaky ships, shoals, unknown
+coasts, cold and general discomfort inseparable from crudely built
+vessels. We can but admire the courageous enterprise which sent them
+forth, and thus helped to lay the foundations of our Mercantile Marine
+and seek a north-east passage to China.
+
+But, as we know from writers of the sixteenth century, the fact was
+that the commodities and wares of England were in small request with
+the neighbouring countries. Those goods which, within the memory
+of the oldest inhabitants, had been in demand, were now neglected,
+notwithstanding that English ships carried the wares into the harbours
+of the foreigners. Contrariwise, there was a brisk demand for foreign
+goods, and at a high price. Therefore certain “grave citizens of
+London ... began to thinke with themselves howe this mischiefe might
+bee remedied.” And observing that the Spaniards and Portuguese had
+wonderfully increased their wealth by the search and discovery of new
+countries and trades; and having taken the advice of Sebastian Cabot,
+who was then in London, these wise merchants formed themselves into
+a company, and each member put up £25, so that before long the three
+ships already mentioned were bought and fitted out with the total £6000
+thus obtained, and victualled too. These shrewd Edwardians were doing
+exactly what modern merchants do in a period of trade depression
+and slump—they went out to look for business in new markets. But the
+difference was that the former had first to get the ships and then fit
+them out, instead of merely going to the office of a tourist-agency and
+purchasing a ticket, and then voyaging in safety, comfort and with the
+certainty of being in a particular place on a fixed day.
+
+In this north-east expedition, as soon as the money was obtained the
+merchants bought exceptionally strong and well-seasoned planks, and
+then the shipwrights set to work with the construction, caulking and
+pitching them and covering the bottom with lead sheathing. That was
+all comparatively straight-going, but the difficulty was to victual
+the ships with food for eighteen months. Indeed, after setting out
+from the Thames, some of the food by the time they reached Harwich
+was already putrid and the hogsheads of wine leaking. Ships were
+ballasted with stones, and before the wind these cumbrous craft would
+sail well, but on a wind they made a good deal of leeway. But all
+the time these sixteenth-century mariners were learning, and setting
+down their records for others to learn. Thus one finds these pioneers
+entering such remarks as “a south moone makes a full sea,” “Friday I
+went on shoare and observed the variation of the Compasse, which was
+three degrees and a halfe from the North to the West; the latitude
+this day was sixtie nine degrees ten minutes.” And in 1557, among the
+instructions given to masters and mariners of an expedition, it is
+ordered that notes and entries be daily made of the navigations, and
+that the young mariners and apprentices be taught and made to learn the
+same.
+
+Thus, with every voyage north, south, east or west, with every slump
+or boom in trade, the English Mercantile Marine was becoming more
+efficient, less unscientific, and the love of seafaring became greater.
+Those were the great days when, though the ships were of wood, the
+men’s hearts were of gold, and nothing daunted them. Their gear was
+none too good, their ships were roughly built, and yet no adversity
+ever overcame their fine spirits. They were ready to struggle with any
+difficulty. Take the case of the Elizabethan ship which got caught
+in heavy weather one September. She hove-to, but was washed down by
+almost every sea, and then the rudder was found to be broken and almost
+falling off. Next day, as soon as the weather eased, a dozen of the
+crew leapt overboard, remained under water as long as possible, worked
+at the rudder-planking, bound it with ropes, and finally made such a
+good job of it that it was again serviceable; but by the time they were
+got aboard once more they were more than half dead. These ships were
+always losing anchors, cables, boats and pinnaces; and even when they
+had charts and globes, they were finding them full of errors; yet they
+“kept on keeping on” and bringing their seafaring profession out of the
+dark recesses of ignorance into the light of knowledge.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] _Mariner’s Mirror_, Vol. V. p. 81.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+FISHERMEN AND MERCHANTMEN
+
+
+Up to the end of the sixteenth century we have seen the progress of
+the Mercantile Marine influenced by the pilgrim and cargo trade in the
+south of Europe, and in the Iberian peninsula by the long ocean voyages
+east and west for the purpose of spreading Christianity, trading, and
+obtaining greater territory. In the north of Europe we have seen that
+the crusades, as in the south, had their effect, and that pilgrims and
+merchandise were regularly carried across the Bay of Biscay.
+
+But we have seen, too, that the Hanseatic League and the fishing
+industry had from early times done much; nor were these influences
+yet dead. It is interesting, as showing the far-sightedness of the
+Hanseatics, to note that they were careful to get into their hands
+the entire corner of hemp, from which ropes were made. Everywhere
+the League had extended its tentacles as a powerful European trading
+combine. The market of Bruges was a place where you met all the great
+travellers and merchants of Europe. Every one who was any one in
+commerce sooner or later came here. In London they had entrenched
+themselves with characteristic German astuteness, and their privileges
+had been marvellously protected by the English sovereigns from the
+twelfth century. Indeed the Hanseatics became, so to speak, the
+Rothschilds of Europe for financing regal schemes. The Wars of the
+Roses and the hostilities with France were the means of making the
+Hanseatics very useful financially, and they got their reward in the
+shape of special privileges, which their depôt just above London Bridge
+in Thames Street enjoyed for many a year. Down to the time of Edward VI
+they indeed prospered exceedingly.
+
+In Portugal the League had established a factory at Lisbon, and thence
+they traded with the Italian commercial republics and also got a
+hold on the big Levantine trade. But during the reign of Elizabeth
+Englishmen began to realise their own strength and capabilities at sea.
+The defeat of the Armada, and the many fights with the Spanish and
+Portuguese, had given them a confidence which they had never before
+enjoyed. The English sailors were to justify their maritime ability
+not merely against the southerners, but against these very powerful
+and historic members of the northern league. Consequently they did
+not hesitate to seize sixty Hanseatic ships about to enter the Tagus
+with grain for the Spaniards. In 1598 the Hanseatics were turned out
+of England, and though they were allowed eventually to come back,
+and their property in the city of London was not sold until 1853,
+when the Cannon Street railway station was erected, yet the rise of
+English sea-power, expressed not merely in actual fighting, but in the
+maritime spirit generally, had given the ancient league its death-blow.
+Thereafter it merely lingered.
+
+But simultaneously with the decline of the Spanish and Hanseatic
+Mercantile Marines was growing up the Dutch. And it cannot be
+emphasised too strongly that this was owing to the herring having in
+the fifteenth century begun to spawn in the North Sea instead of the
+Baltic, as already mentioned. It seems curious that an innocent fish
+should thus be the deciding force of international history. If you
+examine modern Dutch charts you will still see marked channels and
+shoals which show the intimate connection which that country had with
+fishing. The “haringvliet,” or mouth of the Maas, and the “Schotsman”
+shoal, off the island of Walcheren, at once suggest the time when the
+Low Countries were acquiring wealth by their fisheries and doing a
+good deal of trade with Scotland. Then they became more ambitious, and
+built those fine great ships, which you see in the paintings of Vroom
+and other artists, that were the means of bringing home from their
+East Indies wealth in another form once enjoyed by the Venetians and
+Spaniards.
+
+So invaluable had the fisheries been to the Dutch, both in regard to
+shipbuilding and in creating a fine school of seamanship, that by
+the time of Cromwell these Netherlanders were the “waggoners of the
+sea,” had the world’s carrying trade and owned four-fifths of all the
+merchant ships that sailed the seas. Now, having regard to the young,
+keen sea spirit which had made the sixteenth century so illustrious,
+it was hardly surprising that before long there should be trouble
+between the English and the Dutch. It was analogous to the years which
+immediately preceded the Great War of 1914. Collision was certain:
+it was a question only of time. Thus, as early as 1608, Grotius, the
+famous Dutch jurist, wrote his _Mare Liberum_, wherein he contended
+that the high seas were open to all. Contemporary with him was living
+the English jurist Selden, who in 1618 had begun his treatise _Mare
+Clausum_. At the request of James I it was not published for fear of
+complications with the Danes, but in 1635 Selden again took up this
+work at the desire of Charles I. In the previous year Charles began to
+levy ship-money, which really was intended in order to strengthen the
+fleet against the Dutch in the probability of war.
+
+Legislation is merely the expression of the nation’s contemporary
+fears, and in the long series of maritime Acts from the fourteenth
+century onwards we can see the national nervousness of the time lest
+the foreigner should dominate the success of our Mercantile Marine. We
+have already seen Edward I styling himself “Sovereign of the Seas.”
+Then in the last years of the fourteenth century we have what was
+the first of the Navigation Acts. The basic aim was to exclude the
+ships, seamen and trade of the foreigner and to encourage those of
+our country. We will not bore the reader with a legal dissertation,
+but it will help us to understand the difficulties of the time if,
+very briefly, we show how the State was helping the subject of our
+study. During the reigns of Henry VII, Henry VIII and Elizabeth there
+was legislation dealing with the privileges of English shipping. At a
+later date the claim to the sovereignty of the seas was expressed by
+compelling the Flemish subjects of Philip, who married our Queen Mary,
+to pay a fine and an annual rent of £1000 for twenty-one years’ lease
+of the fishing near the north Irish coast, whilst a similar lease with
+similar conditions was granted by Mary to the Hanseatics. Without a
+licence foreign subjects were forbidden to fish in English waters,
+though with the decline of English sea-power in the seventeenth century
+foreigners ceased to be bound by these claims.
+
+The doctrine of the “Dominion of the Seas” is inseparably bound up in
+the growth of our Mercantile Marine and our fishing industry. Matters
+reach a crisis in the dispute, and then the discussion is settled by
+an appeal to force in the shape of war. The Anglo-Dutch wars were
+fundamentally caused by the herring fisheries and the Mercantile
+Marines of the two nations. Every other reason was entirely artificial
+and subservient. Whether the seas could be free to all everywhere to
+trade, whether the fisherman could shoot his nets where he liked—that
+is the whole matter in a nutshell. And the more ships that were
+built for trade or fishing, the more serious the crisis developed.
+Proportionately the value of a navy becomes greater, and thus the
+two services are bound to become less and less similar, as greater
+commercial demands are made on the one and purely warlike requirements
+are insisted on for the other.
+
+The seventeenth century was the crisis in the career of the Mercantile
+Marine, for it was struggling for its very life amid many dangers, but
+it emerged with an independence and character of its own. In any long
+period of assured peace it reaches enormous heights of success, as, for
+instance, during the nineteenth century. But during the Caroline period
+a principle was being insisted upon. The position was this. Charles I
+was determined to compel the Dutch to acknowledge the English claim to
+the dominion of the seas, and that was the reason for the building, in
+1637, of that marvellous and sensational warship the _Sovereign of the
+Seas_, a triumph of Pett’s design, which Van der Velde depicted for
+posterity. This 1683-ton “battleship,” as we should call her nowadays,
+was an expression, both in name and character, of the English attitude
+in regard to the use of the seas.
+
+“We hold it a principle,” Charles had instructed his Minister at The
+Hague, “not to be denied, that the King of Great Britain is a monarch
+at sea and on land to the full extent of his dominions. His Majesty
+finds it necessary for his own defence and safety to reassume and
+keep his ancient and undoubted rights in the Dominion of the Seas.”
+Having forbidden foreigners to fish off our coasts without licence,
+Charles’ fleet attacked and put to flight a Dutch fishing fleet which
+had infringed this order. Some of these small craft were thus sunk by
+our men-of-war, and many of the rest took shelter in harbour. Finally
+the Dutch agreed to pay Charles I £30,000 for permission to finish that
+year’s fishing, and to pay a sum annually for the like privilege.
+
+We can well understand the irritation which this line of action
+caused so great a maritime power as the Dutch. Great sea pioneers
+they certainly were, and before the first decade after the defeat of
+the Armada had passed, they had been the first country to send out a
+real Polar expedition. In 1651 came the celebrated English Navigation
+Act, which prohibited the importation of goods into England except in
+English ships, or in the ships of the country producing the goods. This
+was quite obviously aimed at the great Dutch sea-carriers. Relations
+became strained, the war-clouds gathered, and in the following year the
+first of the three Anglo-Dutch wars broke out inevitably between the
+English and Dutch republics.
+
+The Navigation Act of 1651 was confirmed by that of nine years later,
+and thus the English Mercantile Marine had its future settled on sure
+foundations. In a word, the disputes as to where fishermen could
+shoot their nets to get herrings were the indirect means of giving
+the merchant ships their unique opportunity. Holland’s carrying trade
+fell into our hands, prosperity came to our country, the sailing
+ships of our nation penetrated everywhere, and, as you can see by the
+seventeenth-century architecture in the leading Dutch cities, the
+wealth obtained overseas suddenly ceased to flow in a big way. It
+is for those who have eyes a veritable story in stones, which ends
+suddenly and dramatically.
+
+It is to the credit of the rulers of our country in the seventeenth
+century that they realised what the fisheries meant to us. The Act
+of 1651 was of great assistance in providing that no fish should be
+brought into England or Ireland, or exported thence to foreign parts,
+or even carried from one English or Irish port to another, except fish
+caught by English and Irish fishermen in English and Irish ships.
+In 1661 the Parliament of Scotland also passed navigation laws for
+the encouragement of their native shipping, and one Act for founding
+companies to extend the fishing industry. Very subtle, too, was the
+proclamation of James I in 1621 against eating flesh in Lent or on
+other “fish days,” the reasons given being “the maintenance of our
+navy and shipping, a principal strength of this island, and for the
+sparing and increase of fresh victuals.” This and similar proclamations
+considerably helped the fishermen.
+
+In order fully to appreciate all that the fishing meant to the Dutch,
+it is necessary to mention also that not merely did they seek the
+herring as far away as the Thames estuary, the Orkneys, Shetlands and
+the Irish coast, but, owing to the ingenuity and enterprise of one
+Beuckels, they had learned how to cure and barrel this fish. In this
+way they enjoyed a wonderful monopoly in supplying Catholic central
+and northern Europe. In the year 1560, for instance, the value of
+the year’s fishing trade to Friesland, Holland, Zeeland and Flanders
+amounted to the enormous sum of £300,000. Just as to-day the steam
+fish-carriers go out to fetch the catch home from the fleets fishing
+off the Dogger Bank and elsewhere, so the Dutch in the seventeenth
+century were using a fast-sailing type of craft, called “vent-jagers,”
+to hurry into port the fresh herrings caught by the slow, round, tubby
+“busses.” This practice was in vogue certainly by 1604.
+
+It was a statute of 1663, for the encouragement of our fisheries,
+which forbade any fresh herrings being imported into England except in
+English-built ships, and no ship could sail for Iceland from England
+until March 10, thus protecting the fish at breeding time. The Act of
+1666 prohibited the importation of herrings caught by foreigners. And,
+having done all this, the time came when those Englishmen who owned
+capital thought they saw an opportunity for getting richer. Thus in
+1677 a Royal Fishery Company was incorporated, the Duke of York and
+many peers and gentlemen being partners, with a capital eventually
+increased to £12,580. This was spent in the construction of seven
+busses, but some of these were captured by the French, who were now
+growing up as maritime and commercial people, and were rivals to us in
+our fishing. The remainder of the busses were sold off in 1680 and the
+company ended in debt.
+
+Three years later another fishing company was started, and this failed
+also, whereas the Dutch were doing well with their nets, employing
+8000 vessels and 200,000 hands, thus amassing the enormous sum of
+£5,000,000 a year. During the time of Charles II the Dutch fishermen
+had brought great prosperity to Great Yarmouth, sometimes as many as
+1000 busses and fish-carriers being off that port, and buying bread,
+beer, flesh and butter from the East Anglians. They used to come ashore
+and dry their nets, and the town would find 10,000 of these foreign
+sailormen in their neighbourhood. To assuage their thirst, forty
+brewers were kept busy in the port. Any one who has any experience
+of human nature and of fishermen, will readily understand that there
+were many feuds and quarrellings. Ever since 1540 the Dutchmen had
+been herring-fishing off that port, and the Englishmen were none too
+pleased at this visitation; nor were the Scotch, who in 1532 attacked
+the Dutchmen and captured many of their busses, and for nine years
+prevented them from using Scottish waters.
+
+As far back as the thirteenth century the herring had been caught in
+great numbers off Great Yarmouth, and in 1270 the Yarmouth herring
+fair was held for forty days. About that date some Flemish vessels put
+to sea and killed 1200 English North Sea fishermen, nor will these
+international fishermen’s quarrels ever cease as long as human nature
+remains what it is. Before the end of the thirteenth century Grimsby
+had begun fishing, and before the end of the sixteenth century the
+first Hull whaler had started out on her special industry, whaling
+having begun in England only four years previously. Few people are more
+conservative than the sailor, and of his service the most conservative
+of all is the fisherman, who did not take to steam generally for many a
+long year after it had become dominant in the carrying trade. Many of
+us can still remember the famous “blue” sailing fishing fleet out of
+Great Yarmouth; and the Brixham fleet and others round our coasts still
+stick almost exclusively to sail. In the olden days, wool, wheat, fish
+and other cargoes were sold by the “last.” Wool is no longer thus sold,
+but a hundred years ago wheat was thus reckoned at Great Yarmouth, and
+round our coasts to this day fish is still disposed of in the old-time
+manner, a Yarmouth “last” amounting roughly to 13,200 herrings or about
+two and a half tons.
+
+In our British North Sea fishing craft the busses have given way very
+largely to steam drifters, but off the Dutch shores the Scheveningen
+“pink” is much the same craft in hull as were the vessels which caused
+so much friction in the seventeenth century. The very word by which
+these craft have been known is in itself symbolical of the antiquity
+of the industry. The mediæval Venetians had “buzi,” and throughout the
+Romance and Teutonic languages it has always meant a fishing boat, the
+seventeenth-century Englishmen getting the use from the Dutch North Sea
+craft.
+
+The two principal types of fishing craft in the North Sea were the buss
+and the “dogger.” With regard to the former, the earliest illustration
+I have discovered is that by Elandts in the Municipal Museum at The
+Hague, made in 1664 from a picture of 1570. This “haring buys” is the
+prototype of the seventeenth-century buss, and consists of two masts,
+each having a square-sail. Like the modern drifter, the buss lowered
+her foremast and rode to her nets. This Elandts buss is really nothing
+more than a large open boat, with three hands in her; the length of
+the craft I reckon not more than about thirty feet. A rather bigger
+type, similarly rigged but with three masts, is depicted in the Dutch
+Waghenaer’s _Speculum Nauticum_ of 1584 riding to her nets, with fore
+and mainmasts lowered. Among the sixteen ships which Frobisher took
+with him in 1578, one was the _Emmanuel_ of Bridgewater, and she is
+described as a buss. It will be recollected that this was another
+attempt to find the north-west passage to China, and this craft
+performed most admirable service, and as she came homeward discovered
+an island which had never before been sighted. Thus, there is no
+question about the seaworthiness of this fishing type of craft.
+
+In the Boijmans Museum, Rotterdam, there is an interesting painting by
+Bellevois showing a mid-seventeenth-century buss of a powerful type,
+with three masts, a square-sail on each, and riding with her mizzen up,
+but the other sails and masts lowered. Keymor, who wrote in 1601 on the
+Dutch fishing, describes these craft as being from sixty to two hundred
+tons, and carrying from forty to a hundred lasts. The anonymous author
+of _Britaine’s Busse_, published in 1615, describes them as being
+of from thirty-five lasts or seventy tons, and measuring fifty feet
+on the keel, with a beam of seventeen feet. Her cost, together with
+her boat, was £260. There is another fine picture of these craft by
+Storck, hanging in the Mauritshuis at The Hague, the date being 1683,
+and from the rounded stern and general lines of the ship it is easy
+enough to see that she belongs to the same family to which the familiar
+Scheveningen “pink,” so well known in modern art, belongs.
+
+Often in the mediæval records one finds reference to a North Sea
+fishing type called the “dogger.” Exactly what these were like, it
+would be impossible to say, except that they probably had not more
+than two masts carrying square-sails, and that they were line fishers,
+for cod and ling, and did not use nets, their size in the seventeenth
+century varying from sixty to one hundred tons. It is reasonable to
+suppose, from the later illustrations which exist, that the dogger was
+in hull and square-sails not very different from the buss.
+
+The end of the seventeenth century, then, saw the British Mercantile
+Marine both in respect of its fishing craft and its cargo-carriers,
+going ahead. As regards the latter, the finest of all were the ships
+of the East India Company of England and those of the Dutch East India
+Company, with their stately hulls, lofty sterns, high freeboard and
+two decks of guns. A picture of 1647 shows them with three masts, as
+well as bowsprit, and they even carry topgallant sails on fore and
+main. Such craft are, in fact, the connecting link between the last
+of the mediæval ships and the first of the famous clipper ships. The
+stolid majesty of their design and build, the elaborateness of their
+seventeenth-century carvings, were expressive of that permanence with
+which the Merchant Service now rightly regarded itself. Indeed so
+prosperous had the British East India Company become in the seventeenth
+century, that by 1681 this corporation owned about thirty-five ships,
+ranging in size from 100 to 775 tons, and in customs alone the company
+was paying £60,000 a year. They used to take out to India cargoes of
+lead, tin, cloth and stuffs, bringing back home raw silk, pepper and
+other Eastern goods. Trade prospered so well, indeed, that between 1682
+and 1689 as many as sixteen East Indiamen of from 900 to 1300 tons were
+built, and all these ships had to be armed; for during the last decade
+of that century these merchantmen ran the risk of being attacked by
+French men-of-war as well as by privateers, so that in carrying from
+thirty to fifty guns these East Indiamen were very powerful vessels for
+any enemy to have to encounter.
+
+[Illustration: SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DUTCH EAST INDIAMEN.]
+
+[Illustration: SIGNAL CODE.
+
+Used in a British East Indiaman.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SEAFARING
+
+
+Few people realise that the trade routes of the world are the lanes
+along which history is constrained to flow. It is a fascinating study,
+but we have little enough room to develop the subject here. The success
+of Prince Henry the Navigator’s influence, the achievement of Vasco
+da Gama, completely revolutionised the trade routes of the world,
+transformed the European mercantile system, made the gate of commerce
+not Venice but Lisbon, transferred the centre of progress from the
+Mediterranean to the Atlantic; and the discovery of America accentuated
+this new condition still further.
+
+What followed? First, the Dutch, having built up a shipping industry,
+so to speak, on the backbone of the herring, were able to get the
+trade of distributing these goods from Lisbon to the north European
+countries. This, in turn, caused competition on the part of the
+English, who were not intending to be left out of the new fortune.
+Secondly, the Dutch and English began themselves to voyage to the East.
+And thirdly, the discovery of the rich possibilities of the East and
+West not merely made the Mediterranean commercially of little future
+account, but gave to the nations of the European Atlantic coasts
+an impetus to progress and a reason for strife which had never yet
+occurred. The history of the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries is
+confined to the struggle for the dominion of the seas—that is, maritime
+commercial supremacy, caused by the flow of trade taking a new route.
+The wars with the Dutch, the French and the Spanish were at heart the
+struggle for possession of overseas commerce, and the recent war with
+Germany was animated by the same cause.
+
+It is impossible to emphasise this trade route influence too much,
+for without a clear appreciation of its place in history the sequence
+of events becomes meaningless, and the rise and development of the
+Mercantile Marine seem arbitrary. Prince Henry the Navigator started
+a wonderful sea contest, and it has never stopped during the ensuing
+centuries. As soon as one keen competitor drops out, another comes in
+to keep up the running. That has been the impelling influence in the
+history of the English Mercantile Marine. When Spain falls out, the
+Dutch take her place. When they cease to be competitors, the French
+become the pacemakers, to be followed by the Germans; and now that the
+latter have disappeared almost entirely from the sea, the United States
+ships of commerce will maintain this ancient contest. And so it will
+go on, unless air routes cause another revolution in the transport of
+merchandise, and give another sudden twist to the flow of history.
+
+The seventeenth century, then, saw a wonderful incentive to the
+English Merchant Navy just because the East was calling. And, as a
+result of this, there followed in due succession the creation of the
+East India Company, the wonderful and famous East Indiamen built
+chiefly at Blackwall; then, after the long monopoly came to an end,
+the famous Blackwall sailing ships of the Wigrams and Greens, the
+historic clippers, and finally the Peninsular and Oriental Steam
+Navigation Company. From the year 1582 for the next three hundred
+years from Blackwall, on the River Thames, sailing ships year after
+year made their way to the Orient, and it is to my mind one of the
+most remarkable continuities in the history of human things. It is
+certainly one of the most, if not the most, critical of periods in
+the development of the commercial marine. What Portsmouth has been to
+the British Navy, the village of Blackwall has been to the British
+Mercantile Marine. From the Blackwall yard were launched hundreds
+of East Indiamen; from here came improved and novel designs for the
+sailing ships that were to win and retain against all competitors
+commercial supremacy at sea for the British nation. But for these craft
+the trend of English history, of the world’s history, would be entirely
+different.
+
+There would have been neither the cause nor the means of a powerful
+navy; nor of Colonial expansion; nor would the position which Britain
+possesses financially have been possible. I am omitting intentionally
+for the present the development of the American trade, for that came
+later. It was the Eastern overseas trade in the merchant ships of the
+seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which was responsible
+for an enormous part of the national wealth, many of our costliest
+buildings and institutions, the founding of illustrious families, and
+indirectly the awakening of Japan. All this dates back to Prince Henry
+and Vasco da Gama—to the finding of a sea route to the East.
+
+It was in April 1582 that the first ship left for the East—when the
+_Edward Bonaventure_ sailed from Blackwall, joined the flagship
+_Leicester_ at Southampton, and, four weeks out from the London
+river, accompanied the two other ships. They made a futile attempt
+to reach India west about, and because the Spanish Fleet were in the
+neighbourhood of the Magellan Straits, had to return to England. In
+1595 Holland sent four ships round the Cape of Good Hope, and two years
+later the expedition came back, after making a treaty with the King of
+Bantam and thus opening up the Indian archipelago. In 1599 a number
+of merchants in London petitioned Elizabeth for permission to have a
+monopoly to trade with the East Indies, and on the last day of the
+following year this privilege was granted for fifteen years, and thus
+the first East India Company began.
+
+A small squadron of ships left the Thames in 1601 with iron, lead,
+tin and presents for the Indian princes, doubled the Cape of Good
+Hope on November 1, and reached Sumatra on June 5, 1602. By September
+11, 1603, the flagship _Red Dragon_ anchored in the Downs, after a
+most successful voyage, bringing home 1,030,000 lbs. of pepper in the
+four ships. And thus the beginning of Anglo-Indian commerce started
+so profitably that matters went ahead. The monopoly was extended and
+prolonged, until as a fact it was not abrogated until 1833. Expedition
+after expedition was sent out, until it became the normal routine;
+the ships of the East India Company were a kind of bridge between
+the Thames and the Orient. The Merchant Navy was thus on the way to
+becoming something different from the fighting service, though it was
+not until many years had passed, not until wars had ceased, privateers
+and pirates had ended their activities, that the former could afford
+to give up mounting guns and carrying gunners. Nineteenth century
+peace thus gave a basis for separating the two types of ships and
+the two kinds of personnel; and thereafter the Royal Navy and the
+Mercantile Marine developed on divergent lines. But, up to that stage,
+the East Indiaman differed little enough from many of her contemporary
+men-of-war. Although formally the separation came earlier, it is from
+after 1815 that the real separation takes place, and the amalgamation
+never occurred again for a hundred years, when, temporarily, the ships
+and men of the Merchant Service came to join up with the Royal Navy as
+fighting units during the Great War.
+
+We need not follow in detail the events of the great East India
+Company’s rule—by far the most extraordinary monopoly which Europe
+has ever had with an overseas country. It is important, however, to
+note the effect of this in stimulating shipping affairs. The Dutch and
+English began to improve their ships as well they might for so long an
+ocean voyage. As to the former, the picture galleries in such places as
+Middelburg, and Rotterdam, and Amsterdam show what truly magnificent
+craft they were, with their t’gallant sails, high poops, stern
+galleries and ornate decoration. They were the embodiment of wealth. In
+the first decade of the seventeenth century there was built in England
+the _Trades Increase_, for the English Company’s Indian trade. She was
+of about 1100 tons burthen, and was the biggest merchant ship which
+had ever been built in this country. But she was really too big for
+the knowledge of naval architecture then existing. Clumsy, unwieldy
+and top-heavy, she got out to the East, but at Bantam, whilst she was
+being careened to have her sheathing examined, she fell over on to her
+side and became a total loss, the date being 1613.
+
+Nevertheless, shipbuilding did receive a great stimulus, and this
+growing interest caused the formation of the Shipwrights Company, its
+incorporation taking place in 1612; Phineas Pett, whose family for two
+hundred years had been the greatest English naval architects, becoming
+its first master. By this date of 1612 the yard at Blackwall, which was
+to be during the next two and a half centuries so famous, was already
+well established, and twenty years later almshouses were established at
+Poplar for invalided petty officers of the East India Company’s ships.
+
+For when we think of the Merchant Service in England during the
+seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it is almost exclusively of the
+East Indiamen. It begins gradually, and becomes more important as time
+goes on and the grip on the East gets tighter. The great port was
+London, for it was not until the opening up of the trade with America
+in 1756 that Liverpool began in any way to compete as a great shipping
+centre, though actually it was not until 1815 that the Lancashire port
+made great strides. Nevertheless we must not get a false impression.
+The Tudor awakening had created comparatively few big ships, and
+even in 1615 there were only ten craft of more than 200 tons burthen
+belonging to the Port of London. Still, it was the eve of brilliant
+developments, the like of which the world had never before known.
+Though they could not have foreseen it, the Blackwall shipwrights were
+preparing the way for the coming of the most perfect sailing ships
+which the world has ever seen, or probably ever will see—the clippers
+of the mid-nineteenth century.
+
+In 1661 Pepys goes by barge to the Blackwall yard to see the new wet
+dock, the largest in England, and the “brave new merchantman _Royal
+Oake_,” which was nearly ready for launching. In the following year
+Evelyn refers to accompanying the Duke of York to an East India vessel
+at Blackwall, and going aboard her where they drank punch and “canary
+that had been carried to and brought from the Indies, which was indeed
+incomparably good.”
+
+But before the East India Company had offices in the Blackwall yard
+and superintended the building of its ships, they had a yard of their
+own at Deptford. This dates from the year 1607, where they soon found
+employment for five hundred carpenters, caulkers, joiners, and others.
+Here there existed a wonderful organisation; large stocks of timber,
+masts, yards, canvas, and other stores. There were such officials as
+the ship’s husband, the clerk of the stores, the buyers, the clerk
+of the yard, the master shipwright, the master pilot (who had to
+survey the ships both here and at Blackwall), the boatswain-general,
+treasurers, purser-general, the clerk of the cordage, the
+surgeon-general, clerk of the slaughter-house (to look after the
+victuals), and so on. It was a hive of great activity, and by the year
+1621 they had built so many ships that the company owned 10,000 tons
+of shipping. They had exported from England in their vessels £319,211
+worth of woollen goods, lead, iron, tin and other commodities, and had
+brought home from the East £875,288 worth of cargoes, which were sold
+in England for the immense sum of £2,044,600. The average profit made
+by the first twelve voyages amounted to not less than 138 per cent.
+
+But after leasing the Deptford yard for twenty years, it was found to
+be so costly that it swallowed up too much of the capital, which could
+be employed more profitably in hiring ships. Therefore the Blackwall
+yard became responsible for the building of practically all the East
+Indiamen. The company went on from prosperity to wealth. In 1681 they
+owned thirty-five ships of from 100 to 775 tons, and two years later a
+£100 share would sell for £500. In 1667 was imported the first cargo of
+tea, which in the nineteenth century was to be the means of bringing
+into existence those wonderful tea-clippers.
+
+And now let us see something of the kind of existence which the
+merchant sailor led during the seventeenth century. He and his mode
+of life were regarded by the landsman as something strange, something
+abnormal. Contrariwise, the sailor realised that his art was almost
+beyond the landsman’s comprehension. That spirit, even in this
+twentieth century, is anything but dead, and between the two avocations
+there must always exist a big gulf. But we have to remember that in
+the seventeenth century seafaring was still such a modern and rare
+career (though yearly increasing in popularity) that he who made a
+profession of it was an unusual being. “The sea language,” wrote the
+seventeenth-century Sir William Monson in his _Naval Tracts_, “is not
+soon learned, much less understood ... a boisterous sea and stormy
+weather will make a man not bred on it so sick, that it bereaves him
+of legs and stomach and courage ... when he hears the seamen cry
+starboard, or port, or to bide alooff, or flat a sheet, or haul home a
+cluling, he thinks he hears a barbarous speech, which he conceives not
+the meaning of.”
+
+Similarly John Lyly, the dramatist who died in 1606, in his
+_Gallathea_, gives a dialogue between a mariner and three sons of a
+miller in which this difference is indicated. The landsmen will never
+go to sea again, for the bread is hard and the meat salt, and the
+mariner is pitied for being “pinned in a few boards, and ... within an
+inch of a thing bottomless.” The mariner, however, rather delights in
+showing his superiority over them. “I can shift the moon and the sun,”
+he exclaims, “... the lodestone that always holdeth his nose to the
+North, the two and thirty points for the wind, the wonders I see—would
+make you blind. You be but boys. I fear the sea no more than a dish of
+water.” He then tries to teach them the points of the compass, but they
+cannot learn them. “O dullard,” he remarks in disgust, “is thy head
+lighter than the wind, and thy tongue so heavy it will not wag?”
+
+Richard Braithwait, who wrote during the seventeenth century, published
+in 1631, in his _Whimzies_, an essay on the contemporary sailor, whom
+he admires for his pluck, disregard of danger and for his hardihood. He
+looks upon him as a desperate, hearty good-natured fellow of dissolute
+habits when ashore. “The bredth of an inch-boord is betwixt him and
+drowning, yet hee swears and drinks as deeply as if hee were a fathom
+from it.... Hee is most constant to his shirt, and other his seldome
+wash’d linnen.... What a starveling hee is in a frosty morning, with
+his Sea frocke, which seems as it were shrunke from him, and growne too
+short, but it will be long enough ere hee get another.”
+
+The English writer Sir Thomas Overbury, who was arrested and confined
+in the Tower, and died in 1613, has left behind a study of the
+character of the sailor at this time. He wittily describes him as
+“a pitched piece of reason, caulked and tackled, and only studied
+to dispute with tempests.... A fair wind is the substance of his
+creed, and fresh water the burden of his prayers.... In a storm ’tis
+disputable whether the noise be more his or the elements’, and which
+will first leave scolding.... His language is a new confusion, and all
+his thoughts new nations. His body and his ship are both one burden.
+Nor is it known who stows most wine, or rolls most—only the ship is
+guided.”
+
+The references to life at sea in the seventeenth-century merchantmen
+are not many, but here and there one comes across mention of some
+ship or experience. Pepys, whilst sailing down the Thames estuary
+on Sunday, April 8, 1660, writes in his diary: “We had a brave wind
+all the afternoon, and overtook two merchantmen that overtook us
+yesterday, going to the East Indies.” But there are two interesting
+passages in English literature which show that going to sea in the
+ships of this period was a terrible business. The first is found in the
+autobiography of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, an English historian
+and diplomatist, who describes his experience of crossing the English
+Channel in a French ship in the year 1609. The second is taken from
+Jonathan Swift’s famous _Gulliver’s Travels_. There is no need to ask
+why fiction should be dragged into history; for Swift borrowed this
+descriptive account of an East Indiaman in a storm almost word for word
+from James Love’s _The Mariner’s Jewel_, and it gives us a glimpse
+into the seafaring of the beginning of the eighteenth century that
+bears the stamp of authenticity. And it is such peeps into the past
+that are so invaluable to us in reconstructing the life led by the
+rough seaman at this time, who was learning by his mistakes, risking
+much by his ignorance, but doing so much for the great Merchant Service
+that was to spread all over the world.
+
+Herbert, together with Sir Thomas Lucy returning from France, took
+ship from Dieppe early in February and spent the night in the Channel
+during a gale of wind. “The master of our ship,” he wrote, “lost both
+the use of his compass and his reason. For, not knowing whither he was
+carried by the tempest, all the help he had was by the lightnings,
+which, together with thunder very frequently that night, terrified
+him, yet gave the advantage sometimes to discover whether we were
+upon our coast to which he thought, by the course of his glasses, we
+were near approached.” That is to say, the master was anxious about
+his dead reckoning, which was kept by guessing the distance run every
+hour. The time was kept by means of hourly and half-hourly glasses from
+Elizabethan times even to the eighteenth century aboard ship, according
+to the number of times the sand ran through.
+
+Towards daylight the ship sighted Dover and the master made for it.
+Here the local seafarers were in great numbers by the shore on the
+look-out for wreckage, for the gale had blown down their own barns and
+trees. But the French skipper was either a very bad seaman, or his ship
+was extremely unhandy, for the craft went smack up against Dover pier
+and split, whereupon the Frenchman cheerfully announced: “Mes amis,
+nous sommes perdus.” Herbert, though in the toils of sea-sickness,
+then emerged from his cabin, climbed part of the way up the mast
+and waved his sword for help. A local six-oared boat then came off,
+into which Herbert was the first to enter. Lucy was half dead with
+sea-sickness, but was lifted from the cabin to the boat, and thus they
+were saved. Other boats rowed off the rest of the men and the horses.
+The ship, concluded Herbert, “was wholly split and cast away, insomuch
+that in pity to the master, Sir Thomas Lucy and myself gave thirty
+pounds towards his loss, which yet was not so great as we thought,
+since the tide now ebbing, he recovered the broken parts of his ship.”
+
+Dean Swift, in _Gulliver’s Travels_, refers to the ship _Adventure_
+riding in the Downs at the end of June 1702. She was commanded by
+Captain John Nicholas, a Cornishman, and bound for Surat. At the Cape
+of Good Hope they landed for fresh water, but other reasons detained
+them until the end of March. A good passage was then made till north
+of Madagascar, when bad weather was encountered. The spritsail (the
+square-sail set on a small mast at the end of the bowsprit) was
+therefore taken in, the mizzen was handed, and the guns secured. Rather
+than heave-to, the captain decided to run before the wind—“spooning” is
+the technical expression—the foresail was reefed, the fore-sheet hauled
+aft, the helm put hard aweather, and “the ship wore bravely.” But the
+foresail became split, and the yard was hauled down. “It was a very
+fierce storm; the sea broke strange and dangerous. We hauled off upon
+the lanyard of the whip-staff, and helped the man at helm.” For there
+was no steering wheel in use yet, and this was not introduced until
+about fifty years later. The tiller from the rudder was controlled by
+a vertical bar or lever, called a “whip-staff,” and the lanyards would
+naturally enough be used, as it is employed to this day for assisting
+the helm of sailing yachts.
+
+After scudding before the storm, the weather at last eased up. Then
+the ship set her foresail and mainsail and hove-to, and finally set
+the mizzen, main-topsail and fore-topsail, and with the wind S.W. ran
+a course E.N.E. Then they “got the starboard tacks aboard” and headed
+S.S.E. “We cast off our weather braces and lifts. We set in the lee
+braces and hauled forward by the weather bowlines and hauled them tight
+and belayed them, and hauled over the mizzen tack to windward and kept
+her full-and-by as near as she could lie.” That is to say, the ship was
+now trimmed to sail on a wind, the bowlines, which were connected by
+bridles to the leech of the sail, being used to keep the weather edge
+well hauled out tight, to make the canvas set properly. The mizzen, of
+course, was still a triangular, fore and aft sail. Finally on June 3,
+1703, a boy on the topmast sighted land.
+
+It is a little difficult in this highly specialised twentieth century
+to appreciate the slight difference which existed between a merchant
+ship and a man-of-war. Between the men of the Merchant Service and
+those of the Navy there was thus little to choose. From the Elizabethan
+days most merchant ships of any size had to be armed for their own
+defence. Moreover the merchantman was as much privateer or pirate as
+he was freighter. He had to be a fighting man, whatever else he might
+be. Thus there was always at hand a reserve of crews which could be
+“imprest” into the Navy. During the first quarter of the seventeenth
+century the merchants were paying their crews thirty shillings a month,
+whilst the men in the Royal ships were receiving less than half this
+amount. The result was that for a time the merchant ships attracted the
+best seamen.
+
+It was from the Merchant Service that some of the most distinguished
+officers of the Royal Navy graduated. Admiral Benbow, for instance, had
+been an apprentice in the Merchant Service, and was eventually given
+command of a naval ship such as was usually given to a lieutenant. He
+was promoted later to captain and to flag rank. This caused jealousy
+and bad feeling, and the reader will remember that this Admiral, when
+attacking the enemy in 1702 in the West Indies, was basely deserted
+by some of his captains, but he carried on a running fight almost
+single-handed for five days.
+
+Other names could be mentioned, too. Neither masters nor mates were
+exempt from being impressed; and these rough, daring merchantmen, who
+fought as hard as they drank, who despised the enemy as heartily as
+they despised cowardice, were the very life-blood of the nation that
+was growing up to prosperous adolescence. England was just realising
+what was the meaning of the word sea. As Francis Bacon wrote in his
+essay: “To be master of the sea is an abridgment of a monarchy....
+Surely, at this day, with us of Europe, the vantage of strength at
+sea (which is one of the principal dowries of this kingdom of Great
+Britain) is great; both because most of the kingdoms of Europe are not
+merely inland, but girt with the sea most part of their compass; and
+because the wealth of both Indies seems in great part but an accessory
+to the command of the seas.”
+
+It takes time for a nation to appreciate all that maritime progress
+connotes. We in this twentieth century have seen that it required the
+Great European War to enable the United States to realise this, and the
+present American mercantile shipping activity and development are the
+practical results of this appreciation. The Merchant Navy to a country
+is the basis on which her fighting Navy is built. It is the avenue
+along which her commerce must flow out and home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+MERCANTILE SUPREMACY AT SEA
+
+
+The end of the seventeenth century saw the British Mercantile Fleet as
+the world’s leading traders. The disappearance of their Spanish and
+then Dutch rivals in sea commerce was brought about not by battle, but
+by the steady pressure of sea-power, as in the recent European War the
+continuous pressure of the Grand Fleet throttled the Germans. Just as
+the Battle of Jutland failed to bring about the downfall of our late
+enemies, so the defeat of the Armada did not succeed in breaking Spain;
+so, too, no single battle in the Anglo-Dutch wars brought the maritime
+progress of the great Dutch Republic to a dead stop.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+CAPTAIN THOMAS FORREST.
+
+Navigator and Surveyor, who formed in 1770 for the H.E. India Company a
+new settlement at Balambangan.]
+
+This sea pressure having fulfilled its purpose, the English merchantmen
+were able to scoop up from exhausted nations the world’s maritime
+commerce; and the voyages of discovery, notably those of Dampier,
+Anson and Cook, together with the enterprising penetration of the
+East Indiamen, and to a smaller extent the West Indiamen (who enjoyed
+the benefits of free trade), opened up fresh avenues of commerce. The
+fighting fleets had opened up the oceans for the mercantile ships to
+bring home riches. By the year 1688 the annual clearance outwards from
+Great Britain was 191,000 tons of English shipping and 95,000 tons of
+foreign shipping. In a hundred years the nation had become supreme,
+simply because our forefathers, like any great business man, had
+possessed the imagination to see that the ocean was the road to wealth,
+and they had also not lacked the courage to put their maritime belief
+to the test.
+
+Thus in the year 1701-1702 its Mercantile Marine consisted of 3281
+vessels of 261,222 tons, armed with 5660 guns and giving employment
+afloat to 27,196 men. During the eighteenth century wet docks had to
+be made both in the Thames and the Mersey, the first Marine Insurance
+Company came into being, and Lloyd’s Register of Shipping was started.
+The history of Lloyd’s is indicative of the progress of the Mercantile
+Marine. In the seventeenth century a number of underwriters used to
+meet in Edward Lloyd’s coffee-house in Tower Street for their business.
+In 1692 this coffee-house was removed to Lombard Street, and then, in
+1774, Lloyd’s gave up the coffee-house and went to their premises in
+the Royal Exchange, where they have remained ever since.
+
+It is clear from Lloyd’s Register of Shipping that from 1764 to the
+end of that century most of the British ships were of not more than
+300 tons; but we have to bear in mind two important facts. Firstly,
+the East Indian monopoly prevented competition, and therefore any
+stimulus to build anything larger; and secondly, from 1775 to 1815,
+with only small patches of peace, there was a long series of wars.
+These hostilities naturally caused the tonnage of commercial shipping
+to drop, but every time that peace was restored the figures began to
+go up again; so that in 1793, when war broke out with France, Great
+Britain possessed 16,079 merchant ships as compared with the 3281 at
+the commencement of the century. It was therefore an amazingly live
+industry, which required only a fair opportunity for its development.
+
+This development was, as might be expected, accurately reflected at the
+Blackwall yard, in spite of the fact that the slips and shipwrights had
+largely during those forty years to be employed for building men-of-war
+for the Navy. By the middle of the century this yard had a wet dock,
+three dry docks and a number of slips. It was the biggest private
+dockyard in the country, and only the Royal yards could rival it. Here
+the East Indiamen continued to be built, the direct ancestors of the
+great liners of to-day. In the period 1750-1752 was here constructed
+the East Indiaman _Falmouth_. She was a fine three-masted, full-rigged
+ship of 668 tons burthen, measuring 108 feet 9 inches on the keel, and
+having a beam of 34 feet. She carried topsails and t’gallant sails and,
+with her large figure-head and rather wasteful, ornate design at bow
+and stern, maintained her close connection with the ship architecture
+of the seventeenth century.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+BRUNSWICK DOCK, BLACKWALL.
+
+Built especially for the use of the H.E. India Company’s ships, and
+begun in 1789. It could accommodate sixty of these vessels.]
+
+During the next thirteen years were launched such East Indiamen as the
+642-ton _Osterley_, the 642-ton _Tilbury_, the _Valentine_ and _Ajax_,
+each of 655 tons. In 1768 no fewer than five such ships of 670 tons
+were constructed and fitted out, and then, a couple of years later,
+ships of 700 tons began to be built. The East India Company used to
+charter such ships practically as long as they were seaworthy; and
+Blackwall in those days was able to do everything that the monopolists
+required; for here not only were the ships built, rigged and laid
+up, but ashore the houses were the homes of seafaring families,
+shipwrights, caulkers and every trade concerned in the building of
+these craft. And then in 1789 was launched from this yard the big
+1612-ton _Bombay Castle_, a powerful vessel of seventy-four guns, which
+the East India Company presented to George III. There is a picture
+by Dodd which shows as many as four other big ships on the slips at
+this time, together with four or five similar craft fitting out in
+the stream. It is comparable only to the Clyde in the height of its
+twentieth century shipbuilding.
+
+With the increase in the number of these ships came, of course, the
+greater need for docks where the vessels could lie in tiers in safety
+and convenience; so in 1789 the Brunswick Basin was begun in the east
+end of the Blackwall yard. Two years later the first ship was masted
+here. This was the _Lord Macartney_, and you may guess of the keenness
+and smartness of the men when you learn that her bowsprit and all her
+masts were raised and fixed in the remarkable time of three hours and
+forty minutes. To-day, with all the modern appliances of cranes and
+labour-saving devices, this record is worth noting. Two years later was
+launched from this yard the famous East Indiaman _Warren Hastings_,
+which, as will be seen presently, was destined to become famous for her
+achievement in 1806.
+
+These East Indiamen, the backbone and beauty of the British Marine,
+were frigate-built, and stately rather than fast sailers, badly
+designed, requiring much ballast, and essentially but little
+improved since the sixteenth century. For during the latter part of
+the eighteenth century it was the French who were the finest naval
+architects. But two names become associated with the history of this
+yard before the close of the eighteenth century, and it is with these
+two families that the golden age of the sailing ship will ever be
+remembered. In another chapter we shall see how much the Wigrams and
+Greens did to make the British ships unique in the annals of sail. It
+is therefore worth mentioning that in the year 1764 comes the first
+mention of Robert Wigram. His father had been master of a privateer.
+After his death the young Robert came to London and was apprenticed
+to a surgeon. Two years later Wigram took his surgeon’s diploma and
+then sailed in that capacity in one of the East India Company’s ships.
+This was the _Admiral Watson_. Subsequently he also served in the
+_Duke of Richmond_, but about 1770, after acquiring valuable knowledge
+of the Eastern trade, he became a merchant, and later one of the
+proprietors of this yard, his son William afterwards becoming one of
+the directors of the East India Company. It was in 1782 that George
+Green was apprenticed to the yard, and owing to his ability and other
+circumstances, was destined also to become later one of the partners.
+It is interesting also to mention that young Wigram, during his voyage
+in the _Admiral Watson_, formed a friendship with the second officer,
+whose name was W. T. Money. We thus see the first association of those
+three names, Money, Wigram and Green, which are inseparable from the
+finest fleet of sailing ships in its most historic period.
+
+But the time has not arrived to discuss the Victorian ships. The
+Mercantile Marine of the eighteenth and the first part of the
+nineteenth century had first to go through most trying times before
+the blessings of permanent peace should arrive. We who are now alive
+have not forgotten that for four years during the recent Great War
+the merchant shipping of the Allies was subject to the attacks of our
+enemies. But in the past it was for forty years, as we have already
+seen, the British mercantile vessels had to endure this danger, and it
+is our duty to observe how our seafaring forefathers carried on during
+those trying times. The fighting spirit was by no means confined to the
+Navy, and even apart from those forty years, there hardly seemed a long
+period when the trading ship could proceed upon her lawful occasions
+without fear of being attacked. If it was not a pirate, it was a
+privateer or a warship of some kind. But the merchantman still went
+about her business all the same, undaunted and undismayed.
+
+We are familiar with ancient works on naval tactics, but there is in
+the British Museum a rare and somewhat damaged volume, printed in
+the year 1702, called _The Art of Seafighting_, written by a retired
+merchant mariner named Robert Park of Ipswich. It was undertaken on
+behalf of the Merchant Service at a time when the privateers were so
+active. Park was a “whole-hogger,” who knew no difference between
+foolhardiness and courage. He was a real “hard-case” sailorman, typical
+of his time, who had no use for luxury, but was a firm believer in
+trade and liberty. In this volume he tells his readers how to prepare
+the ship for close-fighting, by making the bulkheads musket-proof,
+and so on. He tells them how a ship can be worked under fire without
+showing a man on deck, gives valuable hints on gunnery and the
+importance of sobriety in the duties of a gunner. In the third part of
+the book he gives the very same advice which the British Admiralty in
+the recent war used to issue to the steamship captains. Park sensibly
+reminds his brother seamen that they are merchantmen, that they are
+sent to sea not to fight, but to get their cargoes to port, and if
+possible they are to avoid engagement. Nevertheless it was a wicked
+crime to leave an attacked consort to become a prey to the enemy.
+
+He gives seamanlike hints on how a three-masted ship should escape. He
+shows the ship stations and duties when preparing for battle, where the
+master is to take up his position, where the gunner is to be stationed,
+what the mate and the carpenter are to be doing. He gives the best
+tactics with regard to the enemy’s boarding, and even discourses on the
+handling of a fleet of merchantmen, incidentally maintaining that for
+them the weather-gauge is not usually advantageous. He prefers having
+a fleet in double, treble or even quadruple line, and gives diagrams.
+It is a quaint book, of human as well as practical interest, and well
+indicates the fine spirit of our eighteenth century merchantmen. Those
+who read it must have found it extraordinarily useful.
+
+It may be as well, before proceeding further, to make quite clear the
+meaning of the two expressions “privateer” and “Letter of Marque.”
+Legally there was no difference, but in practice a privateer was a
+vessel which took out a licence for the purpose of cruising against
+the enemy’s merchant ships. In order to send the prizes into port
+she necessarily carried a large crew. A “Letter of Marque” was a
+merchant ship with a cargo bound for her port in the usual manner,
+but possessing this licence which exempted her from convoy, nominally
+protected her crew from being impressed, and gave her the right to
+attack an enemy merchantman without having to wait until the latter
+attacked her. In a word, she was primarily a merchantman, whereas the
+privateer was a fighting merchant cruiser.
+
+But these British merchant captains were as clever as they were brave.
+Take the following incident, which occurred at the end of January
+1797 off the east end of Java. Here the French Rear-Admiral Sercey,
+with a squadron of six frigates, was at sea when five homeward-bound
+British East Indiamen came in sight. These five were all richly laden,
+and their first duty was certainly to get their cargoes to England
+and fight only if inevitable. The names of the British ships were the
+_Woodford_, _Ocean_, _Taunton Castle_, _Canton_ and the _Boddam_. These
+five were in charge of the senior officer, Captain Charles Lennox. The
+latter took the situation in at once, and realised that it would be
+useless to run away. Moreover the mere act of so doing would indicate
+the inferiority of his squadron; so he did a very smart thing. He
+hoisted the flag of Rear-Admiral Rainier at the mizzen, and made the
+other four ships hoist pendants and ensigns as if they were men-of-war.
+Furthermore, in order to maintain this gigantic piece of bluff, he
+actually detached two of his ships to give chase and reconnoitre the
+French squadron, and as these daring craft approached the _Cybèle_, the
+latter crowded on sail to join her consorts and made the signal at her
+masthead: “L’ennemi est supérieur aux forces Françaises.” Thereupon the
+French Admiral also made sail. He certainly thought it curious that
+when another of his frigates, the _Forte_, carried away her maintopmast
+the British did not continue the chase, but the captain of _Cybèle_
+hailed him, whilst passing, that he had made out the enemy to consist
+of two line-of-battle ships and four frigates! Admiral Sercey therefore
+continued his retreat, and the East Indiamen were never engaged. It was
+not till a month later that he realised how he had been fooled.
+
+The mere fact that a French naval officer should have taken East
+Indiamen for line-of-battle ships is at once a proof of the stateliness
+and formidable appearance which the company’s ships possessed. It shows
+the great similarity which existed at that time between the ships of
+war and of commerce. But finer even than this exploit was the following
+brilliant achievement, which is one of the brightest incidents in the
+whole story of the Merchant Service. It was on January 31, 1804, that
+sixteen East Indiamen set forth from Canton for Europe. They were all
+of a size of from 1200 to 1500 tons register, their names being the
+_Earl Camden_, _Warley_, _Alfred_, _Royal George_, _Coutts_, _Wexford_,
+_Ganges_, _Exeter_, _Earl of Abergavenny_, _Henry Addington_, _Bombay
+Castle_, _Cumberland_, _Hope_, _Dorsetshire_, _Warren Hastings_, and
+_Ocean_. The senior officer present was Captain Nathaniel Dance, in the
+_Earl Camden_, and so was Commodore of all these ships. But it was a
+fleet rather than a squadron, for, in addition to the above sixteen,
+forty more vessels were also put under his charge to convoy them as far
+as their courses remained the same. A convoy of forty sailing ships!
+What a magnificent sight they presented, most of them carrying royals
+and staysails, and the massive hulls with their stern galleries and
+ornate figure-heads and painted ports heeling over gracefully to the
+wind!
+
+[Illustration: CAPTAIN HENRY WILSON,
+
+  A commanding officer in the H.E. India Company, who was wrecked in
+  the company’s ship “Antelope.” About 1788.
+
+CAPTAIN HON. RICHARD WALPOLE,
+
+Who commanded the H.E. India Company’s ship “New Houghton.” About 1805.
+
+COMMODORE SIR NATHANIEL DANCE, 1804.
+
+A very gallant mercantile officer. (See p. 98.)
+
+SIR WILLIAM JAMES, BART.,
+
+  Commodore in the H.E. India Company, Chairman of the Court of
+  Directors, etc. About 1805.
+
+(_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._)]
+
+For Commodore Dance it was a most responsible task. This fleet was
+carrying many thousand pounds’ worth of goods. There was the danger of
+pirates and the possibility of falling in with the French men-of-war;
+and there was the ever-present danger of collision. But those were
+the days of seamanship, and where would you find to-day any mercantile
+or naval officer who could handle a fleet of forty sail? We know
+all too well how difficult it was to handle much smaller convoys of
+steamships during the recent war; and with engines it is mere child’s
+play compared with dependence on wind and sail. To Commodore Dance,
+then, I suggest the greatest compliment is due for his leadership and
+tactical seamanship alone. But that was not all.
+
+Through night and day for a fortnight he kept his fleet under way
+without mishap, and then at daybreak one February day when the fleet
+was E.N.E. of Pulo-Auro, which was visible, the _Royal George_ made
+a signal that she had sighted four strange sail to the south-west.
+Commodore Dance therefore signalled the _Alfred_, _Royal George_,
+_Bombay Castle_ and _Hope_ to go down and examine them. It happened
+that in the Commodore’s ship there was a passenger named Lieutenant
+Robert Fowler, R.N., lately in command of a ship that had been wrecked.
+He now offered to go in the fast-sailing brig _Ganges_, which was
+in the convoy. The Commodore assented, and she went away also to
+examine the strange vessels. Before long the look-out ships signalled
+that the strangers were actually a French squadron consisting of a
+line-of-battle ship, three frigates and a brig.
+
+At 1 p.m. the British Commodore signalled his scouts to return, and
+formed the line of battle in close order. Admiral Linois, who was in
+command of the French squadron, as soon as he could fetch in the wake
+of the East Indiamen, put about. The Commodore expected his rear to be
+attacked, but at nightfall the enemy, preferring a daylight action,
+hauled close to the wind. The British ships lay-to all night, the men
+at their quarters, ready for action, and at daybreak the enemy were
+seen also lying-to, but were three miles to windward. Both forces
+now hoisted their colours, and as the whole of the China fleet had
+been only recently painted, they presented a wonderful sight with
+their clouds of canvas. Admiral Linois’ flag was in the 74-gun ship
+_Marengo_, his other units being the 40-gun frigate _Belle-Poule_,
+the 36-gun frigate _Sémillante_, the 22-gun _Berceau_, and the 16-gun
+_Aventurier_. It was no chance meeting, for the French Admiral was
+on the look-out for this China fleet, of whose strength and time of
+departure he had been informed.
+
+At 9 a.m., as the enemy showed no intention of engaging, Dance formed
+the order of sailing and continued his course, his fleet being under
+easy sail on the starboard tack; whereupon the French filled and edged
+towards the merchantmen. Four hours later, as it was obvious that
+Linois was trying to cut off the rear of the fleet, Dance signalled
+his fleet to tack in succession, bear down in line ahead, and engage
+on arriving abreast of the enemy. This manœuvre was perfectly carried
+out, the _Royal George_ leading, all of them in close order and under
+t’gallant sails.[4] At 1.15 p.m. Linois opened fire upon the _Royal
+George_ and leading ships, but this was returned in a very determined
+manner. For about three-quarters of an hour the two enemies blazed
+away at each other. The brunt was borne by the _Royal George_, but the
+_Ganges_, _Earl Camden_, _Warley_ and _Alfred_ were all hotly engaged.
+These five ships gave the French such a hot time that by two o’clock
+_Marengo_ and her consorts ceased firing, hauled their wind, broke
+off the engagement and stood away under all sail to the eastward. The
+French warships had been beaten by British merchantmen and especially
+by clever tactics. But that was not all.
+
+Dance now made the signal for a general chase, and for two hours these
+merchant ships chased the warships; and then, remembering that his
+first duty was to his ships and their valuable cargoes, Dance feared
+that further pursuit would take his fleet too far from the mouth of the
+Malacca Straits, so ordered his fleet to tack, and eventually entered
+the straits. The _Royal George_ had one man killed, one wounded, and
+she received some shot holes in her hull and sails; the other British
+ships were practically untouched. The sixteen East Indiamen carried
+from thirty to thirty-six guns each, though not one of these ships was
+armed better than the _Aventurier_, and this point is to be remembered,
+that a warship is always more or less ready to fight, whereas these
+East Indiamen were full of cargo and the decks were greatly lumbered.
+The Commodore by his determination and promptitude had saved the whole
+fleet, and it is to the credit of these sixteen merchantmen that their
+smart appearance, the regularity of their manœuvres, and their bold
+advance made the French Admiral wonder whether, after all, these were
+not British men-of-war escorting the others.
+
+For this remarkable victory the Commodore, officers and crews were
+liberally rewarded. The Patriotic Fund Committee, which had originated
+in Lloyd’s coffee-house in 1803, presented the Commodore with a sword
+of the value of £100 and a silver vase of the same worth. Captain
+Timmins of the _Royal George_ also received a sword, as did the other
+captains and Lieutenant Fowler. The directors of the East India Company
+set aside about £50,000, and rewarded their Commodore with 2000 guineas
+and a piece of plate valued at 200 guineas. Captain Timmins received
+1000 guineas and plate, the other captains receiving 500 guineas each
+and a piece of plate. The chief officers each received 150 guineas, the
+second officers 125 guineas, and so on through the ship, each seaman
+receiving six guineas.
+
+Dance was given also £5000 by the Bombay Insurance Society. He was
+offered a baronetcy, but declined it and accepted a knighthood, and
+thus concludes one of the finest incidents in the history of the
+Merchant Service. This action showed that the ships and men were not
+merely magnificent for their own particular job, but that they could
+tackle any emergency that came along.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] For list of an East Indiaman’s sails, see Appendix.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+MIGHTY MERCHANTMEN
+
+
+Most of the vessels in this fleet of East Indiamen had been built at
+the Blackwall yard, or at least refitted there. In the year 1789 the
+East India Docks were brought into being, or rather begun, for they
+were not opened for another couple of years. This wet dock had become
+very necessary, for the East Indiamen had no accommodation provided
+for them now that they had become so big. And as long as they lay out
+in the river a good deal of their valuable cargoes was subject to
+pilfering. A joint-stock company was formed with a capital of £200,000,
+and it was decided that the hatches of every ship arriving from either
+India or China should be locked down before the ship reached Gravesend,
+and that the captain and one officer should remain on board until the
+ship was moored in the docks and the keys of the hatches handed over to
+an officer of the East India Company.
+
+At the beginning of the nineteenth century the price of building these
+ships was £13 12_s._ 6_d._ a ton. By 1803 it had gone up to £19. Five
+years later there were ten of these ships lost; in fact the first
+decade of the new century was unfortunate generally. There were losses
+owing to disasters at sea, and the French war paralysed the Indian
+trade. But the Blackwall yard was kept busy, and in 1813 it built ten
+frigates for the British Government of from 1078 to 1571 tons, owing
+to the lessons which had been learnt from the American frigates. Having
+built so many East Indiamen, this mercantile yard was eminently fitted
+for constructing such craft. And now that the firm consisted of Sir
+Robert Wigram, George Green, Money Wigram and Henry Loftus Wigram, we
+can see the time approaching when the famous Blackwall frigates were to
+make their appearance, though we shall not come to them immediately.
+
+In 1814 was launched for the East India Company the 1263-ton _Lady
+Melville_, and the firm of Wigrams & Greens was now making a great
+deal of money. Three years later came the fine 1325-ton _Waterloo_.
+The only other port in the kingdom that in any way rivalled London was
+Liverpool. In 1751 there were only 220 ships belonging to Liverpool,
+but the opening of the American trade five years later gave it a great
+impetus. Then came those years of war which checked this, but on the
+resumption of peace in 1815 the Mercantile Marine received a wonderful
+impetus which has culminated in the magnificent Atlantic liners of
+to-day. There was the great industrial awakening in Yorkshire and
+Lancashire, a big trade was to be built up with America, and the haven
+of the Mersey was geographically suitable for the exports and imports.
+Britain was supreme at sea, foreign shipping had almost disappeared,
+the demand for tonnage was increasing rapidly, and the Mercantile
+Marine was very much encouraged. In fact, from 1815 to 1860 the service
+passed through the most popular days of its long career.
+
+The first thirty years of the nineteenth century, just before the
+Indian monopoly was lost, saw the East India Company ships at their
+very best. We have spoken of the “Merchant Service” as a generic term,
+for convenience; but, strictly speaking, it pertained to the service
+in the ships of the East India Company, to distinguish it from service
+in the Free Traders and the Royal Navy. During this time to be able
+to get into the company’s service was about as good as a commission
+in the Navy. The ships themselves were as fine as any naval corvette,
+with similar discipline and similar personnel. Run like men-of-war,
+owned by a very ancient and wealthy company of unique character, the
+officers were of a social status equal to their cousins and brothers
+in His Majesty’s vessels. It was only when this old monopoly was taken
+away, and the romantic mixture of trade and sea-adventure gave way to
+keen competition in the race for wealth, that ships, officers, men and
+methods became of a different standard for a time. But this is always
+excepting the famous Blackwall frigates, which were destined to keep up
+the fine traditions of the old Indiamen.
+
+An officer in the East India Company was made to realise that he was
+being honoured to be allowed to enter such a service. The captains
+and first four officers were always sworn in before being allowed to
+proceed to duty on board. They enjoyed the very lucrative privilege
+of being able to participate in the company’s monopoly. The captain
+of a 755-ton ship and upwards, for instance, was allowed as much as
+fifty-six tons for his private trade, and he could even do better than
+this by using as dunnage bamboos which could be sold in London. From
+China he could bring home 9336 lbs. Therefore, although his pay was
+only £10 a month—and we must not forget that a sovereign in those days
+was worth very much more than it is to-day—the captain was able to
+make very nice profits. The officers were also allowed a liberal amount
+of wine, beer, butter, cheese, spirits and groceries. No wonder that an
+officer was so often able to retire after a very few voyages and buy a
+ship for himself.
+
+The 1200-ton East Indiaman carried a captain, six mates, surgeon,
+purser, boatswain-gunner, master-at-arms, midshipmen, caulker, cooper,
+cooks, carpenters, quartermasters, sailmaker, armourer, butcher, baker,
+poulterer, officers’ servants, stewards; the crew numbering a hundred
+and thirty. No one could become captain unless he had voyaged to and
+from India or China as chief or second mate. These officers were better
+seamen than navigators, but navigation was still crude and somewhat
+unscientific in those days. The full uniform of the captain was a fine
+blue coat with black Genoa velvet round the cuffs, black velvet lapels,
+black velvet panteen cape. The gilt buttons bore the company’s crest.
+Whenever officers appeared before the Court of Directors they were
+compelled to wear full uniform, but undress uniform when appearing
+before the Committee.
+
+Strict instructions were given to the captain that his new hands were
+to wear the clothes provided by the company. The pay of the “foremast
+men” was £2 5_s._ a month, but in addition to this they were entitled
+to a pension from what was known as the Poplar Fund. Any captain,
+officer or man who had served aboard these ships for eight years and
+had regularly contributed to the fund was entitled to a pension. The
+size of the pension was based on the amount of capital which an officer
+possessed. Thus, if a captain said he was not worth £2500, or £125 a
+year, he received a pension of £100. Allowances were made to the widows
+and orphans of those who had served the company for seven years, and if
+a man had been wounded or maimed so as to be incapable of further sea
+service he was qualified for a pension even if he had not served eight
+years.
+
+We mentioned some time back the fine East Indiaman _Warren Hastings_.
+In the engagement which is to be described she lost her purser and six
+men, and thirteen were wounded, including her chief, third and sixth
+officers and surgeon’s mate. Therefore, although these were really
+merchant ships, built to carry cargoes, with neither the facilities nor
+the crew of a man-of-war, yet there was always the possibility of the
+personnel being killed or disabled for life. In the case of the _Warren
+Hastings_, extra special trouble had been taken to enable her to
+defend herself against any French frigate she might meet. She mounted
+twenty-six 18-pdrs. on her main or lower deck, fourteen on her upper
+deck, and four 12-pdrs. on her poop. She left England in February 1805
+and reached China, then left again for home, but in a less suitable
+condition of defence; for of her main-deck ports four had been caulked
+up so as to give space for a storeroom, and the four guns had been
+placed in the hold. Of her crew, forty Chinamen remained at Canton, and
+a British man-of-war had pressed eighteen of her English seamen. Four
+of her upper deck guns had also been stowed below. She therefore now
+mounted only thirty-six guns.
+
+It was on June 21 at 7.30 a.m., when the ship was in Lat. 26° 13’ S.,
+Long. 56° 45’ E. that _Warren Hastings_, steering W. by S. before a
+strong breeze from N.E. by E., under a press of sail, sighted to the
+south-west a strange ship under treble-reefed topsails and courses.
+This was the French 40-gun frigate _Piémontaise_, 1093 tons, with a
+crew of 385, and able to fire a broadside of twenty-three guns, against
+the _Warren Hastings_’ eighteen. The latter had a tonnage of 1856, but
+a crew of only 138. The Frenchman had twenty-eight 18-pdrs. on her
+main deck. She also carried eighteen other guns on her quarter-deck,
+a total of forty-six carriage-guns. But she also carried swivels and
+musketoons in her tops and along her gunwales. On each fore and main
+yard-arm there was a tripod to contain a 5-cwt. shell, so that if she
+got alongside her enemy its fusee could be lit by a man lying out on
+the yard, and it would then be allowed to fall on the enemy’s deck, and
+after its explosion the French would be able to rush on board. It was
+thus in idea a revival of mediævalism. The historian James even went so
+far as to refer to the Frenchmen as being “armed more like assassins
+than men-of-war’s men; each having, beside the usual boarding weapons,
+a poniard struck through the button-holes of his jacket.”
+
+Thus, in every respect except tonnage the East Indiaman was a more
+powerful vessel, and the preliminary tactics are interesting. At
+9 a.m., when the Indiaman was well on her weather-quarter, the
+Frenchman shook out the reefs from her topsails and stood towards the
+merchantman, who held on her course. Half an hour later the frigate set
+her t’gallant sails and stuns’ls, and at 10 a.m. hoisted the British
+blue ensign and pendant. There was nothing wrong in this _ruse de
+guerre_, and often during the war of 1914-1918 British ships hoisted
+neutral colours _before_ opening fire on German submarines. _Warren
+Hastings_ suspected the frigate was not a British man-of-war, but
+hoisted her colours and made her private signal. For, in order that
+East Indiamen might be able to make themselves known on the high seas
+to British men-of-war, a special code of signals was always arranged by
+the Admiralty during war-time. This code was sent sealed to the Secret
+Committee of the company and then handed over to the commanding officer
+of each ship.
+
+The Frenchman took no notice of the signals, continued rapidly to
+approach, so that at 11 a.m. the Indiaman shortened sail and cleared
+for action: it was quite obvious now what was going to happen. At noon
+the frigate took in her stuns’ls, staysails and mainsail, and then
+hauled down British colours and hoisted French. After opening fire and
+disabling part of the Indiaman’s rigging, the Frenchman again attacked,
+this time killing and wounding several of the merchantman’s crew,
+badly damaging the foremast, cutting away all the foreshrouds on the
+port side and the ensign. The latter was quickly hoisted again at the
+maintopgallant masthead.
+
+A third attack followed, during which the _Warren Hastings_’ foremast
+was finally crippled. Thus, owing to the wind and heavy sea, the latter
+could carry sail on only her main and mizzen masts, and now opened
+fire. A hot engagement followed, and unfortunately her mainmast was
+now damaged as well as her standing and running rigging, besides the
+further loss of men killed and wounded. The fifth attack found her with
+only the main topsail set, and the enemy poured in a terrible fire,
+which knocked the spanker boom into splinters and carried away the
+mizzen-mast, which, falling forward, disabled every remaining effective
+gun on the upper deck. Troubles came not singly, for the lower deck
+was on fire, the rudder was rendered useless, and whilst the surgeon
+was operating, a shell entered and destroyed all his instruments. For
+four hours and a half the Indiaman had sought to defend herself, but
+in spite of the zeal and perseverance of her officers and men she was
+compelled in her crippled state to lower her colours.
+
+Then, being thoroughly unmanageable, the Indiaman, with the heavy sea
+running, happened to fall off, and crashed alongside the _Piémontaise_,
+who was to leeward. Thereupon a number of Frenchmen leapt aboard the
+merchantman with daggers and threatened to kill the lot, dragged the
+captain about the ship and accused him of having tried to ram the
+frigate so as to cripple her masts; and then stabbed the captain,
+whereupon he fainted through loss of blood. The second officer,
+surgeon, and a midshipman and boatswain’s mate were similarly stabbed.
+Presently this fury died down, the Frenchman took the Englishman in tow
+and both arrived at the Isle of France on July 4.
+
+Thus, life in these merchant ships, although well rewarded, was at any
+time during those long years of hostilities liable suddenly to become
+most exciting. Ships and men were sent to the bottom or taken captive,
+but the service went on. Lest the reader should imagine these incidents
+isolated events, let the following be related. On May 2, 1809, a small
+squadron of homeward-bound Indiamen had cleared the Sandheads of Bengal
+River, escorted by H.M. sloop _Victor_. After three weeks the latter,
+in dark and squally weather of the night of the 24th, parted company.
+By the 30th, owing to stress of weather, two ships had left the convoy,
+and there now remained only the _Streatham_, _Europe_ and _Lord Keith_
+in company. The first two were 820-ton craft; the third was a vessel of
+600 tons. The first two carried thirty guns apiece; the _Lord Keith_
+had not more than twelve.
+
+At five-thirty on the morning of May 31, when in Lat. 9° 15’ N., Long.
+90° 30’ E., these three were on the starboard tack with the wind S.W.
+by S. when a strange ship was seen seven miles off to the west of
+south. This was the French 40-gun frigate _Caroline_, which mounted
+forty-six guns in addition to her swivels. She had been cruising off
+the Sandheads and had captured a few ships. Subsequently she had
+learned from an American ship, the _Silenus_, which had sailed from
+the Sandheads, of the number and probable route of the Indiamen.
+But when first sighted the _Caroline_ was taken by the Indiamen for
+the _Victor_. _Streatham_, being the senior ship, made the private
+signal about 6 a.m., but having got no answer from the Frenchman,
+signalled the other two to form into line, _Lord Keith_ leading,
+followed by _Streatham_ and _Europe_, but the two last mentioned were a
+considerable distance apart. Half an hour later the _Caroline_ hoisted
+colours and attacked _Europe_, who quickly returned the fire. At the
+end of half an hour the latter was disabled. Most of her guns were
+put out of action, yards, foremast, sails and rigging cut to pieces
+and hull damaged in several places. And then the enemy raked her from
+forward and proceeded to deal with _Streatham_, which by eight o’clock
+was so utterly crippled that she had to lower colours. Meanwhile _Lord
+Keith_ and _Europe_ had been firing at _Caroline_, who now recommenced
+the action with the last mentioned. Presently _Europe_ closed
+_Streatham_, but on learning that the latter had surrendered, and that
+_Lord Keith_ had escaped, running before the wind, also determined to
+up helm. Then _Caroline_, after securing _Streatham_, went in chase
+and captured _Europe_. On account of the leaking condition which the
+two prizes were now in, it took three days to get them in a seaworthy
+condition, but on July 22, with their valuable cargoes, they were
+brought by _Caroline_ and anchored in the Bay of St. Paul, Isle of
+Bourbon. It had been a heavy loss to the East India Company, though the
+gallant merchant captains, with their ill-armed and badly-manned ships
+(the crews consisting partly of cowardly Portuguese and lascars), had
+done all that was possible. The one consoling feature was that _Lord
+Keith_ managed to get right away, and actually arrived safely back in
+English waters.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+A CONVOY OF EAST INDIAMEN.
+
+H.E. India Company’s ship “Inglis” leaving St. Helena in July 1830,
+with H.M. Frigate “Ariadne” and the H E. India Company’s ships
+“Windsor,” “Waterloo,” “Scaleby Castle,” “General Kyd,” “Farquharson”
+and “Lowther Castle.”]
+
+Similarly on July 3, 1810, three outward-bound Indiamen, the _Ceylon_,
+_Windham_ and _Astell_, each of them of 800 tons, were about thirty
+miles west of the island of Mayotta on a northerly course with a fresh
+S.S.E. breeze when three ships were sighted close-hauled on the port
+tack. These were the two French frigates _Bellone_, _Minerve_, and the
+recaptured ship-corvette _Victor_, about nine miles distant, and it was
+about six o’clock, just as the day was dawning. Half an hour later the
+senior Indiaman _Ceylon_ made the private signal, and, as no answer
+was returned, the merchant ships prepared for action. Presently, as
+_Astell_ signalled she was overpressed, the other two shortened sail.
+Captain Meriton made the following signal from _Ceylon_: “As we cannot
+get away, I think we had better go under easy sail, and bring them to
+action before dark.” To this _Astell_ replied: “Certainly.” _Windham_
+answered: “If we make all sail and get into smooth water under the
+land, we can engage to more advantage.”
+
+The wind increased so much that the Indiamen were compelled to
+heave-to, and took in the third reef of their topsails. It was not an
+ideal day for an engagement, as the ships heeled over so that they
+could not keep open their lower-deck ports. Captain Meriton formed
+his ships in line abreast, _Ceylon_ in the centre, and at 2.15 p.m.
+_Minerve_ opened fire on _Windham_ and _Ceylon_. There was a heavy sea
+running and the action became general. During the afternoon Captain
+Hay of _Astell_ was severely wounded, and the command was taken over
+by the chief mate. _Windham_ had her sails and rigging considerably
+damaged, and about 4.30 p.m. a temporary lull occurred, when _Minerve_
+carried away her main and mizzen topmasts. And then Captain Meriton was
+wounded, so the command of _Ceylon_ devolved on her chief mate, who a
+few minutes afterwards was himself wounded and was succeeded by the
+second mate. This ship had received great punishment throughout the
+engagement: her masts, sails and rigging were badly damaged, many of
+her guns disabled, her hull so injured that she was making three feet
+of water an hour; six of her people were killed and twenty-one wounded.
+Therefore before half-past seven she hauled down her colours and was
+taken prize. _Astell_, already much injured, put out her lights, made
+sail and escaped during the extreme darkness of the night. _Windham_
+was now left alone, and finding that she was too damaged to make sail,
+continued the action to help _Astell’s_ escape, and then hauled down
+her colours and was taken captive.
+
+The captains, officers and men had fought very gallantly against the
+French, who were in superior force, and the East India Company, who
+always could afford to treat their servants handsomely, awarded each of
+the three captains the sum of £500, with a fine reward for the officers
+and men. On Captain Hay of the _Astell_ the company also settled a
+pension of £460 a year, and distributed £2000 among the officers and
+crew. Furthermore, the Admiralty, to show their appreciation of the
+ship’s gallantry, granted to the crew a protection from impressment
+for three years. One of the men, Andrew Peters, had bravely nailed the
+pendant to the maintop masthead, and having done so was killed while
+descending the rigging.
+
+It is fine to read of the resource, the able seamanship and great
+gallantry of these wonderful old ships right through two centuries
+until well into a third. But there was a new era coming, and the
+final link with Tudor romance and mediæval shipping ideas was just
+about to be severed. Looking back on events, it seems to us moderns
+perfectly amazing that the East India Company should have enjoyed
+so rich and enormous a monopoly so long, and in the year 1814 they
+lost this privilege so far as India was concerned. The result was
+that a new impetus was given to shipbuilding and shipowning, and the
+element of competition was introduced with free trade and no favour.
+In the task of making the Mercantile Marine of Britain such a solid,
+dignified, stately and honourable service for all those years the
+company did much; nor is this influence by any means dead, for it set a
+high standard for subsequent independent shipowners to follow, and it
+permeates the big shipping lines of to-day. What the Orient had meant
+in a small way to the Tudor and Stuart seamen and merchants, it was to
+mean on a much bigger scale to the traders of the nineteenth century,
+and the wealth of Great Britain was to benefit thereby.
+
+From 1814 the owners of the Blackwall yard began to build East Indiamen
+for themselves to own and manage. In 1824 they built the _Carn Brae
+Castle_, 570 tons, which was the first ship expressly built for the
+passenger trade to Calcutta, and the finest ship of her day. She was
+lost rather unnecessarily by the officer of the watch allowing her to
+stand too close into Freshwater Bay, Isle of Wight, one day when the
+captain and passengers were at dinner. In that same year Mr. Green had
+purchased the _Sir Edward Paget_, which was the first of the well-known
+passenger ships to India and Australia. She was elaborately fitted and
+made quite a sensation. She was commanded by Captain Geary, R.N., and
+in this connection the following true anecdote is recorded. The house
+flag which she wore was a white ground with a red St. George’s cross
+through the centre. One day, after arrival at Spithead, the Admiral at
+Portsmouth sent his lieutenant off to inquire what ship was wearing an
+admiral’s flag, and on learning that she was a merchant ship, at once
+ordered it to be hauled down. A blue handkerchief was then sown on the
+centre of the flag, and as this satisfied the lieutenant it was allowed
+to be hoisted again, and continued to be the distinguishing flag of the
+Wigram and Green ships until, some years later, the partnership in the
+firm was dissolved.
+
+After this ship returned to Blackwall from her first voyage, Mr.
+Green proceeded on board to make his usual inspection, and, much to
+his dismay, was received with manned yards, with a salute, and the
+ship’s band playing “The Conquering Hero.” But the _Sir Edward Paget_
+was not a man-of-war and Mr. Green was not an admiral; and it was all
+very fine, but not suitable. He resented this kind of reception, and
+the general man-of-war appearance everywhere on board so astonished
+him, that he was not surprised also to find that when the accounts of
+the voyage were balanced the style was not financially profitable. The
+result was that a new captain came to the ship and there was a new set
+of regulations before she went on her second voyage.
+
+In 1825 a couple of 1325-ton ships were launched by the yard, and here
+we get the final resemblance to the ships of the Caroline period, for
+the figure-head, poop, decorations and so on have been considerably
+modified. By the year 1830 the firm had ceased to build any more
+vessels to be employed by the East India Company; for although that
+corporation had lost its Indian monopoly, as already stated, it still
+retained a like privilege in regard to China. But the public mind was
+opposed to this being continued; in 1832 Parliament had to face the
+question, and in April of 1834 the company lost its commercial charter
+for ever. But, seeing this revolution was approaching, individual
+firms had in the meantime been preparing to compete in this Eastern
+trade. Not merely did the Greens and Wigrams from 1830 build ships for
+themselves, but they ordered them from the Tyne firm of T. & W. Smith,
+and this firm also began to own East Indiamen themselves in competition
+with the Greens and Wigrams.
+
+In 1831 the Blackwall firm consisted of George Green, Money Wigram,
+Henry Loftus Wigram, Richard Green and Henry Green, but they were to
+pursue a strange policy, which, if good for the Mercantile Marine, was
+destined to ruin the firm. The owners of the Blackwall yard began to
+build ships not for the firm, but for individual members of the firm—so
+many for the Green family and so many for the Wigrams, but especially
+for the former. Thus it came about that a Green fleet competed with
+a Wigram fleet, whilst by the year 1841 the ships owned by the firm
+itself numbered only two. Finally in 1843 the partnership was dissolved.
+
+But in 1832 they launched the 577-ton _London_ for Money Wigram, and
+this was the real pioneer of the celebrated Blackwall frigates of which
+we shall speak in a later chapter. We thus enter on that last stage of
+ship development which was to precede the golden age of the sailing
+ship, when the clippers made eternal fame for themselves. This yard
+was still the biggest private concern in Europe, though Liverpool as
+a great port was now going ahead. The beginning of the American War
+in 1812 had given it a serious set-back, but after peace came in 1814
+there was a new era as well for the Atlantic shipping as for the East.
+For America was going ahead. She had shown that she knew how to build
+during the war frigates of an improved kind, and in peace she was now
+producing better-designed merchantmen than ourselves.
+
+In 1816 was inaugurated the famous Black Ball Line of New York packets,
+which were the precursors of the present-day Atlantic liners. These
+Black Ball liners were full-rigged ships of from 300 to 500 tons
+register, with full bodies and bluff bows, and yet they averaged
+at first only twenty-three days on the outward voyage to Liverpool
+and forty-three days homeward-bound. This was the only means of
+communication in those days between America and Liverpool, and in 1836
+was started the Dramatic Line, consisting of 700-ton sailing ships. The
+world’s trade was increasing, industrialism was prospering, the markets
+of the whole world were now open to all, and there was a long spell of
+peace ahead. Transatlantic shipping was encouraged so that these packet
+ships increased in tonnage, and in 1846 the 1400-ton _New World_ was
+built, being then the largest sailing ship in the world. Other famous
+vessels were the _Isaac Webb_, _Albert Webb_ and _Guy Mannering_.
+The ships of these two lines were exceedingly fine craft, and made
+remarkable passages across to England, the Black Ball liners eventually
+averaging twenty-one days and the Dramatic liners twenty and a half
+days. The nineteenth century in regard to the sailing ship alone was
+certainly a most wonderful period.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+A FINE PIECE OF SEAMANSHIP.
+
+The “Chesterfield” packet (Captain Robert Lea Jones) rescuing the crew
+of a sinking ship. About 1795.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+PACKET SHIPS AND BRIGS
+
+
+As far back as the reign of Elizabeth a State post-office was
+instituted for foreign letters, for the reason that the merchants
+now required it. Owing to England’s geographical position, this, of
+course, connoted the employment of sailing ships. By 1635 the weekly
+continental service was doubled and accelerated. This arrangement
+improved during the seventeenth century, and there were packet stations
+at Dover for France, Harwich and Yarmouth for Holland and Hamburg, and
+at Holyhead and Milford for Ireland.
+
+But it was Falmouth which became the headquarters for the post-office
+packet service as far back as 1688. The reason for this is obvious
+when you consider its location in regard to the Bay of Biscay, and
+the facility with which even those unhandy sailing craft could come
+in and out in all weathers and practically all winds. A very safe
+harbour, with plenty of room and water, right at the western end of
+the English Channel and easy of access, it was ideal for the departure
+of travellers and mails for Spain and the West Indies. The result was
+that, as the service became more numerous, shipyards were created
+in Falmouth, inns were built for the travellers, and a seafaring
+population grew up.
+
+The North Sea packets were of about sixty tons, but the Falmouth
+packets were of 200 tons and heavily armed. They were not owned by the
+post-office, but hired by private contract, as the East India Company
+used to charter their ships. In fact, never did the post-office own the
+ships, although the officers and men were its servants, and not the
+contractor’s. The Falmouth packet service began in a quiet way in 1688
+with the hiring of two craft, and for years it was run at a loss. But
+there were political reasons for keeping up connection with Spain, and
+during the eighteenth century both the Spanish and West Indian trades
+became important; and even by 1702 packet ships from Falmouth were
+running to Barbados, Jamaica, the southern States of North America, to
+Corunna in Spain, and in 1704 also to Lisbon. It was a separate method
+of causing to grow up a body of fine seamen; it was one of the best
+schools for encouraging navigation, which was still in a most crude
+position; and generally it was one of the great influences towards
+building up the Mercantile Marine. It was not until Cromwell’s time
+that any real naval fighting service as distinct from the Merchant
+Navy had come into being, and right up to the Napoleonic Wars the two
+services were closely allied and practically interchangeable. We have
+to remember also that merchantmen and packet ships had to fight enemy
+warships whenever required. Of a peaceful voyage there was hardly such
+a thing.
+
+Such incidents as that of May 16, 1744, when the _Townshend_ packet
+fought against the Spaniards; or of July 25, 1759, when the packet
+_Fawkener_ was attacked by a large French sloop between Barbados and
+Antigua, are by no means isolated. Indeed, although they were forbidden
+to seek engagements and were reminded that their first duty was the
+safety of the mails, yet if they saw a chance of obtaining wealth at
+sea by attacking a likely ship, they did so in spite of any authority.
+These men were, like the age in which they lived, a hardy, rough,
+corrupt lot of dare-devils.
+
+They carried cargoes of their own, contrary to regulations; they
+stole, they smuggled, they mutinied—but we cannot go through the whole
+decalogue. On the other hand, they were real sailormen, and the rule
+that a packet was to put to sea from Falmouth immediately on receiving
+the mails, whatever the wind might be, provided only she could carry a
+double-reefed topsail, was maintained. The regularity of their voyages
+was the nearest thing to the running of a modern steamship. In 1798
+there were sixteen packet ships to keep up the Falmouth to West Indies
+service, and “on the quiet” captains, officers and crews would take
+out quantities of cheese, potatoes, boots, shoes and so on, sell them
+on commission for English merchants, and then bring back such goods as
+wines, lace, tobacco, brandy, which would be smuggled ashore and then
+sold all over the country by special men. This went on until 1810, when
+the Lisbon and West Indian packets were strictly forbidden to carry
+on these trades. The order brought the crews up with a round turn,
+and a terrible moan went about in disgust. Their wages were certainly
+too low, and this was the means of remunerating themselves. Anger and
+indignation finally culminated in a mutiny.
+
+And yet the captains used to make no meagre living, even reckoned in
+the money of the nineteenth century. They were paid £8 a month during
+war-time and £5 in peace; but besides this they received large sums
+in respect of the fares of passengers. One captain alone was making
+£1000 a year by this means, and then there were the fees for carrying
+bullion, to say nothing of their commission for selling goods, both
+exports and imports. For instance, they were paid thirty-five guineas
+by every passenger who proceeded from Falmouth to Gibraltar. By the
+year 1808 there were thirty-nine packets at Falmouth—quite a fine fleet
+for any one port in those days. Every week one sailed for Lisbon, one
+for San Sebastian or other part of the north Spanish coast, whence
+communication with the British Army in the Peninsula was maintained.
+Each week, too, one packet sailed for the West Indies, whilst others
+at longer intervals set forth towards the Mediterranean, Brazil,
+Surinam, Halifax and New York. People were beginning to travel, and
+between 2000 and 3000 passengers thus passed through Falmouth to and
+from these ships yearly. It was a very encouraging factor for the
+Mercantile Marine, especially as the Falmouth packets alone kept 1200
+men permanently employed afloat.
+
+Contemporary artists of the early nineteenth century have left for
+us paintings showing some of the North Sea packet ships. Turner’s
+well-known picture in the National Gallery of the English packet
+arriving in Calais in 1803 is an instance. These craft were never
+bigger than about eighty tons, and during the French wars ran for
+a time between Yarmouth and Hellevoetsluis in Holland. But a West
+Indian packet such as the _Duke of Marlborough_ with her 1804 tons and
+brig-rigged, was a very different sort of ship. And in the very year
+when Commodore Dance put Admiral Linois to flight, this packet ship,
+whilst bound for the Leeward Islands, was in the month of April chased
+by a schooner and captured.
+
+[Illustration: CAPTAIN W. ROGERS,
+
+Of the “Windsor Castle” packet. About 1808.
+
+CAPTAIN JOSEPH HUDDART, F.R.S.,
+
+Who served in the H.E. India Company’s service for ten years. He lived
+1741-1816, and was a celebrated hydrographer.
+
+(_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._)]
+
+As mentioned in the last chapter, the famous American packets which
+ran from New York to Liverpool, came out in 1816. This famous Black
+Ball Line was for years the pioneer, and began with five 400-ton ships.
+During the first ten years these vessels averaged twenty-three days on
+the eastward and forty-three days on the westward voyage, the fastest
+eastward being the passage of _Canada_ in fifteen days eighteen hours.
+These ships were flush-decked. Between the foremast and mainmast was
+the galley, and in the long-boat were carried the sheep and pigs and
+fowls for the ship’s food. A cow was also carried in a house over the
+main hatch, and the passengers’ cabins were aft.
+
+These liners carried a black ball painted on the foresail and were
+commanded by real hard-case captains who had caused much anxiety to
+British shipping whilst in command of privateers during the war of
+1812. In these ships passengers, mails and bullion were conveyed, two
+vessels leaving each month. In 1821 two more lines were started, one
+of which was the Red Star Line of packets to Liverpool. After the
+Dramatic Line was founded in 1836 the packet ships gradually increased
+to about 1000 tons, and the competition had become keener, packets now
+running from North America to Liverpool, Havre and London. Captain A.
+H. Clark, in his interesting volume The _Clipper Ship Era_, states
+that all packet ships carried a white light at the bowsprit cap from
+sunset to sunrise; but of course side-lights had not yet come in. It
+is interesting to remark in this connection that probably the first
+institution of side-lights was in 1834, for from January 1 the City of
+Dublin Steam Company began to use a white light at the foremast head,
+a red on the larboard bow and a white on the starboard bow, the two
+latter being attached to the houses forward of the paddleboxes. Then
+for a few years there was a diversity in practice, each company doing
+what it thought best in this respect to minimise risk of collision at
+sea.
+
+Up to 1846 the system in use by the British packet ships of Liverpool
+was to have a white light under the cross-trees below the foot of the
+foresail, with a red light on the port paddlebox and a white light
+on the starboard paddlebox, but apparently the Milford steam packets
+carried a red light on the starboard bow, a green light on the port bow
+and a “common light” (presumably white) at the foremast head. It is
+claimed that this was also the fashion adopted by the P. & O. Company.
+In 1846 the Royal Mail Steam Company’s ships carried masthead and bow
+lights, but colourless. The subject is a little difficult to elucidate,
+but it is certain that there were in existence different usages as late
+as this date, and it was not until at least two years later that any
+sort of uniformity came in. It has been stated by another authority
+that it was only as a result of the collision between the Collins
+liner _Arctic_ and the French ship _Vesta_ on September 21, 1854, when
+the former foundered with the loss of 323 lives out of 368, that the
+carrying of side-lights was made compulsory and not optional.
+
+Even in the American packets most of the crew were British, and often
+enough gaol-birds of the worst type, but the captains were pretty tough
+and accustomed to handling men as well as ships, and the mates were of
+the same order. These ships could reel off their twelve knots pretty
+regularly, and sometimes did the voyage in sixteen days. With their
+high-steeved bowsprits, their black hulls and square painted ports,
+and carrying plenty of canvas, even to skysails and stuns’ls in summer
+weather, they used to race against each other, sometimes even for very
+high stakes. For quite a long time the Atlantic packet ships were able
+to laugh at the steamships, but gradually from 1840 the progress of the
+marine engineer and shipbuilder wore down the competition. Regularity
+and reliability of running with increased comfort were bound to have
+their influence on the carrying of mails, passengers and merchandise.
+
+Ralph Waldo Emerson in his _English Traits_ has left on record an
+account of his passage across the Atlantic from Boston in 1847 aboard
+the packet ship _Washington Irving_. She was of 750 tons register, the
+mainmast measured 115 feet from deck to truck, and the length of the
+ship from stem to stern on deck was 155 feet. “The shortest sea-line,”
+he goes on to remark, “from Boston to Liverpool is 2850 miles. This
+a steamer keeps, saving 150 miles. A sailing ship can never go in
+a shorter line than 3000, and usually it is much longer. Our good
+master keeps his kites up to the last moment, studding sails alow and
+aloft, and by incessant straight steering never loses a rod of way....
+Since the ship was built, it seems, the master never slept but in his
+day-clothes whilst on board.... Hour for hour, the risk on a steamboat
+is greater; but the speed is safety, or twelve days of danger instead
+of twenty-four.”
+
+In one week the _Washington Irving_ made 1467 miles, but to Emerson,
+as to most passengers in those days, this form of travel was anything
+but pleasant. “I find the sea-life an acquired taste,” he sums up
+rather sadly, “like that for tomatoes and olives. The confinement,
+cold, motion, noise and odour are not to be dispensed with. The floor
+of your room is sloped at an angle of twenty or thirty degrees, and
+I waked every morning with the belief that someone was tipping up my
+berth. Nobody likes being treated ignominiously, upset, shoved against
+the side of the house, rolled over, suffocated with bilge, mephitis
+and stewing oil. We get used to these annoyances at last, but the
+dread of the sea remains longer.... Such discomfort and such danger
+as the narratives of the captain and mate disclose are bad enough
+as the costly fee we pay for entrance to Europe; but the wonder is
+always new that any sane man can be a sailor.” Emerson found the worst
+inconvenience was the lack of light in the cabin, but the fifteen days
+from the time they left soundings were to him long, joyless and severe.
+
+The American poet James Russell Lowell has left us a character sketch
+of a chief mate whom he describes as “not an American, but I should
+never have guessed it by his speech, which was the purest Cape Cod,
+and I reckon myself a good taster of dialects.... He used to walk the
+deck with his hands in his pockets, in seeming abstraction, but nothing
+escaped his eye.... He is as impervious to cold as the polar bear. On
+the Atlantic, if the wind blew a gale from the north-east, and it was
+cold as an English summer, he was sure to turn out in a calico shirt
+and trousers, his furzy brown chest half bare, and slippers without
+stockings. But ... he comes out in a monstrous pea-jacket here in the
+Mediterranean when the evening is so hot that Adam would have been glad
+to leave off his fig-leaves.... He ... always combs his hair, and works
+himself into a black frock-coat (on Sundays he adds a waistcoat) before
+he comes to meals, sacrificing himself nobly and painfully to the
+social proprieties. The second mate, on the other hand, who eats after
+us, enjoys the privilege of shirt-sleeves, and is, I think, the happier
+man of the two.”
+
+But besides the shipping engaged in the East Indian, West Indian,
+American, Spanish, Mediterranean and North Sea routes, the Mercantile
+Marine was being built up by the fishermen and coasters, and we should
+be providing an inaccurate picture if we did not consider them. In
+an earlier chapter we saw how important were the fishing fleets down
+to the end of the seventeenth century, and what a backbone they
+have always been to the navies and Mercantile Marine. In 1704 Queen
+Anne reorganised the various laws relating to the herring fishery
+and permitted the use of all harbours and shores for landing fish
+on payment of reasonable dues. A certain number of foreigners were
+being employed by the British to help with the fishing, but in 1747
+the Dutch still had 3000 herring vessels and were employing 40,000
+fishermen. This was a great falling off since 1679, but still it was a
+considerable industry, and bringing in £5,000,000. Not without reason
+these Hollanders called their herring fisheries their gold mine, and
+in the mid-eighteenth century they were employing over 1000 Englishmen
+in their craft. Thus each nation learned a good deal of each other’s
+methods, and this standardisation has continued to this day.
+
+Somehow the English fishery companies continued to be unsuccessful, for
+in October of 1750 one more was incorporated, but the craft and gear
+were purchased at expensive rates, more fish were obtained than could
+be sold, and thus the company failed. But it was not merely the Dutch
+who were rivalling the English and Scottish fishermen. During the
+latter half of the century the Swedes and the Danes were very active.
+In fact, British men-of-war had to be requested to afford protection
+against the encroachments of foreigners. The British fishing craft were
+often badly built, of ill design and not well-found, but legislation
+was introduced to assist them. In 1771 a bounty of thirty shillings a
+ton for seven years was granted to all decked vessels of from twenty
+to eighty tons, provided they were of British origin and ownership and
+engaged in the herring fishery. These craft were to meet for fishing at
+Yarmouth, Leith, Inverness, Bressay Sound, Kirkwall, Oban, Campbelltown
+and Whitehaven. But it is rather curious that the Scottish fishing
+was abandoned to foreigners, who brought in the catches, and then the
+fish were exported to the British West Indies as food for slaves; but
+from 1809 the Scottish fishing began to prosper once more. During
+the nineteenth century the rights of the European States over their
+territorial waters were defined, for the constant quarrels between the
+French and British fishermen as to where they could dredge for oysters
+off the coast were somewhat of a nuisance.
+
+It is since the Sea Fisheries Act of 1868 that all fishing vessels have
+been compelled to be registered and licensed, and then in 1886 was
+instituted a Fishery Department in the Board of Trade. The twentieth
+century has been notable for the way steam and motors have gradually
+begun to take the place of sailing craft. The steam drifters are able
+to follow the herring down the coast, but the big steam trawlers are
+the principal fishing craft in the British Isles to-day. During the
+war most of the British steam fishing craft were taken up by the
+Admiralty for mine-sweeping or anti-submarine work, but by the year
+1921 the national fishing had recovered so much that the total landings
+amounted to over £16,000,000. It is from the North Sea trawlers that
+most of the fish still comes, and of this a considerable quantity is
+caught by the trawlers from Hull and Grimsby. One unfortunate result of
+the war has been the loss of the Russian and much of the German trade;
+for in 1913 the United Kingdom exported £5,500,000 worth of cured and
+salted herring, of which Russia and Germany together took 80 per cent.
+To-day from Hull alone there are about 250 steam trawlers fishing and
+employing about 3000 hands aboard. If you add to this the number of
+steam, motor and sailing fishing craft from the other ports, it is at
+once obvious that these fleets form a very considerable portion of the
+Mercantile Marine.
+
+We may take Hull as representative of modern fishing, but it is only as
+the result of centuries of experience. Certainly as far back as 1535
+the quantity of fish there landed was considered so important as to
+require an Act of Parliament to regulate the trade. Perhaps the least
+known was the very important Hull whaling trade, which was carried
+on for two and a half centuries until about 1868, when, owing to the
+scarcity of whales, the industry died out, the last whaling voyage
+being made by the _Truelove_, which had been built in Philadelphia 104
+years previously. This vessel made seventy-two whaling voyages, during
+which she took about 500 whales, and besides these activities filled in
+the time by general trading, in the Oporto wine trade, and even as a
+“Letter of Marque.” Other whalers also went to the Arctic from Whitby,
+Scarborough and London. You may guess how important was the industry
+when we state that in the year 1821 no fewer than sixty-one whalers
+left Hull, thirty-two for the area between Greenland and Spitzbergen,
+and twenty-nine for the Davis Straits.
+
+But there was still another school for seamanship, and it was one of
+the most important sections of the Mercantile Marine, for two reasons:
+it not merely trained some of our finest officers and men, but it was
+until late in the nineteenth century a wonderful fleet of coasters,
+which passed away only at the coming of the steam collier. We refer
+to those brigs which used to bring coal from the Tyne to the Thames.
+These little two-masted vessels were manned by crews who were paid by
+the voyage. The result was that they were interested in making a quick
+passage. A contemporary writer, who was himself a privateer for a time,
+regarded these collier crews as the most perfect in working their ships
+in narrow channels, as the East Indiamen were the finest in the open
+seas.
+
+This was in the eighteenth century, but from the time of the Stuarts
+these _Geordie_ brigs had been plying their trade and building up a
+fine body of seamen who formed a kind of pool from which ocean-going
+ships could obtain officers and crews for bolder enterprises. In this
+branch of the Mercantile Marine the famous discoverer, Captain Cook,
+learnt his seamanship, which was to lead to such important events. You
+may remember that whilst still in his teens he became apprenticed for
+three years in 1746 to the Whitby owners of the 450-ton vessel which
+carried coal from Newcastle to London, and after two years he served
+for a time in the 600-ton collier _Three Brothers_. He then served
+aboard her in the Norwegian and Baltic trades. In the seventeenth
+century these “coal cats,” as they were called, were sometimes
+three-masted vessels with square mainsail, square foresail, lateen
+mizzen, and sometimes a main topsail, but of course no triangular
+headsails, which did not come in until later.
+
+Captain H. Y. Moffat, who was born in 1844 and served as a boy in
+the collier-brig _Premium_, has published some interesting facts
+illustrating this kind of seafaring. His pay was £8—not a week, nor a
+month, but a year. The second year he was to have £10, and the third
+year £12. Each of these brigs carried a couple of boys, though the
+rest of the crew were still paid by the voyage. They lived in a dirty,
+dark, small fo’c’sle, and during the summer the brig would often run
+coals across to Hamburg and Rotterdam, but in the winter to London from
+South Shields. If the surroundings were hardly ideal for a boy, and
+the pay utterly inadequate, it was a splendid chance for him to learn
+his seamanship in a rough school. If the brig had a head wind anywhere
+between Yarmouth and London—that is to say, among all those shoals,
+these lads were kept busy heaving the lead all the time night and day;
+for in those times there were no gas-buoys.
+
+As to the men, they knew their job perfectly, but they could neither
+read nor write. They went aboard the ship with their marlin-spike,
+pricker, palm, rubber, sail-hook, needles, etc., and even with
+a well-scrubbed handspike for the windlass. Many of the modern,
+dry-nursed steamship seamen, better educated and better fed though
+they are, would have no right to be reckoned in the same category of
+efficiency as these rough mariners, who still used the old-fashioned
+hour and half-hour sand-glasses in their brigs. It was one of the
+most glorious sights to see a fleet of these colliers beating up the
+Thames. A waterman was always employed to assist each brig working
+up the river, and he would come aboard anywhere between Woolwich and
+Greenwich. If they were beating up with the flood tide, there might
+be fifty or a hundred brigs all of a bunch, and it would often happen
+that a brig could not fore reach because of the colliers just ahead.
+The waterman would therefore put the helm down, let her come up into
+the wind, and shake, but not so long as to lose way. This was known as
+a “waterman’s nip,” and with great care he could make the brig take as
+long to reach from one side of the river to the other as would allow
+the crew time to eat their dinner. The collier crews were the smartest
+men afloat for breaking out the anchor, for the reason that in working
+their way in and out of so many narrow channels they frequently had to
+bring up. It was always said that whenever an ex-collier’s crew shipped
+aboard another vessel the windlass required only half the men to work
+it.
+
+Thus, everywhere the mariner in his own particular sphere was an
+expert at his job, and though he could never suspect it, he was making
+history, helping on the development and civilisation of the world. It
+was a lawless, irreligious, even blasphemous age in which he lived,
+and it is easy enough to criticise him for his wild excesses. But,
+having regard to the morals of the time, his poor pay, the disgraceful
+conditions of service, and the hard life which he was compelled to
+endure, is it to be wondered at that when he came ashore he was dragged
+into debauchery? The responsibility rests largely on those who
+enriched themselves by his bravery, his seamanlike skill and devotion
+to duty. There is not one of us to-day who is not a debtor to these
+old-time mariners for what they have done on our behalf, no matter what
+their ship.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE SAIL-CARRIERS
+
+
+If you set aside the forty years from 1837 to 1877 you cover the
+period which is unsurpassed for the glories of the sea. It is a period
+when the Mercantile Marine in every ocean rose to such a standard
+of seamanship as was never seen before nor will ever be witnessed
+again. It is a time when the triumph of the shipwright and the skill
+of the sailor combined to bring about the golden age. Every log-book,
+ship-illustration or reminiscence that bears on this epoch should be
+regarded with the utmost care and preserved for the wonderment of
+posterity, for at present we are living so close to this epoch that we
+hardly appreciate its worth. Those who come after us will rightly envy
+us for having seen at least some of the ships and spoken with those who
+handled them. For it was a time when wooden ships were run by men of
+iron.
+
+The traditions inherited from the old East India Company after the
+latter had lost its monopoly in India and China were too noble and
+inspiring to be dissipated at once. The high grade of officers and
+men remained for a long time a standard, especially when the captain
+of an East Indiaman even as late as about 1830 was making anything
+between £6000 and £10,000 a voyage. So, too, the Blackwall yard still
+retained its name for building the best ships. And though they had
+ceased to construct the stately but slow vessels which had been good
+enough as long as the monopoly lasted, a big advance came in the year
+1837, when Richard Green launched the 818-ton _Seringapatam_. She was,
+in fact, the first of a new order of things. In her the double stern
+and galleries were abandoned, and owing to her finer lines she became
+famous for her quick and regular passages to the East, and was destined
+to be the model for many vessels to follow. It was such men as Green,
+Wigram, Somes, Dunbar, Baines and others who built up the Mercantile
+Marine after the East India Company left the sea; for these men saw
+their grand opportunity, and seized it. Most of these purchased some of
+the best of the company’s ships. The _Earl of Balcarres_, for instance,
+was sold for £10,700, and she voyaged for fifty-two years before she
+became a hulk. The same price was paid for that fine ship the _Thames_;
+the _Lady Melville_ fetched £10,000, the _Buckinghamshire_ £10,550
+and others realised between £4000 and £10,000. In certain cases the
+company, seeing their approaching fate, began to sell as far back as
+1830.
+
+Some of the captains, officers and men from the honourable company
+were now taken on by these enterprising new shipowners about to enjoy
+the benefits of free trade. But not more than one-fifth of these
+“old-timers” changed over to the new régime, at any rate straight away.
+Why? Firstly, these private owners were not too anxious to employ a
+personnel who had been accustomed to work in ships where expense had
+not been of the first consideration. Secondly, some officers thought it
+beneath their dignity to serve in “free trade” vessels, and in any case
+their remuneration could not be as high as had been possible during
+the company’s extravagant existence. So the captains and officers
+appealed to their late employers for pensions. They had entered the
+East India Company’s service expecting provision for life, but now
+they found themselves awkwardly placed. Not without reluctance the
+company eventually decided to grant compensations to all commanders and
+officers who had been in their employ for five years from April 22,
+1834. Every commanding officer therefore received £1500 and the other
+officers received proportionate amounts. But, in addition to this, each
+commander also received £4000 for three unexpired voyages, £3000 for
+two voyages and £2000 for one voyage, which they would have made had
+they continued in the service. Nor was that all; for those commanders
+who had served for ten years were given a pension for life of £250 a
+year, the chief mates getting £160 a year, and so the scale ranged
+down to the carpenters and gunners. The only condition was that these
+assured the company of their inability to obtain further employment,
+and that any income which they possessed was to be in abatement of
+these pensions. Thus, to the very end, the old East India Company
+treated its officers and crews very handsomely, especially when we
+remember the value of a sovereign in those days.
+
+The _Seringapatam_ was the first of those famous Blackwall frigates
+which were the direct descendants of the defunct East India Company.
+The last of the series, also built by Green’s Blackwall yard, was the
+_Melbourne_ (afterwards well known as the _Macquarie_), launched in
+1875. Most of this historic fleet were built at the Blackwall yard,
+at Smith’s Tyne yard, at Sunderland or in India, but especially
+at Blackwall. They were all high-class ships which were run in a
+high-class manner. The discipline was strict, the personnel was
+excellent, and they were in every way worthy successors of the old
+monopolists. If you talk to any of the officers still alive who served
+in these Blackwallers, or read their reminiscences, you will understand
+at once that it was thought an honour to be allowed into this new
+service.
+
+These ships differed from any other merchant vessels in that they
+carried midshipmen and not apprentices. These midshipmen were drawn
+from the same families who supplied officers to the Royal Navy, and
+were known as “young gentlemen.” Very often in the case of a country
+rector who had two sons, you find the eldest going into the Navy and
+the younger into a Blackwall frigate. If a guardian could get a boy
+into one of these ships, there was no further cause for worry: a fine
+career was assured. He went to sea in what were happy ships and he
+gradually rose in his profession until he was making about £5000 a
+year in the case of the best captains. The guardian or parent had to
+pay a premium of £60 a voyage for the young midshipman, but those were
+the days when the commanding officers were the finest navigators in
+the world and had time to instruct the aspirant. It was a life totally
+different from that of a modern apprentice.
+
+For some time the officers in these ships were allowed to wear the
+lion and crown of the East India Company on their uniform buttons,
+but eventually the house flags of the companies were substituted. A
+great deal of the old dignity and semi-naval routine were retained in
+this new service, with action stations and sail-drill. For they were
+frigate-built and carried guns, so that they could readily be turned
+into corvettes and be useful fighting units. In an interesting little
+book entitled _Reminiscences of a Blackwall Midshipman_, published some
+years ago, Mr. W. I. Downie remarked with pride: “It was a fine service
+and afforded a good opening for younger sons, whose elder brothers
+were in the Army or Navy, but whose parents could not very well spare
+the means to dispose in the same way of all their sometimes numerous
+progeny.” He himself joined up in the ’sixties, having considered
+himself disappointed at not entering the Royal Navy, but lucky to
+obtain a berth as midshipman in Green’s Blackwall frigate _Trafalgar_,
+and bound to India. This ship was built in the year 1848, and was of
+1038 tons, her construction being of teak.
+
+When lying at anchor with a few guns on her maindeck and her boat-booms
+swung out and boats in the water, she might be taken for a frigate,
+even by a seafaring man, but for the house flag at her main. She had
+painted ports, square yards and enormous whole topsails. In such a ship
+no officer or man dared address a superior on duty without saluting.
+It was because of this excellent discipline and semi-naval character
+that these well-found ships created such a fine pride of service among
+its personnel. We shall speak presently of the other development in
+shipping which was to proceed collaterally with the Blackwallers,
+but it may be mentioned here that the latter frequently used to race
+in the ’sixties against the clippers met on the high seas. Downie
+mentions that these frigates often were able to hold the clipper ships,
+especially in hard winds, for though the Blackwallers had high bulwarks
+and heavy sterns, which made them in comparison look clumsy, yet
+underwater they had fine lines.
+
+Every known device was resorted to in the effort to squeeze out an
+extra half-knot, and the third mate of the Blackwaller would be sent
+down with a gang of men to roust the lee cable out of the chain locker
+and range it along the weather side of the deck. The fourth mate would
+take another gang to pump fresh water out of the lee tanks into those
+of the weather tanks that were empty. In light winds the hose would
+be taken aloft to wet the sails—the old dodge of making the canvas
+hold the wind better. Nor did they hesitate to race even against such
+flyers as the crack clippers _Taeping_ and _Fiery Cross_, and in one
+instance they competed with another sailing ship and beat her home by
+twenty-four hours; and this after racing for 16,000 miles! Yes, they
+were sail-carriers in those days. The Mercantile Marine was full of
+expert seamen.
+
+This _Trafalgar_, for instance, carried, besides her commander, five
+mates, several midshipmen, a full crew, a bo’sun and his two mates,
+carpenter, sail-maker, fiddler and cooper. The last two would seem
+strange to a modern apprentice, but the former used to sit on the
+capstan and fiddle while the hands were heaving up the anchor with an
+endless “messenger,” and would provide the music for hornpipes danced
+in the second dog-watch. The cooper was a necessary rating, for casks
+and barrels were used a good deal, and when not wanted were taken to
+pieces and reconstructed as required. The midshipmen received their
+occasional invitations to dine with the captain, as to-day in the
+naval service. Sundays and Thursdays were the occasions when there was
+champagne at the captain’s table, and a midshipman thought himself
+lucky if his turn to be invited occurred on one of these days.
+
+The voyage was begun by the ship being towed out of dock down to
+Gravesend, where she brought up for twenty-four hours to enable the
+crew to get over their final shore carouse. The captain—in this case
+a tall, thin man wearing an eyeglass, himself a scientist and a great
+authority on the law of storms—would come on board, and the tug would
+take the ship down to the North Foreland and then cast off. If it was
+a fair wind the Blackwaller would then carry on down Channel. If it
+was foul she would anchor and wait for a slant in the Downs. In spite
+of their sailorlike, alcoholic weakness, these hands were very fine
+fellows, specially selected, who had sailed in the old East Indiamen
+or Blackwallers since boyhood, and very rarely did they ever serve in
+other ships. There was, then, practically continuity of employment, and
+it is the lack of this which in the twentieth century is the weakest
+element of the Mercantile Marine.
+
+In these ships there was nothing slovenly, and every one had to be
+correctly and smartly uniformed. The officers’ cap in those days had
+the old-fashioned peak at right angles, like that still worn by the
+officers of the Dutch Navy to-day. Every morning the captain’s steward
+would convey to the midshipmen the instructions as to what rig was
+to be worn, as, for instance, in fine weather blue jackets, white
+waistcoats and trousers. In many other merchant ships there was trouble
+with the crew, which consisted of a mixture of pier-jumpers, gaol-birds
+and the riff-raff of all the European ports; but it was seldom that
+the Blackwall men gave any trouble. Every Sunday there was service on
+the poop in fine weather, or in the saloon when the weather was bad,
+and all hands were supposed to attend. In harbour the Blackwall ships
+always looked smart and clean, with yards squared to mathematical
+precision like a naval frigate.
+
+As a sign of mourning the custom was to paint all the white parts of
+the ship a pale blue, such as the white ribbon round the hull, the
+lower masts, the boats, and so on. There were some ships in which
+the discipline was stricter than in others, according to whether the
+captain was more disposed towards man-o’-war fashion. Those ships which
+ran to India were more strict in their discipline and more formal
+in their routine than the vessels which sailed to Australia. In the
+former the passengers consisted chiefly of Army officers and their
+families, or civil servants going out to take up their appointments,
+or of consumptives voyaging for their health. But in the Australian
+ships life was more easy-going, with concerts, theatricals, dances, and
+even bazaars. In both ships there was a good deal of fraternising and
+philandering between the younger officers and the eternal feminine,
+which was natural enough during those long voyages.
+
+The late Captain W. B. Whall, who died not long since, served as
+a midshipman in the Blackwaller _Hotspur_ during the ’sixties,
+and fortunately has left behind in his _School and Sea Days_ some
+interesting recollections. The commander of this famous 1000-ton East
+Indiaman was Captain Henry Toynbee, F.R.G.S., F.R.A.S., uncle of Arnold
+Toynbee, the social economist and philanthropist. Whall describes how,
+after the _Hotspur_ had anchored off Gravesend, the captain would be
+received on board in true naval style. This commanding officer, who,
+by the way was uncle to Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the famous scout,
+will always be remembered for his amazing skill as a navigator. Captain
+Whall said he recollected on one occasion when the _Hotspur_ had been
+ninety days out of sight of land, and had sailed over three oceans
+bound for Calcutta direct, Toynbee came up on deck about 8 p.m. and
+told the chief officer to send a man up to the foretopsail yard and to
+order him to look two points on the starboard bow, and he would then
+see the Lower Floating Light. The hand had barely got his head over
+the sail when he cried from aloft: “Light two points away on starboard
+bow.” And this was without having sighted anything since the Lizard!
+
+In contrast to this fine ability of an East Indiaman navigator must
+be placed the rough-and-ready methods of those fine but ignorant
+skippers of the fruit-trade schooners which were built and sailed
+like yachts and went down as far south as the Azores. Often when
+full-rigged ships were blown by easterly gales from the western end of
+the English Channel as far west as the Fastnet, these splendid little
+fore-and-afters would be able to make excellent passages to windward.
+In old waterside inns of the West country you may still see pictures
+of these ships with the canvas cut in realistic fashion to obtain
+verisimilitude. They made wonderfully fast passages, and they were
+most perfectly handled, but the captains, not being capable always of
+working out their longitude, used to hail any passing ship and hang out
+a blackboard with the question: “What is your longitude?”
+
+Such a ship as the _Hotspur_, well manned, well navigated, would go
+round the Cape and land her forty passengers in Calcutta within three
+months. They would come aboard at Gravesend with their own cabin
+furniture, but included in the fare was an ample supply of liquor.
+Often the charge for a stern cabin for a man and wife would be £300
+from Calcutta to England, and the ship would have also probably 500
+troops aboard, or a total of 600 souls. The decks would be encumbered
+with sheep, hay, potatoes, bananas, hen-coops, and yet if any disaster
+had occurred there was accommodation in the boats for not more than
+about 100. Whall, who served in these ships for ten years, never once
+saw a Blackwaller heave-to in a heavy gale. But that was because they
+were well found and so well manned under the best commanders. In those
+days the sailor ashore loved his grog too much, and when he left the
+ship at the end of a voyage with probably £40 on him, he would proceed
+to get drunk, then perhaps some one in the East End would drug him,
+and finally, when he awoke up next day he would find himself without
+so much as a penny. But at sea he was the best fellow in the world,
+well-disciplined, able to go aloft in the heaviest weather to hand or
+reef a sail and lay out on a yard. He was an expert at the wheel or
+with the lead or marlin-spike, and a captain knew that his men could be
+relied upon from the moment the ship left Gravesend. It was thus that
+such ships as _Flying Cloud_, _Sovereign of the Seas_, _James Baines_
+and _Marco Polo_ could on occasions reel off their eighteen knots, or
+420 knots in the twenty-four hours. In fact during the ’fifties the
+sailing ships could make passages as fast as any mail steamer afloat.
+
+Every one who has had command of vessels and men realises how important
+is the spirit of emulation and the pride of ship and service. Whall,
+the son of a rector, remarked that all who served in these ships
+looked down on the officers of the Liverpool contemporary sailing ships
+as being less polished and wearing no uniform, though he admitted they
+were perhaps smarter sailormen than the Blackwallers. In his memoirs
+_My Life at Sea_, that experienced mercantile officer, Commander W.
+C. Crutchley, R.N.R., says of a certain renowned clipper ship: “The
+officers and men of that craft considered themselves very superior
+beings to those who had not the good fortune to sail under the blue St.
+Andrew’s Cross; but they, in their turn, were looked down upon by the
+men sailing in the ships of Green, Dunbar, Wigram and Smith. In those
+days it would have required a very careful M.C. to give the varying
+grades of the Merchant Services their due order of preference.”
+
+It was the same at Southampton at one time between the officers of
+the Royal Mail and the P. & O. Lines, who would not foregather on any
+account, owing to their mutual jealousies. But those were the days
+when ship-love and pride of service were more accentuated than to-day.
+And yet in even some of the contemporary crack steamships there was
+plenty to find fault with, and Crutchley, who served in the Union liner
+_Roman_, which ran to South Africa, complains that even in that ocean
+steamship there was neither engine-room telegraph nor standard compass;
+for orders were shouted down the engine-room skylight, and the ship was
+steered from right on the poop, with a binnacle on either side, that on
+the starboard being the one used for navigating.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+S.S. “NORTHUMBERLAND.”
+
+2,180 tons, 500 horse-power. Henry Skinner, Commander. About 1871. She
+was one of Money Wigram & Sons’ Australian steamships. The famous house
+flag will be seen at the main.]
+
+We have digressed from our main theme in order to show the spirit
+which actuated the Mercantile Marine at that important period which
+followed the abolition of the monopoly and saw the numbers of
+shipyards, ships and mariners rapidly increasing, thanks to freedom and
+competition. It is now time for us to watch this progress in detail.
+If we compare the _Seringapatam_ with one of the East India Company’s
+ships of say 1826, we can see indeed more points of resemblance than
+of difference. Both are frigates, each has a bluff bow and heavy stern
+that remind us of the Stuart ships, yet in the new type inaugurated
+by _Seringapatam_ it meant a daring advance to omit the heavy double
+stern and quarter galleries. She still retained her ship rig, her white
+ribbon, her square ports and her high-steeved bowsprit, but in her was
+the first break, architecturally, with the olden times. The sailing
+ship was now in a new era.
+
+Even in the very year of Queen Victoria’s accession, Money Wigram
+launched for the Australian trade the 293-ton _Emu_, for this was
+beginning to open as an important lane of commerce. And in that same
+year the yard built such different ships as the 461-ton whaler _Active_
+and the 621-ton steamer _Neptune_, the latter for the General Steam
+Navigation Company. It was a couple of years later that they launched
+the 852-ton _Earl of Hardwicke_ for Richard Green. This ship was
+originally fitted with paddles and 100-horse-power engines to be used
+in calms, but they were found unsuitable and removed in the following
+year. And then in 1839 they launched the _Owen Glendower_, which was
+such a splendid sailing ship that foreign merchantmen used to salute
+her with the respect as for a man-of-war. She was a sister ship of the
+_Earl of Hardwicke_. In that year, too, they built the Opium clipper
+_Moa_ for Jardine, Mattheson & Co., though we shall come to the
+clipper ships presently. Three years later the Blackwall yard launched
+the two magnificent 1223-ton flush-decked, frigate-built sister ships
+_Queen_ and _Prince of Wales_, as well as the 449-ton _Sylph_.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+AUXILIARY S.S. “KENT.”
+
+2,300 tons. G. Fairles Gibbs, Commander. Built and owned by Money
+Wigram & Sons. About 1876.]
+
+And here we come to another severing of olden ties, for this was the
+last ship which was ever built by the firm of Green, Wigrams & Green.
+In the following year the partnership expired, a wall was built through
+the yard, and the western portion was made over to Money Wigram &
+Sons, whilst the eastern half became the property of Richard and Henry
+Green. Sentimentally it seemed a pity that after all those years the
+separation should have taken place; but, as already foreshadowed, it
+was bound to come, owing to the difference in interests. The firm had
+become _individually_ interested in shipowning, and not collectively.
+Thus Wigram never owned so large a fleet as Green, and where a firm is
+divided against itself obviously it must come to an end before long.
+Richard Green and Henry Green went on building and increasing their
+ownership until the discovery of gold in Australia, when they launched
+many ships to cope with the rush. Richard Green did not die until 1863,
+and just before his death one of his ships had made a voyage to China.
+In his life he did much to improve the Mercantile Marine, and it was he
+who was the chief mover and first chairman of what was originally known
+as the Thames Marine Officers’ Training Ship, better known to-day as
+H.M.S. _Worcester_. In the year 1922 this ship celebrated its sixtieth
+anniversary, and during its existence has been able to turn out 3000
+officers for the Mercantile Marine, of whom so many distinguished
+themselves during the Great War. Thus, directly through the Blackwall
+yard there is an intimate connection between the merchant ships of the
+time of Queen Elizabeth and those liners of to-day.
+
+The two finest ships in the Mercantile Marine of 1851 were the East
+Indiamen _Marlborough_ and _Blenheim_, owned by Messrs. T. & W. Smith,
+who had begun running ships to the East soon after the monopoly had
+gone, in competition with Green and Wigram. It was the gold-diggings
+of South Australia and Victoria from 1851 onwards which made a sudden
+demand for shipping passengers out from England: in fact by 1853 the
+demand was greater than the supply. But the only suitable vessels
+available for first- and second-class passengers were these famous
+Blackwall frigates, and the Greens were thus in a position to transfer
+some of their large fleet from the Calcutta to the Australian trade.
+Money Wigram, not having yet become a large shipowner, began to build
+for this Melbourne trade.
+
+The Blackwall frigates were devoid of sheer, had long poops, short
+maindecks, and were beautifully built of picked teak and oak. Green’s
+ships were not as sharp-ended as Smith’s or Wigram’s, but Somes’ and
+Dunbar’s were real old-fashioned, clumsy-bowed craft. The fastest of
+Green’s ships were the _Alnwick Castle_, _Clarence_, _Windsor Castle_
+and _Anglesey_. The fastest of Wigram’s fleet was the _Kent_. The old
+East India Company’s influence for a time so dominated these Blackwall
+frigates that dignity, comfort and safety first were rather the
+mottoes of the fleet, unlike the clipper ships, always snugging down
+for the night. Some of the best-known Green ships were the 835-ton
+_Madagascar_, built in 1837, the 852-ton _Earl of Hardwicke_, already
+mentioned, built in 1838, but afterwards wrecked on the South African
+coast in 1863; the _Owen Glendower_, built in 1839, the _Agincourt_
+(958 tons), in 1841, the _Prince of Wales_ (1223 tons), in 1842, the
+_Monarch_ (1444 tons), in 1844, the _Alfred_ (1291 tons), in 1845, the
+_Barham_ (934 tons), in 1846. The _Prince of Wales_ and _Queen_ of 1842
+were both 1223-ton ships, the former built for Green and the latter for
+Wigram at the Blackwall yard. Pierced for fifty guns and flush-decked,
+they were ready with their crew of seventy-eight each to be turned into
+naval corvettes at once.
+
+The _Anglesey_, built in 1852, of 1018 tons, holds the record for
+having made the biggest day’s run by a Blackwaller. This was 380
+miles, and her passage from Melbourne to the Start in seventy-nine
+days with a crew of forty-six was a remarkable achievement. Wigram’s
+927-ton _Kent_, built in 1852, was invaluable during the gold rush
+to Australia. She was one of the crack sailing ships in history, and
+actually beat the tea-clippers. It was a great innovation when, in 1866
+and 1868 respectively, the Blackwall yard built the 1451-ton _Superb_
+and the 1458-ton _Carlisle Castle_, for both were of iron, and owing to
+Richard Green’s prejudice against iron the firm had to wait until after
+his death to discard teak. The former became a popular passenger ship
+to Melbourne; and the last of these famous Blackwall frigates was the
+_Melbourne_, built for the Greens at the Blackwall yard in 1875 as the
+finest iron passenger sailing ship in the world. Of 1857 tons and 269·8
+feet long, her passenger accommodation was excellent—a great difference
+from the old East Indiamen.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+S.S. “NORFOLK.”
+
+3,196 tons, 2,500 horse-power. J. Pyne O’Callaghan, Commander. One of
+Money Wigram & Sons’ Australian ships. About 1879.]
+
+Until 1887 _Melbourne_ sailed regularly to the Australian port of the
+same name, and was then bought by Messrs. Devitt & Moore, who changed
+her name to _Macquarie_. In 1897 she was used as one of this firm’s
+cadet ships, six years later she was sold to the Norwegians and changed
+her name to _Fortuna_, and these owners eventually sold her, so that
+now she is used as a hulk in Australia. So ended one interesting period
+in one of the most important developments of the Mercantile Marine. The
+combination of personal interest on the part of builder and owner; the
+great pride in the ship not merely as a money-maker, but as a thing of
+beauty and queen of the sea; the ability of officers and men serving
+under a captain who was anxious to maintain the dignity of his line—all
+these brought about a high standard of seafaring which was thoroughly
+let down when owners without consciences sent crews to sea in ill-found
+steam coffin-ships. The fine, historic reputation of the Merchant
+Service received a shock, the best men were attracted by other walks in
+life, and so for a while the standard deteriorated. There are many who
+believe, rightly, that the Mercantile Marine of any country could and
+should be run with fixity of employment and the same lofty standard as
+the fighting navies. If that were done, the grade of officers and men
+would be as high as it was in the days of the East Indiamen. Let it be
+realised what a nation’s merchant ships mean to the country, and then
+the public will concede it proper respect and give to that service its
+best sons.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+CRACKING-ON
+
+
+We have seen in the development of our subject that it was only after
+many centuries that the accommodation of the passenger aboard ship was
+ever considered. We have noticed how the ship was built primarily not
+for speed, but for carrying the maximum of cargo with the greatest
+safety. But now there comes into our story the desire for speed as the
+dominating factor, far more important than any other consideration, and
+it is in the clipper ships that we get the first merchant vessels that
+were constructed to cross the seas with the utmost despatch.
+
+It is to North America that this is due. Whilst our bluff, dignified,
+heavy East Indiamen were slowly making their last voyages before the
+China monopoly was to come to an end, a remarkable ship, built by her
+owner regardless of cost, was to appear in Baltimore. This was the
+_Ann McKim_, of 493 registered tons. This flush-decked vessel came out
+in 1832. She was very fast, but had small carrying capacity, and was
+the first clipper ship ever built, and having regard to the daring
+improvement which America had made in frigates and privateers, it is
+not surprising that this fast type of merchant ship should come from
+the same country. The contrast, indeed, between the old East Indiamen
+and the young clippers is exactly what exists between the Old World and
+the New. Convention was put aside, shipbuilders thought out problems
+for themselves and had the courage to put their convictions into hulls.
+
+But the first real out-and-out clipper ship was the _Rainbow_, which
+was launched at the beginning of 1845 in New York. She was a 750-ton
+vessel with hollow lines at the bows, and her greatest breadth much
+further aft than had been thought practicable. When constructed, she
+turned out to be a handsome vessel, exceptionally quick, and she was
+the fastest vessel in the world. But after trading some time out to
+China, she was lost in 1848, probably off Cape Horn. Now the cause of
+attraction towards China at first was the trade in opium. It is not to
+the credit of British, American or Parsee firms that this pernicious
+drug was imported into China, where it had been declared illegal by the
+Government as far back as 1796; but this illicit trade certainly did
+much to develop fast-sailing ships.
+
+But besides the opium, there was the China tea trade after the East
+India Company’s monopoly had run out, and happily this did even more
+than the opium to improve the evolution of the quickest fleet of ships
+under sail that the world has ever seen. In 1846 the 890-ton _Sea
+Witch_ was launched in New York, and she made a wonderful series of
+voyages to China and back, her best day’s run being 358 miles, which
+was far superior to that of any contemporary steamer. Then came such
+celebrated American clippers as the _Samuel Russell_, 940 tons, the
+_Memnon_, 1068 tons, and others. The American trade with China was so
+important that in one year forty-one ships with tea, silk and spices
+reached New York from China. The American clippers were certainly the
+fastest ships of the period, and the _Sea Witch_ was still to hold the
+record for a long time.
+
+But now come two important events which were to have noteworthy results
+on the Mercantile Marines of the world. The first of these was the
+repeal of the British Navigation Laws in 1849, and the second was the
+rush in that same year to California, caused by the discovery there
+of gold in 1848. We will deal briefly with these factors and pass on.
+Considerable opposition was made to this repeal, and indeed the first
+result was that the tonnage of British shipping entering British ports
+largely decreased and that of American shipping increased. After a
+few years this competition proved a stimulus to both countries, but
+especially it caused British owners to wake up in the Atlantic, as the
+introduction of competition into the Eastern route had already done so
+much good.
+
+During the ’forties and ’fifties the American Mercantile Marine was in
+many respects superior to the British, for the reason that the baneful
+monopoly had caused a kind of self-satisfaction, and therefore no
+progress to speak of. The long series of Navigation Laws beginning in
+1651, and the steady, comfortable, close trade to the East, had lulled
+British shipping into a kind of stupor. It was only when competition
+was thrown open to the world that British shipping really got going.
+The first American ship to carry tea from China to England was the
+_Oriental_, which left China in August 1850 and reached the London
+River ninety-seven days out from Hong-Kong with 1600 tons. This was the
+fastest passage which had yet been made to England. As a beautiful,
+powerful, speedy, well-found ship the like of her had never been met
+with in the Thames. Those who had never seen anything but the East
+Indiamen were amazed at the innovation by the United States Mercantile
+Marine. But the shock did a world of good. The arrival of tea, in an
+American ship, in record time, from a country where there had been a
+British monopoly for so long, caused shipowners and builders furiously
+to think.
+
+The result was that two ships were ordered to be built at Aberdeen,
+for during the last few years Messrs. Hall of that port had been
+building some fast schooners. The _Stornoway_ and _Chrysolite_ were
+thus launched, and have been called the first British tea-clippers,
+though they were less beamy and powerful than the American clippers.
+The first ship sailed out to Hong-Kong in 102 days, the _Chrysolite_
+also went out during 1851 in the same time, and on her way home her
+best day’s run was 320 miles, and she even reached fourteen knots. She
+got to Liverpool in 103 days, after a very fine maiden voyage. Then
+came increased competition as the result of _Chrysolite’s_ achievement,
+for the American Navigation Club challenged the British shipbuilders to
+a race with cargo on board from England to China and back for £10,000 a
+side. This stake was even doubled, but the challenge was unfortunately
+never accepted by British shipowners until Richard Green in 1852 built
+the tea-clipper _Challenger_, which in that year went out to China,
+and after loading tea at Shanghai, fell in with the American clipper
+_Challenge_, three times the size of the British ship. From Anjer they
+raced home with their tea, and _Challenger_ beat the _Challenge_ into
+the dock in London by a couple of days. It is only fair to add that
+British naval architects had an opportunity of learning from American
+progress in a very direct manner. For _Oriental_ had been previously
+placed into the Blackwall dock and her lines taken off; and now
+_Challenge_ went in for the same purpose. Thus, the American clipper
+ships, with their original design, did have a very powerful effect on
+the future of British shipping.
+
+The competition in the China tea trade continued, the British clippers
+of this time made the rivalry very keen, and it is always a matter
+of regret that there never was another real race between the two
+countries. But now we must see how the California gold affected the
+clipper. Briefly these are the facts. In 1848 San Francisco was a
+mere hamlet, but this sudden discovery of a means to wealth caused a
+tremendous flow of emigration to the West. Every one wanted to go, and
+every one wanted to get there in the quickest possible time. Leaving
+out the difficulties in those days of transcontinental travel, the only
+way possible was by means of ships. The American clipper was thus the
+solution, and they were therefore built in great numbers and in a small
+space of time. In fact within four years 160 were launched, and they
+sailed from New York to San Francisco in the remarkable time of 100
+to 120 days. Here, then, was yet another incentive to the increase of
+the Mercantile Marine, to the shipbuilders and to those attracted by
+the sea. It is comparable only to the impetus which we have seen was
+received by the Elizabethan seamen. There has seldom been in history
+such an extensive and speedy migration of people, all anxious to get
+rich quickly. Once again the ship was invaluable in the service of man.
+
+In the year 1849 over 90,000 passengers landed in that San Franciscan
+hamlet from ships. On the other hand, it became most difficult to
+get crews to bring the ships back; for the seamen, too, had gone
+gold-seeking as soon as the ship had anchored. The California clipper
+period, as Captain Clark says in his _The Clipper Ship Era_, covers
+the period 1850 to 1860, and it is during the first four of these
+years that nearly all the 160 ships were built, most of them being
+constructed in the neighbourhood of New York and Boston. It is claimed
+for them that they were the fastest sailing ships which the world
+ever saw, and the skippers cracked-on because these vessels were
+able to earn enormous rates if only the passengers could be landed
+at their port in the quickest time. Every one was making money—the
+shipowner, captain, crew and then the gold-seekers. Ashore the riggers,
+shipwrights, painters, sail-makers, metal workers, spar-makers,
+pump-makers, blacksmiths, carpenters, caulkers were in such demand
+that there was prosperity for all, and plenty of it. And it is to this
+period that a good many of the fast-dying sea-chanties can be traced.
+
+What of the crews that manned the American clippers? “The history of
+men before the mast on board American ships,” says Captain Clark,
+“is not a history of American sailors, for strictly speaking there
+have never been any American merchant sailors as a class; that is,
+no American merchant ship of considerable tonnage was ever manned
+by native-born Americans in the sense that French, British, Dutch,
+Norwegian, Swedish, Spanish or Danish ships are manned by men born in
+the country under whose flags they sail.” This statement was written in
+1910, and of course requires some modification to-day. But the advent
+of the Californian clippers necessitated getting men from anywhere—some
+sailors, many others not, and a whole lot of “bad hats” among them.
+Of the Californian clippers built in 1851 one was the celebrated
+_Challenge_, already referred to, a vessel of 2006 tons, one of the
+largest clippers ever built, though absolutely the biggest was the
+_Great Republic_, built in 1853. This was constructed by Donald McKay,
+the famous Nova Scotian builder. She was of 4555 tons register, and
+was the first ship to have an engine merely for hoisting the yards
+and working the pumps. Rigged with four masts, she had the misfortune
+to get on fire when nearly ready for sea, but was rebuilt, being the
+largest merchant ship of her time, though registering now only 3357
+tons.
+
+The famous American clipper _Dreadnought_ came out in 1853, and voyaged
+between New York and Liverpool, and on one occasion made this passage
+in fifteen days twelve hours, and on another occasion in thirteen days
+eight hours, though she was wrecked eventually off Cape Horn. But the
+Australian gold discovery in 1851 had the same effect on shipping that
+the China tea trade and the California gold rush had created. The
+fastest vessels were required, competition became keen, and there was
+no time to waste. Those owners, therefore, who had ships that could
+carry passengers were in a splendid position from the first, for about
+300,000 or 400,000 people each year for the next three or four years
+had to be transported. From America no less than from England these
+ships sailed away, and there was the same difficulty in Melbourne with
+the crews as there had been in San Francisco.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy the White Star Line._
+
+SAILING NOTICE OF THE WHITE STAR CLIPPER “RED JACKET.”
+
+(See p. 157.)]
+
+For British shipowners the difficulty was that there was but little
+accommodation in most ships, so they thought of the American clippers,
+which had been doing such fine work. James Baines & Co. of Liverpool
+therefore had the clipper _Marco Polo_ built at St. John’s, New
+Brunswick. She was a very handsome ship of 1622 tons, with considerable
+rise of floor, very fine aft, and she carried a very large spread of
+canvas. This was the pioneer of the clipper ships for the Australian
+trade and the first of the Australian Black Ball Line, her passenger
+accommodation being a great improvement on the ships usually trading to
+Australia. She left Liverpool in July 1851, and made a record passage
+in sixty-eight days to Melbourne, and during the ensuing years of the
+gold rush was a very popular and successful ship. The British lines
+running out to Australia at this time were the White Star (twenty years
+before they entered the Atlantic steam competition) and James Baines &
+Co.’s Australia Black Ball Line, just mentioned.
+
+These two firms both had clippers which were built in New England, and
+one of these, the _Red Jacket_, was for the White Star Line. Named
+after a noted Indian chief, with a full-length figure-head of him at
+her bow, this fine ship was one of the most famous of the clippers,
+and made a fine passage from New York to Liverpool in thirteen days,
+one hour, when she first came out in February 1854, and on one of the
+days made 413 miles. During that same year she sailed from Liverpool to
+Melbourne in sixty-nine days. In his recently published _Reminiscences
+of a Liverpool Shipowner_, Sir William B. Forwood has left an
+interesting account of a voyage he made in this magnificent sailing
+ship of 2006 tons, three years after she came out. “On the morning of
+the 20th November, 1857,” he says, “I embarked by a tender from the
+Liverpool pierhead. It was nearly the top of high water. The crew were
+mustered on the forecastle, under the 1st Mate, Mr. Taylor. An order
+comes from the quarter-deck. ‘Heave up the anchor and get away.’ ‘Aye,
+aye, sir.’ ‘Now then, my boys, man the windlass,’ shouts the Mate, and
+to a merry chantie:
+
+    “‘In 1847 Paddy Murphy went to Heaven
+      To work on the railway, the railway, the railway,
+      Oh, poor Paddy works upon the railway.’
+
+“‘The anchor is away, sir,’ shouts the Chief Officer. ‘Heave it a-peak
+and cathead it,’ comes from the quarter-deck, and the tug _Retriever_
+forges ahead and tightens the tow-rope as we gather way. Bang, bang
+went the guns, and twice more, for we were carrying the mails, and
+goodbye to old Liverpool, and the crowds which lined the pierhead
+cheered, for the _Red Jacket_ was already a famous ship, and it was
+hoped she would make a record passage.
+
+“Next morning we were off Holyhead, with a fresh westerly breeze and
+southerly swell. We were making but poor headway, and shortly the
+hawser parted. ‘All hands on deck,’ was shouted by Captain O’Halloran,
+and a crew of eighty men promptly appeared on deck, for we carried
+a double crew. ‘Loose sails fore and aft; hands in the tops and
+cross-trees to see that all is clear and to overhaul gear; let royals
+and sky sails alone.’
+
+“The boatswain’s whistle sounded fore and aft as the men quickly took
+their positions and laid hold of the halyards and braces.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_Photo, Henry Hughes & Son, Ltd._
+
+CRACKING-ON!]
+
+“‘Mr. Taylor, loose the headsails.’ ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ The topsail,
+courses and topgallant sails were all loose and gaskets made up. ‘Now
+then, my men, lead your topsail halyards fore and aft, and up with
+them.’ Away the crew walk along with the halyards, and then with a long
+pull and a pull all together the topsail yards are mastheaded to the
+chantie:
+
+    “‘Then up the yard must go,
+        Whiskey for my Johnny,
+      Oh, whiskey for the life of man,
+        Whiskey, Johnny.’”
+
+With the man at the wheel, keeping his eyes on the weather-luff of the
+foreroyal, and allowing the sail to be just on the tremble, so as not
+to lose an inch to windward, the _Red Jacket_ went tearing through the
+seas, throwing them on either side in a sparkling cascade. By evening
+the wind had increased, and the captain ordered life-lines to be run
+fore and aft, and the decks to be sanded and the scuppers to be free.
+The clipper plunges along, the man at the wheel eases her a few spokes
+when a squall strikes her, and then bang goes the second jib, blown out
+of the bolt ropes with the report of a gun. With seas coming in over
+the forecastle, the hands set another jib, and by this time the clipper
+is indeed travelling, for by the log she is doing eighteen knots.
+
+During bad weather the fifty saloon passengers and 600 steerage were
+kept below and the atmosphere was stifling. There was none of the
+comfort or luxury of a modern steamship, and the clipper was heeling
+over in a way that would alarm many travellers to-day. But at last,
+after sixty-four days, the _Red Jacket_ had made Port Philip Heads, and
+so a record voyage to Australia. Those were the days when travelling
+by sea was romantic and not as monotonous as a railway journey. With
+the captain cracking-on to make a fast trip, with sails carrying away,
+spars and gear as well, there was always some sport, some adventure.
+Between 1850 and the following ten years Prince’s Dock, Liverpool, was
+crowded with fine clippers raising their lofty masts and crossing their
+great spars. And those were the days of wonderful feats of seamanship.
+Sir William Forwood says that he remembers seeing the 600-ton
+Brocklebank sailing ship _Martaban_ come sailing into George’s Dock
+Basin under all canvas. Her halyards were then let go and sails clewed
+up so smartly that the ship, as she passed the pierhead, was able to
+throw a line on shore and make fast. Could you beat this for seamanlike
+skill and discipline?
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_Photo, Henry Hughes & Son, Ltd._
+
+SPARS AND STAYS.
+
+Looking for’ard along the decks of a sailing ship.]
+
+But it is with the celebrated China tea-clippers from about 1860
+onwards that this skill reached such heights of proficiency. British
+shipowners no longer found it necessary to have their clippers built
+in America, and the Merchant Shipping Act of 1854, together with the
+enterprise learnt in a hard school, as the result of competition,
+enabled British shipping to go ahead. The California boom, which had
+produced America’s finest clippers, was dead. The great quantities
+of American timber would soon be not wanted for shipbuilding, now
+that iron was coming in and steam was replacing sails. But that which
+gave the final character to the American Mercantile Marine was the
+outbreak of civil war in 1861 between the North and South. From that
+it never recovered until the new efforts, begun in 1917, to rebuild a
+service that had been such a keen competitor during the clipper-ship
+period. In the meantime, during the ’sixties and onwards, the British
+Mercantile Marine, by the enterprise of the shipowners, the assistance
+of legislation, the protection of the British Navy, the scientific
+progress of shipbuilders and engineers, and by the skill and endurance
+of its officers and crews, regained its supremacy after a stiff fight,
+and opened up new trade routes in all parts of the world. And this
+not merely in regard to the big lines, but especially in respect of
+the tramp steamers going out with coal and bringing back all sorts of
+essential produce.
+
+The Clyde was gradually beginning to take the place of the Blackwall
+yard, and this became still more so as the need for coal and iron
+increased, owing to the fact that the Thames is not convenient to
+coalfields. It was in 1855 that Steele of Greenock built his first
+tea-clipper, the _Kate Carnie_, about 600 tons, and thereafter he
+built, among other beautiful and eye-pleasing ships, the historic
+_Taeping_, _Serica_, _Ariel_ and _Sir Lancelot_, all under 900 tons,
+yet exceedingly fast. From 1855 to 1881 is the comprehensive period
+of these China tea-clippers, and their evolution should be compared
+with that of the Blackwall frigates already dealt with. The Steele
+clippers had a full midship section and fine ends, but some of the
+other clippers were fined away like the hulls of schooner yachts.
+Unlike the obstinate Blackwallers, many tea-clippers had a certain
+amount of sheer. From 1863 both the Clyde and Aberdeen firms launched
+composite-built clippers, and these were so beautifully tight as to
+require practically no pumping, and so the cargoes of tea arrived in
+perfect condition.
+
+The British tea-clippers of the period under consideration were
+smaller than the American clippers, had less sheer, less freeboard,
+and were more slim and graceful, with decks unencumbered except with
+small houses; with less heavy spars, less beam, and were designed
+to carry small cargoes of tea with the utmost despatch. They were a
+small fleet in numbers, but their excellence was rather in a sustained
+average speed throughout their voyages than in hourly or daily runs.
+The longest day’s run by a tea-clipper was 363 miles, and this record
+was made by _Cutty Sark_, and the only other clipper that could rival
+her was the _Thermopylae_. These tea-clippers were economical to run,
+handled by magnificent British seamen, and commanded by captains of
+great experience, courage and enterprise. The composite construction
+of wooden planking and iron frames gave these little ships unusual
+strength, they were ballasted with shingle, and in light weather could
+utterly outsail a Black Baller, a Californian clipper or a Blackwall
+frigate. But because of their comparative smallness it is not to be
+imagined that in heavy weather they could compete with the American
+clippers of much greater tonnage and freeboard. _Cutty Sark’s_ rival,
+_Thermopylae_, being of her own nationality, on one occasion did 358
+miles, and _Ariel_ 340 miles, in the twenty-four hours.
+
+But these tea-clippers needed proper handling, like sensitive horses,
+and required to be humoured. Those were the days when the love of
+ships by owners, captains and crews was something real, when clippers
+were treated like human beings and given everything they wanted; and
+their loss often meant the breaking of the owner’s heart. The personal
+relationship between the owner, his ship and captain was something
+very different from to-day. Before the advent of limited liability
+companies and telegraph cables, instructions were given personally
+by the owner, who would himself come down to see his ship start. In
+many cases the captains were financially interested in the ships, and
+it must be remembered that the best clipper-ship captains were hard
+to find. Remembering that an owner required neither a mere dare-devil
+nor one who merely played for safety, but a captain who would crack-on
+without losing ship or gear, and whilst getting the last ounce out of
+the ship would know instantly when to ease up, it is obvious that an
+ideal commander would be a mixture of courage, iron nerve, initiative,
+driving power, sound judgment based on experience, consummate
+seamanlike ability and great physical endurance.
+
+It was when such skippers got command of these lovely little ships that
+the tea was raced home in such splendid time. They had to watch their
+ships from hour to hour during the three months’ race from China to
+England, rarely going below, getting very little sleep, and the result
+was that many eventually broke down. But we must think of them as the
+keenest lot of captains who ever sailed the seas, and up to every dodge
+to get the ship home quicker than the other fellow. They looked for
+risks and accepted them freely, but they were not foolhardy, and they
+knew just how much their ships could stand. Backed up not by mutinous
+crews, as was often the case in the American clippers, but by thorough
+seamen, all British, a captain knew that he could rely on them to
+aid him in getting the most out of his ship; for they were not less
+keen than himself, and were betting against the other ships. It meant
+hard work, but no sailorman will ever grouse at this if he is in tune
+with the reason. They took a pride in their vessels and were jealous
+of a ship’s honour. Could the same be said nowadays of the crews of
+steamships? Sentiment in seafaring has a tremendous practical value if
+only it is appreciated and properly trained.
+
+In his volume _The China Clippers_, Mr. Basil Lubbock says that “in
+the heyday of the racing, Foochow was the loading port par excellence,
+and the Pagoda anchorage, just before the tea came down the river,
+showed perhaps the most beautiful fleet of ships the world has ever
+seen. The crack ships, which were always the first to load, began to
+assemble about the end of April; and until the tea came down were all
+engaged in painting, varnishing and smartening themselves up, and in
+other ways, such as sheathing over their channels, preparing for the
+fray. Then what a sight they made when all was spick and span, with
+their glistening black hulls, snow-white decks, golden gingerbread
+work and carving at bow and stern, newly-varnished teak deck-fittings,
+glittering brass and burnished copper. Every ship, of course, had her
+distinctive mast and bulwark colours.”
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+PORT OF LIVERPOOL.
+
+In 1798.]
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+SCREW S.S. “LADY JOCELYN.”
+
+1,800 tons, 300 horse-power. Owned by General Screw Steam Shipping Co.]
+
+The tea-clipper _Fiery Cross_, launched in 1860 at Liverpool and
+wood-built, was to become famous for her fast passages home. It was
+customary in those days for the first vessel who landed the new teas
+in England to receive a premium. This vessel won the premium on four
+occasions. Then in 1863 Steele built the _Serica_ and _Taeping_, two
+of the most famous clipper ships. The former was wood-built and of 708
+tons. The latter was composite-built and of 767 tons, and it was in
+1865 that two more Steele composite tea-clippers were launched, also
+to become famous. These were the 853-ton _Ariel_ and the 886-ton _Sir
+Lancelot_. Very beautiful craft they were, and no ship-lover can regard
+the existing pictures of these handsome craft without a thrill of
+emotion. Symmetry, grace, proportion, curves, easy lines as to hull;
+a good sail-plan, tall masts and fine spars; carrying in light winds
+all sorts of kites and fancy sails, the supreme test came in the
+ever-memorable race of 1866, which is one of the greatest events in the
+whole history of merchant ships under sail. On May 28, 1866, there was
+a whole fleet of these clippers loading at Foochow. At 5 p.m. _Ariel_
+began her voyage, by dropping down and anchoring for the night; and
+then followed the _Fiery Cross_, _Taeping_, _Serica_ and _Taitsing_, at
+intervals. On August 12 _Ariel_ passed the Cape Verde Islands, next day
+came _Taeping_, _Fiery Cross_ and _Serica_, the _Taitsing_ not passing
+until the 19th, but she had made up these three days by September 1.
+On September 5 _Ariel_ picked up the Bishop Light, sighted _Taeping_,
+and the two raced up Channel, doing their fourteen knots. _Ariel_ got
+her pilot at six the next morning off Dungeness, followed immediately
+by _Taeping_. In the Downs _Taeping_ got the more powerful tug, and
+thus reached Gravesend nearly an hour sooner, and finally docked twenty
+minutes before _Ariel_. It was a near thing after racing for three
+months from one end of the world to the other. _Serica_ docked on the
+same tide, _Fiery Cross_ was only about a day later, and _Taitsing_
+arrived in the river on September 9. And there were plenty more of
+these races, for the skippers cracked-on and made these clippers do
+marvellous things through the water.
+
+But in 1868 there was built at Aberdeen the famous clipper
+_Thermopylae_, 947 tons, a bigger and more powerful ship than the
+Steele clippers, and a veritable witch at sailing, whether on the wind
+or to windward, and a wonderful sea boat, too. In November 1868 she
+started on her maiden voyage from Gravesend, and reached Melbourne in
+sixty-three days. Mr. Downie, already quoted, whilst a midshipman in a
+Blackwaller, happened to be in Melbourne when _Thermopylae_ came in,
+and went aboard to look over this new wonder ship. “She had immensely
+square yards,” he says, “and most beautiful lines, fore and aft. Her
+apprentices told me her skipper had driven her all the way, carrying on
+tremendously, but her spars and rigging were all new, and of the best
+material, and stood the severe strain in splendid fashion.”
+
+_Thermopylae_ broke records, and in 1869 got home from Foochow in
+ninety-one days, though _Sir Lancelot_ less than a fortnight later
+arrived after a voyage of only eighty-nine days. But then came the
+splendid _Cutty Sark_. She is the only one of this long line of
+tea-clippers still afloat and at work. In the autumn of 1921 she came
+into the London river, and I was able to go all over her. But she had
+changed her name to _Ferreira_ and was Portuguese-owned and rigged as a
+barquentine. For all that, and the disappointing way in which she was
+being kept up, she was in excellent condition, with a yacht-like hull,
+every line of which suggested grace and speed. Composite-built, this
+921-ton vessel was a little bigger than _Thermopylae_, and was launched
+in 1869. Under Captain Moodie this vessel cracked-on, and she could do
+her seventeen and a half knots, and anyone who has examined her bow and
+stern will readily believe this.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+AUXILIARY SCREW S.S. “INDOMITABLE.”
+
+1,170 tons. Owned by R. James Brown, Sunderland.]
+
+And here, in the height of their glory, we must now leave these
+clippers; for the opening of the Suez Canal told owners pretty
+plainly that the future for them was to leave sail and go in for steam.
+In 1881 _Thermopylae_ made her last passage as a tea-carrier, and all
+the other clippers had either gone or were out of the running, and used
+in other trades. Crews began more frequently to go into steamships,
+famous captains retired, and the younger men, like the crews, preferred
+the more comfortable life in a mechanically-propelled vessel. But for
+years the American and British clipper ships were the glory of the
+Mercantile Marine, as at one time the old East Indiamen had been before
+the days of healthy competition. The influence of the scientific French
+architects on the American builders of frigates and privateers is
+traceable through the clipper ships which followed. Thus mutually one
+nation is linked with another in the development of that great service
+which has meant so much for the good of the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE TRIUMPH OF STEAM
+
+
+The speed of life, the rate of progress, and the development of new
+ideas have since the beginning of the nineteenth century been so rapid
+that all the previous history of the Mercantile Marine, as in other
+spheres of activity, seems ridiculously slow and unduly protracted
+until we realise that a ship could not become efficient until she had
+the right type of hull and the correct distribution of sails, nor be
+able to steam until suitable engines had evolved by invention and long
+practice.
+
+It is a cliché to speak of the “wonderful” nineteenth century, and
+yet in regard to its effects on the sea services it is but expressing
+a literal truth. The amazing fact is, that just as the sailing ship
+was becoming perfect the steamship was beginning to take its place;
+and just as the clippers had definitely created the golden age of
+sail, steamers had become reliable, indispensable and destined to make
+sailing vessels out of date. If steam and iron, and then steel, had not
+been introduced into marine progress for another hundred years, and
+the clippers had been allowed to have the seas to themselves, it would
+have seemed but fair and natural, having regard to the centuries and
+centuries which had been necessary to bring about, at last, so perfect
+a creation of man’s science, art and bitter experience.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+LORD YARBOROUGH’S YACHT “FALCON.”
+
+351 tons. Off Cowes. About 1829. Afterwards used as a merchant ship.]
+
+But it was not to be. The story of the steamship, like that of the
+sailing ship, is one of evolution; but compressed into a few years
+instead of many centuries. As early as 1736 a steam vessel had been
+patented by Jonathan Hulls, to be used as a steam tug. It is even said
+that such a craft was built and experimented with in the following
+year; but at any rate the experiment was not continued. The essential
+idea was the use of a single paddle at the stern. Now follows the
+trend of invention. In 1783 a two-paddle-wheel steam craft, turned
+by a single horizontal steam cylinder, constructed by the Marquis de
+Jouffroy, actually went ahead for some time against the current of the
+Saône. For some time Patrick Miller had been experimenting with the old
+idea of propelling craft by hand-worked paddle-wheels. In 1787 William
+Symington had obtained a patent for a new steam-engine, and he was now
+asked to design an engine that would turn these paddle-wheels. Thus in
+the autumn of 1788 the engine was put into a double-hulled vessel, no
+bigger than the smallest yacht, measuring 25 feet long, with 7 feet
+beam, the engine being geared with chains and the two paddle-wheels
+being placed between the two hulls, one wheel astern of the other. This
+curious vessel was actually tried on Dalswinton Loch and was able to do
+her five miles an hour.
+
+Then in 1801 was built the stern-wheeler _Charlotte Dundas_ at
+Grangemouth, having engines supplied by Symington. She also had a
+double stern with two rudders controlled by a steering-wheel. She
+proved her efficiency to the extent of towing a couple of 70-ton,
+loaded vessels for nearly twenty miles along the Forth and Clyde canal;
+but as the owners of this waterway feared for the damage done to the
+banks of the canal, the ship was condemned. We have to look upon these
+as hardly anything more than interesting experiments, but six years
+later we see the first real steamship, not in England nor Scotland,
+but in North America, yet produced by a combination of British and
+American brains. This was the _Clermont_, measuring 133 feet long and
+18 feet beam, and was produced by Robert Fulton, an American engineer,
+born in Pennsylvania of Irish parentage. In 1797 he came to Paris,
+where he devoted his attention to steam navigation, and in 1803 built
+a small steamboat which went up the Seine. Three years later he went
+back to America, having seen the trial trip of the _Charlotte Dundas_.
+He arranged with the British firm Boulton & Watt to make for him the
+principal portions of a suitable engine, and these were sent across the
+Atlantic to him and fitted into the wooden ship _Clermont_. The result
+was that in 1807 this craft travelled by steam power from New York to
+Albany up the Hudson, a distance of 150 miles, in thirty-two hours.
+This was a veritable triumph, and definitely settled the question as
+to whether steam vessels would ever become of practical utility. It
+is, indeed, one of the landmarks of history, and when we look on the
+ocean to-day and see such mighty steamships as _Olympic_, _Aquitania_,
+_Majestic_ and _Berengaria_, to say nothing of the many thousands of
+smaller steamers all over the world, it is nothing short of remarkable
+that in little more than a hundred years such a stupendous change
+should have come about. The advancement of the ship seems suddenly to
+have been telescoped.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+CLIPPER SCREW S.S. “HELLENIS.”
+
+755 tons, length 206 ft. Owned by the Anglo-Ionian Steam Navigation
+Co., Ltd. Built at Stockton. In 1861.]
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+S.S. “ORINOCO.”
+
+2,250 tons, 800 horse-power. Lieut. G. M. Chapman, R.N., Commander.
+Owned by Royal West India Mail Company.]
+
+But the successive stages were not easy, and there was much to be
+learnt. In 1811 on the Clyde was launched the _Comet_, a clumsy
+little thing of 40 feet length on the keel, and able to steam five
+miles an hour by means of one paddle on each side, as in the case of
+the _Clermont_. During the next few years paddle-steamers began to
+be built and introduced on the Clyde, Thames and Mersey. By 1817 a
+steamer called the _Caledonia_ had been taken from the Clyde to the
+Thames, whence, after receiving new engines, she steamed to Rotterdam.
+A year later came the 90-ton _Rob Roy_, constructed by William Denny
+and engined by Napier with thirty nominal horse-power. After running
+for some time between Greenock and Belfast, she was transferred to
+the Dover-Calais route, but in the meantime steamer development was
+proceeding in other parts of Europe. For in 1815 a small craft called
+the _Elizabeth_ was running on the Neva, another steamer was carrying
+passengers between Cronstadt and St. Petersburg, whilst in Germany the
+first vessel of this kind to be built was the _Prinzessin Charlotte_, a
+double-hulled thing with a single paddle-wheel between the hulls. She
+was running on the Elbe and Spree as early as 1816.
+
+Thus far small steamers had shown their utility for inland waters
+and for short sea passages; but now comes another important event.
+In the year 1818 there was built in New York the 350-ton full-rigged
+ship _Savannah_, but she was also fitted with a low-pressure engine
+of ninety horse-power, and a couple of paddle-wheels, one on each
+side. These were so arranged that they could be hoisted on board. In
+the following year she crossed the Atlantic to Liverpool in thirty
+days, but this was largely a sailing passage, for she did not use her
+engines except for eighty hours, and by the time she had reached the
+Irish coast she had consumed all her fuel. On her return to America
+her engines were removed and she became a sailing ship simply. Still,
+for the first time in history a ship had been driven by steam in the
+Atlantic, and it showed what could be expected presently.
+
+And then came a surprise. In that yard which had been building nothing
+else but sailing ships since the time of Elizabeth, in that yard where
+the flower of the British merchant fleet had always been constructed,
+there was now actually being made a steamer! It seemed incredible,
+but it was true, and it caused a great sensation at the time. In 1820
+had been formed the first steamship company, under the title of the
+General Steam Navigation Company, and they gave the order for their
+first steamer to the Blackwall yard of Wigram & Green. This ship was
+the 401-ton paddler _City of Edinburgh_, for the Edinburgh trade, and
+she was launched in 1821, the same year as the yard also launched the
+1333-ton East Indiaman _Duchess of Atholl_, one of the finest sailing
+ships of the time. It was significant of the big change that was coming
+over the Mercantile Marine, though for many a year most of the officers
+and men heartily despised any one who deserted sail for steam.
+
+In the following year this same yard launched the 180-ton paddler _King
+of the Netherlands_ for the same owners, and in 1823 they built three
+more steamers of from 244 to 510 tons. The _City of Edinburgh_ had been
+launched in March, and had caused so much interest that the future
+William IV and Queen Adelaide went to look over her and were surprised
+at the magnificence of her passenger accommodation. The engines were of
+only 100 horse-power, yet the Press at the time referred to them as
+“extremely powerful.” Then in the following June was launched at Port
+Glasgow the 420-ton three-masted schooner _James Watt_, which had a
+long, narrow funnel, about as tall as her mainmast, and a paddle-wheel
+on either side of the ship driven by engines of the same horse-power as
+those for the _City of Edinburgh_.
+
+The steamship had thus got a good start, though as regards ocean work
+the engines were auxiliary rather than the main propelling power. In
+1825 the 176-ton auxiliary _Falcon_ reached Calcutta via the Cape, and
+the 470-ton _Enterprise_ made the same voyage in 113 days, but for 103
+days she used steam. This was the biggest test which marine machinery
+had so far endured. It proved a good deal, and therefore it is not
+surprising that two years later there were eighty steamers classed
+in Lloyd’s Register, and five years later there were 100. But the
+Atlantic had not yet been conquered by steam, and when we realise that
+_Aquitania_ was not in commission until 1914, we can well appreciate
+the rate of progress that was afterwards made. In 1831 a vessel named
+the _Royal William_, 176 feet long, was built in Quebec, and fitted
+with engines made by Boulton & Watt that had been sent across the
+Atlantic. Two years later this ship crossed the ocean to Cowes, having
+done the 2500 miles in seventeen days, yet there is some doubt as to
+whether she used her engines throughout the whole voyage.
+
+But the year 1838 was to be remarkable in the story of the Atlantic,
+for on April 4 there started from Cork the 703-ton paddler _Sirius_,
+which reached New York on April 22. She had steamed all the way, but
+it had been a near thing, for her fuel gave out and she had even to
+burn some of her spars. At one stage of the voyage her captain had
+to quell a mutiny, for the crew began to assume that the ship would
+never get across. Twelve hours after her arrival came into New York the
+four-masted paddler _Great Western_, which had left Bristol on April 7.
+She was a much larger ship, of 1321 gross tons, and had been specially
+designed by that engineering genius Brunel to withstand Atlantic
+weather. On the return voyage she took fifteen days, and _Sirius_
+seventeen. _Great Western_ was a most successful ship, both technically
+and commercially. At the end of the first year she earned a dividend of
+9 per cent., thirty-five guineas being the fare, and she carried 152
+passengers. She was not broken up until 1847.
+
+So far no steamer had crossed from Liverpool to New York, though the
+sailing ships were still doing the voyage in about three weeks, but in
+1838 a second _Royal William_ accomplished this. She was hardly the
+kind of paddler to choose for Atlantic work, and had really been built
+for the Liverpool-Kingstown route. Built and engined at Liverpool,
+being 3 feet shorter but 2 feet wider than _Sirius_, she was thus
+the first of those steamers to maintain the communication between
+Liverpool and New York, which has meant so much to the mutual commerce
+and development of ideas in the two countries. On April 2, 1839, the
+three-masted paddler _British Queen_ left Portsmouth and reached New
+York on April 16, or three days quicker than the first _Royal William_
+had done the journey in the opposite direction under sail and steam.
+Encouraged by the success of _Sirius_, which had been chartered
+because the _British Queen_ was not yet ready, the British Queen Steam
+Navigation Company had also built the sister ship _President_, 1863
+tons and 700 horse-power; but after sailing from New York on March 11,
+1841, with a few passengers, _President_ was never heard of again, and
+thus the company came to an end.
+
+We have now reached a stage when a change was coming over the
+Mercantile Marine slowly but without a doubt. A new competition was
+beginning, yet so far sail was ahead and improving all the time.
+But from the number of new shipyards which were springing up, and
+the interest which they and owners were taking in the steamship, it
+was obvious even soon after Queen Victoria’s accession that in the
+steamship lay the future of the trading and passenger ship. It is to be
+noted that during the time of the Honourable East India Company their
+ships were primarily and essentially freighters. They earned their
+profits by carrying valuable exports and imports. The few passengers
+who travelled were officials going out to India in the service of
+the company, or returning home. To-day the finest merchant ships in
+the world are not freighters, but passenger ships. It is the tramp
+which has succeeded to the carrying trade of those pioneer ships; and
+after the Indian monopoly had disappeared, and there came a need for
+people to go out East, it was quite an innovation to provide more
+accommodation for passengers. Then the same thing happened in regard
+to China, but especially with the emigration to Australia. Gradually
+this element increased, people began to travel all over the world, for
+business, for administrative reasons, for pleasure; and as the number
+of passengers increased so the amount of cargo space was encroached
+upon. Especially was this the case in the transatlantic ships, so that
+to-day the principal liners on that route carry practically no cargo
+beyond mails and the passengers’ luggage. Thus, within a hundred years,
+the needs of the public have entirely altered the characters of the
+shipping.
+
+It was natural enough that the East should for so long have instigated
+all the improvements in shipping, for the reason that travellers
+went to the Orient long before America was discovered, and the East
+India Company had a continuous need for the best ships. But since the
+introduction of steam and the rapid progress of the United States,
+it is the West, and not the East which has always seen the greatest
+enterprise in shipping. Bigger and better vessels, compound engines,
+twin screws, triple screws, quadruple screws, turbines, oil fuel,
+increased speed, luxurious accommodation—all these most important and
+progressive factors in the Mercantile Marine have come as a result of
+the Atlantic, and not the Oriental trade.
+
+In reality it is all traceable to the year 1840, though the
+establishment of Lloyd’s Register in 1834,[5] the founding of the
+Marine Department of the Board of Trade in 1846 and the repeal of the
+Navigation Laws in 1849 have also to be reckoned as having powerfully
+contributed to the improvement of British shipping. Some time since
+I had in my hands the log of the sailing ship _Elizabeth_, which
+sailed from the Thames in the spring of 1833, arrived in China the
+following January, left there in March, called at St. Helena in June,
+then crossed the Atlantic and reached Halifax in August. She was, I
+believe, the last of the ships owned by the Honourable East India
+Company to leave China before the monopoly ended. Now, as showing
+the interlocking of human affairs, it is interesting to observe that
+at Halifax she went alongside Mr. Cunard’s wharf, for he was the East
+India Company’s agent in that port. Curiously, five years previously,
+in reply to a letter sent to his firm by Messrs. Ross & Primrose,
+Cunard had written: “We have received your letter of the 22nd inst.
+We are entirely unacquainted with the cost of a steamboat, and would
+not like to embark in a business of which we are quite ignorant. Must,
+therefore, decline taking any part in the one you propose getting up.”
+
+Now in those days the arrangements for postal contracts were in the
+hands of the British Admiralty, who were so impressed by the wonderful
+steamship achievements of 1838 that they proceeded to issue circulars
+inviting tenders for the carrying of American mails by steamers. It
+so happened that one of these circulars fell into the hands of Samuel
+Cunard of Halifax, who owned a number of sailing ships trading between
+Boston, Newfoundland and Bermuda. He had been one of the shareholders
+of the first _Royal William_, which had crossed in 1833 from Nova
+Scotia to Cowes. Having read the circular and made up his mind, he
+came to London in order to raise the required money, but the merchants
+would have nothing to do with the scheme. From the secretary of the
+East India Company he obtained a letter of introduction to Mr. Robert
+Napier, a Clyde shipbuilder and engineer, who in turn introduced
+him to Mr. George Burns, and the latter introduced him to Mr. David
+MacIver. Each of these two last mentioned was an expert in the shipping
+business, and in a few days the necessary capital of £270,000 was
+subscribed. A tender was then made to the Admiralty for the conveyance
+of Her Majesty’s mails once a fortnight between Liverpool, Halifax and
+Boston. This was accepted in competition, and a contract was signed for
+seven years. It was agreed that the service was to be carried on by
+four ships, that fixed dates of sailings should be adhered to, and that
+the company should be subsidised to the extent of £81,000 a year.
+
+Thus the famous Cunard Company was founded. Cunard came to London,
+Burns to Glasgow and MacIver to Liverpool, and to these three men we
+owe a great deal of the subsequent development of Atlantic shipping
+and the progress of the Mercantile Marine. The company was at first
+known as “The British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet
+Company,” and in the year 1840 these four wooden ships were built on
+the Clyde and supplied with engines by Robert Napier. The first was the
+_Britannia_, followed by the _Acadia_, _Caledonia_ and _Columbia_. They
+were propelled by paddle-wheels, carried 115 cabin passengers and 225
+tons of cargo, and they were all approximately 1154 tons, and 207 feet
+long. Regardless of superstition, _Britannia_ began her maiden voyage
+on a Friday, which happened to be July 4, a day which commemorated
+another kind of Independence. After a fine trip of eleven days and
+four hours she reached Halifax, and thence proceeded to Boston, just a
+fortnight plus eight hours out from Liverpool. The citizens of Boston
+celebrated the historic event with banqueting and enthusiasm, and thus
+was forged one of those links which have bound the two nations together
+for so many years ever since.
+
+Following the precedent of the Cunard Company, the Royal Mail Line
+in March 1840, obtained a contract to carry the mails in at least
+fourteen “good substantial and efficient steam vessels” to the West
+Indies, whither previously the mails had been carried in gun-brigs. The
+contract was for ten years from December 1841. All the ships were named
+after British rivers, and they used to depart from Falmouth, the voyage
+taking from seventeen to eighteen days. It is evidence of the great
+spread of shipbuilding already that these fourteen ships were built at
+Northfleet on the Thames, Greenock, Dumbarton, Leith and even Cowes.
+The fleet cost about £1,000,000 sterling, but the Government gave them
+a subsidy of £240,000 a year. The undertaking was very successful, and
+presently Southampton took the place of Falmouth. Then in 1851 the
+Royal Mail Line extended their service to South America. Gradually the
+heavy subsidy dropped to £85,000 a year, and was finally abolished in
+June 1905.
+
+As further evidence of the solid belief which the steamship had now
+won, it is only necessary to refer to the Pacific Steam Navigation
+Company, which received its charter in 1840. It is now amalgamated with
+the Royal Mail Line, but in those days, whilst the latter served the
+east side of South America, the Pacific Steam Navigation Company served
+the Pacific coast of that continent by going round through the Magellan
+Straits. Their two ships the _Chile_ and _Peru_ were in fact the first
+two steamers which ever passed through those straits. What a wonderful
+change since the time of Drake’s ships!
+
+But there is still one more important event which belongs to the year
+1840, for this was the date when there was incorporated by royal
+charter the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company. The
+foundation of the Peninsular Company dates back to 1837, and a regular
+service of mail packets was instituted from London to Lisbon and
+Gibraltar, though even a little prior to this date its ships had begun
+running to the Peninsula. The first steamship owned by the Peninsular
+Company was the 209-ton paddler _William Fawcett_, built in the year
+1829, and she ran from London to Lisbon and Gibraltar. In 1840 the
+line was extended to Malta and Alexandria, and its title changed from
+Peninsular to Peninsular and Oriental. There was as yet no Suez Canal,
+so from Alexandria passengers and goods were sent by the Mahmoudieh
+Canal to the Nile, whence they proceeded by steamer to Cairo, and from
+there travelled through the desert on camels as far as Suez. It was
+thus a laborious business, 3000 camels being employed for transporting
+a single steamer’s loading, every package requiring three separate
+transfers; and for nearly thirty years this continued until the Suez
+Canal was opened in 1869.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+TWO EARLY MAIL STEAMSHIPS.
+
+This picture of 1842 shows two of the General Steam Navigation
+Company’s vessels at Rotterdam. The 600-ton “Ocean” leaving, and the
+500-ton “Giraffe” arriving.]
+
+But this company first sent a steamer to India via the Cape in 1842.
+This was the 1800-ton _Hindostan_, with 500-horse-power engines. In
+1844 the P. & O. undertook the mail service from England to Alexandria,
+and thus from Suez to Ceylon, Calcutta and China. The service between
+Suez and Bombay was carried on by the East India Company, in order to
+keep alive their navy, but in 1854 this service was absorbed by the
+P. & O., who in 1852 had also started a branch line from Singapore
+to Australia. Then in 1869 came the opening of the Suez Canal, and
+thus was broken down the last barrier which separated India from the
+trader. A tremendous impulse was given now to shipping; for the
+first time vessels need not go round the Cape of Good Hope, and so once
+again the Mediterranean ceased to be a backwater and the route to the
+East was now more like what it was before the Portuguese, Dutch and
+Elizabethan English had begun to undertake their Oriental voyages. It
+is interesting to remark that in the same year which saw the opening
+of the Suez Canal the two fastest clipper ships which ever sailed were
+both afloat—_Thermopylae_ and _Cutty Sark_. The latter made her maiden
+voyage in the following February. Thus, at a time when sailing ships
+were passing the Cape at a record speed, the canal was being opened and
+putting an end to the sail-driven vessel’s usefulness after so many
+centuries, linking it up with Vasco da Gama and earlier.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[5] By the amalgamation of the Register of Shipping (1760) and the New
+Register Book of Shipping (1799).
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE IRON AND STEEL AGE
+
+
+In a very few years, then, the increasing success of the steamer,
+together with the opening of the Suez Canal and firm establishment of
+several steamship companies carrying mails east, west and south, gave
+the glorious sailing ships a blow from which they have never since
+recovered. Mechanically-propelled craft were now seen everywhere. In
+1841 the Blackwall yard launched the 666-ton paddler _Princess Royal_
+and the 875-ton paddler _Trident_ for the General Steam Navigation
+Company. The latter craft was one of the fastest vessels afloat, and
+on Queen Victoria’s first visit to Scotland this ship so far surpassed
+the royal yacht in speed that _Trident_ was chartered for Her Majesty’s
+party on the return voyage.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+S.S. “TRIDENT.”
+
+Of the General Steam Navigation Company, arriving at Woolwich on
+September 13, 1842, with Queen Victoria on board after her visit to
+Scotland. “Trident” was of 875 tons.]
+
+From 1840 to about 1860 the Cunard ships had practically a monopoly of
+the Atlantic steamship trade, though as long as they used paddle-wheels
+they were not very serious competitors with the sailing craft. It was
+the advent of iron and steel, of the high-pressure and compound engines
+which was to give the steamships the virtues of economy and efficiency
+and thus a superiority over the old-fashioned craft. From 1850 for the
+next eight years there was in the North Atlantic a certain amount of
+opposition from a steamship company called the Collins Line, which had
+been subsidised by the United States Government. After a burst of
+keen rivalry, the Collins Line withdrew from the contest. In 1850 came
+the Inman Line, which kept up the running for many years until in 1893
+it was reorganised and became merged in the American Line. In 1866 was
+founded the Guion Line, which certainly had a great influence for a
+time in accelerating the development of the big steamship. And then in
+1870 came the White Star Line, which, excepting the Cunard Line and
+a temporary influence of the two German lines, has done more for the
+improvement in design and speed and comfort in regard to steamships
+than all the other companies put together.
+
+We must now see how this all came about. It depended really on two
+things: first, the use of iron, and subsequently steel, for the
+building of bigger hulls; and secondly, the invention of the screw
+propeller to take the place of the old-fashioned paddle-wheel. Briefly
+how this came to pass is as follows. As far back as 1821 a Mr. Aaron
+Manby had built an iron craft 120 feet long and 18 feet wide, and she
+steamed from London to Paris, being employed for the next twenty years
+on the Seine. She was thus the first iron ship to put to sea, and was
+called the _Aaron Manby_, after her builder. Then in 1832 Laird & Co.
+of Birkenhead built the 148-ton paddler _Lady Lansdowne_ for the trade
+between England and Ireland. But it was not until 1843 that the first
+really large iron ship, the famous _Great Britain_, was built, intended
+as an improvement on the _Great Western_.
+
+But before we speak of the _Great Britain_ we must see something of
+the way the propeller came in, for the two subjects are intimately
+connected. At its best the paddle-wheel, except for excursion steamers
+and certain kinds of tugs, is a very clumsy means of driving a ship
+through the water. It is the most obvious, because historically it is
+analogous to the action of the duck, of the first primitive man who
+paddled his small craft, or of the later Egyptians who rowed with oars
+down the Nile. But for open sea work the paddle-wheel is an awkward
+encumbrance, and apart from tugs and pleasure steamers it was last
+seen, in European waters at least, in the mail steamers running from
+England to Flushing and Ostend comparatively recently.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+THE “ROBERT F. STOCKTON.”
+
+(Captain Ericsson, 1839.)]
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+AN EARLY CROSS-CHANNEL STEAMER.
+
+This picture of 1855 shows the English and French Royal Mail Steam
+Packets “Queen” and “Empress.”]
+
+But for a long time there had been efforts made to introduce the
+screw propeller. As far back as 1804 John Stevens crossed the Hudson
+in a little vessel driven by a screw propeller, but it was not until
+thirty-two years later that John Ericsson, a Swedish engineer,
+reintroduced the screw and patented it. In 1837 his propeller was
+successfully tried in the 45-foot _Francis B. Ogden_, and in the
+following year the Lairds built at Birkenhead the 63-foot _Robert F.
+Stockton_, which obtained the extraordinary speed of thirteen knots on
+the Thames, going with the tide, and she afterwards went across the
+Atlantic, where she was turned into a tug. But in England Francis Smith
+was at work on the screw problem and obtained a patent in the same year
+as Ericsson, and his invention was tried with success in a 6-ton boat.
+Smith’s patent was bought by a syndicate; and in 1838 was launched the
+240-ton three-master _Archimedes_, fitted with Smith’s screw, and after
+she had steamed round Great Britain and across the Bay of Biscay, the
+prejudiced and “old-timers” began to believe in the new idea. Next
+year was launched the much larger _Novelty_, which was the first
+cargo ship to be fitted with a screw, and she proceeded from London to
+Constantinople and back. She was also the first ship to be fitted with
+an iron mast.
+
+We have thus arrived at the stage when the iron ship and the screw
+propeller had become practicable, and thus the future of the steamer
+was moulded. Wood was all very well until the demand for increased
+tonnage arrived, but when it was proposed to construct the 3618-ton
+_Great Britain_ there was nothing for it but to use iron. Here was
+a ship to be 822 feet long with 50½ feet beam, able to carry 260
+passengers and 1200 tons of cargo. As no contractor could be found
+willing to build such a ship, the Great Western Steamship Company at
+Bristol constructed her themselves. She was designed by Brunel, but
+she turned out to be an awkward, ill-fated monstrosity. Launched in
+July 1843, she was unable to enter the river until December of the
+following year, owing to delay in the alteration of the dock. It was
+originally intended to fit her with the usual paddle-wheels, but the
+arrival of the _Archimedes_ in the port caused Brunel to modify the
+designs, so that his ship should be driven by a six-bladed propeller.
+She was a curious, six-masted craft with a bowsprit and painted ports,
+and in July 1845, after making a trip to London, left Liverpool with
+sixty passengers and 600 tons of cargo, reaching New York after a
+voyage of fifteen days. On the return journey her best day’s steaming
+was 287 miles. One night during September of the following year, after
+leaving the Mersey, she ran ashore off the Irish coast in Dundrum Bay,
+where she remained for eleven months exposed to all weathers. Brunel
+cleverly had a wooden breakwater, loaded with stones, built round her,
+and she was eventually refloated and taken into Liverpool. She was now
+sold for a quarter of her original cost of £100,000, was turned into a
+full-rigged ship for the Australian trade, and eventually became a coal
+hulk.
+
+But in spite of her failure this ship showed that an iron hull and a
+screw as propeller were a practicable combination. She was divided
+into five water-tight compartments, she was fitted with bilge-keels to
+minimise rolling, and instead of the heavy wooden bulwarks possessed
+by contemporary ships and inherited from the time when the Tudor ships
+mounted their cannon, _Great Britain_ had iron rails with netting, so
+that any seas shipped could get away easily. Thus, this unfortunate
+vessel, in spite of her ill-luck, did introduce new ideas into the
+Mercantile Marine. It was in 1856 that the Cunard Company built the
+_Persia_, of iron. She was a 3300-ton ship, but had paddle-wheels,
+and then, six years later, came their _Scotia_, which was the last
+and finest paddle-ship ever built for the Atlantic service. She had
+seven water-tight compartments and a double bottom, thanks to the
+influence of _Great Britain_, and she lowered the record of crossing
+the Atlantic to just two hours under the nine days. The sailing ship
+as a passenger-carrier across that ocean was now definitely beaten,
+and the future simply consisted in the more thorough perfecting of the
+steamships; there was no going back now, notwithstanding the fact that
+in the Eastern trades the full-rigged ships were still making such
+wonderful passages.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+THE FAMOUS “GREAT EASTERN.”
+
+After her launching in 1858.]
+
+The advance of engineering and science, the amount of valuable data
+which had been obtained during these years of steam propulsion, had
+already brought steamship building to be no rule-of-thumb method,
+but a highly technical art. About the middle of the century, John Scott
+Russell, for instance, made some valuable researches regarding the
+resistance of a ship’s hull passing through the water, and in 1860 Sir
+Edward Harland, founder of the famous Belfast yard of Harland & Wolff,
+introduced steamers into the Mediterranean with a length of ten times
+their beam. This novel idea was so successful that when he came to
+build the White Star steamships he carried out that same idea, which
+was yet another important influence in the evolution of the modern
+Atlantic liner. But even in 1852 a tremendous improvement was seen in
+the hull of the _Victoria_, which was built of iron to the design of
+Brunel & Scott Russell for the Australian Royal Mail Steam Navigation
+Company. She was designed to embody the wave-line theory and for a
+speed of ten knots, and instead of the clumsy, ponderous hulls, you
+find in the _Victoria_ smoothness, gracefulness and sweet lines. It is
+therefore not altogether surprising that she won the £500 prize offered
+by the Colonies for the fastest voyage to Australia, her time from
+Gravesend to Adelaide being sixty days, including two days’ delay at
+St. Vincent. She was propelled by a two-bladed screw.
+
+Thus in the fewest possible years a remarkable change had come over
+the Mercantile Marine, and though the old die-hards—those fine artists
+of the marlin-spike—still heartily despised every kind of steamship,
+yet others could see well enough that an entirely new order of things
+had begun owing to the advance in engineering. The ship, as in
+regard to other creatures, had to advance with the times. The first
+settlement in Australia had taken place as far back as 1788, and now
+required better lines of communication. So, too, with the East and
+the great strides which North and South America were making. Pioneers,
+emigrants, business men were exercising a pressure which could be met
+only in bigger and faster ships. Thanks to the peace and prosperity
+of the mid-Victorian era, new ideas were emerging. Gone were the
+days of monopolies and worn-out rules: the last trace of mediævalism
+in shipping had been severed, and men were thinking out freely and
+unfettered the problems of transport.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+THE FAMOUS “GREAT EASTERN.”
+
+Also known as the “Leviathan.” Length 680 ft., beam 83 ft.; beam across
+paddle-boxes 120 ft.; depth (deck to keel) 58ft.; 22,500 tons; draught
+(laden) 30 ft.; paddle engines 1,200 horse-power; screw engines 1,800
+horse-power. Accommodation for 4,000 passengers.]
+
+It was quite a remarkable achievement that in 1853 the _Himalaya_ was
+built at Blackwall for the P. & O. line. Here was an iron vessel of
+4690 tons, which succeeded in making a record run to Gibraltar at an
+average speed of thirteen and a half knots. No wonder that the year
+after she was built she was purchased by the British Government. And
+then came that wonder of the world, the historic _Great Eastern_,
+which was the biggest ship ever built for nearly fifty years, until
+the White Star _Baltic_ came out in 1905. The _Great Eastern_ is best
+described as a costly freak, but she shows the marvellous courage and
+enterprise of the Victorian age. It was Brunel’s idea that a ship
+should be built so as to carry a very large number of passengers and an
+enormous cargo all the way to Australia without having to coal anywhere
+on the voyage. She was to be 679 feet 6 inches long, with 82 feet 8
+inches beam, of 18,915 tons, and driven by both paddles and a screw.
+This five-funnelled, six-masted giantess was built by Scott Russell
+on the Thames. She began to be built on May 1, 1854, but she was not
+launched at Millwall until the last day of January 1858, the first
+attempt to persuade her to enter the water being unsuccessful. As a
+financial speculation she was a failure. The attempts to launch her and
+the ensuing delay ran into thousands of pounds, and the company which
+owned her had to be wound up, but she was sold to a new company for
+£160,000. She was unfortunately now put on the Atlantic route, where
+she was a financial failure also; then from 1865 to 1873 she was used
+in laying the Atlantic submarine telegraph cables, for which she was
+found suitable, and finally in 1888 she was beached and then broken
+up. Though in a commercial sense she had never succeeded, the _Great
+Eastern_ did prove that she was perfectly sound structurally, and never
+exhibited any signs of weakness in spite of her enormous length. But
+she was really years before her time.
+
+To have built this, or indeed any big ship, of wood could not have been
+possible. What rendered practicable the increased length of ships,
+able to carry high-powered engines with much space for passengers and
+cargo, was the invention of the rolling-mill, which had been brought
+about by Henry Cort, who died in 1800. Before this was introduced,
+the iron after leaving the furnace had to be hammered into shape. But
+nowadays iron and steel can be turned out into suitable plates, so that
+shipbuilding really consists in riveting together so many plates as to
+form a steel box with shaped ends. Instead of the soft sounds of the
+adze and caulking chisel and the wholesome smell of tar, the shipyard
+of to-day is a pandemonium of monotonous, buzzing pneumatic riveting
+hammers. There is no loving selection of timbers and planking: the
+steel plates and girders are just there ready to be put into position.
+It is highly unsentimental, but inevitable that development should
+proceed along these lines. During the ’seventies steel had been used
+for shipbuilding more or less tentatively, but it was not until the
+Allan liner _Buenos Ayrean_ that a steel ship was seen in the Atlantic.
+
+Mild steel, because of its ductility and strength and lightness, became
+much more suitable than iron, and opened up another era in the story
+of the steamship. With the exception of yachts, lifeboats and certain
+fishing craft, this is now used universally for constructing hulls.
+In 1873 the French had employed steel in building their warships, and
+in 1881 the Cunard _Servia_ came out thus constructed. She was the
+largest and most powerful ship then built with the exception of _Great
+Eastern_, her measurements being 515 feet long, 52 feet beam and 7392
+tons gross. She lowered the Atlantic voyage to seven days, one hour,
+thirty-eight minutes.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy the White Star Line._
+
+S.S. “OCEANIC.”
+
+The first White Star Line steamship. Launched 1870. She measured 420
+ft. over all. She was the first of the modern steamship era.]
+
+But a most important influence on the future of the Mercantile Marine
+was created when the White Star Line began their competition in the
+Atlantic trade. Previously their flag had flown at the masthead of
+a fine fleet of sailing clippers. In 1867 the managing owner of the
+White Star Line retired, and Mr. T. H. Ismay took over control. He
+began by using iron for his Australian clippers instead of wood, and
+two years later gave an order to Harland & Wolff, Belfast, to build
+steamships for the Atlantic. In August 1870 was launched the first of
+the fleet. This was the _Oceanic_, 420 feet long, her beam being only
+one-tenth of her length. That proportion was a radical departure in
+shipbuilding, and very different from the beamy old “waggons,” as the
+old sailing ships were sometimes called. This _Oceanic_ is really the
+first of the modern steamships, and contained so many new ideas
+as to make all the other steamships old-fashioned. For instance, she
+introduced the practice of having the saloon extending the entire width
+and placed in the middle of the ship instead of aft. The state-rooms
+were placed forward and abaft the saloon, instead of opening out on to
+it, which had been the custom derived from the sailing ships. Moreover,
+the introduction of glass side-lights on a much larger scale made the
+interior of the ship lighter and more pleasant. In fact, what with
+this, the revolving chairs instead of the hard seats, the oil-lamps
+instead of the spluttering candles, and other details of comfort, the
+passenger saw that he was so well looked after that the White Star
+became at once a popular line. Ever since that time one company has
+vied with another to give the Atlantic passenger the maximum amount of
+pleasure and luxury. How little do many of them appreciate the contrast
+between the crack steamships of to-day and of fifty or sixty years ago,
+when everything had to be learned by hard and costly experience!
+
+The _Oceanic_ was a 3808-ton vessel, and became the fastest steamship
+afloat, her four-cylinder compound engines enabling her to average
+fourteen and a quarter knots. The first Atlantic line to build all
+its steamers of iron had been the Inman Line, which from 1850 to 1892
+was one of the chief competitors in that ocean. Founded by William
+Inman, its successful policy was to capture the emigration trade which
+had been carried on by the sailing ships. Their first ships had been
+the _City of Glasgow_ and _City of Manchester_, built of iron and
+propelled by a single screw. They inaugurated the custom of calling at
+Queenstown, and began running to New York instead of Philadelphia. The
+first so-called Atlantic “greyhound” was built by the Guion Line. In
+1879 came their _Arizona_, which unfortunately ran at full speed into
+an iceberg, but her water-tight bulkhead enabled her to get into St.
+John’s, Newfoundland. Her advent was followed by the _Oregon_, built
+in 1882, and she created a sensation by making the run from Queenstown
+to New York in six days, fourteen hours. This was a 7375-ton ship,
+which, with her speed of nineteen knots, made her the fastest vessel
+afloat, and was purchased by the Cunard Company; but she in turn was
+eclipsed by the two famous Cunarders, _Umbria_ in 1884 and _Etruria_ in
+the following year. These two wonderful craft were to be used as armed
+cruisers if required, and never were more satisfactory ships built to
+give their owners so little trouble. In respect of speed, also, they
+broke all records, _Etruria_ crossing from Queenstown to New York
+in six days, six hours and thirty-six minutes in 1885, while seven
+years later _Umbria_ surpassed this by maintaining an average of over
+nineteen and a half knots.
+
+And whilst all this activity was proceeding in the Atlantic, ships
+driven by steam were running regularly to the East, though the
+competition in this sphere was not keen. In 1877 the Orient Line was
+founded. One of their ships, the _Austral_, launched in 1881, was lying
+in Sydney Harbour with her scuttles open, but owing to a heavy list
+caused through unequal coaling the water poured in and she sank in
+fifty feet of water. She was, however, refloated several months later.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+S.S. “SULTAN.”
+
+2,225 tons, 240 horse-power. J. Maddison, R.N.R., Commander. About
+1873.]
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+S.S. “ORIENT.”
+
+About 1879. Owned by Orient Steam Navigation Company. 5,386 tons, 5,400
+horse-power, length 460 ft., beam 46 ft. 6 in.]
+
+Up till the ’eighties it was customary for the crack liners to carry
+three and even four masts with yards and both a fore staysail and
+square-sails. It was a practice which exhibited the last suspicion of
+steam, for it was argued that if the propeller should become damaged,
+or the shaft break there would at least be canvas enough for her to
+get along. But, with the introduction and general adoption of the
+twin-screw, masts became fewer, yards and canvas disappeared, and
+the seaman who had been brought up to go aloft and lay-out along a
+yard found himself a mere deckhand. He had seen the golden age of the
+full-rigged pass away, and the last resemblance in the steamship to the
+Blackwall frigates and the clippers remained only in the clipper bows
+of the Inman Line, who for so long kept up the useless but ornamental
+bowsprit even as late as the ’nineties. It is with the launch of their
+_City of New York_ and _City of Paris_, the latter in 1888, that twin
+screws of a large size were introduced into the Mercantile Marine, and
+here begins the final chapter in the steamship’s development, for it
+gave her an independence and increase of efficiency which never before
+has she possessed nor since lost.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE MODERN MERCHANT SHIP
+
+
+The dominating factors which now influenced the development of the
+Atlantic liner were speed and comfort. Owing to the rapid increase of
+commerce between the United States and Great Britain, the West had
+long since taken the place of the Orient as a magnetic attraction for
+the shipowner. It is the Atlantic and not the route to India which has
+seen the great improvements in the modern ship, and even if there had
+been keener competition to the East, it would not have been possible to
+increase much the size of steamships for the reason of the limitations
+imposed by the Suez Canal. It is conceivable, however, that some day
+the route to Australia round the Cape may become a lane of keen rivalry
+to the advantage of ship development.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._
+
+S.S. “SPAIN.”
+
+5,000 tons register. Of the National Line (New York to London).]
+
+The struggle for the speed supremacy of the North Atlantic went
+on. The _City of Paris_ was a flier. She could do her nineteen and
+twenty knots. But the White Star Line replied with the _Teutonic_
+and _Majestic_, both launched in 1889. They, too, were fliers, for
+the former broke the record by steaming from Queenstown to New
+York in five days, eighteen hours, eight minutes, while the latter
+did it in five days, sixteen hours, thirty-one minutes. They were,
+of course, twin-screw ships, but of only 9984 tons, which in this
+advanced twentieth century seems quite small for a crack liner. The
+competition was continued by the Cunard Company launching in 1892
+the _Campania_, and in the following year the _Lucania_, fitted with
+twin screws and triple-expansion engines. Beautiful ships these were,
+with lovely lines and an amazing turn of speed. Steel had, of course,
+long since taken the place of iron, and in the building of these two
+wonderful vessels the plates were made of unprecedented size, and so
+they required a smaller number of rivets. These were 600-feet ships,
+and it was their length which helped to give them the 22-knot speed.
+_Campania_ made the run between Queenstown and New York in five and a
+half days, and averaged just under twenty-two knots for a whole year’s
+east-bound voyages. This was a truly remarkable performance, for the
+real criterion of efficiency is that a ship should be able not merely
+to make one spectacular hour’s run, nor break the record for one day or
+one voyage, but to keep on doing this all the time. Here is the test of
+good steamship management ashore, perfect organisation aboard and the
+reason for the highest praise to her officers and crew.
+
+The point we have now reached represents the era of keen competition
+for the best-equipped and speediest steamships in the Atlantic, and
+therefore of all the Mercantile Marines in the world. In this race the
+Collins Line, though subsidised by the American Government, had already
+disappeared, the reorganised Inman Line, which had been absorbed in the
+American Line, in spite of its fine ships, ceased to be a dangerous
+competitor. In the end it became a contest between the two British
+lines, the Cunard and the White Star. The German liners now entered the
+Atlantic as very serious competitors. It will be more convenient to
+deal with the German Mercantile Marine in a separate chapter, but it
+may be said here that it was the wonderful achievements of _Campania_
+and _Lucania_ which created such emulation that the North German Lloyd
+Company scrapped their old-fashioned ships and in 1897 produced the
+_Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_, which by her mean speed of 22·81 knots
+beat the Cunarders, and thus for the first time Germany won the “blue
+riband” of the Atlantic, as the expression was in the ’nineties.
+
+In 1899 came the British reply in size though not in speed. This was
+the White Star _Oceanic_, 13 feet longer than the memorable _Great
+Eastern_, measuring 705 feet, as against the German’s 648 feet 7
+inches. _Oceanic’s_ 28,500 tons displacement showed the extraordinary
+development which had taken place in the shipbuilding art in the
+fewest years, and she was able to maintain a speed of twenty knots.
+The Cunard’s next ships were two, _Ivernia_ and _Saxonia_, each of
+about 14,000 tons gross—that is to say, roughly the size of the German
+champion, but with an average speed of fifteen and a quarter knots.
+They were comfortable and economical rather than record-breakers. But
+the _Ivernia_ was the first Atlantic liner to break away from the
+triple-expansion and use the quadruple-expansion system. The White Star
+Line, in 1901 and 1908, respectively, brought out two enormous but slow
+ships in the _Celtic_ and _Cedric_, the former being 20,880 tons and
+the latter 21,034 tons, with an average speed of sixteen knots, and at
+this time also came their 15,801-ton _Arabic_, with the same speed.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy the White Star Line._
+
+THE “BRITANNIC.”
+
+This White Star liner was built in 1874, and broke the record for
+speed. She measured 468 ft. long. Speed 16 knots; 5,000 tons.]
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy the Cunard Line._
+
+THE “CAMPANIA.”
+
+Launched for the Cunard Company in 1892. Length 600 ft.]
+
+There was therefore a kind of lull in British enterprise, and in
+1903 the Germans caused another sensation by the _Kaiser Wilhelm the
+Second_, which was able to do her twenty-three and a half knots as
+an average speed from New York to Plymouth. But a new development was
+again to take place. Competition was so keen in the steamship world,
+there was such an impetus to the builder, and so many clever minds were
+working on the problems of propulsion, that it was inevitable that all
+these wonderful changes should come about in such rapid succession.
+In the year 1886 the triple-expansion engine had come into general
+use. This had been followed by the quadruple-expansion, as already
+mentioned, and now came a still further change. For some time the
+turbine engine had been employed for driving electric dynamos on land,
+for pumping stations, colliery fans and so on. But in 1894 this type
+was installed experimentally in the 44-ton craft called the _Turbinia_,
+which was seen racing along Spithead at thirty-four knots. It was a
+wonderful sight, but it was not until 1905 that this type of engine was
+introduced into merchant ships, when the Atlantic ships _Virginian_[6]
+and _Victorian_ of the Allan Line were fitted with Parsons’ triplicate
+turbines driving three propellers. In the same year the Cunard produced
+their first turbine liner, _Carmania_, which on her trial attained a
+speed of twenty knots. She was built of a strength in excess of Board
+of Trade requirements, no fewer than 1,800,000 rivets being used in her
+construction, each plate being 32 feet long. But for the excellence of
+her construction she would never have been able to emerge successfully
+from her famous duel when she sank the _Cap Trafalgar_ off the South
+American coast during the first autumn of the recent Great War.
+
+Events happen so quickly, and one sensation follows so rapidly on
+another, that we are apt sometimes to get quite a wrong perspective. To
+me the _Carmania_ is one of the most interesting ships afloat. For nine
+years before the war she did most excellent work as one of the finest
+passenger ships, carrying many thousands of people across the Atlantic
+in comfort and luxury. Then came the war, and _Carmania_ became an
+armed merchant cruiser and was sent into South American waters. She met
+the Hamburg-South America liner _Cap Trafalgar_, a very similar ship,
+also armed as a merchant cruiser, off the island of Trinidada, and then
+fought a terrific duel which lasted eighty minutes, during which the
+Cunarder was pierced by seventy-nine shells, set seriously on fire and
+generally made desolate. But she sank the _Cap Trafalgar_, and to-day,
+and since the war, _Carmania_ has resumed carrying her thousands across
+to New York in perfect luxury again, with verandah cafés, costly
+furniture, palm trees and the rest, just as if nothing serious had ever
+happened. Truly the modern ship is an amazing creature.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy the Cunard Line._
+
+BERTHING A BIG LINER.
+
+The “Mauretania,” assisted by tugs, coming alongside the quay at
+Southampton.]
+
+During the war 56 per cent. of the Cunard ships were sunk, including
+the memorable _Lusitania_; and the White Star Line, owing to the same
+reason, lost close on 150,000 tons. The _Mauretania_ and _Lusitania_
+had followed the _Carmania_, and were the outcome of an agreement made
+with the British Government to produce two ships capable of maintaining
+a minimum average ocean speed of from twenty-four to twenty-five knots
+in moderate weather. This has not only been maintained, but surpassed.
+_Mauretania_ was built in 1907, with turbines, a length of 790 feet,
+and her tonnage is 31,000 gross. In spite of all her running before
+the war, during the war, and since, she still holds the record not
+merely for the Atlantic, but for all seas in respect of merchant ships.
+The test accepted by most shipping experts is two-fold: the highest
+average speed for the whole voyage, and the fastest passage in days,
+hours and minutes. On this reckoning _Mauretania_ still leads, in spite
+of her younger sisters, for as recently as 1922 she averaged 25·29
+knots eastward-bound in June. Her fastest passage in July of that year
+of five days, eight hours, nine minutes, entitles her still more to
+possession of the “blue riband” of the Atlantic. But as showing the
+remarkable consistency in running, if we take her three consecutive
+passages eastward across the Atlantic in June and July 1922, there are
+only _five_ minutes difference between the fastest and the slowest.
+It is superfluous to comment on this achievement. At a time when
+her fighting sister _Indomitable_ is being broken up, this powerful
+merchantman still goes on beating records. Recently fitted to burn
+oil-fuel, this turbine-driven, quadruple-screw, twenty-five knotter
+will long be remembered in maritime history as _Lusitania_ will in
+naval history.[7]
+
+The next famous Atlantic ships were the two White Star liners _Titanic_
+and _Olympic_. The tragic end of the former, when she foundered during
+her maiden voyage, is too well remembered to need relating again. The
+_Olympic_ left Southampton on her maiden voyage in June 1911. She is a
+triple-screw vessel of 46,489 tons gross register, and thus much bigger
+than _Mauretania_, but not quite so fast. Those of us who remember
+passing _Olympic_ at sea during the war, zigzagging through the
+submarine zone with 5000 soldiers on board and the ship’s boats swung
+out, will never forget the sight. One hears many impossible yarns about
+certain claims, but apart from her magnificent work in bringing armies
+from America to Europe safely, this ship did definitely sink a German
+submarine. This may be regarded as some compensation for the loss
+of that new triple-screw White Star _Britannic_, a vessel of 48,158
+tons gross register, which was destined never to cross the Atlantic,
+for which she had been constructed. The reader will remember that on
+November 21, 1916, after much excellent service as a hospital ship, she
+was sunk by enemy action in the Zea Channel, Ægean Sea.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy the Cunard Line._
+
+MODERN NAVIGATION.
+
+Captain Sir James Charles, K.B.E., C.B., R.D., R.N.R., and officers of
+the “Aquitania” taking the sun’s altitude.]
+
+_Olympic_ came out as the world’s biggest ship, and she is one of the
+fastest. On one occasion coming up Channel she recently touched 27·82
+knots for a brief spell, but her best average speed for a whole voyage
+is 22·55 knots, and her quickest passage is five days, nineteen hours,
+12 minutes. For the consideration of the big German liners who were
+competing with these efforts the reader is referred to the chapter
+dealing with the rise and fall of the German Mercantile Marine, but the
+next British mammoth was the _Aquitania_, which was put into the
+Cunard service just before the war began. She is over 900 feet long,
+she can steam at a little more than twenty-three knots, and her best
+passage, east-bound, has been five days, nineteen hours, forty-one
+minutes. Her gross tonnage is 47,000.
+
+I watched _Aquitania_ being built, from the time when she was a mere
+mass of steel, and finally saw her take the water in the Clyde, and
+walked all over her half an hour before this impressive event took
+place. She was barely ready for her intended work than she was turned
+into an armed merchant cruiser and joined Admiral Phipps Hornby’s
+Cruiser Squadron on the Atlantic trade route. But it was rather like
+putting a race-horse to do the work of a cart-horse. _Aquitania_ was
+then, like other merchantmen, coal-burning, and her endurance was
+only six days, for she was built for the purpose of rushing across
+the Atlantic, then filling up and returning as fast as she could.
+She was thus not suitable for patrolling, and after colliding with a
+Leyland liner, whilst under the command of a naval officer, _Aquitania_
+terminated her engagement as a warship, and then did far more useful
+work during the time of hostilities, until she again took up her
+peaceable service.
+
+This was the last British-built merchant ship to be constructed of
+mammoth size that is still afloat. The White Star _Homeric_, which
+joined the Atlantic service in the spring of 1922, is an ex-German
+vessel. This ship is neither as big nor as fast as _Aquitania_, but she
+is the largest twin-screw steamer afloat. Her best average speed for a
+whole trip is 18·69 knots, and her best voyage is six days, nineteen
+hours, twenty-two minutes. But the slump which followed the war and the
+depression which came over the shipping trade made it undesirable to
+lay down any more of these leviathans for the present, and there was
+still another reason.
+
+In Germany were two such vessels, one of which was already built and
+had been running for a year or two, and the other, a still bigger
+ship, was not yet finished. These two ships were handed over to Great
+Britain, the former being the _Imperator_, 52,022 tons, launched in
+1912, which used to call at Southampton on her way from Germany to New
+York. The other ship was the 56,551-ton _Bismarck_, whose keel had been
+laid by the Kaiser in the year 1914. The _Vaterland_, as mentioned in
+another chapter, measuring 950 feet and 52,282 tons, was acquired by
+the United States. The _Imperator_ now became the _Berengaria_, and was
+taken over by the Cunard Company; the _Bismarck_ became the _Majestic_,
+and was put into the White Star service in the spring of 1922. She
+was built at the Blohm and Voss yard, Hamburg, and with her enormous
+tonnage and length of 956 feet is the biggest ship in the world.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy the Cunard Line._
+
+S.S. “BERENGARIA.”
+
+This Cunarder is the ex-German “Imperator,” 52,022 tons, launched 1912.
+She measures 919 ft. long.]
+
+Though built in Germany, which learned the art from Great Britain,
+these two ships are now the pride of the British Merchant Fleet, and
+they are, together with the _Mauretania_ and _Aquitania_, consumers
+not of coal, but of oil. The _Berengaria_ measures 919 feet long, is
+practically 100 feet in beam, and represents an enormous amount of
+capital; but she was laid aside for six or seven months so as to have
+a complete overhaul and to be converted from coal-burning. With that
+fuel she had been able to do a little over twenty-three knots, and her
+best average speed has since been 23·38 knots for the whole voyage;
+her fastest trip being five days, eighteen hours, forty-seven minutes.
+You can imagine the responsibility of her captain, handling such
+an enormous steel island. Let us forget for a moment such things as
+her new ballroom, able to accommodate 250 dancers. Let us forget, too,
+the cafés, gymnasia, palm courts, Turkish and swimming-baths and the
+numbers of private suites, the velvet carpets, and baronial halls; let
+us just think of her as a ship.
+
+Eighty-five feet above the water is the sun-deck promenade, and away
+above that again rises the bridge. Here are all sorts of gadgets,
+such as a bell that rings automatically when the temperature of the
+sea drops below a certain degree, and so the warning is made to the
+officer of the watch that icebergs are about. Tell-tale lamps act as
+fire-indicators, and another bell rings to call attention to the fact
+that there is smoke in some section of the ship. Steam pressure is
+then made to drive water down a pipe to spray around the particular
+compartment. There are telephones galore, from the bridge to the
+engine-room, boiler-rooms, baggage-hold, purser’s office, engineer’s
+office and, via the ship’s central exchange, to all parts of the ship.
+
+_Berengaria_, like _Vaterland_, had a good deal of trouble with her
+water-tube boilers, which were similar to the German naval pattern,
+but in _Majestic_ British engineers introduced some modifications
+whilst she was still being completed at Hamburg. The point is this.
+Whereas these water-tube boilers are all right for a man-of-war, which
+normally steams at fifteen knots and only occasionally is whacked up
+to twenty-one and above, the liner is driven hard all the time, and
+has to maintain her full speed day and night until she gets across
+the ocean. The amount of oil-fuel required for _Berengaria_ to cross
+the Atlantic once is about 6000 tons, and this is carried in side or
+wing-bunkers. A hundred tons an hour can be supplied to each of the
+four boiler-rooms, and the engines are, of course, turbines.
+
+It is said that £1,000,000 was the price the White Star Line paid
+for the _Majestic_, and she was a great bargain at that, for she
+would cost four times that amount to be built to-day. There are
+forty-eight boilers, and she can carry enough oil-fuel for the round
+voyage Southampton-New York-Southampton. This means not merely greater
+efficiency in regard to steaming, but saves time and expense in
+bunkering and cleaning ship, for it takes only six hours and very few
+men to get the 7000 tons on board. Her best average speed in a passage
+is over twenty-four knots, and her quickest voyage five days, nine
+hours, forty-two minutes. When she was handed over to the Reparations
+Commission under the terms of the Peace Treaty her speed was returned
+as twenty-three knots. But the White Star officials were not a little
+surprised to find, while bringing the ship to Southampton from Hamburg,
+that her turbines would develop much more power than they were
+credited with, and that she was really a 25-knot ship. In fact, on one
+occasion she did an average of twenty-seven knots for over five hours
+eastward-bound.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy the White Star Line._
+
+S.S. “OLYMPIC.”
+
+This 46,439-ton White Star liner was completed in 1911. During the war
+she sank a German submarine.]
+
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy the White Star Line._
+
+S.S. “MAJESTIC.”
+
+This 56,551-ton White Star liner is the ex-German “Bismarck,” and is
+the biggest ship in the world. The illustration shows her coming out of
+dock at Southampton.]
+
+It is significant that more than half the length of the ship is taken
+up with the propelling machinery. Never were such large machinery and
+boiler plant installed in one vessel. If you think of an eight-roomed
+house and multiply this by 400, you get some idea of her interior
+space. She is practically a floating town, with its smart hotel,
+suites, clubs, and so on located on her nine steel decks; and four
+propellers to keep this town hurrying across the Atlantic.
+Swimming-bath, two royal suites, 1245 state-rooms, a restaurant,
+palm court, foyer, lounge—there is no end to her luxurious internal
+arrangement. And yet there are all sorts of cunning devices to ensure
+safety. To guard against fire, the steel bulkheads have been coated
+with fireproof material; the main staircases are so arranged that
+they can be isolated and thus ensure a means of escape to the upper
+decks. There are 450 fire alarms distributed throughout the ship, which
+indicate automatically to the officer on the bridge.
+
+There are three wireless stations. The largest enables her to maintain
+permanent connection with both the Old and the New World during the
+whole voyage. The second is for use over a distance of 800 miles, and
+the third is for emergency. There are anti-rolling tanks, submarine
+signalling gear, and indeed every ingenious device that the wit of man
+could invent for the safety and welfare of the 4000 passengers she
+takes care of each trip. During Cowes week 1922 King George V paid
+to her, and through her to the British Mercantile Marine, a singular
+honour in going aboard to inspect her. His Royal Standard was broken
+out at the main, and this is one of the very few occasions during the
+last four hundred years when a merchant ship, serving as such, has
+legally hoisted this flag. It did occur in the year 1913, when His
+Majesty inspected the _Mauretania_ at Liverpool; and on that day a
+Harbour Board tug while taking the King to and from the liner flew the
+Royal Ensign. But prior to that I think we have to go right back to the
+year 1495, when Henry VII granted to John Cabot and his sons the right
+to fly the royal banners and flags during their voyages of discovery.
+
+From the _Majestic_ to the earliest merchantmen of the Mediterranean,
+even looking back a hundred years to the time when the old East
+Indiamen of 1000 tons were wallowing along, or the Falmouth packets
+were braving the Atlantic, seems to us a period of time that is hardly
+believable. In spite of wars and every kind of crises, never has the
+merchant ship so utterly and marvellously transformed herself within
+such a few years. It is a triumph of man over matter that he can build
+up such a creation as a 50,000-ton ship, but there are just two things
+which always seem to me more wonderful still. The first is that you can
+ever launch such a mass of steel safely from the land down the ways
+into the water; and the second is that, having fitted her out for sea,
+she can be made obedient to the mind of her commander—checked, spurred
+on, controlled and moved about across the sea at will, with confidence
+and remarkable regularity. It is an interesting experience to control
+finance, it is a great task to control men, and it is a responsible
+task to control the ship of State. But to control the biggest ship
+in the history of the world, costing over £1,000,000 sterling and
+containing several thousands of travellers, from quay to quay, through
+any kind of weather that may come along—this to me seems, above all, a
+full-sized man’s job. It is one that brings forth everything that is
+best and noble in the calling of a sailor—courage, coolness, organising
+ability, leadership, self-reliance, dependability, tact, discipline.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy the White Star Line._
+
+ON THE BRIDGE OF THE WORLD’S BIGGEST SHIP.
+
+Captain Sir Bertram Hayes (third from the right), with the Second
+Captain and other officers of “Majestic”.]
+
+Below are the saloons, orchestra, dancing, laughter, luxury and
+thousands of brilliant lights. On the bridge the silent darkness
+of a black, starless night; just the glimmer from the bowls of the
+gyro-compass repeaters, the quartermaster at the wheel, a couple of
+messengers standing by, and the officer of the watch. And always the
+wild roar of the wind as the ship tears on her way at twenty odd knots;
+while forward is the swish of the sea as the fine bows throw each
+bursting wave aside. It is a study in contrasts, just that immeasurable
+gulf which has always existed between the life of the landsman and the
+sailor from the earliest days of history until the present-day. To the
+former “the wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor,” as
+Emerson put it. But it was the same philosopher who admitted that “the
+sea is masculine, the type of active strength.”
+
+And, happily, there is such a contagion as sea-fever. Without it there
+would have been no Phœnician, Venetian, Spanish, Portuguese, Norse,
+mediæval or later mariners; no new worlds to discover—nothing but a
+very restricted communication and the minimum of progress. It would
+have been a very stunted, dull existence. There would have been no
+fine merchantmen of the sea and none of that glorious breed of seamen,
+virile, strong and masculine. Let us be thankful for all that the sea
+has taught us.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[6] Now owned by the Swedish-American Line and named the
+_Drottningholm_.
+
+[7] The speeds given for _Mauretania_, _Majestic_, _Berengaria_,
+_Aquitania_, _Olympic_ and _Homeric_ are from New York to Cherbourg
+Breakwater or to the Eddystone Light. The passages quoted are really
+not faster than what was previously accomplished on the Liverpool
+to New York route before these big liners were transferred to the
+Southampton to New York route. Thus the fastest Atlantic voyage ever
+made was by _Mauretania_ when she steamed from Queenstown to New York
+in four days, ten hours, forty-one minutes. _Lusitania_ accomplished
+this in only sixty-one minutes longer. The best average speed ever made
+by a liner for one day was 27·10 knots by _Lusitania_, eastward-bound;
+but the best average speed for a whole voyage was made by _Mauretania_,
+before being converted to oil. She kept up 26·06 knots.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE RISE AND FALL OF THE GERMAN MERCANTILE MARINE
+
+
+For about seventy years the German Mercantile Marine had an interesting
+career. It began in quite a small way, it was conducted with courage,
+enterprise, far-sightedness and, eventually, with an astute cunning
+which many people would describe under a stronger term. Its rise was
+meteoric, and its descent at the time of its zenith was swifter still.
+It is just because the true value of the sea began to be appreciated,
+that Germany was able to build up such a vast and highly efficient
+service within one generation. The result was that on the eve of the
+Great War she was second only to the British Empire as a big owner of
+steamships.
+
+[Illustration: BIG SHIP MASTERS.
+
+  [_By courtesy the Cunard Line._
+
+Captain C. A. Smith, C.B.E., R.D., R.N.R., of the “Berengaria.”
+
+  [_By courtesy the White Star Line._
+
+Captain Sir Bertram Hayes, K.C.M.G., D.S.O., R.N.R., of the “Majestic.”]
+
+At that date 60 per cent. of Germany’s shipping was in the hands of ten
+lines, working together with a solidarity that amounted practically to
+a shipping union. These ten were the Hamburg-America Line, the North
+German Lloyd, the Hamburg South-American Line, the Hansa Line, the
+German Australian Line, the Kosmos Line, the Roland Line, the German
+East Africa Line, the Woermann Line and the Hamburg-Bremen-Africa
+Line. A month before the outbreak of war this huge organisation
+comprised 3,194,000 gross tons, to say nothing of the German Levant
+Line of 155,000 tons. Well organised, reaching to every part of the
+world, subsidised by the German Government to the extent of £107,950
+a year, this association was extremely successful in obtaining
+an enormous amount of the world’s carrying trade and in furthering
+Germany’s political aspirations. It was able to put up the severest
+competition and to draw away from the United Kingdom a good deal of
+carrying trade, and in their fight with the British companies of
+steamships the Germans were helped not merely by subsidies, but by
+attractive through-rates over their railway system. It was their unity
+and energy in organisation, their ability to cut rates, and their
+attention to the smallest details which gave them their vast success.
+
+It is important to emphasise one great distinction. The British Isles
+depend for their supplies and overseas trade on the tramp steamer.
+Of the British tonnage before the war 60 per cent. represented tramp
+tonnage and only 40 per cent. liners, and it was essential for the
+nation to have a large amount of “loose” tonnage able to trade at
+short notice to any part of the world, taking out, for instance, cheap
+coal and coming back with cargoes of grain, cotton, wool, rice and so
+on. This policy was the exact opposite of Germany, which built up its
+Mercantile Marine on liner trades, and especially in the Atlantic,
+their interest in tramp steamers being quite small. Now of those ten
+German lines just mentioned the Hamburg-America and the North German
+Lloyd, owning on the eve of war 1,093,000 and 716,000 gross tons
+respectively, were at once the creative forces and the mainstays of
+German shipping. Therefore if we consider their history we have before
+us practically the whole evolution of the German Mercantile Marine.
+
+The Hamburg-America Line at the time war broke out was the largest
+merchant steamship enterprise in the world, owning between 400 and 500
+ships, with seventy-five distinct services, its vessels calling at 400
+of the leading ports of the world and carrying over 400,000 passengers
+a year. It was thus an enormous corporation, that makes the old
+Honourable East India Company look ridiculous. As a means of providing
+national wealth and the ready transportation of German goods into the
+remotest corners of the globe it was invaluable. It was founded on
+May 27, 1847, with a capital of 465,000 marks, and it ordered three
+sailing ships in England of about 717 tons each, which carried a score
+of first-class passengers and a couple of hundred emigrants and a
+little freight. These were full-rigged, three-masted vessels, with
+heavy quarters, the white riband and painted square ports and the
+high-steeved bowsprit so familiar in English shipping. The average trip
+from Hamburg to New York took forty days, and twenty-nine days on the
+return voyage. These three ships were the _Deutschland_, _Nordamerika_
+and _Rhein_.
+
+In 1854 the company had already prospered so much, thanks largely to
+the emigrant traffic, that it decided to go in for steam. The screw was
+replacing the paddle in British ships and iron was being used instead
+of wood. They therefore gave an order to Caird of Greenock to build a
+couple of 2026-ton screw steamers having a speed of about twelve knots.
+The first of these was the _Borussia_, a three-masted vessel with
+sails, clipper bow and one funnel. She made her appearance in 1856.
+Hitherto British and other seamen had been largely employed for crews,
+but now only Germans, dressed in uniform, and disciplined after the
+custom of a man-of-war, were allowed. The German Mercantile Marine was
+beginning to exist by itself.
+
+The best speed obtained with these ships was sixteen days, and in
+1858 came the _Saxonia_ and _Austria_, which reduced the passage
+eastward-bound to a little over twelve days, the firm’s fleet now
+consisting of eight sailing ships and four steamers. Presently the
+former were all sold, and a fortnightly service to New York was
+instituted, and other steamships were added. At the outbreak of the
+American Civil War this line was carrying the United States mails and
+calling at Southampton, and, after leaving the English port, New York
+was reached in ten days. By the early ’seventies the fleet already
+numbered twenty-five steamships, and was also running to the Spanish
+Main, Mexico and West Indies.
+
+The White Star and the Hamburg-America were the first Atlantic lines
+to adopt the twin-screw system for passenger ships. It was in 1887
+that the latter ordered the two steel, twin-screw ships _Columbia_ and
+_Auguste Victoria_. The former was built at Birkenhead by Lairds, but
+the latter was constructed at Stettin, and this was the first time a
+German yard had attempted a ship of such a size, for she measured over
+500 feet long, and she was of 8430 tons burthen. These two vessels
+were immediately followed by two others, similar in type, of which one
+was built on the Clyde and one at Stettin. With their three funnels,
+high speed, improved ventilation, commodious cabins, bathrooms, suites
+of rooms and general high standard of comfort, this quartette made a
+sensation. It was the introduction of the German floating palaces into
+the Atlantic.
+
+Reference to the previous two chapters in this volume will show that
+the British Atlantic companies were meeting this competition, but if
+you ask how was it that, notwithstanding the fact that the German
+Empire had been proclaimed as recently as 1871, this new Mercantile
+Marine had been able to build up such a trade in so few years, the
+answer is this. The repeal of the British Navigation Laws in 1849
+enabled the Prussian ships to have the opportunity which came at
+the right moment. But, secondly, it was the enormous increase of
+emigrant passengers anxious to leave the European continent and try
+their fortunes in the New World. I have no wish to weary the reader
+with statistics, but the following few figures will substantiate this
+argument. They are derived from a Board of Trade analysis based on
+information afforded by the United States Immigration Bureau, and are
+therefore beyond dispute.
+
+Bearing in mind that the first Hamburg-America ship sailed in 1847, we
+find that whereas the average annual emigration from Germany to the
+U.S.A. had been only 19,000 up to 1844, during the next ten years it
+jumped to 95,000, dropped during the next decade to 49,000, but then
+rose to 113,000 in the decennial period ending 1874, was 109,000 up
+to the year 1884, then dropped to 28,000 by 1904, but rose to 34,000
+in the decade ending 1914. But in addition to these figures must be
+added others. By reason of her geographical position Germany was most
+favourably placed for capturing the emigrant traffic from the rest of
+the continent, and of this she made the best advantage. It was not
+until the decade ending 1874 that the Russians, for instance, began
+pouring out from their own country to North America, and gradually the
+German ships carried most of these. How valuable such a traffic was
+can be at once realised. Beginning with an average of 2000 Russian
+emigrants to the United States, this figure in ten years had increased
+to 10,000, then to 38,000 and, finally, just before the war averaged
+199,000.
+
+In 1894 the German Government erected what were known as control
+stations at various places on the Russian frontier, ostensibly to
+prevent the spread of cholera by Russian emigrants travelling through
+Germany. The erection and management of these controls were vested in
+the Hamburg-America and North German Lloyd Lines. But whatever was
+their original purpose, these stations came to be used by the German
+steamship companies for confining the increasing stream of emigrants
+to their own lines, who made it as difficult as possible for persons
+not travelling by those lines to get through the control stations. In
+addition to this, the German Government so legislated as to make it
+very awkward and more costly for emigrants to get to America in British
+ships. Thus, Germany, by doing everything from intimidation and bluff
+to legislation, did succeed in obtaining a most valuable emigrant
+traffic, and so was able, quite apart from her own increasing exports,
+to build up a thoroughly up-to-date and steadily improving Merchant
+Navy.
+
+It is not to be wondered at that now she had learnt to construct steel
+steamships for herself she made a bold bid for Atlantic merchant ship
+supremacy. By the year of the Paris Exhibition in 1900 this line had
+fourteen twin-screw steamers to carry passengers across. The latest was
+the celebrated _Deutschland_, which was to win the “blue riband” of the
+Atlantic; for this record-smasher succeeded in lowering the voyage
+between New York and Plymouth to five days, seven hours, thirty-eight
+minutes, and on one trip averaged 23·51 knots. This four-funnelled ship
+was of 16,502 tons and measured 686 feet long. She was certainly an
+eye-pleasing vessel, for it was before the practice of building lofty
+superstructures had become the fashion. Her biggest day’s run was 601
+knots, and the sumptuousness of her passenger comfort made her a very
+popular ship. In 1906 came the _Kaiserin Auguste Victoria_, 24,581
+tons, 687 feet long, and able to carry 4000 passengers and crew. She
+was at the time the biggest steamer in the world.
+
+But before we mention the mammoth German liners we must see briefly
+how the North German Lloyd grew up. Their first transatlantic steamer
+was the _Bremen_, built by Caird of Greenock in 1858, but their
+real progress commences with the year 1881, when the first German
+“express” steamer entered the line. This was the 4510-ton _Elbe_, a
+four-masted screw ship built on the Clyde, and during the next ten
+years Glasgow built _Ems_ and seven other British-made vessels, whose
+speed varied from sixteen to eighteen knots. They were able to carry
+1200 passengers. But when we come to the ’nineties the passenger
+trade was so good that the North German Lloyd could afford to scrap
+its old-fashioned craft and build the twin-screw _Kaiser Wilhelm der
+Grosse_. This was to become an historic ship.
+
+She measured 14,349 gross tons, and appeared in 1897. The Germans
+were jealous of the achievements which had been made by the Cunard
+_Campania_ and _Lucania_, and by attaining a mean speed of 22·81 knots
+on her trip from New York to Europe did outstrip the Cunarders’ fine
+record; and thus for the first time the “blue riband” of the Atlantic
+temporarily passed to Germany. She was “made in Germany”—at Stettin—and
+this triumphant voyage did a great deal to encourage the German
+Mercantile Marine and German shipbuilders. She had been constructed on
+the understanding that if during the trial trip across the Atlantic she
+did not come up to the requirements of the contract, the North German
+Lloyd were to be allowed to reject her. Actually she surpassed the
+builders’ undertaking.
+
+In 1907, whilst coming across the Atlantic in October weather
+eastward-bound, this handsome ship fractured her rudder; but instead
+of taking her into Halifax, the nearest port, her captain held on for
+Plymouth and thence to Bremerhaven, the ship having been manœuvred by
+means of her twin screws. It was a fine achievement, but some ships
+are born to be adventurous. At the beginning of the Great War the
+_Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_ was in Germany. She was fitted out as a
+raider, left Hamburg on August 4, 1914, evaded the Grand Fleet, passed
+round the north of Iceland, and on August 7 sank a British trawler,
+then proceeded down the Atlantic, sank a couple and molested two more
+ships, and finally went into the Rio de Oro, a lonely anchorage in
+Spanish territory in North-West Africa. But on August 26 arrived H.M.S.
+_Highflyer_, and as the German refused to leave territorial waters,
+the British cruiser opened fire and destroyed her. Thus, after nearly
+twenty years’ service, this former Atlantic greyhound ended her days as
+an armed merchant cruiser.
+
+The North German Lloyd’s _Kaiser Wilhelm II_ was the next ship of this
+line to cause a sensation. This was in 1903, and she was certainly a
+triumph for the Stettin builders. Of 20,000 registered tons, she was a
+little faster even than the _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_, for she kept
+up an average speed of 23·58 knots between New York and Plymouth in one
+voyage. Very useful was this speed to become eleven years later, for
+she was in the North Atlantic when war broke out, and got safely into
+New York on August 6. The _George Washington_, of 26,000 gross register
+tons, was launched as the biggest of all the ships in the German
+Mercantile Marine, though, with the speed of eighteen and a half knots,
+by no means the fastest. She was added to the N.D.L. in 1908, and was
+able to carry just under 3000 passengers for her owners when the list
+was full. A very useful and luxurious ship she turned out to be, but
+on the day after the war began she arrived in New York, was interned,
+and is now one of the ships in the American Mercantile Marine. The
+_Berlin_, another N.D.L. steamer, passed into the owners’ hands in
+1909. She was of 19,200 gross tons, and originally could do her
+eighteen knots. In the autumn of 1914 she laid the big minefield off
+the north coast of Ireland, on which H.M.S. _Audacious_ and other ships
+foundered. _Berlin_ afterwards scurried north and interned herself in
+Norway.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy the Cunard Line._
+
+STOKEHOLD OF AN OIL-FUEL CUNARDER.]
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_By courtesy the Cunard Line._
+
+STARTING PLATFORM
+
+Of the engine-room in a Cunarder.]
+
+Such, then, was the progress of these two main supports of the German
+Mercantile Marine until the coming of the mammoth Atlantic liners.
+The ships of the Hamburg-America and the North German Lloyd were
+admittedly as good, and sometimes better than, their competitors, the
+Cunard and White Star; and during the period immediately preceding the
+war, competition was very keen not merely on the New York route,
+but in the trade with Central America, South America, East Africa and
+Australia. The German Mercantile Marine was everywhere, and cutting
+rates in an alarming manner. Her sea-borne trade was increasing, but
+the bulk of her shipping still remained, on the eve of war, in the ten
+powerful companies; and her main strength was still in the Atlantic
+trade of the two big lines we have just been considering.
+
+The North Atlantic had long since earned the title of the cockpit
+where the mercantile supremacy at sea was to be fought out. Germany’s
+final bid was a great effort. For in the year 1912 was built the
+23½-knot _Imperator_, a stupendous creature of 52,022 tons, with her
+swimming-bath and super-luxury. In 1914 was put into service the
+26·75-knot _Vaterland_, which was bigger still, for she measured 950
+feet long, against _Imperator’s_ 905 feet, and her tonnage worked
+out at 52,282. The former at the outbreak of war was lucky to be in
+Germany, where she remained until after hostilities. She was handed
+over to the Cunard Company, who changed her name to _Berengaria_. The
+_Vaterland_ got into New York on the day war was declared between Great
+Britain and Germany, and was interned. She was eventually used for
+carrying American troops to Europe, and after the war she passed into
+the American Mercantile Marine, who changed her name to _Leviathan_.
+When she was seized from Germany there were no plans of her available.
+The United States Shipping Board, on making inquiries from her German
+builders as to the price of these plans, were asked the enormous sum
+of $1,000,000. This was declined, and the colossal task of preparing
+these plans from the ship herself was successfully undertaken. But you
+may imagine what it means to run a ship of this size when it cost the
+American Mercantile Marine $50,000 a month merely to keep her efficient
+whilst laid up. Finally there was finished in Germany during 1922 the
+third mammoth, of 56,000 tons. Originally intended to be called the
+_Bismarck_, she was handed over to the White Star Line, who changed her
+name to _Majestic_.
+
+Before the war Germany’s Mercantile Marine, according to the Managing
+Director of the Hamburg-America Line, consisted of 5,459,000 gross
+tons. Of this amount approximately she lost owing to war operations
+2,700,000 tons. By reason of the Treaty of Versailles she lost a
+further 2,900,000 tons approximately, leaving her about 400,000
+tons.[8] If we select the spring of 1922 we are neither too near the
+ending of the war nor too far removed from it to notice the efforts
+which are being made to revive a merchant fleet which so suddenly
+vanished from its high position. The Hamburg-America Line in 1922 had
+but forty-three vessels of 165,707 gross tons, and the North German
+Lloyd only twenty-five ships of 127,098 gross tons. A mighty contrast
+to the summer of 1914. But both these and other lines were going ahead
+with their building, and it was unofficially estimated that the German
+Merchant Fleet on May 31, 1922, consisted of 1,546,000 gross tons.
+
+In accordance with the Peace Treaty all German merchant ships of any
+importance were handed over to the Entente Powers. This, in part, was
+as compensation for the loss of tonnage during the U-boat campaign.
+But Germany recompensed her shipping companies for the merchant
+vessels thus surrendered and gave them every encouragement to build
+up once more the fleets which meant so much to her, financially
+and politically. For the Shipping Redemption Agreement of 1921
+indemnified these companies, provided labour for the shipyards, and
+ensured co-operation of the industries inland. The money paid to the
+companies was taken from the national funds, but its distribution
+and the supervision of the building programme have been entrusted to
+a Shipowners’ Trust Company. Thus Germany still realises all that a
+Mercantile Marine means to her, and she has every intention of building
+it up again during the coming years.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[8] That is, tonnage built during the war.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE AMERICAN MERCANTILE MARINE
+
+
+Throughout the course of this story the reader will have observed many
+references to the American Mercantile Marine. Let us now consider how
+it began, developed, waned and again revived. We have seen how the
+enterprise of the New England builders was to have a profound effect on
+British shipping, but we desire now to regard the subject as a whole.
+
+So long as a country, wherever situated, has a seaboard, it is very
+evident that its civilised community will soon begin building craft of
+some kind. The early colonists in America built a 30-ton vessel as far
+back as 1607, and it is from this _Virginia_ that we must trace the
+American Mercantile Marine. Seven years later a small ship was launched
+at New Amsterdam, as, of course, New York was then called, and by the
+second decade of the seventeenth century there were over 1000 ships in
+colonial waters; for numbers of shipwrights had come over from England.
+During the eighteenth century at Portland, Maine, and elsewhere were
+built square-rigged ships, privateers, and the first schooners as well
+as brigantines. This was quite apart from the shipping and timber sent
+to England, and during the year 1769 the twelve colonies launched 389
+ships, representing 20,000 tons.
+
+In few countries of the world has the relation between war and
+mercantile shipping been so accurately reflected, as we shall see as we
+go on. The immediate result of the American revolution was to throttle
+the Atlantic trade, and five of the first eleven Acts of Congress were
+laws to encourage American shipping. In 1789 the State gave special
+privileges to shippers engaged in the East Indian and China trades.
+Many of these shippers and owners were located in Massachusetts, and
+made fine profits, as, for instance, the _Mount Vernon_ of Salem, which
+in 1799 made a profit of $100,000 in a single round trip to China; and
+one ship made 700 per cent. on a cargo of pepper from Sumatra.
+
+The registered American tonnage in the foreign trade grew from 123,893
+tons in 1789 to 667,107 tons in 1800; for during the wars growing
+out of the French Revolution the American Mercantile Marine actually
+became the principal carriers of Europe, as at one time the Dutch and
+the English had been. Thus for a second time the marine showed how
+sensitive it was to the effect of war. But the war of 1812 caused
+severe losses to American merchant ships, yet, on the other hand,
+American privateers played havoc with English shipping. The effect,
+even in those days of comparatively few ships, is at once seen by
+looking at the port of Liverpool, the natural haven for American ships
+arriving in Europe; for whereas in 1810, 6729 ships entered that port,
+only 4599 came in during the year 1812. On the other hand, as soon as
+peace returned these figures jumped up, and from 1815 to 1860 shipping
+went ahead quickly.
+
+For the United States were fast developing their industries, opening
+up trade, and therefore had every need of a Mercantile Marine.
+The legislation of Congress in 1828 opened up American ports to
+cargo-carrying British ships from any country where American vessels
+were on a similar footing to British ships, and two years later the
+West Indies were opened to American shipping. In 1849 Great Britain
+adopted the Free Trade policy, and full reciprocity was established
+between British and American merchant vessels. The history of the
+clipper ships and the competition between Great Britain and the United
+States for the ocean-carrying trade has already been related in this
+volume. It is only necessary once more to emphasise that war had yet
+again a good deal to do with the future of the American Mercantile
+Marine, for the Civil War of 1861 took away any chance which remained
+to American ships of continuing as the great sea-carriers. The American
+mind had to concentrate on fighting. Meanwhile, much of the tonnage
+had passed under other flags, while in Great Britain the accessibility
+of coal deposits, the cheapness of labour, the successful introduction
+of iron for shipbuilding, the great advances in ship construction, and
+especially the wonderful progress of the steamship, had been able to
+give back to Great Britain her supremacy as a Mercantile Marine. And
+when the Civil War was over, America was too interested internally to
+pay a maximum amount of attention to ocean trading.
+
+For the riches of the country were only beginning to be developed.
+Mines and manufactures, railroads and so on were now needing all the
+available capital. The New England shipyards, which for many years
+had been so valuable owing to the ample supplies of timber ready to
+hand, became unwanted in proportion as the Clyde, with its adjacent
+coalfields, was becoming more important for building ships of iron and
+then steel. It would be untrue to say that America ignored the building
+of iron ships, and in the early ’seventies she was interested in a
+mild way. The ’eighties passed without much enthusiasm for the subject,
+and then in 1894 and following year the Cramp shipyard launched the
+two fine transatlantic liners _St. Louis_ and _St. Paul_, both being
+constructed of steel. There were many other steel ships built, and
+orders were received from abroad, but, broadly speaking, and in strict
+reference to merchant ships and not warships, America was not even now
+a shipbuilding country.
+
+Those splendid schooners with which the port of Gloucester is for ever
+associated, and those other sailing craft along the American coast do
+not alter the statement, nor do the vessels on the American lakes and
+rivers. We are thinking of ocean-going ships, which are the essential
+feature of any Mercantile Marine. The trade between the Atlantic and
+Pacific ports still remained for the old full-rigged clippers, because
+there were not enough cargoes east-bound to make it worth while for
+the steamship. And so America went on, content to allow her Merchant
+Service to be comparatively small and unprogressive.
+
+But once again it required a war to call the national mind to consider
+what a Mercantile Marine means to a country. The Spanish war of 1898
+did this to the extent that there was aroused a strong support for
+the Panama Canal project. The Act permitting this dates from 1892,
+and it is really from this year that the new phase begins, though
+only gradually. If you make direct and shorter roads on land leading
+to important trading centres, you obviously at once attract trade. If
+in the same manner you shorten communications by sea, it will have a
+similar effect. Quite apart from its warlike strategic value, which is
+outside our subject, the theory of the Panama Canal was based on the
+fact that it would reduce the sea route from New York to San Francisco
+by most of 8000 miles, and to Sydney and Yokohama by about 4000
+miles. The 1892 Act also authorised admission to American registry of
+foreign-built vessels not more than five years old.
+
+Then again came another war, the Great War, which began on August 4,
+1914, the year in which the canal was opened. Too late America had
+begun to learn the value of a Mercantile Marine, and now she foresaw
+that there would be an inadequate supply of shipping to carry her trade
+across the ocean. Immediately she tried to make up for this by passing
+a law a fortnight after the outbreak of war removing the age limit in
+the Act of 1892. And now it becomes necessary to look into the matter
+somewhat closely, otherwise what followed is not intelligible.
+
+When the European War broke out, America, having regard to her
+population, wealth, overseas trade and length of littoral, was in a
+curious position. The following figures are for June 1914, and are
+eloquent. In that month, of all the world’s _sea-going_ steel and iron
+steam tonnage the British Empire owned 47·7, Germany 12, Scandinavia
+8·7, France 4·5, the United States 4·3 and Japan 3·9 per cent. As the
+war went on America realised at last that 71 per cent. of the world’s
+steamships were in the hands of belligerents, and therefore the means
+of transport for American exports and imports—in other words, the
+exchange of wealth—had been taken away. Even farmers and cotton-growers
+who had never seen the sea in their lives began to take an interest in
+the subject when they suffered losses. It took the Great War to wake
+up the great American nation, as it had taken the American clippers to
+make our sailing shipowners become active.
+
+Shipbuilding in America suddenly began to revive, for from the end
+of 1915 ships were required by Britain, France and Norway. Mines and
+submarines had caused losses to the two first, while the third required
+more ships than ever for the profitable trade she was doing with
+Great Britain and France. Moreover, the American Mercantile Marine
+needed ships for herself; and the result was that in 1915 there was a
+net increase of nearly 500,000 tons added to its commercial service,
+including shipping which had been transferred to it. The position in
+the carrying trade outside America was this. A large number of ships
+were interned in various ports, some thousands of tons had been sunk by
+the German mines and submarines, and yet the Allies were now requiring
+more for maintaining food for nations and supplies for the armies in
+the field. In addition to this, many ships had been taken from the
+Merchant Service for purely naval purposes and other objects, such as
+supply-vessels to the Fleet. And the unrestricted submarine campaign
+which Germany began in April 1917 was to make matters considerably
+worse; for in April of that year 545,282 tons of British merchant
+shipping alone were lost by enemy action.
+
+It was on September 7, 1916, that Congress passed a law creating the
+United States Shipping Board, the original aim of which was to develop
+more effectively the American Mercantile Marine. A very few months
+later, on April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany,
+and on May 4 the first American warships to reach Europe, consisting
+of six destroyers, steamed into Queenstown harbour. It is a day firmly
+fixed in my own memory, as the vessel I was then commanding was the
+first to go alongside them, north of Daunt’s Rock lightship. Now with
+America a participant in the war, and about to send armies to Europe
+together with necessary military supplies, the need for American
+merchant tonnage became positively acute. In the whole of the United
+States there were not more than sixty-one shipyards, of which only
+thirty-seven were building steel craft.
+
+But America realised that ships must be built at once, regardless of
+cost, both very quickly and in large numbers. Thus in a strange and
+romantic manner there came unexpectedly a revival of the wooden ship.
+An American writer has pointed out that of the entire transportation of
+American troops about 48¼ per cent. were carried in British ships, and
+43 per cent. in American Navy transports. But, with a fine patriotic
+effort, shipbuilding of all kinds now went ahead, and soon there were
+341 shipyards building sea-going craft. Actually 1284 launching ways
+were now occupied. It was a remarkable lesson which war had taught
+in respect of the Mercantile Marine. There is no room to go into
+details, but it is sufficient to call attention to this exceptional
+effort, which showed what could be done. Fabricated ships, that is,
+vessels constructed by assembling the standardised plates made in the
+engineering shops, rendered possible only through the existence of
+numerous steel rolling mills, began to take the water; and if some of
+these craft were not always well built, we must remember that they were
+a temporary measure, and not intended to last.
+
+The total construction of ships in the United States during the
+years 1910-1916 had averaged 450,000 tons a year. In 1917 it was
+nearly 1,000,000, in 1918 it was 3,223,506 tons, but in 1919 it was
+6,558,823 tons, up to the end of the year in each case. These figures
+are given for the purpose of showing what can be done in a country
+which makes up its mind to have a commercial marine. America had been
+a long time learning its lesson, but there was no question that she
+had learned. Therefore it is not to be expected that she will let
+this hardly-acquired realisation be forgotten. Indeed, the evidence
+is strongly the other way. On June 5, 1920, was approved the Merchant
+Marine Act for the promoting and maintaining an American Merchant
+Marine. It is sufficient evidence merely to read the declaration of
+policy as stated by Congress: “That it is necessary for the national
+defence and for the proper growth of its foreign and domestic
+commerce that the United States shall have a merchant marine of the
+best-equipped and most suitable types of vessels sufficient to carry
+the greater portion of its commerce and serve as a naval or military
+auxiliary in time of war or national emergency, ultimately to be owned
+and operated privately by citizens of the United States; and it is
+hereby declared to be the policy of the United States to do whatever
+may be necessary to develop and encourage the maintenance of such a
+merchant marine.”
+
+With the failure of any immediate benefits of this policy it is not
+necessary here to deal. But of all the many results of the Great War,
+few historically are more interesting than this revival. Competition
+between British and American shipping is inevitable, but it is merely
+a repetition of what happened in the clipper era; and we have seen
+that in the long run this spirit of emulation has always benefited
+the Merchant Service. Comparing the figures given above for June
+1914, let us place alongside them those for June 1921, which are as
+instructive as the first. For now we find in the percentage of the
+world’s total sea-going steel and iron steam tonnage that the British
+Empire owns 39·3, the United States 22·7, France and Japan each 5·6,
+but Scandinavia 7·7. Thus to have leapt from 4·3 to 22·7 in so short a
+space of time, and to have become second only to the British Empire, is
+a remarkable achievement.
+
+The future remains to be seen. But we have noticed that the absence of
+competition caused the East Indian portion—and that was the greater
+part—of the British Mercantile Marine to get into a rut. It was only
+the opening up to all of the East, the free and unfettered rivalry
+there and in the Atlantic, which brought about progress and improved
+conditions both for the trader and the passenger. In the face of the
+lessons of history, is it not better to welcome competition rather
+than to endeavour to hinder, by a series of laws which may do good,
+but may also cause international friction, more dreadful wars, and do
+little for the advancement of civilisation and the attainment of noble
+aims? The practical value of history is that we are able to see at a
+glance the mistakes of our forefathers. If it is not that, it is a mere
+academic study. The world now realises that an adequate merchant fleet
+is as necessary as an adequate fighting Navy. But it has required to
+be confronted with big events before it could thoroughly grasp that
+essential fact.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE MINOR MERCANTILE MARINES
+
+
+One important result of the war was to readjust the respective
+positions of the nations of the world in regard to their merchant
+fleets. Considering only steel and iron steam tonnage, the nations
+were in the following order of precedence immediately prior to the
+war: British Empire, Germany, Scandinavia, France, the United States;
+Japan, Holland, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Spain, Greece. But to-day the
+following is the order: British Empire, United States, and then there
+is an immense drop to Scandinavia, France, Japan, Italy, Holland,
+Spain, Germany and Greece about equal, and no Austro-Hungarian merchant
+ships.
+
+Whilst Scandinavia still occupies the third place, she represents
+only 7·7 of the world’s steam tonnage as against the United States’
+22·7 and the British Empire’s 39·3. Outside the belligerents the
+Scandinavians were the most important merchant fleet throughout the
+period of hostilities, and Norway was more important than Sweden.
+From the earliest times in European history the sea-spirit has been
+a real influence in Scandinavia, and some of the finest sailormen in
+the world have come from there. It is that spirit which has built up
+the Scandinavian merchant fleets, not merely through the sailing-ship
+days, but after. To them were sold many of Britain’s clippers and other
+vessels as steam gradually became dominant; and even now they purchase
+obsolete British steamships, give them another name and put them into
+service again. The Allan liner _Virginian_, the first Atlantic turbine
+steamer, for instance, is now running in the Swedish-American Line.
+
+The war found the Scandinavians with a comparatively large merchant
+fleet, not merely of steam vessels, but of sailing craft. Only those
+who were in the North Sea at that time could realise this fact, and
+as the years went on it became still more emphasised. For they were
+able to sell their agricultural produce to Germany for high prices,
+and they sold, also at a high rate, large supplies of food and of
+timber to Great Britain. The result was that the enormous demand for
+merchant ships brought great wealth to these Northmen. They placed a
+large number of orders with British shipbuilding firms prior to peace,
+and in one area alone these orders amounted to 450,000 tons. But then
+came the slump, ships were not wanted, because trade became bad, many
+shipowners were soon in financial straits and merchant captains found
+themselves without employment. The result is, that notwithstanding the
+boom, they owned in June 1921 only 7·7 as against 8·7 in June 1914 of
+the world’s sea-going steam tonnage. On the other hand, they have shown
+considerable enterprise in evolving the ocean-going motor ship. But
+whereas the Baltic meant so much to their shipping, the revolutionary
+upheavals in Russia and Germany have thoroughly disorganised that most
+important section of their trade. To take one instance alone, before
+the war, and even during those years, Sweden used to export in small
+steamships large quantities of iron ore to Germany, but now these
+exports have considerably diminished. Nevertheless, the possession of
+these Scandinavian merchant fleets, consisting as they do principally
+of small rather than big ships, is a strong factor to be considered in
+the future.
+
+To-day the French Mercantile Marine is of the same strength as Japan,
+owing to the last-mentioned country having gone ahead rather than the
+former having gone astern. The acquisition of a number of ex-German
+liners after the Armistice was something of a windfall, though it
+was a long time before some of the big craft were requisitioned.
+The Messageries Maritimes, for example, took over from the French
+Government the _Lucie Woermann_ (4836 tons) and several bigger ships.
+But as an influence in the shipping world, France is very different
+from what she was during the time of Louis XIV and after. The naval
+architects and shipbuilders in France during the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries were in many cases as good, and frequently better
+than, those of England or Holland or Spain. But this supremacy had long
+since left them by the time the steamship became prevalent.
+
+During the war the French Mercantile Marine was used entirely for the
+prosecution of the one great cause, but France lost during that period
+1,129,000 out of 2,556,000 tons of merchant shipping with which she
+commenced hostilities. This has been more serious for France, because
+whilst during hostilities the shipyards of Great Britain, the United
+States and Japan were able to carry on building, the French yards were
+almost exclusively engaged in manufacturing for their armies. In fact,
+they were unable to launch more than 143,000 tons throughout the war,
+though afterwards about a hundred ships were ordered in Great Britain,
+representing nearly 500,000 tons.
+
+The French Mercantile Marine to-day consists of between 3,000,000
+and 4,000,000 tons. Of this the fine big Atlantic liners running
+to New York make up a fair proportion, especially when we think of
+the 34,568-ton _Paris_, one of the largest liners afloat, and a
+singularly impressive ship to behold. As a result of the war Germany
+had to hand over to the Allies 521 ships, of nearly 3,000,000 tons
+displacement; and of these France was allotted 116, amounting to about
+500,000 tons. But the greater part of her merchant fleet is based on
+the Mediterranean, running from Marseilles to the Black Sea, and her
+possessions in Asia and the Pacific, West Africa, and to North and
+South America. Most of her exports go to her colonies; and the short
+voyages across the Mediterranean to Algeria and Morocco, transporting
+corn, wine, sheep and vegetables, will ever be a valuable means of
+employing small tonnage ships. But it has needed a war to teach France
+that the whole of her shipbuilding and marine transportation required
+overhauling and revising. Her shipping industry was based rather on the
+policy of making profits out of other industries than of becoming a
+means of creating new trade routes and fresh avenues to wealth. It is
+only now that she is realising the riches of her colonies which merely
+wait to be developed fully. To France, curiously enough, belonged the
+honour of owning the largest and finest sailing ship in the world. This
+was the _La France_. Fitted with auxiliary motors in the early days
+of the combustion engine, these were afterwards removed. She sailed
+out to the Pacific in 1922, but had the misfortune to pile up on a New
+Caledonian reef close to her destination and became a total wreck. Thus
+perished the last link France had with its former race of brilliant
+designers of sailing ships.
+
+In the rise of nations few phenomena are more striking than the way
+the Japanese merchant fleet has leapt into prominence in so few years.
+Even before the war she possessed only 3·9 of the world’s steam steel
+tonnage, and was the sixth power in the world as a sea-carrier; to-day
+she is actually bracketed fourth with France, and owning 5·6 of the
+percentage of tonnage. The Japanese are essentially copyists, and
+practically everything they know of shipbuilding or shipping in the
+modern sense has been derived from Great Britain. The war came as a
+grand opportunity to them, and as soon as the Germans vanished from
+the Eastern trades, the Japanese stepped in and took what they wanted
+at a time when our traders were busy with other matters. Thanks to the
+heavy subsidies granted by their Government, they have put up a keen
+competition, including the Indian coasting trade. Both geographically
+and economically Japan is well situated so as to expand her merchant
+fleet throughout the Orient and the Pacific, and all the evidence
+points to her intention to take every advantage of her opportunities.
+
+According to the most recent figures, the Japanese merchant fleet
+contained nearly 800 steamships of over 1000 tons, representing nearer
+3,000,000 than 2,000,000 tons. The purchase of a large number of
+second-hand ships from other countries at a time when, owing to the
+slump, they could be bought for less than half their cost in Japan, is
+one of the latest instances of her enterprise. The Italian proportion
+of ownership in steamships has increased a point as a result of the
+war and after, and the addition in 1921 of the big _Giulio Cesare_ was
+a considerable acquisition to such a small marine. Built in England,
+this 22,500-ton (gross) steamer was the largest vessel the Wallsend
+yard had launched since they constructed the _Mauretania_. She can do
+her nineteen knots and more, and being intended for the Genoa-Buenos
+Ayres route, was fitted with ample luxury to tempt the South Americans.
+But there is also a big emigrant trade from this port westward, and
+more than half the accommodation in the ship is intended for them. The
+outcome of the war brought Trieste, Austria’s only port, into the hands
+of Italy, and this may have an important effect on Italian shipping in
+the future. It used to be to Austria what Fiume was to Hungary, and
+both States used to give large subsidies to their Mercantile Marines
+and encourage transport to and from these ports. Just before the war
+the Austro-Hungarian merchant ships represented only slightly over 1
+per cent. of all the world’s sea-going steel steamers, but now this
+amount has dropped to nothing. Fiume was the port whence emigrants by
+the thousand poured from their Slav, Teuton and Magyar homes on board
+the liners bound for the United States. It was Hungary’s only port,
+and then the World War put an end to its glory and made it a source of
+grave international anxiety.
+
+But its close connection with the Mercantile Marine prosperity can be
+seen at once. For one steamship line alone used to take from there
+30,000 emigrants annually. They used to run three steamships a month
+during the winters when bad harvests had caused the people to leave
+their homes for the New World, and each of these ships was carrying
+most of 2000. Then, having made $500 in America, they would for the
+most part return, and thus there was still further traffic for the
+shipping. The Austrian Lloyd Company owned about eighty steamships,
+though chiefly of small tonnage, but some were built in Trieste of
+about 4000 tons. With one steamship company the Hungarian Government
+actually entered into a contract, to last ten years, by which the
+former were to be guaranteed 30,000 emigrants a year; and a bonus of a
+hundred francs was to be paid for every passenger short of that number.
+It cannot be too much emphasised that the emigrant traffic has been one
+of the foundations of some steamship companies.
+
+During the war the direct services from Scandinavia to America were
+strengthened; but the French emigrant traffic has never been great.
+Before the war the Italian steamship lines were largely under German
+influence. No emigrants could be carried to or from Italy except in a
+licensed ship; and a vessel more than three years old, not previously
+employed in the Italian service, could not receive a licence unless her
+speed was at least eighteen knots. But from the European continent by
+far the greatest emigrant traffic went from Bremen and Rotterdam in the
+two big German lines.
+
+The present position of Holland and Spain, almost at the bottom of the
+list, shows pathetically that a country which in its day has been the
+greatest sea-carrier, which owned and built the finest ships in the
+world, may in a century or more be pushed out of the struggle unless
+her fighting fleet is able to secure free passage for the merchant
+vessels. Holland, at least, owns a small fleet of first-class liners,
+principally for the North American trade and to the Dutch East Indies.
+With regard to the former, Rotterdam has been to them a useful port
+for attracting a good many emigrants every year. Prior to the war the
+German lines were too wise to compete against the Dutch, preferring not
+to separate forces in concentrating against the Cunard and White Star
+Lines. Most Dutch steamship lines enjoy a measure of support from the
+Dutch railways, but in the past there was also a good deal of support
+from Germany.
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  [_Photo, Henry Hughes & Son, Ltd._
+
+A FAST-DISAPPEARING SHIP TYPE.
+
+Steam and motors have almost banished the full-rigged ship from the
+Mercantile Marine, but a very few still survive.]
+
+The future of Mercantile Marines is the future of trade itself; for
+shipping not merely takes goods to market, but actually creates those
+markets in localities hitherto undeveloped. The sailing ship as an
+ocean-carrier is certainly fast disappearing, and everything now is
+reckoned on a basis of economy, but with strict regard to speed and
+efficiency. The need for shipping, apart from temporary slumps in the
+cycle of trade through prosperity to depression, must increase as the
+resources of the world become greater. If the tramp steamer forces her
+way up a shallow river and finds an abundance of a certain commodity
+which by some sudden turn in social life is much in demand in London
+or New York, this new trade will go on and on until a town is built on
+the banks, the river is dredged, and eventually liners call there not
+for cargoes, but to bring passengers. The town needs its regular mail
+service, the inhabitants require costly manufactured goods from England
+or America; and so, in the end, it grows to be a colony with its own
+special exports and imports. The arrival of every ship increases the
+trade, agents from commercial corporations land and start a new vein of
+development. Finally, after a couple of centuries, perhaps, the colony
+decides to have its own merchant fleet, and after it has got thoroughly
+used to this, and had some risk of war, it realises that its
+Merchant Marine must be protected by a fighting Navy. To-day Australia
+has its own liners, and Navy, and yet it was only in 1788 that the
+first thousand settlers landed there. In the exchange of wealth the sea
+is, so to speak, the counter across which the deal is done. You may
+live inland and forget all about the sea; you may hate it or you may
+fear it; but it is there all the time, and it means everything to any
+ambitious community. It is by means of the merchant ship that the sea
+is, partially at least, controlled for the sake of land development and
+the convenience of communities.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE FUTURE OF THE MERCANTILE MARINE
+
+
+If the attention of the reader has been thus far secured, he will
+have appreciated the fact that to any nation owning a seaboard the
+possession of a Mercantile Marine is as important as having a fighting
+Navy. We have seen that Great Britain, the United States, France,
+Germany, Japan—not to mention the rest—all realise more than ever the
+prime importance of an efficient and adequate merchant fleet. You find
+this in the official statements as well as in the remarks by their
+shipping experts. As we said at the beginning of this volume, it has
+taken a great war to cause this right thinking, but you may be assured
+that from now onwards the merchant fleets are coming into their own,
+and the service is going to be regarded before long with some of the
+old respect that was ascribed to it in the palmiest days of the sailing
+ship.
+
+It is sea-borne trade which makes a Mercantile Marine. It is the great
+coalfields conveniently near big harbours that have helped to build up
+the modern British marine after her shipping was temporarily eclipsed
+by the American. The development of the world consequent on the coming
+of the industrial age, the great increase of overseas trade therefrom
+resulting, caused a loud and universal call for cheap maritime
+carriage. The steamer satisfied that call, for the reason that she was
+built economically near to the coalfields, and economically propelled
+because she had cheap coal. She could therefore afford to carry goods
+cheaply. Then, as we have also seen, this tramp is the forerunner of
+the liner, and so the story goes on like a stone gathering momentum as
+it comes down the mountain.
+
+So it all depends on cheap fuel quite as much as on cheap labour. The
+Scandinavians have had the latter for years, but it never enabled
+them to build up such a merchant fleet as one might have expected.
+The world’s greatest shipping centre to-day is the Port of London,
+notwithstanding the great set-back it received during the war, when the
+presence of German submarines in the English Channel diverted much of
+its ancient trade to western ports. Had it not been for the possession
+of an enormous merchant fleet, consisting of a large proportion
+of small and moderate-sized steamers, the Allied cause would most
+certainly have been lost, irrespective of the Army in the field or the
+Navy at sea. The British and German blockades, though exerted in the
+one case by big ships and in the latter by submarines, had the same
+effect: the paralysing of the merchant fleet. Take the blockade away
+and the war could have gone on as long as a couple of men were alive.
+The pivot of the whole thing is therefore the merchant ship, and she in
+turn depends on her fuel.
+
+The fuel of the future will be oil, and you will find only a minority
+of experts to deny this. Whether aircraft will ever become the
+principal passenger-carriers over the world is possible, but remote.
+For the carriage of goods the dependence will remain on merchant
+shipping, and one of the incentives to the use of oil-fuel will be
+brought about by increased competition. Oil is the more economical
+fuel, for the reason that, other things being equal, one ton of
+oil-fuel as now used in Diesel engines drives a vessel three times as
+far as one ton of coal burnt under the boilers of a steamship. And yet
+oil is twice as efficient as coal when the ship has water-tube boilers
+and geared turbines. This is the statement of Sir Westcott Abell, the
+Chief Ship Surveyor of Lloyd’s Register. The biggest liners have now
+been converted into oil-burning, and it is conceivable that before long
+we may have Diesel-engined Atlantic leviathans instead of steamers.
+The absence of boilers will mean more room for passengers and cargo,
+therefore increased earning capacity.
+
+Whether we think of oil as used for Diesel or for steam engines, it
+certainly looks as if the future Mercantile Marines of the world will
+be in the main oil-driven. In that case the outlook for the British
+Mercantile Marine, which has been based on cheap coal, may cause some
+anxiety. The possession of ample oil-wells in other parts of the world
+may, and probably will, get over the difficulty; but it is one thing
+to have coalfields at home, and quite another consideration to fetch
+oil from the other end of the earth. Moreover the commercial fight
+for oil-areas may conceivably lead to international strife, and the
+prolongation of the war might depend on how long the supplies of oil
+could be maintained for the shipping. In any forecast of the world’s
+Mercantile Marines due regard must therefore be paid to the use and
+supply of oil.
+
+The introduction of oil-fuel into the modern Atlantic ships has done
+away with the old, laborious work of stoking, and necessitated from
+the fireman a higher skill, more technical knowledge and keener
+concentration; and he has to be on the move continually in order to
+see that the burners are in good order and the flame is continuous.
+During bad weather, or fogs, fires can be extinguished, and thus
+economy gained. More bunker-fuel is being consumed on the ocean at
+the present than ever, and although during the last twenty years a
+complete revolution has been made in the engine-room by the use of
+turbines and geared turbines, it is only with the introduction of
+oil-fuel that the stokehold has become more progressive. In many cases
+ex-naval men are now employed in the British oil-fuel liners. Their
+experience of years in oil-fuel ships well fits them for this skilled
+“stoking” in the modern merchantmen. And here may be the beginning of
+another improvement. It is well known that the crew’s accommodation in
+most men-of-war is superior to that in most merchantmen, especially
+in regard to cleanliness. During the war it was surprising to naval
+officers commanding armed merchant cruisers that such conditions were
+allowed in liners which would never be tolerated in fighting ships.
+One British admiral, in particular, was so impressed as to express
+his opinions afterwards in print. Now, if the introduction of highly
+skilled ratings from the Navy continues, it may be taken as certain
+that the standard of life in the crew’s quarters will become higher and
+thus a high-grade type of man will be attracted. There is going to be
+a general levelling up in the Mercantile Marines of the world, so long
+as there is peace assured. The world is wearied of war, and asks only
+to be allowed to develop its resources in peace. Every one nowadays is
+interested in commerce, and the time will come when the practice which
+existed in the East India Company’s ships will be reverted to. Only
+the sons of the best families will be thought to be good enough for
+the national merchant ships: only the best sons will offer themselves
+for the honour of controlling the ships which maintain the country’s
+life-giving trade. In the time of the Elizabethans, before the East
+India Company; in the Spanish and Portuguese and Venetian trade
+supremacies, the pick of the nation were engaged in overseas commerce;
+and in the twentieth century, when so much technical knowledge, so
+much responsible capability are required of a man, none but the best
+types of officers and men should be accepted or offered. Permanent
+employment, good pay, pride in ship and service, high standard of
+accommodation, and the most careful selection of candidates will go a
+long way towards bringing about this desired end.
+
+In the olden days the sailor was a very gallant fellow, whose job it
+was to go aloft and lay out along a yard and handsail in the foulest
+weather. At sea he was heroic; on shore he was often a drunken
+reprobate. Things have altered. The modern shipman is just as gallant,
+as we know from his exploits afloat during the war. But he is better
+educated, uses his head more and his fists less. He reads and thinks
+and reasons for himself, and if he knows nothing of the old seafaring,
+he is highly skilled in the working of the hundreds of wonderful
+appliances which are essential to the modern merchant ship. To him the
+shore is not always symbolical of debauch. He is better treated than
+his ancestors, and his undoubted rights have begun to be respected.
+The result is that there is a general improvement going on through the
+Mercantile Marine not merely in regard to the ships themselves, but in
+the personnel.
+
+The romance of the sailing-ship days has to be merged to-day in the
+bigger romance of sea-borne trade. It is ridiculous to say, as one
+lecturer recently stated, that the Mercantile Marine has no fine
+traditions like the Navy, and therefore there is no enthusing force at
+the back of it. To make such a statement—and I regret to say that it
+was uttered by a distinguished merchant ship captain—is to be ignorant
+of sea history. During the recent war, during all the previous wars,
+through the ages of peace, back and back as far as we have any records,
+you will find the marine merchantman doing fine things, piling up the
+finest traditions. If that is not so, the whole purpose of this volume
+has been missed. I have endeavoured to show what the Mercantile Marine
+has done for the world throughout time in all kinds of ships. Sailors
+are a conservative race, and there is at heart very little difference
+between the best of each century. To them we all owe more than we can
+ever repay or even realise.
+
+Whether the average merchant ship of the future is to be the
+cruiser-stern vessel with oil-fuel and geared turbines, or with
+Diesel engines, matters less than the spirit which animates the
+officers and men. In the British Mercantile Marine the officers are
+drawn from many sources, but the chief training establishments are
+in the _Worcester_, lying in the Thames, the _Conway_, lying in the
+Mersey, and in the Nautical College, Pangbourne. It is to these three
+institutions especially that we look for the future mercantile officer,
+on whom great responsibilities rest for the upholding and carrying on
+of the magnificent heritage of tradition. In the United States this
+preparation for the sea is being carried out with that thoroughness
+which was shown during the war for making sailors out of raw landsmen.
+The recruiting for the American Mercantile Marine, according to the
+latest official report to hand, already consisted of a personnel
+which was 68 per cent. American. Its Sea Training Bureau has training
+stations and training ships, and in the first three years turned out
+between 30,000 and 40,000 unlicensed ratings. In addition, there are
+the Navigation and Engineering Schools and advanced courses for men
+already holding licences. Such subjects as the operation, repair,
+adjustment and general upkeep of marine turbines, and matters dealing
+with electricity and oil, are included in the last-mentioned curricula.
+The result was that in four years licences were granted to over 10,000
+graduates as masters, first, second and third mates, chief engineers,
+first, second and third assistant engineers. And by means of a Sea
+Service Bureau maintained at various Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific coast
+ports, during one year over 100,000 officers and men were placed in
+United States ships.
+
+Thus, with glorious traditions behind them, and an equally glorious
+future in front, the Mercantile Marines of the nations of the maritime
+world have every reason to be proud of their respective services.
+Competition there assuredly will be, not merely between British and
+American, but, presently, German merchant fleets. That is all for
+the good of the services concerned and for the world in general. The
+lesson from past history is that maritime legislation in the long run
+is better omitted except where it is necessary as a reply to that
+of another country setting up unfair competition. The real freedom
+of the seas is to allow the merchant ship to pursue her way freely,
+unhampered; and to find her trade where she can, and be allowed to
+develop that trade as it has been in the past by Venetian, Spaniard,
+Dutch, Briton, American and others. To interfere with this system
+is to court trouble which in the long run fails to benefit the very
+organisation it was intended to protect. Navigation laws are all very
+well in intention; but far better still is it to allow free trading
+over the seas, free flow of emigrants and commerce, fair opportunities
+for all. The best must win in the last instance, but why not let each
+marine go about its own business as each trading concern ashore is
+allowed to carry on its own affairs? The merchant fleets mean too much
+to be controlled by the State in any country, except under exceptional
+circumstances and with the most weighty excuse. That is one of the
+lessons in the history of our subject, and we may leave it at that.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+SAILS OF THE _ESSEX_ EAST INDIAMAN
+
+
+The following is a list of the sails which the _Essex_ could set, and
+it is worth placing on record now that the sailing ship is so rapidly
+becoming a rarity. These details have been taken from a contemporary
+manuscript which has been kindly sent me by Colonel E. B. Urmston,
+C.B., whose great-grandfather served in East Indiamen from the time
+when he joined as a midshipman in 1763, and afterwards commanded
+several of these ships between 1783 and 1803. In 1795 he brought home,
+as Commodore, a fleet of thirty East Indiamen without a convoy of any
+of H.M. ships, and later in the same year was Commodore of the East
+Indiamen fleet which accompanied Sir Ralph Abercrombie’s expedition
+to the West Indies. His eldest son, Sir James Urmston, joined the
+company’s service as a “writer” in 1798, and became President of the
+company’s factory and affairs in China.
+
+This memorandum, already turning yellow with age, was made in 1816,
+at the time Lady Urmston came home in the _Essex_, and with the aid
+of existing pictures of East Indiamen it would not be impossible to
+reconstruct a model on fairly accurate lines. It will be seen that
+she was able to set twenty-seven sails on her foremast, twenty-one on
+her mainmast, and seventeen on her mizzen: total sixty-five. It is
+interesting as showing that at least one of these Indiamen was a real
+sail-carrier. She was commanded by Captain Nisbett.
+
+  ON THE FOREMAST 26.    ON THE MAINMAST 21.    ON THE MIZZENMAST 17.
+
+  Fore course             Main course           Square cross jackyard
+   ”   topsail             ”   topsail            Mizzen topsail
+   ”   t’gallant sail      ”   t’gallant sail        ”   t’gallant sail
+   ”   royal               ”   royal                 ”   royal
+   ”   skysail             ”   skysail               ”   skysail
+   ”   moon-raker          ”   moon-raker            ”   moon-raker
+   ”   cloud-scraper       ”   cloud-scraper
+   ”   star-gazer          ”   star-gazer
+   ”   storm staysail      ”   staysail             Driver
+   ”   topmast staysail    ”   topmast staysail     Ring-tail
+  Jib                      ”   middle     ”         Watersail
+  Inner  jib               ”   t’gallant  ”         Gaff topsail
+  Flying  ”                ”   royal      ”         Upper   ”
+  Outer   ”                ”   upper      ”         Mizzen staysail
+  Cutter’s topmast jib                                 ”   topmast staysail
+  Upper           ”                                    ”   t’gallant  ”
+
+  _On the bowsprit_:
+
+  Sprit sail                                        Mizzen royal staysail
+  Sprit topsail                                        ”   topmast stuns’l
+    ”   outer topsail                                  ”   t’gallants’l
+
+  _Studding sails_:
+
+  Common lower studding sail      Lower studding sail
+  Outer lower studding sail       Common topmast studding sail
+  Common topmast studding sail    Outer topmast studding sail
+  Outer topmast studding sail     Common t’gallant studding sail
+  Common t’gallant studding sail  Outer t’gallant studding sail
+  Outer t’gallant studding sail   Royal t’gallant studding sail
+  Royal t’gallant studding sail   Upper t’gallant studding sail
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+  Aaron Manby, 183
+
+  Abell, Sir Westcott, 240
+
+  Abercrombie, Sir Ralph, 246
+
+  Ability of an East Indiaman navigator, 142
+
+  _Acadia_, 178
+
+  Acre, 15
+
+  _Active_, 145
+
+  _Admiral Watson_, 94
+
+  Adriatic, The, 9
+
+  _Agincourt_, 148
+
+  _Ajax_, 92
+
+  _Albert Webb_, 118
+
+  _Alfred_, 98, 99, 100, 148
+
+  Allan Line, 197, 230
+
+  _Alnwick Castle_, 147
+
+  American clippers, 151
+
+  American Line, 183, 195
+
+  American Mercantile Marine, 152, 220, 244
+
+  American packets, 123
+
+  American trade, 104, 151
+
+  American War, 117
+
+  _Anglesey_, 147, 148
+
+  Anglo-Dutch wars, 66
+
+  _Ann McKim_, 150
+
+  _Aquila_, 25
+
+  _Aquitania_, 170, 173, 199, 200, 201
+
+  _Arabic_, 196
+
+  _Archimedes_, 184, 185
+
+  _Arctic_, 124
+
+  _Ariel_, 161, 162, 164
+
+  _Arizona_, 192
+
+  “Art of Seafighting, The,” 95
+
+  _Astell_, 112
+
+  _Aventurier_, 100, 101
+
+  _Audacious_, H.M.S., 216
+
+  _Auguste Victoria_, 211
+
+  _Austral_, 192
+
+  Australian Black Ball Line, 157
+
+  Australian gold discovery, 156
+
+  Australian Royal Mail Steam Navigation Co., 187
+
+  _Austria_, 211
+
+  Austrian Lloyd Company, 235
+
+
+  Baden-Powell, Sir Robert, 142
+
+  Baines, James, 135, 157
+
+  Balearic Isles, 5
+
+  Ballasting, 26
+
+  _Baltic_, 188
+
+  Barcelona ordinance, 22
+
+  _Barham_, 148
+
+  Beatty, Earl, 2
+
+  _Belle-Poule_, 100
+
+  _Bellone_, 112
+
+  Benbow, Admiral, 88
+
+  _Berceau_, 100
+
+  _Berengaria_, 170, 199, 202, 203, 217
+
+  _Berlin_, 216
+
+  Berthing a big liner, 198
+
+  Big Ship Masters, 208
+
+  _Bismarck_, 202, 218
+
+  Black Ball Line, 117, 123
+
+  “Black Book of the Admiralty,” 31
+
+  Black Sea, 16
+
+  Blackwall, 77, 80, 82, 92, 103, 115, 117, 134, 136, 146, 148, 172,
+        182, 188
+
+  _Blenheim_, 147
+
+  Blohm & Voss, 202
+
+  _Boddam_, 97
+
+  _Bombay Castle_, 93, 98, 99
+
+  Bombay Insurance Society, 102
+
+  _Bona Confidentia_, 58
+
+  _Bona Esperanza_, 58
+
+  _Borussia_, 210
+
+  Boulton & Watt, 170, 173
+
+  _Bremen_, 214
+
+  _Britannia_, 178
+
+  _Britannic_, 196, 200
+
+  British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Co., 178
+
+  British crews in American packets, 124
+
+  British Navigation Laws, Repeal of, 152, 212
+
+  _British Queen_, 174
+
+  Brunel, 174, 185, 187, 188
+
+  Brunswick Basin, 92, 93
+
+  _Buckinghamshire_, 135
+
+  _Buenos Ayrean_, 190
+
+  Burns, George, 177, 178
+
+
+  Cabot, John, 205
+
+  Cabot, Sebastian, 49, 55, 59
+
+  Caird of Greenock, 210, 214
+
+  _Caledonia_, 171, 178
+
+  _Campania_, 195, 196, 214
+
+  _Canada_, 123
+
+  _Canton_, 97
+
+  _Cap Trafalgar_, 197
+
+  Cargatores, 24
+
+  _Carlisle Castle_, 148
+
+  _Carmania_, 197, 198
+
+  _Carn Brae Castle_, 115
+
+  _Caroline_, 111, 112
+
+  Carthaginians, 5
+
+  _Cedric_, 196
+
+  _Celtic_, 196
+
+  _Ceylon_, 112
+
+  _Challenge_, 153, 154, 156
+
+  _Challenger_, 153
+
+  Chancellor, Richard, 58
+
+  _Charlotte Dundas_, 169, 170
+
+  Chaucer, 42
+
+  _Chile_, 179
+
+  “China Clippers, The,” 164
+
+  China fleet, 100
+
+  _Christiana_, 25
+
+  _Chrysolite_, 153
+
+  _Cidona_, 25
+
+  Cilicians, 5
+
+  City of Dublin Steam Company, 123
+
+  _City of Edinburgh_, 172, 173
+
+  _City of Glasgow_, 191
+
+  _City of Manchester_, 191
+
+  _City of New York_, 193
+
+  _City of Paris_, 193, 194
+
+  _Claremont_, 170
+
+  _Clarence_, 147
+
+  Clark, Captain A. H., 123, 155
+
+  _Clermont_, 170, 171
+
+  “Clipper Ship Era, The,” 123, 155
+
+  Clipper ships, 151
+
+  Clyde, The, 161
+
+  Coal brigs, 130
+
+  _Cogge_, 39
+
+  Collins Line, 124, 182, 195
+
+  _Columbia_, 178, 211
+
+  Columbus, 14, 48
+
+  _Comet_, 170
+
+  Communal idea, 22, 27, 56
+
+  Continental Service, 119
+
+  Convoy of East Indiamen, A, 112
+
+  Convoy system, 12, 15, 23
+
+  _Conway_, 243
+
+  Cook, Captain, 130
+
+  Cort, Henry, 189
+
+  Cost of building ships, 103
+
+  _Coutts_, 98
+
+  “Cracking-on,” 150, 158
+
+  Cramp shipyard, 223
+
+  Cretans, 5
+
+  Crutchley, Commander, R.N.R., 144
+
+  _Cumberland_, 98
+
+  Cunard Company, 178, 186, 190, 192, 195, 197, 202
+
+  Cunard losses, 198
+
+  Cunard, Mr., 177
+
+  _Cutty Sark_, 162, 166, 181
+
+  _Cybèle_, 97
+
+
+  Dalmatia, 8
+
+  Dance, Commodore, 98, 100, 122
+
+  Demand for merchant shipping, 7
+
+  Denny, William, 171
+
+  Deptford, 81
+
+  Desertion, 27
+
+  _Deutschland_, 210, 213
+
+  Devitt & Moore, 149
+
+  Diesel Engines, 240, 243
+
+  Discipline, 20
+
+  _Dogger_, 40
+
+  _Dorsetshire_, 98
+
+  Downie, W. I., 138, 166
+
+  Drake, Francis, 50
+
+  Dramatic Line, 118, 123
+
+  _Dreadnought_, 156
+
+  _Drottningholm_, 197
+
+  _Duchess of Atholl_, 172
+
+  _Duke of Marlborough_, 122
+
+  _Duke of Richmond_, 94
+
+  Dunbar, 135, 144, 147
+
+  Dutch East India Company, 73
+
+
+  _Earl of Abergavenny_, 98
+
+  _Earl of Balcarres_, 135
+
+  _Earl Camden_, 98, 100
+
+  _Earl of Hardwicke_, 145, 148
+
+  East India Company, 9, 73, 76, 78, 81, 104, 116, 137, 175, 176,
+        177, 242
+
+  East India Docks, 103
+
+  East Indiamen, 18, 73, 76, 77, 79, 90, 92, 93, 97, 98, 99, 103,
+        130, 145, 147, 148, 172, 246
+
+  _Edward Bonaventure_, 58, 77
+
+  Efficiency of the old-time mariner, 132
+
+  Egyptians, 3
+
+  _Elbe_, 214
+
+  _Elizabeth_, 171, 176
+
+  Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 125
+
+  Emigrant traffic, 212
+
+  _Emmanuel_, 72
+
+  _Ems_, 214
+
+  _Emu_, 145
+
+  Enemies, attacks by, 94
+
+  English Maritime Law, 31
+
+  _Enterprise_, 173
+
+  Ericsson, John, 184
+
+  _Essex_, 246
+
+  _Etruria_, 192
+
+  _Europe_, 111, 112
+
+  Evolution of the ship, 3, 7, 17, 32, 45, 168
+
+  _Exeter_, 98
+
+
+  _Falcon_, 168, 173
+
+  _Falmouth_, 92
+
+  Falmouth, 179
+
+  Falmouth packet service, 119, 122
+
+  _Fawkener_, 120
+
+  _Ferreira_, 168
+
+  _Fiery Cross_, 139, 164
+
+  Fishermen and Merchantmen, 62
+
+  Fishermen’s quarrels, 70
+
+  Fishery Department, Board of Trade, 128
+
+  _Flying Cloud_, 143
+
+  Forrest, Captain Thomas, 90
+
+  _Forte_, 97
+
+  _Fortima_, 149
+
+  Forwood, Sir William B., 157, 160
+
+  Fowler, Lieut. Robert, R.N., 99, 102
+
+  _Francis B. Ogden_, 184
+
+  Free Trade, 222
+
+  Free trade vessels, 135
+
+  French Mercantile Marine, 231, 232
+
+  French Naval Architects, 93
+
+  Fulton, Robert, 170
+
+  Future of the Mercantile Marines, 246
+
+
+  _Ganges_, 98, 99, 100
+
+  Geary, Captain, R.N., 115
+
+  General Steam Navigation Company, 145, 172, 182
+
+  Genoa, 13
+
+  _Geordie_, 130
+
+  _George Washington_, 216
+
+  German Australian Line, 208
+
+  German East Africa Line, 208
+
+  German liners, 195
+
+  _Giulio Cesare_, 233
+
+  _Godezere_, 38
+
+  _Grâce Dieu_, 53
+
+  _Great Britain_, 183, 185, 186
+
+  _Great Eastern_, 188, 190, 196
+
+  _Great Republic_, 156
+
+  _Great Western_, 174, 183
+
+  Great Western Steamship Company, 185
+
+  Greeks, 3
+
+  Greens, The, 77, 94, 104, 115, 116, 135, 136, 138, 144, 145, 146,
+        153, 172
+
+  Grotius, 64
+
+  Growth of the Mercantile Marine, 42
+
+  Guion Line, 183, 192
+
+  “Gulliver’s Travels,” 84, 86
+
+  _Guy Mannering_, 118
+
+
+  Hakluyt, 50, 55
+
+  Hall, Messrs., 153
+
+  Hamburg-America Line, 208, 209, 211
+
+  Hamburg-Bremen-Africa Line, 208
+
+  Hamburg-South America Line, 208
+
+  Hansa Line, 208
+
+  Hanseatic League, 34, 41, 62, 65
+
+  Harland, Sir Edward, 187
+
+  Harland & Wolff, 187, 190
+
+  Hawkins, 51
+
+  Hay, Captain, 113, 114
+
+  Heligoland, 41
+
+  _Hellenis_, 170
+
+  _Henry Addington_, 98
+
+  Herbert, of Cherbury, Lord, 84
+
+  Herring exports in 1913, 129
+
+  _Highflyer_, H.M.S., 215
+
+  _Himalaya_, 188
+
+  _Hindostan_, 180
+
+  Holy Land, The, 11
+
+  _Homeric_, 199, 201
+
+  _Hope_, 98, 99
+
+  Hornby, Admiral Phipps, 201
+
+  _Hotspur_, 141, 142
+
+  Hour-glasses, 85
+
+  Huddart, Captain Joseph, F.R.S., 122
+
+  Hulls, Jonathan, 169
+
+
+  Illyrians, 5
+
+  _Imperator_, 202, 217
+
+  Indian Empire, 9
+
+  _Indomitable_, 166, 199
+
+  Inman, William, 191
+
+  Inman Line, 183
+
+  Ionians, 5
+
+  Iron and Steel, 182
+
+  Iron Mast, The first, 185
+
+  _Isaac Webb_, 118
+
+  Ismay, T. H., 190
+
+  Istria, 8
+
+  Italian Mercantile Marine, 233
+
+  _Ivernia_, 196
+
+
+  James, Sir William, Bart., 98
+
+  _James Baines_, 143
+
+  _James Watt_, 173
+
+  Japanese Merchant Fleet, 233
+
+  Jardine, Mattheson & Co., 146
+
+  _John Tutteburie_, 39
+
+  Jouffroy, Marquis de, 169
+
+  _Judith_, 51
+
+
+  _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_, 196, 214, 215, 216
+
+  _Kaiser Wilhelm II._, 215
+
+  _Kaiserin Auguste Victoria_, 214
+
+  _Kate Carnie_, 161
+
+  _Kent_, 146, 147, 148
+
+  _King of the Netherlands_, 172
+
+  Kosmos Line, 208
+
+
+  _La France_, 232
+
+  _Lady Jocelyn_, 164
+
+  _Lady Lansdowne_, 183
+
+  _Lady Melville_, 104, 135
+
+  Laird & Co., 183, 184, 211
+
+  Laws of Oleron, 30
+
+  _Leicester_, 78
+
+  Lennox, Captain Charles, 97
+
+  Letters of Marque, 96, 129
+
+  _Leviathan_, 203, 217
+
+  Linois, Admiral, 99, 100, 120
+
+  Liparian Isles, 5
+
+  Liverpool, Port of, 80, 104, 164
+
+  Lloyd’s Register, 91, 173, 176, 240
+
+  London, Port of, 80, 104, 117
+
+  _Lord Keith_, 111, 112
+
+  _Lord Macartney_, 93
+
+  Lowell, James Russell, 126
+
+  Lubbock, Basil, 164
+
+  _Lucania_, 195, 196, 214
+
+  _Lucie Woermann_, 231
+
+  Lucy, Sir Thomas, 85
+
+  _Lusitania_, 198, 199
+
+  Lycians, 5
+
+
+  MacIver, David, 177, 178
+
+  McKay, Donald, 156
+
+  _Macquarie_, 136, 149
+
+  _Madagascar_, 148
+
+  _Madre de Dios_, 50
+
+  _Majestic_, 170, 194, 199, 202, 203, 204, 206, 218
+
+  Malocello, 46
+
+  Manby, Aaron, 183
+
+  _Marco Polo_, 143, 157
+
+  _Marengo_, 100
+
+  Marine Insurance Company, The first, 91
+
+  “Mariner’s Jewel, The,” 84
+
+  Maritime Acts, 65
+
+  Maritime Law, 19, 30
+
+  _Marlborough_, 147
+
+  _Martaban_, 160
+
+  Mastery of the Sea, 88
+
+  _Mauritania_, 198, 199, 200, 205
+
+  Mediterranean, 7, 17
+
+  Merchant Shipping Act of 1854, 160
+
+  Merchant Ships of the North, 30
+
+  Merchantman as privateer or pirate, 87
+
+  Melbourne, 136, 148
+
+  Melbourne trade, 147
+
+  _Memnon_, 151
+
+  Mercantile Marine of the Sixteenth Century, 53
+
+  Mercantile Marines, The Minor, 229
+
+  Mercantile Supremacy at Sea, 90
+
+  Meriton, Captain, 112, 113
+
+  Messageries Maritimes, 231
+
+  Michelson, Godeke, 40
+
+  Middle Ages, 10, 13, 21, 37, 52
+
+  “Midshipman, Reminiscences of a Blackwall,” 138
+
+  Midshipmen, 137
+
+  Mighty Merchantmen, 103
+
+  Milford steam packets, 124
+
+  Miller, Patrick, 169
+
+  _Minerve_, 112
+
+  _Moa_, 145
+
+  Modern Merchant Ship, The, 194
+
+  Modern Navigation, 200
+
+  Moffat, Captain H. Y., 131
+
+  _Monarch_, 148
+
+  Moneys, The, 94, 104, 116, 146
+
+  Monson, Sir William, 82
+
+  Moodie, Captain, 166
+
+  Moslem power, 10, 11
+
+  _Mount Vernon_, 221
+
+  Mourning, sign of, 141
+
+
+  Napier, Robert, 171, 177, 178
+
+  Navigation Acts, 65, 67
+
+  Navigation Laws, Repeal of, 176
+
+  _Neptune_, 145
+
+  _New World_, 118
+
+  Nisbett, Captain, 247
+
+  _Nordamerika_, 210
+
+  _Norfolk_, 148
+
+  North German Lloyd, 196, 208, 209, 214, 215
+
+  North Sea fisheries, 32
+
+  _Northumberland_, 144
+
+  _Novelty_, 184
+
+
+  _Ocean_, 97, 98
+
+  _Oceanic_, 190, 196
+
+  O’Halloran, Captain, 158
+
+  _Oliva_, 25
+
+  _Olympic_, 170, 199, 200
+
+  Opium trade, 151
+
+  _Oregon_, 192
+
+  _Orient_, 192
+
+  Orient Line, 192
+
+  _Oriental_, 152, 154
+
+  _Orinoco_, 170
+
+  _Osterley_, 92
+
+  Owen, Sir Douglas, 31
+
+  _Owen Glendower_, 145, 148
+
+
+  Pacific Steam Navigation Company, 179
+
+  Packet Ships and Brigs, 119
+
+  Panama Canal, 223, 224
+
+  _Paris_, 232
+
+  Park, Robert, 95
+
+  Patriotic Fund Committee, 101
+
+  Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company, 77, 124, 179, 188
+
+  Pepys, Samuel, 81, 84
+
+  _Persia_, 186
+
+  _Peru_, 179
+
+  Peters, Andrew, 114
+
+  Pett, Phineas, 80
+
+  Phœnicians, 3
+
+  _Piémontaise_, 108, 110
+
+  Piracy, 5, 37
+
+  Pisa, 13
+
+  Plimsoll mark, 25
+
+  Polar Expedition, The first, 67
+
+  Poplar Fund, 106
+
+  Portsmouth, Admiral of, 115
+
+  _Premium_, 131
+
+  _President_, 175
+
+  _Prince of Wales_, 146, 148
+
+  Prince Henry the Navigator, 47, 75, 76, 77
+
+  _Princess Royal_, 182
+
+  _Prinzessin Charlotte_, 171
+
+  Privateer, 96
+
+
+  Quadruple-Expansion Engine, 197
+
+  _Queen_, 146, 148
+
+
+  Rabelais, 54
+
+  _Rainbow_, 151
+
+  Rainier, Rear-Admiral, 97
+
+  _Red Dragon_, 78
+
+  _Red Jacket_, 157
+
+  Red Star Line, 123
+
+  _Regent_, 53
+
+  _Rhein_, 210
+
+  Rhodian sea-law, 19, 30
+
+  Richard Cœur de Lion, 11, 30
+
+  Rise and Fall of the German Mercantile Marine, 208
+
+  _Rob Roy_, 171
+
+  _Robert F. Stockton_, 184
+
+  Rogers, Captain W., 122
+
+  Roland Line, 208
+
+  _Roman_, 144
+
+  Roman merchant ships, 4, 17
+
+  Ross & Primrose, 177
+
+  Royal Fishery Company, 69
+
+  _Royal George_, 98, 99, 100, 101
+
+  Royal Mail Line, 124, 179
+
+  _Royal Oake_, 81
+
+  _Royal William_, 173, 174, 177
+
+  Russell, John Scott, 187, 188
+
+
+  _St. Blazius_, 25
+
+  _St. Louis_, 223
+
+  _St. Paul_, 223
+
+  Sail-Carriers, The, 134
+
+  _Samuel Russell_, 151
+
+  _San Felipe_, 50
+
+  _Savannah_, 171
+
+  _Saxonia_, 196, 211
+
+  “School and Sea Days,” 141
+
+  _Scotia_, 186
+
+  Screw Propeller, The, 183
+
+  Sea Fisheries Act of 1868, 128
+
+  Sea language, 82
+
+  Seamanship, Fine, 118
+
+  Seamen as authors, 54
+
+  _Sea Witch_, 151
+
+  Selden, 64
+
+  _Sémillante_, 100
+
+  Sercey, Rear-Admiral, 97
+
+  _Serica_, 161, 164
+
+  _Seringapatam_, 135, 136, 145
+
+  _Servia_, 190
+
+  Seventeenth-Century Seafaring, 74, 75
+
+  Ship-money, Levying of, 65
+
+  Shipbuilding in America, 224, 225
+
+  _Shipper Berline of Prussia_, 39
+
+  Ship’s bell, Introduction of, 53
+
+  Shipwrights Company, 80
+
+  Side-lights, 123
+
+  Signal code, 74
+
+  _Silenus_, 111
+
+  Simon of Utrecht, 41
+
+  _Sir Edward Paget_, 115, 116
+
+  _Sir Lancelot_, 161, 164, 166
+
+  _Sirius_, 173, 174
+
+  Smith, Francis, 184
+
+  Smith, T. & W., 116, 136, 144, 147
+
+  Somes, 135, 147
+
+  Southampton, 179
+
+  _Sovereign of the Seas_, 66, 143
+
+  _Spain_, 194
+
+  Spanish Armada, 63, 67
+
+  Spars and Stays, 160
+
+  _Speculum Nauticum_, 72
+
+  State post-office, 119
+
+  Steam, Iron and Steel, 168, 182
+
+  Steele of Greenock, 161, 164
+
+  Stertebeker, 40
+
+  Stevens, John, 184
+
+  Stokehold of an Oil-Fuel Cunarder, 216
+
+  Stone ballast, 60
+
+  _Stornoway_, 153
+
+  _Streatham_, 111, 112
+
+  _Sylph_, 146
+
+  Suez Canal, 167, 180, 182, 194
+
+  _Sultan_, 192
+
+  _Superb_, 148
+
+  Swift, Dean, 84, 86
+
+  Symington, William, 169
+
+
+  _Taeping_, 139, 161, 164
+
+  _Taitsing_, 165
+
+  _Taunton Castle_, 97
+
+  _Teutonic_, 194
+
+  _Thames_, 135
+
+  _Thermopylae_, 162, 165, 166, 167, 181
+
+  _Three Brothers_, 130
+
+  _Tilbury_, 92
+
+  Timmins, Captain, 101
+
+  _Titanic_, 200
+
+  _Townshend_, 120
+
+  Toynbee, Arnold, 141
+
+  Toynbee, Captain Henry, F.R.G.S., F.R.A.S., 141
+
+  _Trades Increase_, 79
+
+  Traditions, 243
+
+  _Trafalgar_, 138, 139
+
+  _Trident_, 182
+
+  Triple-Expansion Engine, 197
+
+  Triumph of Steam, The, 168
+
+  _Truelove_, 129
+
+  Turbine, The, 197
+
+  _Turbinia_, 197
+
+
+  _Umbria_, 192
+
+  Union Line, 144
+
+  United States Merchant Marine Act, 227
+
+  United States Shipping Board, 225
+
+  Urmston, Sir James, 246
+
+  Urmston, Colonel E. B., C.B., 246
+
+  _Urso_, 25
+
+
+  _Valentine_, 92
+
+  Vasco da Gama, 47, 75, 77
+
+  _Vaterland_, 202, 217
+
+  Venetian Statutes, 21, 25
+
+  Venetians, 8, 11, 13, 29
+
+  _Vesta_, 124
+
+  _Victor_, 110, 112
+
+  _Victoria_, 187
+
+  _Victorian_, 197
+
+  Victual Brothers, 40
+
+  _Virginia_, 220
+
+  _Virginian_, 197, 230
+
+  Vivaldi, 47
+
+
+  Walpole, Capt. Hon. Richard, 98
+
+  _Warley_, 98, 100
+
+  _Warren Hastings_, 93, 98, 107
+
+  _Washington Irving_, 125
+
+  _Waterloo_, 104
+
+  West Indiamen, 90
+
+  West Indies Service, 121
+
+  _Wexford_, 98
+
+  Whall, Captain W. B., 141, 142, 143
+
+  White Star Line, 157, 183, 187, 188, 191, 194, 196, 198, 200, 202, 211
+
+  Wigrams, The, 77, 94, 104, 115, 116, 135, 144, 145, 146, 172
+
+  _William Fawcett_, 180
+
+  Willoughby, Sir Hugh, 59
+
+  Wilson, Captain Henry, 98
+
+  _Windham_, 112
+
+  _Windsor Castle_, 147
+
+  Woermann Line, 208
+
+  _Woodford_, 97
+
+  _Worcester_, 146, 243
+
+  World’s Biggest Ship, 206
+
+  Wreckers, 23
+
+
+  MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN.
+  RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
+  PRINTERS, BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber’s Notes
+
+  pg 43 Changed: pilgrim trade to Santiago de Campostela
+             To: pilgrim trade to Santiago de Compostela
+
+  pg 122 Changed: between Yarmouth and Helvoetsluis in Holland
+              To: between Yarmouth and Hellevoetsluis in Holland
+
+  pg 128 Changed: Inverness, Brassey Sound, Kirkwall, Oban
+              To: Inverness, Bressay Sound, Kirkwall, Oban
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78205 ***
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+    </style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78205 ***</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 85%">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" data-role="presentation">
+</div>
+<br>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="pageborder">
+    <p class="center no-indent fs120"><em>BOOKS ON THE SEA BY</em>
+    <br>
+    E. KEBLE CHATTERTON
+  </p>
+<hr class="full">
+
+<p class="center no-indent"><em>HISTORICAL</em></p>
+
+<p class="no-indent">
+  Q-SHIPS AND THEIR STORY<br>
+  SAILING SHIPS AND THEIR STORY<br>
+  SHIPS AND WAYS OF OTHER DAYS<br>
+  FORE AND AFT: THE STORY OF THE FORE AND AFT RIG<br>
+  STEAMSHIPS AND THEIR STORY<br>
+  THE ROMANCE OF THE SHIP<br>
+  THE STORY OF THE BRITISH NAVY<br>
+  KING’S CUTTERS AND SMUGGLERS<br>
+  THE ROMANCE OF PIRACY<br>
+  THE OLD EAST INDIAMEN
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="center no-indent"><em>CRUISES</em></p>
+
+<p class="no-indent">
+  DOWN CHANNEL IN THE “VIVETTE”<br>
+  THROUGH HOLLAND IN THE “VIVETTE”
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<h1>
+THE MERCANTILE MARINE
+</h1>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<hr class="double">
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="no-indent">The Life of Sir Ernest Shackleton.
+By <em>Dr. Hugh R. Mill</em>. Demy 8vo. Illustrated.</p>
+
+<p class="no-indent">
+  Price about 21<em>s.</em> net.
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="no-indent">The Life &amp; Letters of Walter H.
+Page. By <em>Burton J. Hendrick</em>. In two volumes.
+Sixth impression. Demy 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+  36<em>s.</em> net.
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="no-indent">The Letters of Lord &amp; Lady Wolseley.
+Edited by <em>Sir George Arthur.</em> Second impression,
+with a new index. Demy 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+  25<em>s.</em> net.
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="no-indent">Knole &amp; the Sackvilles. By <em>V. Sackville-West</em>.
+With many illustrations. Second impression.
+Demy 8vo.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+  25<em>s.</em> net.
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="no-indent">Woodrow Wilson &amp; World Settlement.
+By <em>Ray Stannard Baker</em>. In three volumes.
+Demy 8vo. Vols. I &amp; II, 36<em>s.</em> net. Vol. III
+(sold separately)</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+  18<em>s.</em> net.
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="double">
+<br>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="a0040_frontispiece_2" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/a0040_frontispiece.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+
+    <p class="center no-indent">H.E. INDIA COMPANY’S SHIP “WILLIAM FAIRLIE.”<br>
+
+    Commanded by Captain Thomas Blair, leaving the harbour of Prince of Wales’ Island. About 1828.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center no-indent wsp">
+  <span class="fs150" style="color: blue">THE</span><br>
+  <span class="fs200" style="color: blue">MERCANTILE MARINE</span><br>
+  <br>
+  <br>
+  <span class="fs80">BY</span><br>
+  <span class="bold fs120">E. KEBLE CHATTERTON</span></p>
+  <br>
+  <br>
+  <figure class="figcenter illowp15" id="title" style="max-width: 9.375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/title.jpg" alt="">
+</figure>
+  <br>
+  <br>
+<p class="center no-indent bold wsp"><span class="fs90">LONDON</span><br>
+  WILLIAM HEINEMANN, LTD.
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center no-indent fs70">
+  <em>First published, 1923</em><br>
+  <br>
+  <br>
+  <em>Printed in Great Britain</em>
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</span></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="PREFACE">
+    PREFACE
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>This volume is an attempt to trace the history of
+the Mercantile Marine, and to show the reader how
+much we owe to our ancestors for the ingenuity,
+enterprise, courage and perseverance by which the
+Merchant Service has been built up for the good
+of nations, the increase of trade and the spread of
+civilisation.</p>
+
+<p>In other volumes I have endeavoured to trace
+the history of ships. The subject here considered
+is the birth and growth of a sea service, without
+which the navies of the world become useless and
+indeed could never have been brought into being.
+It is high time that the public appreciated all that
+is meant by the term Mercantile Marine.</p>
+
+<p>The part played by commercial ships as fighting
+craft during the recent war does not enter into this
+book. This section was largely treated of in my
+<cite>Q-Ships and Their Story</cite>, and other writers have
+drawn attention to the dangers and difficulties of
+freighters and passenger ships carrying on through
+the period of hostilities. Those four years form so
+small a chapter in the thousands of years during
+which the trader has been winning its way across
+the seas, that it is unnecessary to deal with them
+here. Our aim is rather to consider the progress of
+the Mercantile Marine as a whole, from the earliest
+times to the latest liner development.</p>
+
+<p>The story here submitted is the result of many
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</span>years of research, travel and ship study. I have
+had access to many manuscripts and printed books
+too numerous to mention. I desire to return thanks
+to Messrs. T. H. Parker, 12<span class="allsmcap">A</span> Berkeley Street, W.,
+for permission to use some invaluable, rare prints;
+and to the Cunard and White Star Lines for certain
+other illustrations of a magnificent service.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+  <span class="smcap">E. Keble Chatterton.</span>
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">
+    CONTENTS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<table class="autotable">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr fs70">
+CHAP.
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+</td>
+<td class="tdr fs70">
+PAGE
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+I.
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+INTRODUCTION
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_1">1</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+II.
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+THE DEMAND FOR MERCHANT SHIPPING
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_7">7</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+III.
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+THE MEDITERRANEAN MERCANTILE MARINE
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_17">17</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+IV.
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+THE MERCHANT SHIPS OF THE NORTH
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_30">30</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+V.
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+THE GROWTH OF THE MERCANTILE MARINE
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_42">42</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+VI.
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+THE MERCANTILE MARINE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_53">53</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+VII.
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+FISHERMEN AND MERCHANTMEN
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_62">62</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+VIII.
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SEAFARIN
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_75">75</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+IX.
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+MERCANTILE SUPREMACY AT SEA
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_90">90</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+X.
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+MIGHTY MERCHANTMEN
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_103">103</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+XI.
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+PACKET SHIPS AND BRIGS
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_119">119</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+XII.
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+THE SAIL-CARRIERS
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_134">134</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+XIII.
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+CRACKING-ON
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_150">150</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+XIV.
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+THE TRIUMPH OF STEAM
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_168">168</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+XV.
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+THE IRON AND STEEL AGE
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_182">182</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+XVI.
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+THE MODERN MERCHANT SHIP
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_194">194</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+XVII.
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+THE RISE AND FALL OF THE GERMAN MERCANTILE MARINE
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_208">208</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+XVIII.
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+THE AMERICAN MERCANTILE MARINE
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_220">220</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+XIX.
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+THE MINOR MERCANTILE MARINES
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_229">229</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+XX.
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+THE FUTURE OF THE MERCANTILE MARINE
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_238">238</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+APPENDIX
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_246">246</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">
+</td>
+<td class="tdlp">
+INDEX
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#Page_249">249</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS">
+    LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<table class="autotable">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+</td>
+<td class="tdr fs70">
+<em>Facing page</em>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+H.E. INDIA COMPANY’S SHIP “WILLIAM FAIRLIE”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr fs70">
+<em><a href="#a0040_frontispiece_2">Frontispiece</a></em>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DUTCH EAST INDIAMEN
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p0741_ill1">74</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+SIGNAL CODE
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p0741_ill2">74</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+CAPTAIN THOMAS FORREST
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p0901_ill">90</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+BRUNSWICK DOCK, BLACKWALL
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p0921_ill">92</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+CAPTAIN HENRY WILSON
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p0981_ill1">98</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+CAPTAIN HON. RICHARD WALPOLE
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p0981_ill2">98</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+COMMODORE SIR NATHANIEL DANCE
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p0981_ill3">98</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+SIR WILLIAM JAMES, BART.
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p0981_ill4">98</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+A CONVOY OF EAST INDIAMEN
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1121_ill">112</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+A FINE PIECE OF SEAMANSHIP
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1181_ill">118</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+CAPTAIN W. ROGERS
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1221_ill1">122</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+CAPTAIN JOSEPH HUDDART, F.R.S.
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1221_ill2">122</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+S.S. “NORTHUMBERLAND”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1441_ill">144</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+AUXILIARY S.S. “KENT”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1461_ill">146</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+S.S. “NORFOLK”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1481_ill">148</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+SAILING NOTICE OF THE WHITE STAR CLIPPER “RED JACKET”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1561_ill">156</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+CRACKING-ON!
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1581_ill">158</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+SPARS AND STAYS
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1601_ill">160</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+PORT OF LIVERPOOL
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1641_ill1">164</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+SCREW S.S. “LADY JOCELYN”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1641_ill2">164</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+AUXILIARY SCREW S.S. “INDOMITABLE”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1661_ill">166</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+LORD YARBOROUGH’S YACHT “FALCON”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1681_ill">168</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+CLIPPER SCREW S.S. “HELLENIS”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1701_ill1">170</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+S.S. “ORINOCO”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1701_ill2">170</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+TWO EARLY MAIL STEAMSHIPS
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1801_ill">180</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+S.S. “TRIDENT”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1821_ill">182</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+THE “ROBERT F. STOCKTON”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1841_ill1">184</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+AN EARLY CROSS-CHANNEL STEAMER
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1841_ill2">184</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+THE FAMOUS “GREAT EASTERN”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1861_ill">186</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+THE FAMOUS “GREAT EASTERN”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1881_ill">188</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+S.S. “OCEANIC”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1901_ill">190</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+S.S. “SULTAN”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1921_ill">192</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+S.S. “ORIENT”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1923_ill">192</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+S.S. “SPAIN”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1941_ill">194</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+THE “BRITANNIC”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1961_ill1">196</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+THE “CAMPANIA”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1961_ill2">196</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+BERTHING A BIG LINER
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p1981_ill">198</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+MODERN NAVIGATION
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p2001_ill">200</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+S.S. “BERENGARIA”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p2021_ill">202</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+S.S. “OLYMPIC”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p2041_ill1">204</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+S.S. “MAJESTIC”
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p2041_ill2">204</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+ON THE BRIDGE OF THE WORLD’S BIGGEST SHIP
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p2061_ill">206</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+BIG SHIP MASTERS
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p2081_ill1">208</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+STOKEHOLD OF AN OIL-FUEL CUNARDER
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p2161_ill1">216</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+STARTING PLATFORM
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p2161_ill2">216</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+A FAST-DISAPPEARING SHIP TYPE
+</td>
+<td class="tdr">
+<a href="#p2361_ill">236</a>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</span>  <br>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">
+    CHAPTER I
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">INTRODUCTION</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>It is curious to observe how thoroughly most of
+us are the slaves of habit, how limited we are in
+our imagination and sympathies until something
+surprising, far-reaching and inevitable upsets our
+routine, introduces a new force into our life and
+compels us to take note of fresh interests.</p>
+
+<p>Until the recent war most people took the Mercantile
+Marine for granted. In a vague sort of way
+the average person believed in it, but rarely if ever
+stopped to consider what it meant or whether it
+had any history. It was sufficient to concede the
+fact that there were steamers running every week
+to most parts of the globe, and that passengers and
+goods could be carried as convenient. But there was
+not the same enthusiasm extended to the Mercantile
+Marine as there was to the doings of the Royal
+Navies; and unless some new mammoth steamship
+advertised herself by her size, speed or luxury, the
+Merchant Service was allowed to continue its all-important
+work unheeded and almost despised.</p>
+
+<p>But then came the sudden change, which gave
+an entirely different viewpoint. How few of us
+ever realise our good fortune until it is taken away
+from our hold! The increasing success of the
+U-boat campaign, culminating in the enormous
+sinkings of merchantmen in April 1917, and the
+consequent shortage of food in the British Isles,
+caused the inhabitants for the first time in their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span>lives to appreciate all that they owed to the Mercantile
+Marine. It was then—and not till then—they
+reminded themselves that the food supplies,
+which formed the necessities of life, were brought
+into the country by a service whose very existence
+had almost been ignored.</p>
+
+<p>Every meal and every food-card, every little inconvenience
+in regard to hunger, henceforth turned
+people’s minds back to the prime cause; and those
+who had been the most ignorant of seafaring matters
+now began to think in terms of tonnage. From
+that time the average man and woman and school-child
+have never ceased to be thankful that we had
+a marine, whose duty was not to fight, but to
+keep us supplied with the essentials of existence.
+Admiral of the Fleet Earl Beatty recently said that
+the Mercantile Marine was a branch of that great
+sea service without which the British Empire would
+cease to exist. In a normal year, he said, the
+amount of food supplies forming the necessities of
+life which are brought into the British Isles and
+taken out consists of 150,000,000 tons. Without
+the one service to carry these food supplies, and
+the Royal Navy to protect the commercial craft on
+their lawful occasions, the reader can now well
+imagine how long starvation would be kept away.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we are about to trace the story of a service
+that is not merely well deserving of our interest
+and enthusiasm, but is in itself so fascinating that
+we shall feel almost ashamed that we never conceded
+so much attention until harsh circumstances compelled
+us to reflect. In order to maintain our
+bread and meat supplies, in order to prevent overseas
+trade from utterly vanishing during those
+terrible years of hostilities, 15,000 men of the
+Mercantile Marine perished. That in itself would
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span>be a sufficient reason for inquiring into the history
+of their service; but, quite apart from that, there
+is the plea that the Mercantile Marine is the older
+of the two branches of the sea service, for out of it
+grew the fighting service only years after man had
+learnt to handle vessels.</p>
+
+<p>Over those far-distant periods when the ancient
+seaman was groping his way towards knowledge we
+shall not require to spend much time. In other
+volumes I have already traced the evolution of the
+ship from a crude creature to a thing of beauty.
+Nor shall we need to be concerned with the horrors
+of war. Our task is the pleasant and glorious study
+of watching brave men creating a peaceable marine
+that will be the means of interchanging commerce
+over seas at first uncharted; bringing back new
+ideas and then taking out civilisation. All the
+time it is one big struggle, varying only in kind
+and intensity. It is one long, strenuous effort to
+achieve; and because it is all so human it demands
+our attention all the while, as we sympathise with
+the incessant attempts to overcome all sorts of
+obstacles.</p>
+
+<p>The human race springs from the land: consequently
+all the arts of the sea have to be learnt
+from the beginning, and this means centuries of
+experience, many disappointments and enormous
+faith and courage. But human aspirations cannot
+be gainsaid. Progress will not be denied. Man is
+not content to remain where he was, and that
+is the basis of the whole story. The Egyptians
+created their Mercantile Marine almost exclusively
+for the Nile. It was the Phœnicians who felt the
+overwhelming desire to traverse the Mediterranean,
+and even to go outside the gates we call the Straits
+of Gibraltar. The Greeks inherited from the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span>Phœnicians a ship which they modified but little,
+as the Phœnicians had from the Egyptians.</p>
+
+<p>But whereas the Egyptians were a peace-loving
+race, and therefore their ships were not built for
+fighting, we find the Greeks constructing two distinct
+types of craft, and it is important to get this
+quite clear at once, as the reader will presently
+agree. First there was the swift-moving galley,
+relying chiefly on oars. She was built for the purposes
+of fighting, and therefore does not enter into
+our subject. But secondly there was the slow-moving,
+big-bellied craft, relying almost entirely
+on her one mast and sail, which was used for the
+purpose of trade from spring to autumn, and then
+laid up until the good weather returned once more.
+Think of her with her great square-sail going across
+to Egypt to bring back corn, calling at Rhodes
+on the way, getting caught in terrible weather,
+but year after year, century after century, doing
+the same voyages as a new generation of seamen
+grew up.</p>
+
+<p>So it was with the Roman merchant ships from
+every March to November, blundering on their trans-Mediterranean
+voyages as corn-carriers. These
+seamen were, as always sailors have been and will
+be, a race apart. In the mind of most people
+nobody but a fool or a madman ever takes up a
+seafaring career. Seamen were very scarce and
+had to be allowed special privileges; and merchants
+who travelled in their ships marvelled that they
+could use the stars for finding their way over the
+dark waters at night. But the transportation of
+goods over the sea had to be done. The shipowners
+formed themselves into corporations, and membership
+was handed down from father to son, much as
+it is in a fishing village to-day.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span></p>
+
+<p>One of the oldest professions is that of piracy.
+In those days a pirate was not so much a sea bandit
+as a sea adventurer; the Greek word <em>peirates</em> and
+its Latin equivalent signifying one who <em>attempts</em> or
+<em>tries</em> his fortune on the sea, much as we speak of
+the Elizabethan “venturers.” None the less, until
+the growth of naval power piracy always was the
+great enemy of the merchant ship; and even in
+Roman times it at length became so serious that
+drastic measures had to be taken to stamp it out,
+only to keep on recurring like a cancerous growth
+until the age of steam practically wiped it out
+except in Chinese waters. Over and over again in
+the following chapters we shall see the innocent,
+cargo-carrying ship molested in this manner; but,
+for all that, the seaman’s spirit remained undaunted,
+and the trade of the world continued to be carried
+over the seas in spite of these known risks. As it
+was in the Mediterranean, so it was later on in the
+North Sea.</p>
+
+<p>From about 580 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> right down to the time of the
+Roman conquest, the Liparian Isles were practically
+a republic of corsairs. The Ionians and the Lycians
+were notorious pirates: the Ægean, the Pontus
+and the Adriatic were the corsairs’ cruising grounds.
+The Cretans, the inhabitants of the Balearic Islands,
+the Cilicians, the Carthaginians, the Illyrians and
+others, also, were the piratical terrors to the Mediterranean
+merchant ships; and it was only as long
+as Rome maintained a strong navy that the cancerous
+growth was kept under, though not finally
+eradicated. Thus, in those early periods when
+there was little enough to encourage it, the Mercantile
+Marine of classical times struggled along,
+comparatively small in numbers compared with the
+fleets of fighting galleys, but historically of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span>highest importance, since from this small flame was
+to burst a great blaze of light that has illumined
+the world; spread Christianity and civilisation,
+learning, exploration, trade and peace. Those little,
+beamy, single-sail, unhandy craft wallowing in the
+Mediterranean seas, suffering so much at the hands
+of pirates, buffeted about by storms and compelled
+to spend such long periods away from their home
+ports, were playing a lonely, uphill game; but they
+were achieving more than they could ever realise in
+the development of the world. Pioneers of the sea,
+undertaking the utmost risks, they have made all
+subsequent centuries their debtors as long as ships
+continue to be built and the seas shall be traversed.
+Such, briefly, are the first stage and the very remote
+period of the merchant ship in its long and glorious
+evolution of usefulness. Let us now see how, influenced
+by progressive trade, the Mediterranean
+continued to develop its shipping.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">
+    CHAPTER II
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">THE DEMAND FOR MERCHANT SHIPPING</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In our own age so many amazing developments
+have taken place during the nineteenth and
+twentieth centuries that we must not be misled.
+These are the exceptions and not the rule in
+history. Between the merchant ships of the late
+Roman Empire and of the next few centuries there
+is no evidence to cause us to think the ships
+materially altered. On the contrary, what little
+evidence we have goes to show that the cargo ship,
+with her mast, yard and square-sail, continued to
+be much the same in the thirteenth century as she
+was in the third, if we add a mizzen-mast and a
+lateen sail.</p>
+
+<p>But all this time the Mediterranean trade had
+been developing, and collaterally there was developed
+a Mercantile Marine. As the years sped
+by, there came greater demands for the merchant
+ship. Thus in the epistles of Cassiodorus, who
+was prætorian prefect under Theodoric (<span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> 495-526),
+there is a dispatch to the tribunes of the
+“maritimi,” or men of the seaboard, bidding them
+provide for the transport of wine from Istria to
+Ravenna; and there is a reference to the frequent
+voyages over the “immense spaces of the sea.”&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_1_1" href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span>By the eighth century Venice was becoming a
+great trading port, and its merchants were realising
+what the sea meant to them in regard to wealth.
+Indeed, they even went so far as to sell Christian
+men as slaves to the Saracens in Africa, thus
+incurring the Pope’s censure.</p>
+
+<p>To Constantinople Venetian merchant ships
+sailed with goods or passengers, as, for instance,
+in the year 968, carrying Bishop Luitprand thither.
+In fact, by the year 1000 the city of Venice was
+pre-eminent in commerce, and its princes were
+merchants. Overseas trading was at last recognised
+as a means to wealth, and so, inevitably, by
+about 1171 the Venetian Navy becomes organised.
+That was bound to come as soon as the Mercantile
+Marine became important; but it was arranged
+rather on the lines of our Naval Reserve. For all
+ordinary occasions it consisted of volunteers, for
+whose service there was payment, and these
+citizens were also entitled to prize money.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, throughout nautical history the navies
+of the world have always been based on the
+Merchant Service. In these early days of Venice,
+while Dalmatia, Istria and other communities supplied
+the men, Venice provided the ships and
+rigging, the rest of the inventory and the crew
+being forthcoming from the dependencies. Finally,
+in the time of emergency hired seamen were
+obtained from foreign countries with whom the
+Venetian commercial ships had traded.</p>
+
+<p>He who visits Venice, or is familiar with Ruskin’s
+<cite>Stones of Venice</cite>, or at least has admired in some
+gallery the paintings of the great Venetian masters,
+must inevitably think of the sea. Those richly
+designed palaces, those luxuriant examples of architecture
+and art, were expressive of a city grown
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span>wealthy by reason of her sea trade. Her merchants
+amassed wealth because their ships enabled them
+to trade—the sea is, in fact, the greatest road to
+riches. And the history of Phœnicia, Egypt,
+Greece, Rome, Venice, Portugal, Spain, Holland,
+England in the past, and quite recently Germany,
+Japan and the United States, is the story of overseas
+trade by means of merchant shipping. Most
+important of all have always been the sea routes
+to the Orient, for Eastern produce has ever fetched
+high prices in European countries. As we look
+through the centuries of sea trade it was the
+fascination of the East which spurred men to
+build, fit out and sail ships. It was this which
+gave the incentive to make navigation a science;
+it was this which created the spirit to explore
+unknown seas; it was this which sent Columbus,
+later on, to the West in the hope of finding the
+East Indies. The whole story of the East India
+Company—indeed of our Indian Empire—is built
+up on the invaluable products which could be
+fetched thence by peaceable shipping.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the seventh century that the twelve
+townships decided to elect one supreme magistrate,
+called the “doge.” Venice thus insisted on her
+own independence, and her geographical position
+enabled her to rise into a consummate commercial
+state. Not merely did she eventually dominate
+the Adriatic, but step by step she absorbed all the
+carrying trade of the world. Keen, enterprising
+men of vision and foresight, these Venetian merchants
+went far afield, in spite of the difficulties
+and dangers of travel. For centuries the Chinese
+had been sending merchant ships as far west as
+Ceylon, whence Indian ships carried the silk and
+other goods a stage further west to the Persian
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span>Gulf; and afterwards, as there was no Suez Canal,
+a land journey intervened until the Mediterranean
+was reached. Thus, by the early years of the
+Middle Ages, the Venetian ships of commerce
+brought across the Mediterranean and up the
+Adriatic the costly skins, the peacocks’ tails, the
+purple garments and other enviable articles which
+had come from India, the Caspian shores and elsewhere.
+In the end, Venice captured the great
+trade to India and China, and Constantinople was
+left behind in the competition.</p>
+
+<p>But that was not all. Already by the seventh
+century the rise of Moslem power had become
+such that in southern Europe Arab dominion
+had obtained control of the Levant and Egypt.
+Presently the whole of the north African coast,
+from the Nile to the Atlantic, fell under this sway,
+and during the eighth century the Arabs overran
+Spain, southern and central France, until in the
+same century they were forced back across the
+Pyrenees. How does this affect the rise of
+the Mercantile Marine? The answer is this. The
+Arabs were excellent sailors who were also expert
+navigators, and incidentally the very word “admiral,”
+which still survives in the sea service of
+all civilised powers, is an Arabic word. The Arabs
+took to trading, and that meant the employment
+of ships in the Mediterranean; so they introduced
+the triangular lateen sail from east of Suez, and to
+this day the lateen has survived as the characteristic
+local sail of Mediterranean craft. Thus
+between Venice and Africa overseas trade was
+created, business made still further business, and
+that in turn created a demand for shipping and for
+men who would use the sea as a career. Later on
+it was the Arabs who were to teach the Spaniards
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span>and Portuguese so much about navigation that
+India and America were discovered.</p>
+
+<p>In the early years of the Middle Ages, then, we
+have the Arabian and the Venetian ships trading
+about the Mediterranean, though frequently the
+former became corsairs and made havoc of the latter,
+even going to the length of raiding the Adriatic.
+But so far the peaceable Venetian craft were literally
+merchant ships: they existed for the purpose
+of carrying merchandise. There enters now another
+element—religion. The Catholic faith, trade,
+pilgrims, crusades and Arabs—all these influences
+had the greatest possible effect on the development
+of merchant shipping. It will be remembered
+that in the seventh century the Arabs had wrested
+the Holy Land from the Eastern Empire, but it
+was not until the latter part of the eleventh
+century that western Europe was really moved to
+action. Finally, in 1095, a holy war against the
+infidel was resolved, and there followed the first
+crusade; and in this expedition Venetian ships
+took part. The most famous crusade of all was
+that in which the English king Richard Cœur de
+Lion engaged, and this ended in a truce with
+Saladin by September 1192, on the understanding
+that pilgrims should be permitted to visit Jerusalem
+without being interfered with by the Moslems.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, we have in the fact of the Holy Land a
+magnetic attraction for the ship. In order to
+carry armies and horses and pilgrims, whether
+from England or Venice, to the coast of Syria,
+you must needs have large numbers of ships,
+and of fair size and seaworthiness. This series of
+voyages created also a much larger body of seamen
+and amassed a tremendous amount of sea-knowledge
+from experience. In a word, then, it was a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span>new and enormous impetus to the development of
+the world’s Mercantile Marine, as opposed to the
+purely warlike fast-moving naval galley. The
+demand now was for tonnage—to carry human
+beings as well as goods. Thus, notwithstanding
+that the crusades originated from a strictly religious
+motive, actually they exercised a most remarkable
+stimulus on trade, shipping and travel. Men who
+had never been previously outside their own city
+or village became acquainted with the sea, strange
+ships, new lands and novel ideas. They returned
+home with fresh aspirations, the desire to carry
+on extended commerce, and the realisation that
+shipping was the key to future riches.</p>
+
+<p>To trace the fitting out of all the crusades
+would be to go outside the scope of our immediate
+subject, but it is enough if we look for a moment
+at the direct effect crusading had on the Venetian
+shipping industry. The gates, so to speak, whence
+middle Europe could gain access to the Holy Land
+were Venice, Genoa and Marseilles. Seven years
+after Richard Cœur de Lion had made the truce
+with Saladin and left Palestine, a new crusade was
+being prepared for; and inasmuch as Venice was so
+distinguished a seaport, envoys came to arrange
+for large quantities of shipping. Landsmen knew
+practically nothing about the sea and ships. They
+were no better informed than the farmer of to-day
+resident all his life in the middle of the United
+States; so they arrived asking for advice, information
+and generally to be put in the way of obtaining
+tonnage sufficient to carry 4500 knights, 9000
+squires and 20,000 men-at-arms. This was no
+small order, even for Venice, quite apart from the
+further request for fifty armed galleys to accompany
+and protect the expedition. It meant, in fact, the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span>creation of an immense Mercantile Marine at
+really quite short notice. Indeed it was comparatively
+a much bigger task than the sudden
+demand for tonnage in 1917 and 1918, when the
+thousands and thousands of soldiers had to be
+packed into steamships and brought from North
+America to Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Venice rose to the occasion, for it was not merely
+a matter of business to provide the shipping, but
+a matter of religion. The Holy Sepulchre was
+in the hands of the infidels: that in itself was a
+sufficient inspiration. And so about Pentecost in
+the year 1202 we can see the hordes of pilgrims
+pouring down through the various passes of the
+Alps to Venice. It was a huge business, and
+action in those days was slow and, to our modern
+minds, dilatory. But the Venetians had got the
+ships ready for the knights and squires and men
+and horses, though it was autumn before they put
+to sea. Some of the cloth and provisions had
+arrived in Venice in French ships via the Straits
+of Gibraltar, and eventually, on October 9, the
+galleys and horseboats set forth from the Adriatic
+port, and a month later appeared before Zara.</p>
+
+<p>During the Middle Ages the three great maritime
+powers were Venice, Genoa and Pisa, and
+between them there was the greatest rivalry, so
+that scarcely ever did two of the parties meet than
+there was conflict. But Venice, being the pre-eminent,
+incurred the greatest amount of jealousy.
+The part which Venice and Genoa played in maritime
+history is not confined to what they did in any
+particular century, but lies rather in the fact that
+they kept alive and developed the seaman’s art;
+until, at the beginning of the fourteenth century,
+the Venetians made a crude map which put into
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span>form the ideas that inspired the first Italian voyages
+in the Atlantic, and Genoa in the next century
+produced Columbus, who, after being wrecked in
+a sea-fight with some Venetian galleys off the
+Portuguese coast, settled down in Lisbon and
+eventually set forth on his historic voyage to the
+West.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since the second Punic War Genoa had
+been a big and important seaport. Becoming a
+free city in 958, she had suffered much from the
+Saracen raids, but when these infidel corsairs seemed
+likely to establish themselves in Sardinia at the
+beginning of the eleventh century, the Genoese and
+Pisan seamen united together against a common
+foe, fitted out an expedition and hurled the Arab
+chief back to Africa. In 1087 the Genoese and
+Pisans were sent by the Pope to dislodge one
+Temim, a pirate chief who lived south of Tunis.
+The result was important to the shipping industry;
+for, having beaten him and captured his stronghold,
+the two cities stipulated for the free admission
+of their merchant ships to trade with the Tunisian
+coast. Thus, in clearing the seas of corsairs for
+a time, they also directly stimulated their own
+commerce.</p>
+
+<p>Pisan merchant ships as far back as 1052 had
+been trading to Egypt and the Levant, and in
+1063 Ingulf, Abbot of Croyland in England, had
+returned from a pilgrimage in a Genoese merchant
+ship he had found at Jaffa. But it was not until
+the year 1090 that the conquest of Sicily was
+effected from the Mussulman hands, and thus the
+Straits of Messina became safe for shipping, and
+the vessels from Genoa and Pisa could go ahead
+in safety with their Levantine trade. By the
+twelfth century, Genoese, Venetian and Pisan seamen
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span>and merchants used to meet at Acre, to their
+great financial benefit, though not without manifestations
+of commercial jealousy. But we must
+dismiss from our minds all thoughts of single ships
+sailing across from Italy to the Syrian coast when
+they liked. There was hardly a time when there
+were not some pirates or corsairs hovering about;
+so the seas might be rid of one chief, but rendered
+dangerous by the rovings of another. Thus it was
+that shipowners had to do exactly what British
+mercantile owners were compelled to resort to in
+the latter part of the Great War, when the enemy
+was attacking so many of our trading craft—the
+convoy system had to be employed.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, from Venice, for instance, at regular
+intervals a convoy of merchant ships would sail
+for Acre, escorted by as many as thirty or forty
+galleys sometimes, as protection against piratical
+attack. If the Venice-Acre trade route were cut,
+it would mean that the French, the Germans, the
+Lombards, the Tuscans and other merchants would
+not receive the silks, sugar, pepper and other very
+valuable Oriental produce which the Venetians
+were bringing across in their ships. Thus the navy
+of Venice was charged with the duty of protecting
+its merchant fleet from the attacks of Genoese,
+Greek or Arab pirates. Just as during our recent
+war convoys used to collect at Falmouth and other
+ports prior to beginning their ocean voyage, so in
+the Middle Ages the convoy—called a <em>mudia</em>—would
+collect at Venice, bound for Syria or Egypt.
+There were only two convoys in the year, so the
+number of ships was large, and well needed the
+strong galley protection. One convoy left Venice
+in the spring and got back home in September;
+the other left in August, spent the winter abroad,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span>and returned in the following May. In addition
+to these commercial convoys, there were also the
+pilgrim convoys to Palestine. Genoa sent one
+convoy a year to Syria and Egypt, but during the
+fourteenth century her ships were cruising in the
+Black Sea and harassing Venetian craft which had
+penetrated the Sea of Azov.</p>
+
+<p>Sea-travel in those mediæval times was thus
+no pleasure cruise: it was comparable only to the
+anxious experiences of passengers at the height of
+the recent submarine campaign. Except for religion
+or trade, no one ever thought of going to sea. It
+was too dangerous an undertaking, so punctuated
+with storms, and in all respects so thoroughly
+uncomfortable, that it was to be avoided as far as
+possible. Consequently those who used it as a
+living expected to be paid very handsomely. It is
+difficult in these modern times, with all the safety
+and luxury which a steamship connotes, to realise
+the horror with which all seafaring was regarded.
+The result was that artists hesitated to depict marine
+subjects; and even when they did, it was usually
+to show a ship having a dreadful time in heavy
+weather. It is for that reason that illustrations of
+mediæval ships are so few, either in stained-glass
+windows, carvings, devotional books, or paintings.
+People had no wish to be reminded of what was
+to them a very unpleasant subject, except to those
+hardened few who preferred ship-life to agriculture
+or trade ashore. Unlike present-day conditions,
+the merchant himself was compelled to go to sea.
+There was no other means of his reaching his
+markets; but he was heartily thankful to get
+himself and his goods safe into port.</p>
+<br>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_1_1" href="#FNanchor_1_1" class="label">[1]</a> <cite>The Early History of Venice</cite>, by F. C. Hodgson. London,
+1901. I wish also to acknowledge indebtedness to the same
+author’s <cite>Venice in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries</cite>.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span></p>
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">
+    CHAPTER III
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">THE MEDITERRANEAN MERCANTILE MARINE</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>It is fortunately possible to obtain from various
+sources an insight into life as it was endured in a
+mediæval Mediterranean merchant ship, and this
+will assist us considerably to form a sympathetic
+interest in the development which was going on
+towards the ideal craft that was to evolve five or
+six hundred years later.</p>
+
+<p>On a tomb in a church at Milan, a Pisan artist
+named Balduccio in the year 1339 sculptured,
+fortunately for our knowledge, a merchant ship of
+his time, and we may regard her as typical alike
+of Venice, Genoa and Pisa. There is remarkably
+little difference in essentials between her and a
+Roman merchant ship of about <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> 200: that is to
+say, the trading shipmen, having once found out a
+suitable type, stuck to it, just as to-day there is a
+more or less standard type of tramp steamer or
+steam trawler or steam drifter. Time had tested
+and given its approval. Thus in Balduccio’s
+illustration we have a round, beamy vessel not
+unlike the shape of a very fat banana, and with a
+stern sweeping up from the water-line not altogether
+unlike that of the so-called modern “cruiser stern.”
+The essential difference is that this stern culminates
+in two small decks—a stern-castle, in fact,
+and a forecastle, much smaller, overhanging the
+bows. There is also a fighting-top.</p>
+
+<p>Although this is emphatically a cargo vessel,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>these castles and fighting-top are there for the
+reasons already indicated by existing conditions at
+sea, and in this elaborate castellation with even small
+galleries aft we have the half-way house between
+the earlier and later Mediterranean merchantman:
+between the cargo-carrier of Rome and the carack,
+which was to develop into the galleon, thence
+into the East Indiaman, and eventually into the
+glorious clippers of the late nineteenth century.
+Thus this Pisan ship is for us most interesting,
+and she still links herself to primitive times by the
+use of one single square-sail and the old-fashioned
+method of steering by means of a rudder, not aft,
+but on the quarter. It is controlled by a tiller,
+but supported by tackles fore and aft, for it is now
+as heavy as a Thames sailing barge’s leeboards.</p>
+
+<p>Everything about this Pisan craft indicates that
+she was well and strongly built, and that expense
+was not spared. The elaborate work in her stern
+galleries, the influence of contemporary land architecture
+on her forecastle, the stout, thick rubbing
+strakes under which the ends of the beam come
+flush, the good strong rigging (three shrouds each
+side with tackles), the thick cable and the anchor
+secured to a shelf outside the hull on the starboard
+side—all these details show that the sculptor knew
+what he was depicting, and that the ship which
+he copied was a real sea-going vessel as used by
+genuine sailormen, and not the inaccurate muddled
+idea of an imaginative artist. The Pisans, the
+Venetians and Genoese were making plenty of
+money, and they could afford to send to sea a
+well-built, well-designed and well-found craft that
+would not cause the merchants to feel nervous
+about their valuable Eastern goods in the hold.</p>
+
+<p>With a mental picture before us of this slow,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>beamy, stout ship, built specially for seaworthiness
+and capacity to carry goods, rather than to excel
+in mobility, we can continue our study, and we
+shall be able to learn a great deal of the conditions
+prevailing in the mediæval Merchant Service if
+we examine the legal literature of the time. For
+obvious reasons, when there was so much coming
+and going and so much money at stake, maritime
+law began to assert itself from about the seventh
+century <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> onwards, until, about six centuries
+later, we have practically every contingency catered
+for. Between the eighth and the thirteenth
+centuries there was very little alteration in the
+ships, the navigation and the manner of sea-trading.
+The big change comes in the thirteenth
+century, when the commercial renaissance begins,
+which, thanks to these vessels, made the great
+literary and artistic renaissance possible, gave to
+the world the new learning, the golden age of art,
+and left behind those wonderful achievements in
+stone. The merchant ship, therefore, is the basis
+of all in life that we respect and venerate.</p>
+
+<p>By 1255 Venice had its maritime law, though
+it was the old so-called Rhodian sea-law,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_2_2" href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> which
+inspired the regulating of the mediæval merchant
+ships all the time. The size of a ship was reckoned
+not in tons, but in <em>amphoræ</em> or else in <em>modii</em>. An
+amphora represented about six gallons, a modios
+was the equivalent of about two gallons. Thus a
+ship with all her tackle was valued at fifty pieces
+of gold for every thousand modii of her capacity,
+though this was further varied according to her
+age. Port dues at Ancona, for instance, were
+calculated on the valuation of the ship.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span></p>
+
+<p>Now it is necessary once more to think of the
+conditions of service afloat in those days as something
+quite different from those in our modern
+Mercantile Marines, where, in spite of trades
+unions, the captain is supreme and the crew simply
+carry out his orders, and the passengers have to go
+wherever he takes them. In those days there was,
+comparatively speaking, little knowledge of the sea
+except what was obtained by personal experience.
+Thus a much-travelled merchant who went backwards
+and forwards each year to the East would
+be almost as competent as the master of the ship.
+Similarly the crew. The result was—and it seems
+very strange to us moderns—that the ship was run
+not on a well-disciplined principle, as every one
+obeying blindly the master’s orders, but on a
+communal basis, backed up by the maritime law.
+Sometimes, it is true, the sailors were paid fixed
+wages, in which case they were also given their
+food; but frequently they undertook the voyage
+on a profit-sharing basis. Thus the master received
+two shares, the steersman one and a half, the
+master’s mate one and a half, the boatswain one
+and a half, while each sailor got a whole share, and
+the cook half a share. It was therefore to the
+interest of all to do everything to get the ship
+safely from port to port.</p>
+
+<p>The little difference which existed between
+master, officers, men and merchants enabled them
+all in an emergency to offer their opinions as to
+weather, pilotage and so on, a decision being
+arrived at by the vote of the majority. All this
+sounds thoroughly unseamanlike to us, but that is
+because the seafaring art has long since become so
+perfect and systematised, and the division of labour
+recognised as a root essential. It was perfectly
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>legal for the merchants, with their valuable goods
+on board, to insist on the ship being taken into a
+harbour, or to prevent her putting to sea notwithstanding
+all the protests of the <em>naukleros</em> or
+shipmaster. The identity of ignorance among all
+on board, with the casting vote in favour of finance,
+bred chaos and ill-discipline, that had to be put
+down with a firm hand later on, as soon there arose
+competent navigators and specialists in seamanship;
+but the time had not yet come.</p>
+
+<p>No one can possibly envy the life in a merchant
+ship of the Middle Ages, with every possible
+opportunity for friction and the captain not allowed
+a free hand. The passenger came on board in fear
+and trepidation, bringing with him his own bed
+and bed-coverings, which, as happened in 1278, for
+instance, were stolen from him occasionally. A
+proper cabin he could not have, the sleeping space
+permitted to him being three cubits long and one
+cubit wide. Under the Venetian statutes every
+merchant or mariner could take on board free one
+mattress; the former could also have one trunk,
+but this was not allowed to his servant. The
+passengers brought with them for the voyage all
+their food, wine, cooking utensils, and even their
+firewood, but there were special precautions taken
+to guard against fire, which was one of the eternal
+terrors in all ships even down to the nineteenth
+century. Thus there is a curious regulation preventing
+passengers in Venetian ships from frying
+fish, and another forbidding them to split wood.
+Water was supplied free both to passengers and
+crew, but this was controlled by measure, for
+economical reasons.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived on board, the passenger would deposit
+his gold with the captain for safe keeping. He
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>lived on biscuits, salt meat, vegetables, cheese,
+onions, garlic and vinegar, and there was a
+Barcelona ordinance of 1258 which compelled the
+shipowner to keep a supply of food to last fifteen
+days, and this was to include bread, wine, salt
+meat, vegetables, oil and water. As regards
+victualling, cargo ships found it easier than pilgrim
+ships, for the former could usually hug the shore
+and put into the land for provisions. Indeed it
+was one of the characteristics of a good pilot that
+he knew where the ship could obtain fresh drinking
+water.</p>
+
+<p>The merchant, with his costly goods, out of
+which he hoped to make big profits, found himself
+in the company of rough mariners who were
+lacking the innocence of the carved saints in a
+cathedral. Thieving was going on all the time
+whenever there was a chance. Nowadays you
+sometimes hear one seaman describe another as so
+dishonest that he would steal the ship’s anchor if
+he could. It is an obvious exaggeration, but the
+expression was perfectly accurate in the times of
+which we are now speaking. There was a passage
+in the maritime law which dealt with this species
+of theft. Thus, it runs, if a ship not under way
+was robbed of her anchors, and the thief was caught
+and confessed, he was to be flogged and to make
+good twice the damage. Similarly, if a sailor
+robbed a merchant or the captain, he was to be
+punished, and there are penalties laid down against
+swearing, blasphemy and other vices.</p>
+
+<p>In these wooden ships, which often “worked,”
+and had to go through heavy weather, the merchant
+would sometimes find his beautiful Oriental
+silks ruined; so there was a regulation that when
+the water began to rise in the hold the captain was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span>to let the merchants know at once, so that they
+could bring their linens and silks up on deck. But
+apart from these risks there were those caused by
+bad seamanship, the attacks by pirates at sea or
+robbers in harbour, the evil men who did not
+hesitate to cut the cables of the visiting ship or
+waylay the merchants and crew as soon as they
+came ashore; and there were the wreckers who
+deliberately displayed false lights to lure the ship
+into destruction—surely one of the lowest of all
+maritime crimes that could be devised by the
+cunning of man.</p>
+
+<p>It was laid down that if a ship “in sail” ran into
+another ship lying at anchor, or which had
+“slackened sail,” and it was during daylight, the
+damage was to be borne by the captain, by those
+on board and by the cargo. But if the incident
+occurred at night, the man who “slackened sail”
+should have lit a fire or have shouted. Be it
+remembered that these merchant ships, though the
+most seaworthy of any craft then in existence, were
+very unhandy and not always under control in
+narrow channels. It was impossible for any regulation
+of man to prevent them encountering bad
+weather and even experiencing shipwreck, but by
+laying these ships up in November, and not allowing
+them to sail until the following March, the
+authorities were following the wise custom which
+had been handed down since classical times, and
+embodied this practice in their law. Against the
+corsair who attacked the ships of his country’s
+enemies, and against the pirate who attacked
+every ship that came his way, there could be no
+absolute guarantee unless the ship was in a convoy
+escorted by armed galleys.</p>
+
+<p>But these corsairs made no false pretence about
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>their work, and when in 1165 the Pisans asked
+Trepedecinus, a well-known Genoese corsair, where
+he was going, he merely replied that he was going
+to capture them, their goods, their persons and cut
+off their noses. It was therefore not unusual to
+carry in these trading ships some men-at-arms with
+swords, shields and helmets. Thus, in a charter-party
+of 1236 there is laid down that there are to
+be twenty-five mariners on board, of whom ten are
+to be in armour. Quite apart from the convoy
+system, it was customary for two or more ships to
+voyage in company for mutual protection, the
+technical term for this being <em>conservagium</em>. It was
+an arrangement that was mutual also in quite
+another manner, for if one of the ships was sunk,
+the loss was spread among the others in the consort—a
+still further instance of the sharing-out
+principle which was so common at sea in these
+times.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually, then, the Mercantile Marine had
+become indispensable to trade and to intellectual
+progress, but it was the growth of pilgrim traffic
+which made certain landsmen affluent; for now
+men called <em>cargatores</em>, or passenger agents, arranged
+the business of transporting these devout people
+across the sea, and therefore stringent regulations
+had to be passed to prevent the travellers from
+being fleeced. Thus the <em>cargatores</em> were compelled
+to supply the pilgrims with good and adequate
+victuals; and, in order to prevent any bribery or
+corruption, they were forbidden to enter into
+partnership with the shipowner in regard to the
+food. Of course this was no small undertaking at
+a period of the world’s history when there were no
+such things as preserved meats or refrigerating
+chambers, especially when the ships were crowded
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span>with a lot of sea-sick landsmen who had never
+previously beheld the sea. All those who voyaged
+from Venice or Marseilles had to carry enough
+food to last them for fifty days, and in those rough
+ships and the Mediterranean climate you can
+imagine the state of the food at the end of seven
+weeks. No wonder that a pilgrimage was a real
+act of self-denial!</p>
+
+<p>It was customary in classical times to give names
+to the Mediterranean ships, and this survived
+through the Middle Ages, where we find such
+names as <em>Urso</em>, <em>Oliva</em>, <em>Aquila</em>, <em>Christiana</em>, <em>Cidona</em>,
+<em>St. Blazius</em>. The Genoese ship went by the name
+of her shipmaster or owner. After she had been
+built and fitted out, the greatest care was taken to
+see that she was seaworthy and not overloaded.
+Thus the internal arrangements, the ballasting and
+stowing of goods in the hold were all supervised.
+The Venetian statutes kept a very tight control
+over their shipping, regulating the places where the
+cabins were to be put, where the sail locker should
+be, where the ship’s tackle was stored, and the
+sleeping arrangements both for the merchants and
+the sailors. No detail seems to have been too
+small for State supervision.</p>
+
+<p>The stowing of the cargo in the hold was left to
+the discretion of the shipmaster, and there was a
+kind of Plimsoll mark used in these Venetian
+ships; for this is what happened. On the outside
+of the hull a mark was put, the ship was then
+loaded and examined officially before setting forth
+on her voyage, and she was not allowed to proceed
+to sea if this mark was more than a certain depth
+below the water-line, this depth varying according
+to the ship’s age. If the mark were submerged
+too much, a sufficient quantity of cargo had to be
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span>taken out until she came up to her marks, and then
+the owner was fined. This was the general rule,
+but exceptions were made in the case of craft
+sailing within the Venetian Gulf or carrying
+victuals.</p>
+
+<p>The ballasting of the merchant ships was done
+either by the navigating officer or else under the
+direction of a committee composed of this officer
+and representatives of owners and merchants. But
+when once the vessel had been properly ballasted,
+it was forbidden to remove any ballast except for
+necessity in entering port, or with the consent
+of the merchants or committee, though certain
+heavy articles, such as lead, were permitted to be
+substituted for ballast. The heavy goods were,
+of course, placed as low as possible, though such
+articles as wrought silks and other light goods were
+allowed to be stowed on the upper deck, where
+also food, carpenter’s tools and armour could be
+placed.</p>
+
+<p>The owner of the ship was also at times her
+master, but when the owner did not himself go to
+sea and himself appointed the master, he contracted
+to carry the passengers and cargo, purchased the
+tackle and engaged the seamen. Right down to
+Elizabethan times the navigation of the ship was
+not necessarily carried out by the captain, but by
+the pilot, though in the early days of Mediterranean
+merchant shipping the masters seem to
+have been navigators as well, or, more accurately,
+pilots. If the ship got wrecked there was, according
+to an old constitution of <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> 380, a practice of
+obtaining the true facts of the incident in a manner
+far more drastic than a modern Board of Trade
+Inquiry; for certain members of the crew would
+be selected as witnesses, and they were then
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span>tortured until they should speak the whole truth
+and nothing but the truth.</p>
+
+<p>The communal idea even went to the length of
+having sometimes several skippers on the same
+ship, in order that no one should act without the
+consent of the others; and what with the interfering
+advice and remonstrances of the merchants
+and the not too disciplined crews, no mercantile
+officer of to-day would find mediæval seafaring
+endurable. The mariners could only be kept in
+check by the drastic law. Thus, if one of them
+injured another, the first was to pay his wages to
+the other during the whole time that the sick man
+was out of employment recovering. Conversely
+the captain was prevented from maltreating his
+men, and had to look after them. For instance, if
+the ship’s long boat with some of the crew in it
+should break adrift from the ship, the captain had
+to pay the lost men’s representatives their wages
+for a whole year, in those cases where the men
+were in receipt of wages instead of a share of the
+profits.</p>
+
+<p>There were plenty of opportunities for disgruntled
+mariners to forsake the ship at the ports
+of call. In order to check this, the man who
+deserted his ship was liable to forfeit double his
+wages received or due. The usual custom was to
+engage the hands from the 1st of March to the last
+day of November, and they received their pay on
+the 1st of March, the 1st of June and the 1st of
+September. This did not mean that the vessel
+necessarily put to sea at the beginning of March,
+but in order to be sure of his men the <em>naukleros</em>
+hired them before they were actually required.
+Having once been engaged, the mariners were
+forbidden by statute to leave the city, but at Pisa,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span>when the ship was about to sail, a crier was sent
+round collecting the men.</p>
+
+<p>It was not part of their duty to load or unload
+the cargo: that was done by the stevedores, but
+it did fall to them to ballast the ship. Each
+mariner, on being engaged, took an oath that he
+would carry out his duties, and he had to obey the
+master. The only occasions on which he could
+justifiably quit his ship were if he were made
+captain of another ship, or if he had made a vow
+to go on a pilgrimage to St. James or the Holy
+Sepulchre or Rome. On the other hand, he could
+be dismissed for theft, quarrelling, repeated disobedience,
+blasphemy or debauchery. At Pisa, if
+a mariner made a disturbance on board, the captain
+and other officials could put him into irons, and if
+he resisted they could strike him even to the
+drawing of blood.</p>
+
+<p>No merchant of the twentieth century sending
+his goods across the seas would have need to
+inquire into the inventory or seaworthiness of the
+ship. Such things are taken for granted; but even
+in the carefully regulated conditions of these old
+Mediterranean ships, it was customary for merchants
+before putting their goods aboard to see
+that the vessel was well furnished with sails, yards,
+anchors and arms, for she should carry spare yards
+and sails of canvas (doubtless for hard weather), as
+well as other gear. The merchants were also to
+ascertain that the ship was water-tight, and the
+skipper was to fill up the seams with tow. The
+Venetian statutes prescribed that a ship should
+have so many anchors and ropes of a certain length
+and thickness. And thus, at last, with anything
+from sixteen to forty mariners—according to her
+size—with her merchants, their servants, men-at-arms
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span>and pilgrims and cooks, the trading vessel
+was allowed to go forth.</p>
+
+<p>Such, then, were the conditions under which the
+Mercantile Marine was emerging during these
+interesting years. Like other nations, Venice
+began to lose her commercial supremacy soon
+after the Cape of Good Hope had been discovered
+in 1486. The future of the overseas trading was
+to be in the hands of Portugal and Spain, then to
+pass into the control of the Dutch, the French, and
+subsequently into British hands, as some day it
+may fall under the direction of the United States.
+But the important fact to remember all the while
+is that Venice, Genoa and Pisa did demonstrate to
+the world that civilisation, progress, literature, art,
+riches, exploration all depended on the merchant
+ship. Having once proved the truth of this idea,
+they have left behind for us in their contemporary
+buildings the most striking expressions of the
+wealth that is obtained only by means of the sea.</p>
+<br>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_2_2" href="#FNanchor_2_2" class="label">[2]</a> See <cite>The Rhodian Sea-Law</cite>, edited from MSS. by Walter
+Ashburner. Oxford 1909. A scholarly and interesting volume.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span></p>
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">
+    CHAPTER IV
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">THE MERCHANT SHIPS OF THE NORTH</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>We can desire hardly any better evidence of the
+existence of a Mercantile Marine than the fact
+that a body of laws had to be created in order
+to regulate that industry. We have seen that
+from quite early times there was in the Mediterranean
+a sea-law which in course of time was
+available for any set of circumstances that might
+arise in regard to trading ships.</p>
+
+<p>In like manner there came into being a code of
+maritime laws for western Europe, and this was
+known as the Laws of Oleron. The code was
+adopted by Alfonso X in the thirteenth century for
+the settlement of disputes in maritime affairs. It
+was based on the sea-law of Rhodes already referred
+to. Now, one effect of the crusade which Richard
+Cœur de Lion undertook was that he came into
+contact with a number of ships and seamen who
+had been sent from the island of Oleron to take
+part in the crusade. And among the officers who
+had come with the fleet from Oleron was one of
+the justiciaries of the navy.</p>
+
+<p>The nett result was that Richard brought home
+a roll of these laws, and ordered them to be
+observed in English waters. They had been framed
+for the benefit of the Merchant Service, and they
+were drastic. Thus if a pilot lost the ship and
+the merchants sustained damage, the pilot was to
+make full satisfaction, if he had the means; if he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span>had no means he was to lose his head. Now,
+based on these laws of Oleron, came into being
+what was known as the “Black Book of the
+Admiralty,” which contained the “ancient statutes
+of the Admiralty, to be observed both upon ports
+and havens, the high seas and beyond the seas,
+which are engrossed upon vellum in the said book
+and written in an ancient hand in the ancient
+French language,” as a High Court Judge of the
+seventeenth century described them.</p>
+
+<p>This so-called “Black Book” contains the most
+ancient laws of the sea in force in this country,
+and continued to be the standard authority in the
+Admiralty Court until the end of the eighteenth
+century, when it suddenly disappeared, but in
+1874 it was accidentally discovered at the bottom
+of a chest belonging to a former Registrar of the
+Admiralty Court. To-day this book is kept in
+a glass-topped, locked table in the room of the
+President of the Admiralty Court. It was probably
+called black to distinguish it from other books
+of reference, but the late Sir Douglas Owen, who
+had examined it about the year 1911, said that the
+cover was now very much the colour of a worn-out
+leather strap. It measures 9½ inches high and 6¼
+inches wide, the leaves being either thin parchment
+or a stout tough paper. The first part of the book
+is written in archaic French, but it was not all
+written at one time nor by one person. In other
+words, as the Merchant Marine of England grew
+in numbers and importance, as the trade with the
+continent got bigger, so the English maritime law
+kept up with the progress. The first part of the
+“Black Book” belongs to the time of Edward III
+or Richard II, the latter part to the time between
+Henry IV and Henry VI. Thus, part of the book
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span>shows that the English Mercantile Marine was
+of sufficient size and importance in the period
+between 1327 and 1351 to necessitate a body of laws.</p>
+
+<p>In character the ships of Northern waters were
+based on those of the Norsemen—that is to say,
+they were double-ended, long, and propelled by
+one large square-sail, or with oars when necessary.
+As time went on, these craft became beamier, and
+approximated to the cargo ships of the Mediterranean,
+the twofold objects aimed at being seaworthiness
+and capacity for carrying as much as
+possible in their holds. But there is this important
+fact to bear in mind, and its value can hardly be
+exaggerated, as we shall presently find. The North
+Sea has from the earliest records until the present
+day been the home of the herring, and on the
+herring the nations of the North have prospered,
+built their Mercantile Marines, grown rich, created
+their navies and expanded commercially. The
+fishing fleets have only to put to sea and they
+can extract silver fortunes—it is, so to speak,
+money for nothing, or for very little. That is the
+broad, general statement, though in practice it is
+modified by the migrations of the herring, which
+did actually alter the trend of history.</p>
+
+<p>As far back as the third century the inhabitants
+of the Hebrides were living on fish and milk, but
+ignorant of the cultivation of grain, and even in
+the ninth century the Dutch came to Scotland
+to buy salted fish. In the tenth century the Norwegians
+were fishing with their herring-nets near
+Christiania, and off the East Anglian coast our own
+fishermen were pursuing the industry on a large
+scale. Before William the Conqueror arrived,
+Beccles, then a fishing town (but now inland on
+the banks of a river), paid as rent to St. Edmund’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span>Abbey as much as 30,000 herrings. In France by
+1030 the herring-fishing was a well-established
+occupation, and there were salt works near Dieppe
+for preserving the catches. During the twelfth
+century our fishermen found herrings very plentiful
+off the Tyne. Further north the English, Scotch
+and Belgic fishermen were getting the herring
+near May Island off the Firth of Forth, and in
+this same period the herring was being first fished
+for in the Meuse. The Dutch were sending out
+small vessels to use their nets in the North Sea, then
+later on packing the fish into barrels, preserving
+them by cleaning their insides and thus beginning
+to acquire wealth from the harvest of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the North Sea fisheries were to build up
+the Mercantile Marines of the North. We were
+exporting herrings, wool, butter, cheese and cattle
+to the continent via the Rhine, and already during
+the thirteenth century a big Lorraine fleet, carrying
+cargoes of wine, used to arrive annually in
+England; but it was the impetus given by the
+herring that caused the north European countries
+to develop the sea instinct. The fishing industry
+developed shipbuilding, created a great seamanhood,
+spread the fascination of the sea as a career,
+and thus handed down from century to century a
+great and wonderful school, from which in Tudor
+times were to be obtained the crews who ventured
+forth with Drake and others. You cannot suddenly
+bring into being this seafaring body, as you
+can collect armies. And had it not been that for
+hundreds of years the Englishmen had been out
+fishing, there would have been no expansion of
+England either commercially or politically. The
+history of the world would, indeed, have to be
+rewritten.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span></p>
+
+<p>By the time of Edward III the fishing had
+become so important to this country that a law
+was passed forbidding any fisherman to give up
+his trade; but, in return for this, fishermen and
+mariners were exempt from serving in any capacity
+other than that to which they had been bred. By
+the fourteenth century there were literally thousands
+of vessels, each having at least six persons on
+board, fishing for herrings between Denmark and
+Norway, and more than 300,000 people were in
+one way or another engaged in the industry. In
+five days no fewer than sixty foreign ships during
+one week came into Great Yarmouth for these fish.
+Thus, side by side with our fishermen there was
+growing up a carrying trade, herrings and woollen
+cloth being regularly exported to the continent.
+By the fifteenth century ships from the British
+Isles, France, Flanders, Zeeland, Holland and
+Germany with Scottish herrings used to sail to
+the Mediterranean to sell the fish for the faithful
+during Lent.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the Middle Ages the herring-fishing
+of the North Sea was far and away the most important
+of western Europe, especially off Scotland,
+Sweden and Norfolk, whither the Dutchmen came
+both to use their nets and to buy. The trade in
+salted and smoked herrings helped to make the
+wealth of the Hanseatic and Dutch towns. And
+it is here that we find, in the Hanseatic League, a
+force which corresponds to that of Venice, Pisa
+and Genoa in the south; for in developing overseas
+trade it encouraged the ship and seafaring.</p>
+
+<p>The word “hansa” signifies a guild or association,
+and the Hanseatic League was an association
+of towns for the purposes of trade, Bergen, London
+and Bruges being its principal foreign markets in
+the North Sea. From the twelfth to the sixteenth
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span>century this trading league existed, and, like
+Venice, had its rise to pre-eminence and then
+gradually lost its supremacy. And, like Venice,
+too, the Hanseatic League kept a tight hand over
+its merchant ships. Thus as far back as 1391
+there was an ordinance by the Diet that no merchant
+should sail from a North Sea to a Baltic port,
+or vice versa, between Martinmas and Candlemas,
+and the only exceptions were that ships carrying
+beer and herrings might sail as late as St. Nicholas
+Day, December 6. For centuries a merchant had
+signified a townsman, but when, from the beginning
+of the twelfth century, the herring suddenly arrived
+in great shoals in the Baltic, the inland dwellers of
+Germany came down to the sea, ousted the Slav
+and thus began to get rich. The movements and
+migrations of the herring are little more understood
+nowadays than they were then, but it was sufficient
+for the Hanseatics that this silvery wealth had
+arrived. Thus Kolberg became a famous emporium
+for salted herrings, and this fishing industry was
+responsible for the Hansa towns obtaining so much
+of their riches and power. And so it went on
+until, in 1425, the erratic herring decided to forsake
+the Baltic and spawn in the waters of the
+North Sea. This at once took away from the
+Hanseatics a large portion of their means to wealth,
+though they were still busy with their carrying
+trade. But what is one country’s loss may be
+another’s gain, and it was so with the herring.</p>
+
+<p>For from the Baltic the herring had moved
+down to the Dutch coast, and so the Netherlands
+found themselves with the good fortune of a silver
+mine outside their own doors. Riches were there
+for the asking, and they wisely availed themselves
+of the opportunity. They built more ships, and
+the whole waterside went forth in clumsy, seaworthy
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span>craft, and thus gradually the fishermen
+laid the foundation-stone of the Dutch nation.
+It is an old saying that Amsterdam was built upon
+herrings; and as the Venetian palaces were built on
+Eastern pepper and silks, so the Northern capital
+arose out of the efforts on sea. It is impossible
+to appreciate all that the herring-fishery has meant
+to Holland until one has been through all the
+picture galleries in the Low Countries and explored
+its harbours. In the former you find the
+herring busses riding to their nets as the subject
+of any number of paintings, for the reason that
+it was the most important aspect of Dutch
+livelihood; and around the quays to-day you
+have only to notice the fine architecture in
+order to see the relics of a wealth that came and
+passed away by means of the sea high-road.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing like trade for the encouragement
+of shipping, but it was not until the end of
+the thirteenth century that the inland towns of the
+continent required for their trade the highway of
+the ocean, and thus the ports became important
+and the demand for shipping increased. One of
+the most important of the Hanseatic sea trade
+routes was from Bruges to northern Russia,
+whither hundreds of craft sailed every year, owned
+by the Baltic merchants. And it was not until the
+fifteenth century that the Dutchmen, Zeelanders
+and Frisians seriously competed with the Hanseatics,
+for the latter was a very close corporation,
+whose organisation was kept secret, and its ban
+was regal in its effect. By its decree no German
+merchant was allowed to go into partnership with
+an Englishman, Fleming or Russian, and the result
+was that for centuries our shipping was kept out
+of the Baltic. All this time the Hanseatic trade
+was doing a great deal to encourage its own shipping,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span>for there were needed many craft and seamen
+to carry eastwards from Germany to Russia the
+produce of the looms and the breweries, returning
+with furs, wax, skins, tallow and fat. Similarly
+the shipping went across to Sweden to fetch the
+copper and iron, while to Bruges and London this
+Russian and Swedish produce was brought for
+distribution.</p>
+
+<p>As in the cargo ships of the Mediterranean, so
+here in the north, the merchants accompanied
+their wares “over sea and sand.” Some of them
+would mutually arrange to charter a ship, and in
+order to encourage the captain to get the goods
+safely across the sea, they would give him an
+interest in the sales. Otherwise, as soon as pirates
+hove into sight he might feel inclined to hurl the
+goods overboard, and a similar desire was thus
+checked in the case of the ship labouring in bad
+weather. Piracy in the English Channel, Irish
+Sea, North Sea and the Baltic went on merrily
+during the Middle Ages, and played havoc with
+the merchant ship, though, as in the south, this
+kind of activity was less a crime than a specialised
+form of seafaring. In the Cinque Ports dwelt
+a class of seamen commissioned, according to
+Matthew of Paris, to plunder all merchant ships
+of any nationality other than English as they
+passed up and down the Channel; so in the
+thirteenth century we find the Scotch, Irish,
+Welsh and French all fitting out vessels to cruise
+about in readiness for a cargo ship full of valuable
+goods.</p>
+
+<p>The English Channel and the North Sea thus
+became full of dangers, and no merchant ship
+could put to sea without grave risk of capture.
+One nationality was as bad as another, and a kind
+of international vendetta went on in revenge for
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span>the losses by piracy. It became, indeed, a matter
+of high politics, far too serious to be ignored, so
+that the kings of England at various dates had to
+enter into negotiations with the foreign authorities.
+Thus at the beginning of the fifteenth century the
+Chancellor of England demanded from the Master-General
+of Prussia full restitution and recompense
+for “sundry piracies and molestations offered of
+late upon the sea.” During the next reign Henry
+IV, writing to the same personage, admitted that
+both English and Prussian merchants had suffered
+by these pirates “roving up and downe the sea.” It
+was finally agreed that English merchant ships
+should be allowed to enter Prussian ports unmolested,
+and that if Prussian cargoes were captured
+in the North Sea by English pirates, and this
+merchandise was brought into an English port,
+the “governour” of the port, if he suspected piracy,
+was to have such goods taken out and put ashore
+in safe keeping. And between this same Henry
+and the Hanseatic towns a similar agreement was
+made which bound the cities of Lubeck, Bremen,
+Hamburg and others to recompense the injured
+parties “for all injuries, damages, grievances, and
+drownings or manslaughters” done and committed
+by the pirates.</p>
+
+<p>The following incidents well illustrate the risks
+which these merchantmen ran whilst pursuing their
+calling. About Eastertide in the year 1394 the
+merchant ship <em>Godezere</em>, owned by four Englishmen,
+set out from the Tyne for Prussia, loaded
+with a cargo of woollen cloth and red wine. She
+was a 200-ton ship, her value with that of her sails
+and tackle amounting to £400; her cargo, plus
+certain sums of money on board, aggregating
+200 marks. In the North Sea she encountered a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span>Hanseatic ship who gave the English craft such
+a hot time that the <em>Godezere</em> was captured, two
+of her crew slain, and the rest of them were
+imprisoned for three years. In the same year
+the Hanseatic pirates also attacked the Hull ship
+named the <em>Shipper Berline of Prussia</em>, belonging
+to a Richard Horuse, and from her they took away
+goods to the value of 160 nobles. Next year, off
+the coast of Norway, they molested a ship called
+the <em>John Tutteburie</em>, and relieved her of 476 nobles
+worth of cargo. A year later still, these Hanseatic
+pirates captured the Hull ship <em>Cogge</em>, belonging to
+one William Terry, and took £200 worth of woollen
+cloth as well. The pirates were no respecters of
+ships so long as valuable goods were being taken
+across the North Sea, for Dutch, Zeeland and
+English merchantmen and fishing craft were all
+made to suffer. If the merchants and crew were
+not killed, they were thrown into prison and not
+allowed their liberty until ransom was paid, so
+altogether the trading ship had quite as exciting
+a time in the north as in the southern sea.</p>
+
+<p>But it was just as bad in the Baltic, where the
+pirates found it such a profitable business that they
+formed themselves into a corporation, and became
+such a serious and powerful force that in 1392 they
+were able to burn down Bergen and take the bishop
+prisoner. This much is to be said for them: they
+had a sense of chivalry, and on occasions actually
+gave back the empty ships to merchants after
+removing the cargoes, and wished them a happy
+return with fresh and fuller freights. But so
+mighty a scourge did these sea-raiders become that
+for a time they put a stop to all fishing. In the
+spring of 1394 these lawless Hanseatics sailed with
+quite a large fleet to the town of Norbern in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span>Norway, took the place by assault, captured all
+the merchants, together with their goods, burnt
+their houses and put their persons up to ransom.</p>
+
+<p>Matters had now reached a crisis. For three
+years all fishing had been stopped and these rovers
+had made maritime life impossible, so in 1394, by
+means of a tax, the Hanseatic League got together
+a fleet of thirty-five large ships and 3000 men, and
+by this means broke the power of this pirate confederation—for
+a time; for the scourge continued
+for years after. It was a fine life for those who
+had run through their money and desired adventure,
+and it attracted men of noble birth who had
+gambled and drunk away their fortunes. Of these
+none was more notorious than Stertebeker, who
+took part in almost every instance of North Sea
+piracy at this time. Hamburg having denied to
+this reprobate his knightly armour and forbidden
+him the city precincts, he threw in his lot with the
+notorious pirates known as the Victual Brothers,
+whose leader was Godeke Michelson.</p>
+
+<p>There was no limit to the depredations of this
+band. On one occasion they attacked a ship in
+the North Sea named the <em>Dogger</em>, which was lying
+at anchor while the crew were fishing. These
+Hanseatics took away their fish, beat and wounded
+both master and crew, and owing to the damage
+done lost the <em>Dogger</em> a whole year’s fishing. Nor
+did the daring of the pirates confine itself to the
+Baltic and North Sea: they even raided the coast
+of Spain. Stertebeker was one of those heavy-drinking
+Germans who had a curious method of
+dealing with his prisoners; for if among them he
+found a poor, strong man he would test the latter’s
+powers by resort to drinking. Stertebeker, whose
+own mark consisted of two reversed goblets in a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span>cathedral church, would cause his own goblet to be
+filled with wine and handed to the prisoner. If
+the latter could empty it at one gulp, he was a
+man after Stertebeker’s heart, and was accepted
+as a comrade, otherwise he was dismissed.</p>
+
+<p>But there came a time when this terror to the
+merchant ships of all nations had reached the limit.
+In the year 1422 the Hanseatic League sent a fleet
+under Simon of Utrecht to fall upon the pirates,
+and having come out from Hamburg, Simon found
+the enemy one evening lying off Heligoland. So
+near did the Hamburg fleet get to them that one
+daring fisherman was able to pour molten lead on
+the rudders of certain of the pirate ships, and this
+loosened the rudders and rendered the ships uncontrollable.
+On the following day the battle began,
+and went on for three days and nights, but in the
+end Stertebeker was beaten. He and seventy of
+his comrades were captured and carried in triumph
+to Hamburg, where they were all condemned to
+death and executed, to the great relief of the
+mercantile mariners. The rest of the pirates had
+fled, or been killed or thrown into the sea, and in
+the captured ships were found much linen and wax
+and cloth, which had been ill gotten from unfortunate
+craft. But when the Hamburgers rummaged
+the ships all the valuable metals they could find
+were a few goblets: until a carpenter broke the
+mainmast, which was then found to be hollow, and
+full of molten gold. However, this conveniently
+indemnified the merchants, and a golden crown
+was made and placed on the spire of St. Nicholas
+church, Hamburg. Stertebeker’s friend and accomplice,
+Michelson, was still at large, but Simon went
+after him, got him, and eighty pirates lost their
+heads.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">
+    CHAPTER V
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">THE GROWTH OF THE MERCANTILE MARINE</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Chaucer, who flourished in the fourteenth
+century, has left us a description of a merchant
+“shipman” of his time. He refers to him as being
+a West-countryman living, “for aught I woot,” at
+Dartmouth, who wore a gown of coarse cloth
+extending to the knee, and had a dagger hanging
+on a lanyard. The hot summer had tanned his face
+brown, and Chaucer describes him as a good fellow,
+who had drawn many a draught of wine while the
+“chapman” (or merchant) was asleep. No man
+had such skill in reckoning his tides, streams,
+dangers; and in his knowledge of harbours, the
+state of the moon and pilotage, there was no such
+man between Hull and Carthage.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">“Hardy he was, and wys to undertake:</div>
+      <div class="verse indent1">With many a tempest hadde his berd been shake.</div>
+      <div class="verse indent1">He knew wel alle the havenes, as they were,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent1">From Gootlond to the cape of Finistere,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent1">And every cryke in Britayne and in Spayne:</div>
+      <div class="verse indent1">His barge y-cleped was the Maudelayne.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>From the mere fact that Chaucer said as much
+as he did, it is clear enough that English merchant
+ships at this time were trading up and down Europe
+between Sweden and the Spanish coast, and that as
+a regular thing. And some of these seamen were
+now also navigators. Chaucer, who died in the
+year 1400, has left behind a treatise on the astrolabe
+by which a mariner could “knowe the altitude
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span>of the sonne, or of other celestial bodies.” An
+astrolabe was the ancestor of the sextant, an
+instrument which had been used by the Arabs for
+long years before it was used by the Christian
+seamen of the Mediterranean or the North. As
+far back as the eighth century a learned Rabbi
+named Messahala had written a treatise on the
+astrolabe, and it was chiefly from that author that
+Chaucer derived his knowledge on the subject.
+During the early Tudor period the cross-staff
+began to supersede the astrolabe.</p>
+
+<p>The growth of the English Mercantile Marine
+in the fourteenth century, and the friction which
+occurred between these ships and the vessels
+belonging to Norway, Prussia, Flanders, Scotland,
+Spain and Genoa, led to the assertion by
+Edward III that his royal progenitors had been
+lords of the English sea “on every side,” and in
+1344 he had coined a gold noble whereon he was
+represented standing in a ship crowned, with
+sword and shield, emblematic of his sovereignty
+of the seas. It was a statesmanlike attempt on
+behalf of the commercial ships to make the sea
+a peaceful highway, when for so long it had been
+such a dangerous thoroughfare. It had its counterpart
+in the Mediterranean; for the raids by the
+Saracens had caused the Pisans to exercise the
+rights of commercial and naval supremacy on
+the west coast of Italy; and in 1138 the Genoese
+had exercised a similar authority in the Gulf of
+Lyons. Similarly Venice had claimed sovereignty
+over the whole of the Adriatic in the thirteenth
+century, though prior to that it had exacted a toll
+from vessels passing through that sea.</p>
+
+<p>England, too, had her pilgrim trade to Santiago
+de Compostela, thirty-three miles south of Corunna,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span>where the shrine of St. James caused these travellers
+to cross the Bay of Biscay to Spain. By the
+fifteenth century this transportation of pilgrims
+had become a regular trade, and in 1434 Henry VI
+granted a licence to carry no fewer than 2433 such
+enthusiasts. Indeed the earliest English sea song
+is that which describes the life on board one of
+these pilgrim ships. The manuscript is in the
+Trinity College Library, Cambridge, and it begins
+by saying that “men may leve all gamys, that
+saylen to Seynt Jamys,” for when these people
+have joined the ship at Sandwich, Winchelsea,
+Bristol or wherever it may be, their hearts soon
+begin to fail, “for som ar lyke to cowgh and grone,
+or hit be full mydnyght.” The cook is ordered
+to get food ready, but the pilgrims have “no lust”
+for eating, but lie “with they bowlys fast them by”
+and complaining that their heads would “cleave
+in three”—“splitting,” as the modern martyr to
+sea-sickness expresses it. Then the carpenter
+comes along and with his gear makes small cabins
+for the unhappy passengers to sleep in. A sack
+of straw formed the mattress, and in some cases
+the pilgrims found they had to sleep near the
+pump and bilge-water in the reeking hold. “A
+man were as good to be dede, as smell thereof the
+stynk.” For there are few odours more objectionable
+than the bilge-stench of an aged ship, and in
+those days, when refuse was thrown into the hold
+and there was little idea of sanitation, a pilgrim’s
+voyage from England to Spain, across the boisterous
+Bay, could not have been more pleasant
+than from Venice to the Syrian shore.</p>
+
+<p>In this poem just quoted it is interesting to
+notice, also, the life on board the merchant ship
+as regards the mariners. We see the master at
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span>once ordering his “shyp-men” to stand by the
+mast and handle their tackle. Then, with the old
+expression of the sea (still surviving in sailing
+merchant vessels to-day), “Ho! Hissa,” they hoist
+away, whilst one man reprimands another for
+standing too close to his neighbour to allow him
+room to haul. Then one or two boys go up aloft,
+out on the yard, and unfurl the square-sail, while
+the rest of the crew haul aft the sheets. The
+captain then orders the boatswain to stow the
+ship’s boat, and next “haul the bowline,” the ship
+being now on a wind; but presently “veers the
+sheet” to allow her to run before the breeze. The
+steersman is sent to the helm and told to sail no
+nearer to the wind, after which the master calls
+the steward to bring him a pot of beer, which is
+promised “with good chere.” It is now time to
+haul in the brails of the yard, and one of the crew
+is admonished for not hauling; and then see “howe
+well owre good shyp sayles.” The steward is told
+to get food ready “and tary not so long,” whilst
+the ship’s pessimist comes and prophesies a storm
+or squall. He is promptly told to hold his “pese”
+and not to interfere.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">“Then commeth oure owner lyke a lorde,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent1">And speketh many a royall worde,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent1">And dresseth hym to the hygh borde</div>
+      <div class="verse indent3">To see all thyng be well.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Thus, with the demand for shipping to carry
+cargo and pilgrims across the open sea, there was
+every chance given to the Mercantile Marine, and
+by the fifteenth century the single-masted ship had
+begun to be displaced by the three-master, for the
+reason that the merchantman was becoming bigger,
+and it was necessary to split the sails up for ease
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span>in handling. Thus the big cargo ship now has a
+small square foresail on her foremast, a big square
+mainsail on her mainmast, and a triangular lateen
+sail on the mizzen-mast. The mere fact that the
+last-mentioned, characteristic, Mediterranean sail
+was added to northern ships during the fifteenth
+century, is evidence of the influence which the
+Portuguese and Spanish ships were having on our
+distant-voyaging vessels. Sea transportation was
+becoming the rule, and no longer the exception;
+trade overseas was increasing; merchants and seamen
+were fast becoming imbued with new ideas
+seen in strange lands, and in fact the world was
+beginning to awake.</p>
+
+<p>The biggest of the ships carried a main topsail,
+and by this time the rudder had been shifted from
+the quarter to aft, as it is to-day. The hull is in a
+transition state, still feeling the influence of the
+Viking type, but not yet a wholesome creature.
+The forecastle, sterncastle and main topmast castle
+are still there, but they have become amalgamated
+with the general design of the hull rather than
+being mere additional platforms. There is a contemporary
+manuscript which shows such craft
+under way, at anchor, and even being towed out of
+harbour by the ship’s boat against a head wind,
+past a flaming beacon which marks a promontory.
+And even at this time there were such things
+as pilots’ guides for the coasts of England and
+Wales, as well as sailing directions for the Bay of
+Biscay.</p>
+
+<p>But we must turn our attention south to watch
+what was going on in the Mediterranean. Briefly
+this is what had happened. Already in the
+thirteenth century merchant ships had become
+more enterprising, for about the year 1270 Malocello
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span>had reached the Canary Isles, and in 1281,
+Vivaldi had set forth from Genoa to find the East
+Indies via the west coast of Africa, but failed.
+For you must remember that during the latter
+part of the twelfth century the compass, crude
+and inaccurate, yet of immense utility, had been
+introduced into Europe from the East. Then
+comes into our story that great man Prince Henry
+the Navigator, son of the King of Portugal, and
+nephew of Henry IV of England. Henry devoted
+his life to developing the science and art of navigation,
+creating an observatory and nautical school
+at Sagres, near Cape St. Vincent, and doing all he
+possibly could to encourage maritime discovery.
+The result of this was that the Portuguese became
+great sea-travellers, big shipowners and expanded
+in commerce and colonies. Henry the Navigator
+was born in 1394 and died in 1460, and to his foresight,
+organisation and enthusiastic intellect can
+be traced the rapid and marvellous Portuguese
+achievements which followed at sea. Thus in 1442
+Madeira and the Azores had been discovered in
+the Atlantic, trade with Africa materially increased,
+especially on the west coast, and the traffic in black
+slaves become very profitable. Then in 1486 the
+Cape of Good Hope was rounded and the sea
+route at last opened to the East Indies, instead
+of the long and perilous overland route to the
+Levant which had been used always up till now.
+In 1498 Vasco da Gama sailed from Lisbon to
+Calicut, and two years later the Portuguese had
+landed in Brazil. Thus by the dawn of the
+sixteenth century Portugal had reached a wonderful
+height of prosperity. The great Eastern trade
+was in her hands; Ceylon, the Sunda Islands,
+Malacca and Ormuz in the Persian Gulf were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span>hers; and all this pre-eminence had been won by
+studying the problems of the sea and then applying
+that knowledge in ships manned by practical
+navigators and sailors.</p>
+
+<p>Portugal had risen up by the twelfth century as
+a separate kingdom, and Spain had been passing
+through a period of complete anarchy, but on
+the death of the Spanish Henry IV, Isabel and
+Ferdinand had ascended the throne of Castile, and
+then law and order were restored, the last Moorish
+stronghold was captured in 1492, and a few months
+later the Genoese sailor Columbus, under the
+patronage of Ferdinand and Isabella, was allowed
+to set forth on his historic voyage which discovered
+the West Indies. He returned home, went across
+the Atlantic again in 1493 and discovered Dominica;
+then made his third voyage, in which he discovered
+the mainland of South America in 1498, and finally,
+on his last voyage, explored the southern shore of
+the Mexican Gulf.</p>
+
+<p>With the discovery of a sea-route both to the
+East and West Indies, the whole future of the
+Mercantile Marine was altered. Instead of
+carrying merchandise and pilgrims across Europe,
+there came the demand for great ocean-going
+vessels that could carry home large quantities
+of rich produce, that would make the European
+markets surprised when they beheld these goods.
+Thus the Portuguese and Spaniards, like the
+Venetians and Genoese, began to amass great
+wealth from their merchant ships. Noble caracks
+were built, more and more men embarked on a
+seafaring career, the art of navigation received
+much more careful study, and mercantile maritime
+supremacy passed to the Iberian peninsula. Thus
+the work of great shipbuilders and sea-carriers,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span>discoverers, colonisers and traders had for a time
+passed into other hands.</p>
+
+<p>But success in one party always breeds jealousy
+in another: indeed, if you examine the causes of
+all the great wars in history, or look into the
+reasons for most private quarrels, you will find
+usually that they come under the heading either
+of commercial jealousy or religious intolerance.
+And when, as was the case in the sixteenth
+century, you have both these factors united, you
+have the maximum of intense feeling. The
+English seamen, perfectly naturally, began to be
+jealous and envious of the lectureships and instruction
+which were being given to these southern
+seamen. At Seville Charles V had founded a
+lectureship on navigation in the sixteenth century.
+In England Henry VIII founded three guilds, at
+Deptford-on-Thames, Kingston-on-Hull and Newcastle-on-Tyne,
+for the same purpose, and Edward
+VI selected Sebastian Cabot to be Grand Pilot of
+England. Henry VII encouraged his shipbuilders
+by giving them a bounty on the tonnage built, and
+in Henry VIII’s reign dockyards were established
+at Woolwich, Erith and Deptford, in addition to
+Portsmouth. Books on the sea arts began to be
+written in English, so that by the time the full
+force of the commercial and religious hatred of the
+Spanish and Portuguese was let loose, the English
+mercantile mariners were something more than
+mere coastal seamen. From their fishing they
+had gradually become cross-Channel carriers; from
+this they had risen to the ability to trade regularly
+with Spain, with an occasional voyage even to the
+Mediterranean; but now they were qualified by
+their ambition and their greater knowledge to go
+wherever the sea existed. And thus we get Drake
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span>going all the way round the world; the many voyages
+across the Atlantic to the West Indies; the
+fights with the Spanish treasure ships; the capture
+of the <em>Madre de Dios</em> and <em>San Felipe</em>, thus discovering
+the long-kept secrets of the sea-route to India.
+From the captured caracks and galleons which had
+been built in the Iberian peninsula, the English
+shipwright was able to enlarge his ideas and to
+learn how to build real ocean-going craft bigger
+than most of the Elizabethan ships. The introduction
+of cannon had been an additional reason
+for making the ship a much stouter, loftier and
+more formidable creature. Thus length, and beam,
+and draught increased; larger crews and more
+officers were needed, and as each expedition came
+home with strange products, merchant adventurers
+combined to fit out other expeditions to inaugurate
+trade even in such remote spots as had not yet
+seen a white man.</p>
+
+<p>And never a ship came home from her voyage
+without adding some valuable information in regard
+to trade or geography or navigation or pilotage.
+You have only to read the travels in Hakluyt,
+Purchase and elsewhere to see how keen these
+Elizabethans were not to omit a single piece of
+knowledge that would be useful for future voyages.
+They had been able, almost suddenly, to realise
+that, given pluck, determination, enterprise and
+endurance, the treasures of the world were theirs.
+They could follow the sea for a few long voyages
+and then return to build themselves comfortable
+mansions in Devonshire. And inasmuch as nothing
+succeeds like success, every time the crew came
+home and spread the wonderful tales of their
+experiences and showed the valuables they had
+managed to obtain, other men were anxious to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span>go forth and do likewise. Nobles and gentlemen
+and city magnates invested heavily in these trading
+voyages, selected the ablest seamen, and thus, incidentally,
+were helping to build up the Mercantile
+Marine on a grand scale.</p>
+
+<p>Before Hawkins engaged in his trans-Atlantic
+voyages he was a Plymouth shipowner accustomed
+to sail to the ports of Spain and the Canary Islands
+with trade. At the Canaries he learns a good deal
+about the West Indies, then goes further south
+to the west coast of Africa, begins transporting
+niggers thence to America, returns to England
+with plenty of money, and sets every one in the
+west of England talking and anxious to have a
+share in this great new game. His relative,
+Francis Drake, owner of a small brigantine in
+which coastal trading has been carried on, is fired
+by Hawkins’ success, and accompanies him on one
+of his expeditions. Young Francis has learnt his
+seamanship in a rough school, having made friends
+with a shipmaster trading to the Channel ports
+and gone to sea with him, and thus acquired his
+knowledge, until finally the shipmaster dies and
+leaves him the brigantine in his will. Several
+years of coastal work had followed, Drake had
+acquired both money and reputation, and in the
+end could not resist selling the coaster and buying
+the brigantine <em>Judith</em>, fifty tons, and going with
+his relative across the Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p>What followed? Every time the English seamen
+came back with terrible yarns concerning the
+treachery of the Portuguese and Spaniards, every
+time the stories of the gallant fights were told,
+every time the jewels and plate and pearls were
+seen and handled, the West countrymen were
+stirred to their very souls. Religious and commercial
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span>jealousy, racial hatred and the love of
+adventure, combined with the possibility of becoming
+rich—all this created such a fire of
+enthusiasm that the English Mercantile Marine
+was bound to increase in numbers and aspirations.
+The moderate ambitions of the Middle Ages had
+passed away for ever: the dawn of a new order
+of things had now already come.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">
+    CHAPTER VI
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">THE MERCANTILE MARINE OF THE SIXTEENTH
+    CENTURY</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>By the middle of the fourteenth century the
+merchant ships had begun to outgrow mediævalism;
+by the sixteenth they were able to go to
+windward and to keep the sea for months on end.
+Thus, vessels had at last begun to enjoy the freedom
+of the seas and to be independent of the shore.
+It was a great achievement, considering how limited
+in size and seaworthiness ships had been, and how
+limited in knowledge mariners had remained until
+they had passed through the Middle Ages and
+emerged into the clear, bright light of science.</p>
+
+<p>Men were getting away from convention and
+thinking for themselves, but some of the old habits
+were dying very slowly. One very antique custom
+was that of waits attending seafaring men. As
+late as 1466, and probably even after, at the Cinque
+Ports musicians with fifes and trumpets paraded
+the town and announced which way the wind
+was blowing, so that merchant ships could put
+to sea if the wind was fair for them. The use
+of the ship’s bell had been introduced into Tudor
+ships before the end of the fifteenth century,
+for Henry VII’s famous <em>Grâce Dieu</em> in 1485 included
+this in her inventory, and the <em>Regent</em> in
+1495 had two “wache belles.” In a volume printed
+at the beginning of the sixteenth century, showing
+a typical merchant ship of the time, with mast,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span>square-sails, and castles from which to attack
+pirates and other enemies, the artist has actually
+shown, in a rather conventional, but none the less
+interesting, manner the skipper at the helm and
+the merchants with their bales of goods in the
+vessel; but the pictorial information of these early
+craft is so slight, and landsmen artists dealing with
+technical marine subjects were so very inaccurate,
+that it is only by most diligent and careful research
+that a nautical student who understands the ways
+of a ship can follow the development of the merchant
+craft through to the seventeenth century.</p>
+
+<p>Seamen have very rarely been good authors,
+until we come to modern times; and writers have
+usually been unacquainted with the technicalities
+of seafaring. The difficulty, therefore, has been
+great. The only solution is to regard the efforts
+of ancient artists and authors critically with the
+eyes of a seaman, and to make allowances. With
+this concession, realising what a ship can do and
+what she never could be asked to do; realising
+also that the artist’s intention was not so much to
+bequeath to posterity an accurately rigged ship as
+to depict an idea—as, for instance, the progress of
+a saint, in which a ship appeared incidentally—we
+can find all these quaint artistic efforts worth
+examining, and yielding up information. So it is
+with the writers. Even that fifteenth century
+French humorist Rabelais helps us if we allow for
+his ignorance of seafaring matters. So long as a
+man writes of what he actually saw with his own
+eyes, and not what he imagined, we have valuable
+and illuminative truth. Rabelais was no seaman,
+but his description of the handling of the ship in a
+gale is worth preserving. At the approach of bad
+weather we see the pilot shortening sail. The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span>terrified Panurge exclaims with horror that the
+bitts are broken, the tackle is in pieces, the timbers
+are splitting, the mast dipping into the sea up to
+the truck. His is the attitude of the “all-is-lost”
+landsman who exists through all the ages of the
+merchant ship. Thus he goes on: “Alas! alas!
+where are our topsails? All is lost, by God! Our
+topmast is under water. Alas! to whom will this
+wreck belong? Friends, put me here behind one
+of these bulkheads. Lads, your top-crane has
+fallen.” He hears the rudder-pintle creaking.
+“Is it broken?” Eventually the pilot heaves-to
+under her main-course, but later the weather
+moderates so that the ship can resume her voyage.
+“To the main topsail,” rings out an order. “Hoist!
+hoist! To the main-mizzen topsail. The rope to
+the capstan. Heave! heave! heave! Hands to
+the halyards. Hoist! hoist! Clear away the
+tacks. Clear away the sheets. Clear away the
+bowlines. Port tack. Down helm. Haul taut
+starboard sheet. Luff. Full and by. Up helm.
+(“Up, it is,” replied the sailors.) Keep her going.
+Head for the harbour-mouth.” Thus, with the
+steering tackles manned, and the ship sailing close-hauled
+on the port tack, the pilot makes the helmsman
+keep her out of the wind and straight for their
+haven.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_3_3" href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p>But those who know their Hakluyt well, and take
+the trouble to read those wondrous voyages with
+imagination, are richly rewarded by the interesting
+side-lights thrown on the sixteenth-century seamanship
+in the merchant craft. Among the instructions
+“for the direction of the intended voyage for
+Cathay,” issued by Sebastian Cabot in 1553, the
+“captain-general,” “pilot major,” masters, merchants
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span>and other officers are first exhorted to be
+“knit and accorded in unitie, love, conformitie
+and obedience.” Every mariner and passenger
+took an oath to be obedient to the captain-general,
+and to every captain and master of his ship. But
+even as late as the reign of Edward VI, the old
+custom of the sea, which we have seen in the
+Mediterranean, prevailed. The communal idea
+was not yet extinct.</p>
+
+<p>“Item,” runs the fifth instruction, “all courses
+in Navigation to be set and kept, by the advice of
+the Captaine, Pilot Major, masters, &amp; masters’
+mates, with the assents of the counsailers and the
+most number of them, and in voyces uniformely
+agreeing in one to prevaile, and take place, so that
+the Captaine generall, shall in all counsailes and
+assemblies have a double voyce.” The fleet was
+ordered to keep together, the merchants “and
+other skilful persons in writing, shal daily write,
+describe, and put in memorie the Navigation of
+every day and night, with the points, and observation
+of the lands, tides, elements, altitude of the
+sunne, course of the moon and starres, and the
+same so noted by the order of the Master and pilot
+of every ship to be put in writing, the captaine
+generall assembling the masters together once every
+weeke (if winde and weather shal serve) to conferre
+all the observations, and notes of the said ships, to
+the intent it may appeare wherein the notes do
+agree, and wherein they dissent, and upon good
+debatement, deliberation, and conclusion determined,
+to put the same into a common leger, to
+remain of record for the company: the like order
+to be kept in proportioning of the Cardes, Astrolabes,
+and other instruments prepared for the
+voyage, at the charge of the companie.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span></p>
+
+<p>Thus the merchants, having financed the voyage,
+still had a considerable say in the matter. The
+steward and cook of every ship had to render a
+weekly account of the flesh, fish, biscuit, meat,
+bread, beer, wine, oil and vinegar consumed. If
+an officer or seaman were found inefficient, he
+could be put ashore anywhere “within the king’s
+Majesties realme &amp; dominion.” In order to keep
+discipline over the crew—many of them the “bad
+hats” of the port from which the ships had sailed—they
+were forbidden blasphemy, “ribaldrie, filthy
+tales or ungodly talke, neither dicing, carding,
+tabling, nor other divelish games to be frequented,
+whereby ensueth not onely povertie to the players,
+but also strife, variance, brauling, fighting, and
+oftentimes murther.” Every morning and evening,
+service was to be read in the flagship by
+“the minister,” and in the other ships by the
+merchant or some other learned person. “No
+liquor to be spilt on the balast, nor filthines to be
+left within boord; the cook room, and all other
+places to be kept cleane, for the better health of
+the companie.”</p>
+
+<p>The merchants were to look after the “liveries in
+apparel” given to the mariners, which were not to be
+worn except by order of the captain. And there was
+also a “slop-chest,” taken care of by the merchants,
+from which a seaman could obtain “any necessarie
+furniture of apparel for his body, and conservation
+of his health at such reasonable price as the same
+cost, without any game to be exacted by the marchants.”
+Nor could the merchants exhibit for sale
+any of their goods to foreigners without consent of
+the captains and other officers.</p>
+
+<p>In this expedition for the purpose of trading there
+were three ships, and from these details we have a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span>fair idea of the way the pick of the Mercantile
+Marine was being conducted on a grand scale, as
+contrasted with the usual small voyages around the
+British Isles, or across the North Sea, English
+Channel and the Bay of Biscay. Such an expedition
+as the one we are considering aimed at big
+things: the opening up of a new trade route and
+fresh markets. Thus there were three ships in this
+venture, the 120-ton <em>Bona Esperanza</em>, which was
+the flagship; the 160-ton <em>Edward Bonaventure</em>;
+and the 90-ton <em>Bona Confidentia</em>. In the first was
+Sir Hugh Willoughby, captain-general of the
+squadron, or, as they called it, the fleet. In that
+same ship were the master, his mate and six merchants,
+together with the master gunner, boatswain,
+boatswain’s mate, four quartermasters and their
+four mates, two carpenters, a purser, a cook and
+his mate, two surgeons and others. Two men were
+landed at Harwich for sickness, and one other was
+ducked at the yard-arm “for pickerie,” and then
+discharged. The <em>Edward Bonaventure</em> carried
+Richard Chancellor as captain and pilot major of
+the fleet, a master, his mate, two merchants, a
+minister, officers and mariners. The little <em>Bona
+Confidentia</em> carried only a master, his mate, three
+merchants, as well as the usual officers and mariners.
+Each of these three ships had a pinnace and a boat.
+We know that these ships could never lie nearer
+than seven points from the wind by the statement
+that “the wind veared to the West, so that
+we could lie but North and by West.” Not having
+charts of the strange unexplored harbours and
+havens, the ship, on approaching the land, used to
+send her pinnace ahead to find an anchorage, and
+then the big craft could follow in. They used their
+lead for sounding, and consulted the globe, which
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span>was the only knowledge of geography of distant
+countries possessed in many cases. But it was no
+unusual thing to find in these exploratory voyages
+that “the land lay not as the Globe made mention.”
+In this particular expedition, whereon, by the way,
+Sir Hugh Willoughby and the company of two of
+his ships perished in the bitter Lapland regions,
+there were all sorts of anxieties through gales of
+winds, leaky ships, shoals, unknown coasts, cold and
+general discomfort inseparable from crudely built
+vessels. We can but admire the courageous enterprise
+which sent them forth, and thus helped to lay
+the foundations of our Mercantile Marine and seek
+a north-east passage to China.</p>
+
+<p>But, as we know from writers of the sixteenth
+century, the fact was that the commodities and
+wares of England were in small request with
+the neighbouring countries. Those goods which,
+within the memory of the oldest inhabitants, had
+been in demand, were now neglected, notwithstanding
+that English ships carried the wares into
+the harbours of the foreigners. Contrariwise, there
+was a brisk demand for foreign goods, and at a
+high price. Therefore certain “grave citizens of
+London ... began to thinke with themselves
+howe this mischiefe might bee remedied.” And
+observing that the Spaniards and Portuguese had
+wonderfully increased their wealth by the search
+and discovery of new countries and trades; and
+having taken the advice of Sebastian Cabot, who
+was then in London, these wise merchants formed
+themselves into a company, and each member put
+up £25, so that before long the three ships already
+mentioned were bought and fitted out with the
+total £6000 thus obtained, and victualled too.
+These shrewd Edwardians were doing exactly what
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span>modern merchants do in a period of trade depression
+and slump—they went out to look for
+business in new markets. But the difference was
+that the former had first to get the ships and then
+fit them out, instead of merely going to the office of
+a tourist-agency and purchasing a ticket, and then
+voyaging in safety, comfort and with the certainty
+of being in a particular place on a fixed day.</p>
+
+<p>In this north-east expedition, as soon as the
+money was obtained the merchants bought exceptionally
+strong and well-seasoned planks, and then
+the shipwrights set to work with the construction,
+caulking and pitching them and covering the
+bottom with lead sheathing. That was all comparatively
+straight-going, but the difficulty was to
+victual the ships with food for eighteen months.
+Indeed, after setting out from the Thames, some of
+the food by the time they reached Harwich was
+already putrid and the hogsheads of wine leaking.
+Ships were ballasted with stones, and before the
+wind these cumbrous craft would sail well, but on
+a wind they made a good deal of leeway. But all
+the time these sixteenth-century mariners were
+learning, and setting down their records for others
+to learn. Thus one finds these pioneers entering
+such remarks as “a south moone makes a full sea,”
+“Friday I went on shoare and observed the variation
+of the Compasse, which was three degrees and
+a halfe from the North to the West; the latitude
+this day was sixtie nine degrees ten minutes.” And
+in 1557, among the instructions given to masters and
+mariners of an expedition, it is ordered that notes
+and entries be daily made of the navigations, and
+that the young mariners and apprentices be taught
+and made to learn the same.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, with every voyage north, south, east or
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span>west, with every slump or boom in trade, the
+English Mercantile Marine was becoming more
+efficient, less unscientific, and the love of seafaring
+became greater. Those were the great days when,
+though the ships were of wood, the men’s hearts
+were of gold, and nothing daunted them. Their
+gear was none too good, their ships were roughly
+built, and yet no adversity ever overcame their fine
+spirits. They were ready to struggle with any
+difficulty. Take the case of the Elizabethan ship
+which got caught in heavy weather one September.
+She hove-to, but was washed down by almost every
+sea, and then the rudder was found to be broken
+and almost falling off. Next day, as soon as the
+weather eased, a dozen of the crew leapt overboard,
+remained under water as long as possible, worked
+at the rudder-planking, bound it with ropes, and
+finally made such a good job of it that it was again
+serviceable; but by the time they were got aboard
+once more they were more than half dead. These
+ships were always losing anchors, cables, boats and
+pinnaces; and even when they had charts and
+globes, they were finding them full of errors; yet
+they “kept on keeping on” and bringing their
+seafaring profession out of the dark recesses of
+ignorance into the light of knowledge.</p>
+<br>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_3_3" href="#FNanchor_3_3" class="label">[3]</a> <cite>Mariner’s Mirror</cite>, Vol. V. p. 81.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span></p>
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">
+    CHAPTER VII
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">FISHERMEN AND MERCHANTMEN</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Up to the end of the sixteenth century we have
+seen the progress of the Mercantile Marine influenced
+by the pilgrim and cargo trade in the south
+of Europe, and in the Iberian peninsula by the
+long ocean voyages east and west for the purpose
+of spreading Christianity, trading, and obtaining
+greater territory. In the north of Europe we have
+seen that the crusades, as in the south, had their
+effect, and that pilgrims and merchandise were
+regularly carried across the Bay of Biscay.</p>
+
+<p>But we have seen, too, that the Hanseatic League
+and the fishing industry had from early times done
+much; nor were these influences yet dead. It is
+interesting, as showing the far-sightedness of the
+Hanseatics, to note that they were careful to get
+into their hands the entire corner of hemp, from
+which ropes were made. Everywhere the League
+had extended its tentacles as a powerful European
+trading combine. The market of Bruges was a
+place where you met all the great travellers and
+merchants of Europe. Every one who was any
+one in commerce sooner or later came here. In
+London they had entrenched themselves with
+characteristic German astuteness, and their privileges
+had been marvellously protected by the
+English sovereigns from the twelfth century.
+Indeed the Hanseatics became, so to speak, the
+Rothschilds of Europe for financing regal schemes.
+The Wars of the Roses and the hostilities with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span>France were the means of making the Hanseatics
+very useful financially, and they got their reward
+in the shape of special privileges, which their depôt
+just above London Bridge in Thames Street enjoyed
+for many a year. Down to the time of Edward VI
+they indeed prospered exceedingly.</p>
+
+<p>In Portugal the League had established a factory
+at Lisbon, and thence they traded with the Italian
+commercial republics and also got a hold on the
+big Levantine trade. But during the reign of
+Elizabeth Englishmen began to realise their own
+strength and capabilities at sea. The defeat of
+the Armada, and the many fights with the Spanish
+and Portuguese, had given them a confidence which
+they had never before enjoyed. The English
+sailors were to justify their maritime ability not
+merely against the southerners, but against these
+very powerful and historic members of the northern
+league. Consequently they did not hesitate to
+seize sixty Hanseatic ships about to enter the
+Tagus with grain for the Spaniards. In 1598 the
+Hanseatics were turned out of England, and though
+they were allowed eventually to come back, and
+their property in the city of London was not sold
+until 1853, when the Cannon Street railway station
+was erected, yet the rise of English sea-power,
+expressed not merely in actual fighting, but in the
+maritime spirit generally, had given the ancient
+league its death-blow. Thereafter it merely
+lingered.</p>
+
+<p>But simultaneously with the decline of the
+Spanish and Hanseatic Mercantile Marines was
+growing up the Dutch. And it cannot be emphasised
+too strongly that this was owing to the
+herring having in the fifteenth century begun to
+spawn in the North Sea instead of the Baltic,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span>as already mentioned. It seems curious that an
+innocent fish should thus be the deciding force
+of international history. If you examine modern
+Dutch charts you will still see marked channels
+and shoals which show the intimate connection
+which that country had with fishing. The “haringvliet,”
+or mouth of the Maas, and the “Schotsman”
+shoal, off the island of Walcheren, at once suggest
+the time when the Low Countries were acquiring
+wealth by their fisheries and doing a good deal of
+trade with Scotland. Then they became more
+ambitious, and built those fine great ships, which
+you see in the paintings of Vroom and other artists,
+that were the means of bringing home from their
+East Indies wealth in another form once enjoyed
+by the Venetians and Spaniards.</p>
+
+<p>So invaluable had the fisheries been to the
+Dutch, both in regard to shipbuilding and in
+creating a fine school of seamanship, that by the
+time of Cromwell these Netherlanders were the
+“waggoners of the sea,” had the world’s carrying
+trade and owned four-fifths of all the merchant
+ships that sailed the seas. Now, having regard to
+the young, keen sea spirit which had made the
+sixteenth century so illustrious, it was hardly surprising
+that before long there should be trouble
+between the English and the Dutch. It was
+analogous to the years which immediately preceded
+the Great War of 1914. Collision was certain: it
+was a question only of time. Thus, as early as
+1608, Grotius, the famous Dutch jurist, wrote his
+<em>Mare Liberum</em>, wherein he contended that the
+high seas were open to all. Contemporary with
+him was living the English jurist Selden, who in
+1618 had begun his treatise <em>Mare Clausum</em>. At
+the request of James I it was not published for
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span>fear of complications with the Danes, but in 1635
+Selden again took up this work at the desire of
+Charles I. In the previous year Charles began to
+levy ship-money, which really was intended in
+order to strengthen the fleet against the Dutch in
+the probability of war.</p>
+
+<p>Legislation is merely the expression of the
+nation’s contemporary fears, and in the long series
+of maritime Acts from the fourteenth century
+onwards we can see the national nervousness of
+the time lest the foreigner should dominate the
+success of our Mercantile Marine. We have already
+seen Edward I styling himself “Sovereign of the
+Seas.” Then in the last years of the fourteenth
+century we have what was the first of the Navigation
+Acts. The basic aim was to exclude the ships,
+seamen and trade of the foreigner and to encourage
+those of our country. We will not bore the reader
+with a legal dissertation, but it will help us to
+understand the difficulties of the time if, very
+briefly, we show how the State was helping the
+subject of our study. During the reigns of Henry
+VII, Henry VIII and Elizabeth there was legislation
+dealing with the privileges of English shipping.
+At a later date the claim to the sovereignty of
+the seas was expressed by compelling the Flemish
+subjects of Philip, who married our Queen Mary,
+to pay a fine and an annual rent of £1000 for
+twenty-one years’ lease of the fishing near the
+north Irish coast, whilst a similar lease with similar
+conditions was granted by Mary to the Hanseatics.
+Without a licence foreign subjects were forbidden
+to fish in English waters, though with the decline
+of English sea-power in the seventeenth century
+foreigners ceased to be bound by these claims.</p>
+
+<p>The doctrine of the “Dominion of the Seas” is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span>inseparably bound up in the growth of our Mercantile
+Marine and our fishing industry. Matters
+reach a crisis in the dispute, and then the discussion
+is settled by an appeal to force in the shape of
+war. The Anglo-Dutch wars were fundamentally
+caused by the herring fisheries and the Mercantile
+Marines of the two nations. Every other reason
+was entirely artificial and subservient. Whether
+the seas could be free to all everywhere to trade,
+whether the fisherman could shoot his nets where
+he liked—that is the whole matter in a nutshell.
+And the more ships that were built for trade or
+fishing, the more serious the crisis developed. Proportionately
+the value of a navy becomes greater,
+and thus the two services are bound to become less
+and less similar, as greater commercial demands
+are made on the one and purely warlike requirements
+are insisted on for the other.</p>
+
+<p>The seventeenth century was the crisis in the
+career of the Mercantile Marine, for it was struggling
+for its very life amid many dangers, but it emerged
+with an independence and character of its own.
+In any long period of assured peace it reaches
+enormous heights of success, as, for instance, during
+the nineteenth century. But during the Caroline
+period a principle was being insisted upon. The
+position was this. Charles I was determined to
+compel the Dutch to acknowledge the English
+claim to the dominion of the seas, and that was
+the reason for the building, in 1637, of that marvellous
+and sensational warship the <em>Sovereign of the
+Seas</em>, a triumph of Pett’s design, which Van der Velde
+depicted for posterity. This 1683-ton “battleship,”
+as we should call her nowadays, was an
+expression, both in name and character, of the
+English attitude in regard to the use of the seas.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span></p>
+
+<p>“We hold it a principle,” Charles had instructed
+his Minister at The Hague, “not to be denied, that
+the King of Great Britain is a monarch at sea and
+on land to the full extent of his dominions. His
+Majesty finds it necessary for his own defence
+and safety to reassume and keep his ancient and
+undoubted rights in the Dominion of the Seas.”
+Having forbidden foreigners to fish off our coasts
+without licence, Charles’ fleet attacked and put to
+flight a Dutch fishing fleet which had infringed
+this order. Some of these small craft were thus
+sunk by our men-of-war, and many of the rest
+took shelter in harbour. Finally the Dutch agreed
+to pay Charles I £30,000 for permission to finish
+that year’s fishing, and to pay a sum annually for
+the like privilege.</p>
+
+<p>We can well understand the irritation which this
+line of action caused so great a maritime power
+as the Dutch. Great sea pioneers they certainly
+were, and before the first decade after the defeat
+of the Armada had passed, they had been the first
+country to send out a real Polar expedition. In
+1651 came the celebrated English Navigation Act,
+which prohibited the importation of goods into
+England except in English ships, or in the ships
+of the country producing the goods. This was
+quite obviously aimed at the great Dutch sea-carriers.
+Relations became strained, the war-clouds
+gathered, and in the following year the first of
+the three Anglo-Dutch wars broke out inevitably
+between the English and Dutch republics.</p>
+
+<p>The Navigation Act of 1651 was confirmed by
+that of nine years later, and thus the English
+Mercantile Marine had its future settled on sure
+foundations. In a word, the disputes as to where
+fishermen could shoot their nets to get herrings
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span>were the indirect means of giving the merchant
+ships their unique opportunity. Holland’s carrying
+trade fell into our hands, prosperity came to our
+country, the sailing ships of our nation penetrated
+everywhere, and, as you can see by the seventeenth-century
+architecture in the leading Dutch cities,
+the wealth obtained overseas suddenly ceased to
+flow in a big way. It is for those who have eyes
+a veritable story in stones, which ends suddenly
+and dramatically.</p>
+
+<p>It is to the credit of the rulers of our country
+in the seventeenth century that they realised what
+the fisheries meant to us. The Act of 1651 was
+of great assistance in providing that no fish should
+be brought into England or Ireland, or exported
+thence to foreign parts, or even carried from one
+English or Irish port to another, except fish caught
+by English and Irish fishermen in English and
+Irish ships. In 1661 the Parliament of Scotland
+also passed navigation laws for the encouragement
+of their native shipping, and one Act for founding
+companies to extend the fishing industry. Very
+subtle, too, was the proclamation of James I in
+1621 against eating flesh in Lent or on other “fish
+days,” the reasons given being “the maintenance
+of our navy and shipping, a principal strength of
+this island, and for the sparing and increase of
+fresh victuals.” This and similar proclamations
+considerably helped the fishermen.</p>
+
+<p>In order fully to appreciate all that the fishing
+meant to the Dutch, it is necessary to mention
+also that not merely did they seek the herring as far
+away as the Thames estuary, the Orkneys, Shetlands
+and the Irish coast, but, owing to the
+ingenuity and enterprise of one Beuckels, they
+had learned how to cure and barrel this fish. In
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span>this way they enjoyed a wonderful monopoly in
+supplying Catholic central and northern Europe.
+In the year 1560, for instance, the value of the
+year’s fishing trade to Friesland, Holland, Zeeland
+and Flanders amounted to the enormous sum of
+£300,000. Just as to-day the steam fish-carriers
+go out to fetch the catch home from the fleets
+fishing off the Dogger Bank and elsewhere, so the
+Dutch in the seventeenth century were using a
+fast-sailing type of craft, called “vent-jagers,” to
+hurry into port the fresh herrings caught by the
+slow, round, tubby “busses.” This practice was
+in vogue certainly by 1604.</p>
+
+<p>It was a statute of 1663, for the encouragement
+of our fisheries, which forbade any fresh herrings
+being imported into England except in English-built
+ships, and no ship could sail for Iceland from
+England until March 10, thus protecting the fish
+at breeding time. The Act of 1666 prohibited
+the importation of herrings caught by foreigners.
+And, having done all this, the time came when
+those Englishmen who owned capital thought they
+saw an opportunity for getting richer. Thus in
+1677 a Royal Fishery Company was incorporated,
+the Duke of York and many peers and gentlemen
+being partners, with a capital eventually increased
+to £12,580. This was spent in the construction of
+seven busses, but some of these were captured by
+the French, who were now growing up as maritime
+and commercial people, and were rivals to us in
+our fishing. The remainder of the busses were
+sold off in 1680 and the company ended in debt.</p>
+
+<p>Three years later another fishing company was
+started, and this failed also, whereas the Dutch
+were doing well with their nets, employing 8000
+vessels and 200,000 hands, thus amassing the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span>enormous sum of £5,000,000 a year. During the
+time of Charles II the Dutch fishermen had
+brought great prosperity to Great Yarmouth,
+sometimes as many as 1000 busses and fish-carriers
+being off that port, and buying bread,
+beer, flesh and butter from the East Anglians.
+They used to come ashore and dry their nets, and
+the town would find 10,000 of these foreign sailormen
+in their neighbourhood. To assuage their
+thirst, forty brewers were kept busy in the port.
+Any one who has any experience of human nature
+and of fishermen, will readily understand that
+there were many feuds and quarrellings. Ever
+since 1540 the Dutchmen had been herring-fishing
+off that port, and the Englishmen were none too
+pleased at this visitation; nor were the Scotch,
+who in 1532 attacked the Dutchmen and captured
+many of their busses, and for nine years prevented
+them from using Scottish waters.</p>
+
+<p>As far back as the thirteenth century the herring
+had been caught in great numbers off Great Yarmouth,
+and in 1270 the Yarmouth herring fair
+was held for forty days. About that date some
+Flemish vessels put to sea and killed 1200 English
+North Sea fishermen, nor will these international
+fishermen’s quarrels ever cease as long as human
+nature remains what it is. Before the end of the
+thirteenth century Grimsby had begun fishing, and
+before the end of the sixteenth century the first
+Hull whaler had started out on her special industry,
+whaling having begun in England only four years
+previously. Few people are more conservative
+than the sailor, and of his service the most conservative
+of all is the fisherman, who did not take to
+steam generally for many a long year after it had
+become dominant in the carrying trade. Many of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span>us can still remember the famous “blue” sailing
+fishing fleet out of Great Yarmouth; and the
+Brixham fleet and others round our coasts still
+stick almost exclusively to sail. In the olden
+days, wool, wheat, fish and other cargoes were
+sold by the “last.” Wool is no longer thus sold,
+but a hundred years ago wheat was thus reckoned
+at Great Yarmouth, and round our coasts to this
+day fish is still disposed of in the old-time manner,
+a Yarmouth “last” amounting roughly to 13,200
+herrings or about two and a half tons.</p>
+
+<p>In our British North Sea fishing craft the busses
+have given way very largely to steam drifters, but
+off the Dutch shores the Scheveningen “pink” is
+much the same craft in hull as were the vessels
+which caused so much friction in the seventeenth
+century. The very word by which these craft
+have been known is in itself symbolical of the
+antiquity of the industry. The mediæval Venetians
+had “buzi,” and throughout the Romance and
+Teutonic languages it has always meant a fishing
+boat, the seventeenth-century Englishmen getting
+the use from the Dutch North Sea craft.</p>
+
+<p>The two principal types of fishing craft in the
+North Sea were the buss and the “dogger.” With
+regard to the former, the earliest illustration I
+have discovered is that by Elandts in the Municipal
+Museum at The Hague, made in 1664 from a
+picture of 1570. This “haring buys” is the
+prototype of the seventeenth-century buss, and
+consists of two masts, each having a square-sail.
+Like the modern drifter, the buss lowered her
+foremast and rode to her nets. This Elandts
+buss is really nothing more than a large open
+boat, with three hands in her; the length of the
+craft I reckon not more than about thirty feet.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span>A rather bigger type, similarly rigged but with
+three masts, is depicted in the Dutch Waghenaer’s
+<em>Speculum Nauticum</em> of 1584 riding to her nets,
+with fore and mainmasts lowered. Among the
+sixteen ships which Frobisher took with him in
+1578, one was the <em>Emmanuel</em> of Bridgewater, and
+she is described as a buss. It will be recollected
+that this was another attempt to find the north-west
+passage to China, and this craft performed
+most admirable service, and as she came homeward
+discovered an island which had never before been
+sighted. Thus, there is no question about the
+seaworthiness of this fishing type of craft.</p>
+
+<p>In the Boijmans Museum, Rotterdam, there is
+an interesting painting by Bellevois showing a
+mid-seventeenth-century buss of a powerful type,
+with three masts, a square-sail on each, and riding
+with her mizzen up, but the other sails and masts
+lowered. Keymor, who wrote in 1601 on the
+Dutch fishing, describes these craft as being from
+sixty to two hundred tons, and carrying from forty
+to a hundred lasts. The anonymous author of
+<cite>Britaine’s Busse</cite>, published in 1615, describes them
+as being of from thirty-five lasts or seventy tons,
+and measuring fifty feet on the keel, with a beam
+of seventeen feet. Her cost, together with her
+boat, was £260. There is another fine picture of
+these craft by Storck, hanging in the Mauritshuis
+at The Hague, the date being 1683, and from the
+rounded stern and general lines of the ship it is
+easy enough to see that she belongs to the same
+family to which the familiar Scheveningen “pink,”
+so well known in modern art, belongs.</p>
+
+<p>Often in the mediæval records one finds reference
+to a North Sea fishing type called the “dogger.”
+Exactly what these were like, it would be impossible
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span>to say, except that they probably had not more than
+two masts carrying square-sails, and that they were
+line fishers, for cod and ling, and did not use nets,
+their size in the seventeenth century varying from
+sixty to one hundred tons. It is reasonable to suppose,
+from the later illustrations which exist, that
+the dogger was in hull and square-sails not very
+different from the buss.</p>
+
+<p>The end of the seventeenth century, then, saw
+the British Mercantile Marine both in respect of
+its fishing craft and its cargo-carriers, going ahead.
+As regards the latter, the finest of all were the
+ships of the East India Company of England and
+those of the Dutch East India Company, with
+their stately hulls, lofty sterns, high freeboard and
+two decks of guns. A picture of 1647 shows them
+with three masts, as well as bowsprit, and they
+even carry topgallant sails on fore and main. Such
+craft are, in fact, the connecting link between the
+last of the mediæval ships and the first of the
+famous clipper ships. The stolid majesty of their
+design and build, the elaborateness of their seventeenth-century
+carvings, were expressive of that
+permanence with which the Merchant Service now
+rightly regarded itself. Indeed so prosperous had
+the British East India Company become in the
+seventeenth century, that by 1681 this corporation
+owned about thirty-five ships, ranging in size from
+100 to 775 tons, and in customs alone the company
+was paying £60,000 a year. They used to take
+out to India cargoes of lead, tin, cloth and stuffs,
+bringing back home raw silk, pepper and other
+Eastern goods. Trade prospered so well, indeed,
+that between 1682 and 1689 as many as sixteen
+East Indiamen of from 900 to 1300 tons were
+built, and all these ships had to be armed; for
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span>during the last decade of that century these
+merchantmen ran the risk of being attacked by
+French men-of-war as well as by privateers, so
+that in carrying from thirty to fifty guns these
+East Indiamen were very powerful vessels for any
+enemy to have to encounter.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p0741_ill1" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p0741_ill1.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DUTCH EAST INDIAMEN.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p0741_ill2" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p0741_ill2.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    SIGNAL CODE.
+
+    Used in a British East Indiaman.
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">
+    CHAPTER VIII
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SEAFARING</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Few people realise that the trade routes of the
+world are the lanes along which history is constrained
+to flow. It is a fascinating study, but we
+have little enough room to develop the subject
+here. The success of Prince Henry the Navigator’s
+influence, the achievement of Vasco da
+Gama, completely revolutionised the trade routes
+of the world, transformed the European mercantile
+system, made the gate of commerce not Venice
+but Lisbon, transferred the centre of progress from
+the Mediterranean to the Atlantic; and the discovery
+of America accentuated this new condition
+still further.</p>
+
+<p>What followed? First, the Dutch, having built
+up a shipping industry, so to speak, on the backbone
+of the herring, were able to get the trade of
+distributing these goods from Lisbon to the north
+European countries. This, in turn, caused competition
+on the part of the English, who were not
+intending to be left out of the new fortune.
+Secondly, the Dutch and English began themselves
+to voyage to the East. And thirdly, the
+discovery of the rich possibilities of the East and
+West not merely made the Mediterranean commercially
+of little future account, but gave to the
+nations of the European Atlantic coasts an impetus
+to progress and a reason for strife which had never
+yet occurred. The history of the seventeenth to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span>the twentieth centuries is confined to the struggle
+for the dominion of the seas—that is, maritime
+commercial supremacy, caused by the flow of
+trade taking a new route. The wars with the
+Dutch, the French and the Spanish were at heart
+the struggle for possession of overseas commerce,
+and the recent war with Germany was animated
+by the same cause.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to emphasise this trade route
+influence too much, for without a clear appreciation
+of its place in history the sequence of events
+becomes meaningless, and the rise and development
+of the Mercantile Marine seem arbitrary. Prince
+Henry the Navigator started a wonderful sea
+contest, and it has never stopped during the
+ensuing centuries. As soon as one keen competitor
+drops out, another comes in to keep up the
+running. That has been the impelling influence
+in the history of the English Mercantile Marine.
+When Spain falls out, the Dutch take her place.
+When they cease to be competitors, the French
+become the pacemakers, to be followed by the
+Germans; and now that the latter have disappeared
+almost entirely from the sea, the United States
+ships of commerce will maintain this ancient
+contest. And so it will go on, unless air routes
+cause another revolution in the transport of merchandise,
+and give another sudden twist to the
+flow of history.</p>
+
+<p>The seventeenth century, then, saw a wonderful
+incentive to the English Merchant Navy just
+because the East was calling. And, as a result of
+this, there followed in due succession the creation
+of the East India Company, the wonderful and
+famous East Indiamen built chiefly at Blackwall;
+then, after the long monopoly came to an end, the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span>famous Blackwall sailing ships of the Wigrams
+and Greens, the historic clippers, and finally the
+Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company.
+From the year 1582 for the next three
+hundred years from Blackwall, on the River
+Thames, sailing ships year after year made their
+way to the Orient, and it is to my mind one of the
+most remarkable continuities in the history of
+human things. It is certainly one of the most, if
+not the most, critical of periods in the development
+of the commercial marine. What Portsmouth has
+been to the British Navy, the village of Blackwall
+has been to the British Mercantile Marine. From
+the Blackwall yard were launched hundreds of
+East Indiamen; from here came improved and
+novel designs for the sailing ships that were to
+win and retain against all competitors commercial
+supremacy at sea for the British nation. But for
+these craft the trend of English history, of the
+world’s history, would be entirely different.</p>
+
+<p>There would have been neither the cause nor
+the means of a powerful navy; nor of Colonial
+expansion; nor would the position which Britain
+possesses financially have been possible. I am
+omitting intentionally for the present the development
+of the American trade, for that came later.
+It was the Eastern overseas trade in the merchant
+ships of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth
+centuries which was responsible for an enormous
+part of the national wealth, many of our costliest
+buildings and institutions, the founding of illustrious
+families, and indirectly the awakening of Japan.
+All this dates back to Prince Henry and Vasco da
+Gama—to the finding of a sea route to the East.</p>
+
+<p>It was in April 1582 that the first ship left for
+the East—when the <em>Edward Bonaventure</em> sailed
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span>from Blackwall, joined the flagship <em>Leicester</em> at
+Southampton, and, four weeks out from the
+London river, accompanied the two other ships.
+They made a futile attempt to reach India west
+about, and because the Spanish Fleet were in the
+neighbourhood of the Magellan Straits, had to
+return to England. In 1595 Holland sent four
+ships round the Cape of Good Hope, and two
+years later the expedition came back, after making
+a treaty with the King of Bantam and thus opening
+up the Indian archipelago. In 1599 a number of
+merchants in London petitioned Elizabeth for
+permission to have a monopoly to trade with the
+East Indies, and on the last day of the following
+year this privilege was granted for fifteen years,
+and thus the first East India Company began.</p>
+
+<p>A small squadron of ships left the Thames in
+1601 with iron, lead, tin and presents for the
+Indian princes, doubled the Cape of Good Hope
+on November 1, and reached Sumatra on June 5,
+1602. By September 11, 1603, the flagship <em>Red
+Dragon</em> anchored in the Downs, after a most
+successful voyage, bringing home 1,030,000 lbs. of
+pepper in the four ships. And thus the beginning
+of Anglo-Indian commerce started so profitably
+that matters went ahead. The monopoly was
+extended and prolonged, until as a fact it was not
+abrogated until 1833. Expedition after expedition
+was sent out, until it became the normal routine;
+the ships of the East India Company were a kind
+of bridge between the Thames and the Orient.
+The Merchant Navy was thus on the way to
+becoming something different from the fighting
+service, though it was not until many years had
+passed, not until wars had ceased, privateers and
+pirates had ended their activities, that the former
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span>could afford to give up mounting guns and carrying
+gunners. Nineteenth century peace thus gave a
+basis for separating the two types of ships and the
+two kinds of personnel; and thereafter the Royal
+Navy and the Mercantile Marine developed on
+divergent lines. But, up to that stage, the East
+Indiaman differed little enough from many of her
+contemporary men-of-war. Although formally the
+separation came earlier, it is from after 1815 that
+the real separation takes place, and the amalgamation
+never occurred again for a hundred years,
+when, temporarily, the ships and men of the
+Merchant Service came to join up with the
+Royal Navy as fighting units during the Great
+War.</p>
+
+<p>We need not follow in detail the events of the
+great East India Company’s rule—by far the most
+extraordinary monopoly which Europe has ever
+had with an overseas country. It is important,
+however, to note the effect of this in stimulating
+shipping affairs. The Dutch and English began
+to improve their ships as well they might for so
+long an ocean voyage. As to the former, the
+picture galleries in such places as Middelburg, and
+Rotterdam, and Amsterdam show what truly
+magnificent craft they were, with their t’gallant sails,
+high poops, stern galleries and ornate decoration.
+They were the embodiment of wealth. In
+the first decade of the seventeenth century there
+was built in England the <em>Trades Increase</em>, for the
+English Company’s Indian trade. She was of
+about 1100 tons burthen, and was the biggest
+merchant ship which had ever been built in this
+country. But she was really too big for the
+knowledge of naval architecture then existing.
+Clumsy, unwieldy and top-heavy, she got out to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span>the East, but at Bantam, whilst she was being
+careened to have her sheathing examined, she fell
+over on to her side and became a total loss, the
+date being 1613.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, shipbuilding did receive a great
+stimulus, and this growing interest caused the
+formation of the Shipwrights Company, its incorporation
+taking place in 1612; Phineas Pett,
+whose family for two hundred years had been the
+greatest English naval architects, becoming its
+first master. By this date of 1612 the yard at
+Blackwall, which was to be during the next two
+and a half centuries so famous, was already well
+established, and twenty years later almshouses were
+established at Poplar for invalided petty officers
+of the East India Company’s ships.</p>
+
+<p>For when we think of the Merchant Service in
+England during the seventeenth and eighteenth
+centuries, it is almost exclusively of the East
+Indiamen. It begins gradually, and becomes more
+important as time goes on and the grip on the
+East gets tighter. The great port was London,
+for it was not until the opening up of the trade
+with America in 1756 that Liverpool began in any
+way to compete as a great shipping centre, though
+actually it was not until 1815 that the Lancashire
+port made great strides. Nevertheless we must
+not get a false impression. The Tudor awakening
+had created comparatively few big ships, and even
+in 1615 there were only ten craft of more than
+200 tons burthen belonging to the Port of London.
+Still, it was the eve of brilliant developments, the
+like of which the world had never before known.
+Though they could not have foreseen it, the
+Blackwall shipwrights were preparing the way for
+the coming of the most perfect sailing ships
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span>which the world has ever seen, or probably ever will
+see—the clippers of the mid-nineteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>In 1661 Pepys goes by barge to the Blackwall
+yard to see the new wet dock, the largest in
+England, and the “brave new merchantman
+<em>Royal Oake</em>,” which was nearly ready for launching.
+In the following year Evelyn refers to
+accompanying the Duke of York to an East India
+vessel at Blackwall, and going aboard her where
+they drank punch and “canary that had been
+carried to and brought from the Indies, which was
+indeed incomparably good.”</p>
+
+<p>But before the East India Company had offices
+in the Blackwall yard and superintended the building
+of its ships, they had a yard of their own at
+Deptford. This dates from the year 1607, where
+they soon found employment for five hundred
+carpenters, caulkers, joiners, and others. Here
+there existed a wonderful organisation; large stocks
+of timber, masts, yards, canvas, and other stores.
+There were such officials as the ship’s husband, the
+clerk of the stores, the buyers, the clerk of the
+yard, the master shipwright, the master pilot (who
+had to survey the ships both here and at Blackwall),
+the boatswain-general, treasurers, purser-general,
+the clerk of the cordage, the surgeon-general, clerk
+of the slaughter-house (to look after the victuals),
+and so on. It was a hive of great activity, and by
+the year 1621 they had built so many ships that
+the company owned 10,000 tons of shipping.
+They had exported from England in their vessels
+£319,211 worth of woollen goods, lead, iron, tin
+and other commodities, and had brought home
+from the East £875,288 worth of cargoes, which
+were sold in England for the immense sum of
+£2,044,600. The average profit made by the first
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span>twelve voyages amounted to not less than 138 per
+cent.</p>
+
+<p>But after leasing the Deptford yard for twenty
+years, it was found to be so costly that it swallowed
+up too much of the capital, which could be employed
+more profitably in hiring ships. Therefore the
+Blackwall yard became responsible for the building
+of practically all the East Indiamen. The
+company went on from prosperity to wealth. In
+1681 they owned thirty-five ships of from 100 to
+775 tons, and two years later a £100 share would
+sell for £500. In 1667 was imported the first
+cargo of tea, which in the nineteenth century was
+to be the means of bringing into existence those
+wonderful tea-clippers.</p>
+
+<p>And now let us see something of the kind of
+existence which the merchant sailor led during
+the seventeenth century. He and his mode of
+life were regarded by the landsman as something
+strange, something abnormal. Contrariwise, the
+sailor realised that his art was almost beyond the
+landsman’s comprehension. That spirit, even in
+this twentieth century, is anything but dead, and
+between the two avocations there must always
+exist a big gulf. But we have to remember that
+in the seventeenth century seafaring was still such
+a modern and rare career (though yearly increasing
+in popularity) that he who made a profession of it
+was an unusual being. “The sea language,” wrote
+the seventeenth-century Sir William Monson in
+his <cite>Naval Tracts</cite>, “is not soon learned, much
+less understood ... a boisterous sea and stormy
+weather will make a man not bred on it so sick,
+that it bereaves him of legs and stomach and
+courage ... when he hears the seamen cry starboard,
+or port, or to bide alooff, or flat a sheet, or
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span>haul home a cluling, he thinks he hears a barbarous
+speech, which he conceives not the meaning of.”</p>
+
+<p>Similarly John Lyly, the dramatist who died
+in 1606, in his <cite>Gallathea</cite>, gives a dialogue between
+a mariner and three sons of a miller in which this
+difference is indicated. The landsmen will never
+go to sea again, for the bread is hard and the meat
+salt, and the mariner is pitied for being “pinned in
+a few boards, and ... within an inch of a thing
+bottomless.” The mariner, however, rather delights
+in showing his superiority over them. “I
+can shift the moon and the sun,” he exclaims,
+“... the lodestone that always holdeth his nose
+to the North, the two and thirty points for the
+wind, the wonders I see—would make you blind.
+You be but boys. I fear the sea no more than
+a dish of water.” He then tries to teach them
+the points of the compass, but they cannot learn
+them. “O dullard,” he remarks in disgust, “is
+thy head lighter than the wind, and thy tongue so
+heavy it will not wag?”</p>
+
+<p>Richard Braithwait, who wrote during the seventeenth
+century, published in 1631, in his <cite>Whimzies</cite>,
+an essay on the contemporary sailor, whom he
+admires for his pluck, disregard of danger and for
+his hardihood. He looks upon him as a desperate,
+hearty good-natured fellow of dissolute habits
+when ashore. “The bredth of an inch-boord is
+betwixt him and drowning, yet hee swears and
+drinks as deeply as if hee were a fathom from
+it.... Hee is most constant to his shirt, and other
+his seldome wash’d linnen.... What a starveling
+hee is in a frosty morning, with his Sea frocke,
+which seems as it were shrunke from him, and
+growne too short, but it will be long enough ere
+hee get another.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span></p>
+
+<p>The English writer Sir Thomas Overbury, who
+was arrested and confined in the Tower, and died
+in 1613, has left behind a study of the character of
+the sailor at this time. He wittily describes him
+as “a pitched piece of reason, caulked and tackled,
+and only studied to dispute with tempests.... A
+fair wind is the substance of his creed, and fresh
+water the burden of his prayers.... In a storm
+’tis disputable whether the noise be more his or
+the elements’, and which will first leave scolding....
+His language is a new confusion, and all his
+thoughts new nations. His body and his ship are
+both one burden. Nor is it known who stows
+most wine, or rolls most—only the ship is guided.”</p>
+
+<p>The references to life at sea in the seventeenth-century
+merchantmen are not many, but here and
+there one comes across mention of some ship
+or experience. Pepys, whilst sailing down the
+Thames estuary on Sunday, April 8, 1660, writes
+in his diary: “We had a brave wind all the
+afternoon, and overtook two merchantmen that
+overtook us yesterday, going to the East Indies.”
+But there are two interesting passages in English
+literature which show that going to sea in the ships
+of this period was a terrible business. The first is
+found in the autobiography of Edward, Lord
+Herbert of Cherbury, an English historian and
+diplomatist, who describes his experience of
+crossing the English Channel in a French ship
+in the year 1609. The second is taken from
+Jonathan Swift’s famous <cite>Gulliver’s Travels</cite>.
+There is no need to ask why fiction should be
+dragged into history; for Swift borrowed this
+descriptive account of an East Indiaman in a
+storm almost word for word from James Love’s
+<cite>The Mariner’s Jewel</cite>, and it gives us a glimpse
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span>into the seafaring of the beginning of the eighteenth
+century that bears the stamp of authenticity.
+And it is such peeps into the past that are so
+invaluable to us in reconstructing the life led by
+the rough seaman at this time, who was learning
+by his mistakes, risking much by his ignorance,
+but doing so much for the great Merchant Service
+that was to spread all over the world.</p>
+
+<p>Herbert, together with Sir Thomas Lucy returning
+from France, took ship from Dieppe early
+in February and spent the night in the Channel
+during a gale of wind. “The master of our ship,”
+he wrote, “lost both the use of his compass and
+his reason. For, not knowing whither he was
+carried by the tempest, all the help he had was
+by the lightnings, which, together with thunder
+very frequently that night, terrified him, yet gave
+the advantage sometimes to discover whether we
+were upon our coast to which he thought, by the
+course of his glasses, we were near approached.”
+That is to say, the master was anxious about his
+dead reckoning, which was kept by guessing the
+distance run every hour. The time was kept by
+means of hourly and half-hourly glasses from
+Elizabethan times even to the eighteenth century
+aboard ship, according to the number of times the
+sand ran through.</p>
+
+<p>Towards daylight the ship sighted Dover and
+the master made for it. Here the local seafarers
+were in great numbers by the shore on the look-out
+for wreckage, for the gale had blown down their
+own barns and trees. But the French skipper was
+either a very bad seaman, or his ship was extremely
+unhandy, for the craft went smack up against
+Dover pier and split, whereupon the Frenchman
+cheerfully announced: “Mes amis, nous sommes
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span>perdus.” Herbert, though in the toils of sea-sickness,
+then emerged from his cabin, climbed
+part of the way up the mast and waved his sword
+for help. A local six-oared boat then came off,
+into which Herbert was the first to enter. Lucy
+was half dead with sea-sickness, but was lifted
+from the cabin to the boat, and thus they were
+saved. Other boats rowed off the rest of the men
+and the horses. The ship, concluded Herbert,
+“was wholly split and cast away, insomuch that
+in pity to the master, Sir Thomas Lucy and
+myself gave thirty pounds towards his loss, which
+yet was not so great as we thought, since the tide
+now ebbing, he recovered the broken parts of his
+ship.”</p>
+
+<p>Dean Swift, in <cite>Gulliver’s Travels</cite>, refers to the
+ship <em>Adventure</em> riding in the Downs at the end
+of June 1702. She was commanded by Captain
+John Nicholas, a Cornishman, and bound for
+Surat. At the Cape of Good Hope they landed
+for fresh water, but other reasons detained them
+until the end of March. A good passage was then
+made till north of Madagascar, when bad weather
+was encountered. The spritsail (the square-sail
+set on a small mast at the end of the bowsprit) was
+therefore taken in, the mizzen was handed, and the
+guns secured. Rather than heave-to, the captain
+decided to run before the wind—“spooning” is the
+technical expression—the foresail was reefed, the
+fore-sheet hauled aft, the helm put hard aweather,
+and “the ship wore bravely.” But the foresail
+became split, and the yard was hauled down. “It
+was a very fierce storm; the sea broke strange and
+dangerous. We hauled off upon the lanyard of
+the whip-staff, and helped the man at helm.” For
+there was no steering wheel in use yet, and this
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span>was not introduced until about fifty years later.
+The tiller from the rudder was controlled by a
+vertical bar or lever, called a “whip-staff,” and the
+lanyards would naturally enough be used, as it is
+employed to this day for assisting the helm of
+sailing yachts.</p>
+
+<p>After scudding before the storm, the weather
+at last eased up. Then the ship set her foresail
+and mainsail and hove-to, and finally set the
+mizzen, main-topsail and fore-topsail, and with
+the wind S.W. ran a course E.N.E. Then they
+“got the starboard tacks aboard” and headed
+S.S.E. “We cast off our weather braces and
+lifts. We set in the lee braces and hauled forward
+by the weather bowlines and hauled them
+tight and belayed them, and hauled over the
+mizzen tack to windward and kept her full-and-by
+as near as she could lie.” That is to say,
+the ship was now trimmed to sail on a wind, the
+bowlines, which were connected by bridles to the
+leech of the sail, being used to keep the weather
+edge well hauled out tight, to make the canvas set
+properly. The mizzen, of course, was still a triangular,
+fore and aft sail. Finally on June 3, 1703,
+a boy on the topmast sighted land.</p>
+
+<p>It is a little difficult in this highly specialised
+twentieth century to appreciate the slight difference
+which existed between a merchant ship and
+a man-of-war. Between the men of the Merchant
+Service and those of the Navy there was thus little
+to choose. From the Elizabethan days most merchant
+ships of any size had to be armed for their
+own defence. Moreover the merchantman was as
+much privateer or pirate as he was freighter. He
+had to be a fighting man, whatever else he might
+be. Thus there was always at hand a reserve of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span>crews which could be “imprest” into the Navy.
+During the first quarter of the seventeenth century
+the merchants were paying their crews thirty shillings
+a month, whilst the men in the Royal ships
+were receiving less than half this amount. The
+result was that for a time the merchant ships
+attracted the best seamen.</p>
+
+<p>It was from the Merchant Service that some
+of the most distinguished officers of the Royal
+Navy graduated. Admiral Benbow, for instance,
+had been an apprentice in the Merchant Service,
+and was eventually given command of a naval ship
+such as was usually given to a lieutenant. He
+was promoted later to captain and to flag rank.
+This caused jealousy and bad feeling, and the
+reader will remember that this Admiral, when
+attacking the enemy in 1702 in the West Indies,
+was basely deserted by some of his captains, but
+he carried on a running fight almost single-handed
+for five days.</p>
+
+<p>Other names could be mentioned, too. Neither
+masters nor mates were exempt from being impressed;
+and these rough, daring merchantmen,
+who fought as hard as they drank, who despised
+the enemy as heartily as they despised cowardice,
+were the very life-blood of the nation that was
+growing up to prosperous adolescence. England
+was just realising what was the meaning of the
+word sea. As Francis Bacon wrote in his essay:
+“To be master of the sea is an abridgment of a
+monarchy.... Surely, at this day, with us of
+Europe, the vantage of strength at sea (which is
+one of the principal dowries of this kingdom of
+Great Britain) is great; both because most of the
+kingdoms of Europe are not merely inland, but
+girt with the sea most part of their compass; and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span>because the wealth of both Indies seems in great
+part but an accessory to the command of the seas.”</p>
+
+<p>It takes time for a nation to appreciate all that
+maritime progress connotes. We in this twentieth
+century have seen that it required the Great European
+War to enable the United States to realise
+this, and the present American mercantile shipping
+activity and development are the practical results
+of this appreciation. The Merchant Navy to a
+country is the basis on which her fighting Navy
+is built. It is the avenue along which her
+commerce must flow out and home.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">
+    CHAPTER IX
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">MERCANTILE SUPREMACY AT SEA</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The end of the seventeenth century saw the
+British Mercantile Fleet as the world’s leading
+traders. The disappearance of their Spanish and
+then Dutch rivals in sea commerce was brought
+about not by battle, but by the steady pressure of
+sea-power, as in the recent European War the
+continuous pressure of the Grand Fleet throttled
+the Germans. Just as the Battle of Jutland failed
+to bring about the downfall of our late enemies, so
+the defeat of the Armada did not succeed in breaking
+Spain; so, too, no single battle in the Anglo-Dutch
+wars brought the maritime progress of the
+great Dutch Republic to a dead stop.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp85" id="p0901_ill" style="max-width: 50.3125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p0901_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">CAPTAIN THOMAS FORREST.<br>
+    Navigator and Surveyor, who formed in 1770 for the H.E. India Company a new settlement
+    at Balambangan.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>This sea pressure having fulfilled its purpose, the
+English merchantmen were able to scoop up from
+exhausted nations the world’s maritime commerce;
+and the voyages of discovery, notably those of
+Dampier, Anson and Cook, together with the
+enterprising penetration of the East Indiamen,
+and to a smaller extent the West Indiamen (who
+enjoyed the benefits of free trade), opened up fresh
+avenues of commerce. The fighting fleets had
+opened up the oceans for the mercantile ships to
+bring home riches. By the year 1688 the annual
+clearance outwards from Great Britain was 191,000
+tons of English shipping and 95,000 tons of foreign
+shipping. In a hundred years the nation had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span>become supreme, simply because our forefathers,
+like any great business man, had possessed the
+imagination to see that the ocean was the road to
+wealth, and they had also not lacked the courage
+to put their maritime belief to the test.</p>
+
+<p>Thus in the year 1701-1702 its Mercantile Marine
+consisted of 3281 vessels of 261,222 tons, armed
+with 5660 guns and giving employment afloat to
+27,196 men. During the eighteenth century wet
+docks had to be made both in the Thames and the
+Mersey, the first Marine Insurance Company came
+into being, and Lloyd’s Register of Shipping was
+started. The history of Lloyd’s is indicative of the
+progress of the Mercantile Marine. In the seventeenth
+century a number of underwriters used to
+meet in Edward Lloyd’s coffee-house in Tower
+Street for their business. In 1692 this coffee-house
+was removed to Lombard Street, and then, in
+1774, Lloyd’s gave up the coffee-house and went
+to their premises in the Royal Exchange, where
+they have remained ever since.</p>
+
+<p>It is clear from Lloyd’s Register of Shipping
+that from 1764 to the end of that century most of
+the British ships were of not more than 300 tons;
+but we have to bear in mind two important facts.
+Firstly, the East Indian monopoly prevented competition,
+and therefore any stimulus to build anything
+larger; and secondly, from 1775 to 1815,
+with only small patches of peace, there was a long
+series of wars. These hostilities naturally caused
+the tonnage of commercial shipping to drop, but
+every time that peace was restored the figures
+began to go up again; so that in 1793, when war
+broke out with France, Great Britain possessed
+16,079 merchant ships as compared with the 3281 at
+the commencement of the century. It was therefore
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span>an amazingly live industry, which required
+only a fair opportunity for its development.</p>
+
+<p>This development was, as might be expected,
+accurately reflected at the Blackwall yard, in spite
+of the fact that the slips and shipwrights had
+largely during those forty years to be employed for
+building men-of-war for the Navy. By the middle
+of the century this yard had a wet dock, three dry
+docks and a number of slips. It was the biggest
+private dockyard in the country, and only the
+Royal yards could rival it. Here the East Indiamen
+continued to be built, the direct ancestors of
+the great liners of to-day. In the period 1750-1752
+was here constructed the East Indiaman <em>Falmouth</em>.
+She was a fine three-masted, full-rigged ship of
+668 tons burthen, measuring 108 feet 9 inches on
+the keel, and having a beam of 34 feet. She
+carried topsails and t’gallant sails and, with her large
+figure-head and rather wasteful, ornate design at
+bow and stern, maintained her close connection with
+the ship architecture of the seventeenth century.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p0921_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p0921_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">BRUNSWICK DOCK, BLACKWALL.<br>
+    Built especially for the use of the H.E. India Company’s ships, and begun in 1789.
+    It could accommodate sixty of these vessels.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>During the next thirteen years were launched
+such East Indiamen as the 642-ton <em>Osterley</em>, the
+642-ton <em>Tilbury</em>, the <em>Valentine</em> and <em>Ajax</em>, each of
+655 tons. In 1768 no fewer than five such ships
+of 670 tons were constructed and fitted out, and
+then, a couple of years later, ships of 700 tons
+began to be built. The East India Company used
+to charter such ships practically as long as they
+were seaworthy; and Blackwall in those days was
+able to do everything that the monopolists required;
+for here not only were the ships built,
+rigged and laid up, but ashore the houses were the
+homes of seafaring families, shipwrights, caulkers
+and every trade concerned in the building of these
+craft. And then in 1789 was launched from this
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span>yard the big 1612-ton <em>Bombay Castle</em>, a powerful
+vessel of seventy-four guns, which the East India
+Company presented to George III. There is a
+picture by Dodd which shows as many as four
+other big ships on the slips at this time, together
+with four or five similar craft fitting out in the
+stream. It is comparable only to the Clyde in the
+height of its twentieth century shipbuilding.</p>
+
+<p>With the increase in the number of these ships
+came, of course, the greater need for docks where
+the vessels could lie in tiers in safety and convenience;
+so in 1789 the Brunswick Basin was
+begun in the east end of the Blackwall yard. Two
+years later the first ship was masted here. This
+was the <em>Lord Macartney</em>, and you may guess of
+the keenness and smartness of the men when you
+learn that her bowsprit and all her masts were
+raised and fixed in the remarkable time of three
+hours and forty minutes. To-day, with all the
+modern appliances of cranes and labour-saving
+devices, this record is worth noting. Two years
+later was launched from this yard the famous East
+Indiaman <em>Warren Hastings</em>, which, as will be seen
+presently, was destined to become famous for her
+achievement in 1806.</p>
+
+<p>These East Indiamen, the backbone and beauty
+of the British Marine, were frigate-built, and
+stately rather than fast sailers, badly designed,
+requiring much ballast, and essentially but little
+improved since the sixteenth century. For during
+the latter part of the eighteenth century it was the
+French who were the finest naval architects. But
+two names become associated with the history of
+this yard before the close of the eighteenth century,
+and it is with these two families that the golden
+age of the sailing ship will ever be remembered.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span>In another chapter we shall see how much the
+Wigrams and Greens did to make the British ships
+unique in the annals of sail. It is therefore worth
+mentioning that in the year 1764 comes the first
+mention of Robert Wigram. His father had been
+master of a privateer. After his death the young
+Robert came to London and was apprenticed to
+a surgeon. Two years later Wigram took his
+surgeon’s diploma and then sailed in that capacity
+in one of the East India Company’s ships. This
+was the <em>Admiral Watson</em>. Subsequently he also
+served in the <em>Duke of Richmond</em>, but about 1770,
+after acquiring valuable knowledge of the Eastern
+trade, he became a merchant, and later one of the
+proprietors of this yard, his son William afterwards
+becoming one of the directors of the East India
+Company. It was in 1782 that George Green was
+apprenticed to the yard, and owing to his ability
+and other circumstances, was destined also to
+become later one of the partners. It is interesting
+also to mention that young Wigram, during his
+voyage in the <em>Admiral Watson</em>, formed a friendship
+with the second officer, whose name was W. T.
+Money. We thus see the first association of those
+three names, Money, Wigram and Green, which
+are inseparable from the finest fleet of sailing ships
+in its most historic period.</p>
+
+<p>But the time has not arrived to discuss the
+Victorian ships. The Mercantile Marine of the
+eighteenth and the first part of the nineteenth
+century had first to go through most trying times
+before the blessings of permanent peace should
+arrive. We who are now alive have not forgotten
+that for four years during the recent Great War
+the merchant shipping of the Allies was subject to
+the attacks of our enemies. But in the past it was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span>for forty years, as we have already seen, the British
+mercantile vessels had to endure this danger, and it
+is our duty to observe how our seafaring forefathers
+carried on during those trying times. The fighting
+spirit was by no means confined to the Navy, and
+even apart from those forty years, there hardly
+seemed a long period when the trading ship could
+proceed upon her lawful occasions without fear of
+being attacked. If it was not a pirate, it was a
+privateer or a warship of some kind. But the
+merchantman still went about her business all the
+same, undaunted and undismayed.</p>
+
+<p>We are familiar with ancient works on naval
+tactics, but there is in the British Museum a rare
+and somewhat damaged volume, printed in the
+year 1702, called <em>The Art of Seafighting</em>, written
+by a retired merchant mariner named Robert Park
+of Ipswich. It was undertaken on behalf of the
+Merchant Service at a time when the privateers
+were so active. Park was a “whole-hogger,” who
+knew no difference between foolhardiness and
+courage. He was a real “hard-case” sailorman,
+typical of his time, who had no use for luxury, but
+was a firm believer in trade and liberty. In this
+volume he tells his readers how to prepare the ship
+for close-fighting, by making the bulkheads musket-proof,
+and so on. He tells them how a ship can
+be worked under fire without showing a man on
+deck, gives valuable hints on gunnery and the
+importance of sobriety in the duties of a gunner.
+In the third part of the book he gives the very
+same advice which the British Admiralty in the
+recent war used to issue to the steamship captains.
+Park sensibly reminds his brother seamen that they
+are merchantmen, that they are sent to sea not to
+fight, but to get their cargoes to port, and if
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span>possible they are to avoid engagement. Nevertheless
+it was a wicked crime to leave an attacked
+consort to become a prey to the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>He gives seamanlike hints on how a three-masted
+ship should escape. He shows the ship
+stations and duties when preparing for battle,
+where the master is to take up his position, where
+the gunner is to be stationed, what the mate and
+the carpenter are to be doing. He gives the best
+tactics with regard to the enemy’s boarding, and
+even discourses on the handling of a fleet of
+merchantmen, incidentally maintaining that for
+them the weather-gauge is not usually advantageous.
+He prefers having a fleet in double,
+treble or even quadruple line, and gives diagrams.
+It is a quaint book, of human as well as practical
+interest, and well indicates the fine spirit of our
+eighteenth century merchantmen. Those who read
+it must have found it extraordinarily useful.</p>
+
+<p>It may be as well, before proceeding further, to
+make quite clear the meaning of the two expressions
+“privateer” and “Letter of Marque.”
+Legally there was no difference, but in practice a
+privateer was a vessel which took out a licence
+for the purpose of cruising against the enemy’s
+merchant ships. In order to send the prizes into
+port she necessarily carried a large crew. A
+“Letter of Marque” was a merchant ship with a
+cargo bound for her port in the usual manner, but
+possessing this licence which exempted her from
+convoy, nominally protected her crew from being
+impressed, and gave her the right to attack an
+enemy merchantman without having to wait until
+the latter attacked her. In a word, she was
+primarily a merchantman, whereas the privateer
+was a fighting merchant cruiser.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span></p>
+
+<p>But these British merchant captains were as
+clever as they were brave. Take the following
+incident, which occurred at the end of January
+1797 off the east end of Java. Here the French
+Rear-Admiral Sercey, with a squadron of six
+frigates, was at sea when five homeward-bound
+British East Indiamen came in sight. These five
+were all richly laden, and their first duty was certainly
+to get their cargoes to England and fight only if
+inevitable. The names of the British ships were
+the <em>Woodford</em>, <em>Ocean</em>, <em>Taunton Castle</em>, <em>Canton</em> and
+the <em>Boddam</em>. These five were in charge of the
+senior officer, Captain Charles Lennox. The latter
+took the situation in at once, and realised that it
+would be useless to run away. Moreover the mere
+act of so doing would indicate the inferiority of his
+squadron; so he did a very smart thing. He
+hoisted the flag of Rear-Admiral Rainier at the
+mizzen, and made the other four ships hoist pendants
+and ensigns as if they were men-of-war.
+Furthermore, in order to maintain this gigantic
+piece of bluff, he actually detached two of his ships
+to give chase and reconnoitre the French squadron,
+and as these daring craft approached the <em>Cybèle</em>,
+the latter crowded on sail to join her consorts and
+made the signal at her masthead: “L’ennemi est
+supérieur aux forces Françaises.” Thereupon the
+French Admiral also made sail. He certainly
+thought it curious that when another of his frigates,
+the <em>Forte</em>, carried away her maintopmast the
+British did not continue the chase, but the captain
+of <em>Cybèle</em> hailed him, whilst passing, that he had
+made out the enemy to consist of two line-of-battle
+ships and four frigates! Admiral Sercey
+therefore continued his retreat, and the East
+Indiamen were never engaged. It was not till
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span>a month later that he realised how he had been
+fooled.</p>
+
+<p>The mere fact that a French naval officer should
+have taken East Indiamen for line-of-battle ships
+is at once a proof of the stateliness and formidable
+appearance which the company’s ships possessed.
+It shows the great similarity which existed at that
+time between the ships of war and of commerce.
+But finer even than this exploit was the following
+brilliant achievement, which is one of the brightest
+incidents in the whole story of the Merchant
+Service. It was on January 31, 1804, that sixteen
+East Indiamen set forth from Canton for Europe.
+They were all of a size of from 1200 to 1500 tons
+register, their names being the <em>Earl Camden</em>,
+<em>Warley</em>, <em>Alfred</em>, <em>Royal George</em>, <em>Coutts</em>, <em>Wexford</em>,
+<em>Ganges</em>, <em>Exeter</em>, <em>Earl of Abergavenny</em>, <em>Henry
+Addington</em>, <em>Bombay Castle</em>, <em>Cumberland</em>, <em>Hope</em>,
+<em>Dorsetshire</em>, <em>Warren Hastings</em>, and <em>Ocean</em>. The
+senior officer present was Captain Nathaniel Dance,
+in the <em>Earl Camden</em>, and so was Commodore of all
+these ships. But it was a fleet rather than a
+squadron, for, in addition to the above sixteen,
+forty more vessels were also put under his charge
+to convoy them as far as their courses remained
+the same. A convoy of forty sailing ships! What
+a magnificent sight they presented, most of them
+carrying royals and staysails, and the massive hulls
+with their stern galleries and ornate figure-heads
+and painted ports heeling over gracefully to the
+wind!</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figleft illowp45" id="p0981_ill1" style="max-width: 47.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p0981_ill1.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    CAPTAIN HENRY WILSON,<br>
+
+    <span class="fs80">A commanding officer in the H.E. India
+    Company, who was wrecked in the company’s
+    ship “Antelope.” About 1788.</span>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<figure class="figright illowp45" id="p0981_ill2" style="max-width: 47.25em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p0981_ill2.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    CAPTAIN HON. RICHARD WALPOLE,<br>
+
+    <span class="fs80">Who commanded the H.E. India Company’s
+    ship “New Houghton.” About 1805.</span>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figleft illowp45" id="p0981_ill3" style="max-width: 47.9375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p0981_ill3.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    COMMODORE SIR NATHANIEL DANCE,<br>
+    1804.<br>
+
+    <span class="fs80">A very gallant mercantile officer.
+    (See p. <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.)</span>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<figure class="figright illowp45" id="p0981_ill4" style="max-width: 48.25em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p0981_ill4.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    SIR WILLIAM JAMES, BART.,<br>
+    <span class="fs80">Commodore in the H.E. India Company,
+    Chairman of the Court of Directors, etc.
+    About 1805.</span>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<div style="clear:both;"></div>
+
+<p class="center no-indent fs80">(<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em>)</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>For Commodore Dance it was a most responsible
+task. This fleet was carrying many thousand
+pounds’ worth of goods. There was the danger of
+pirates and the possibility of falling in with the
+French men-of-war; and there was the ever-present
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span>danger of collision. But those were the days of
+seamanship, and where would you find to-day any
+mercantile or naval officer who could handle a fleet
+of forty sail? We know all too well how difficult
+it was to handle much smaller convoys of steamships
+during the recent war; and with engines it is
+mere child’s play compared with dependence on
+wind and sail. To Commodore Dance, then, I
+suggest the greatest compliment is due for his
+leadership and tactical seamanship alone. But
+that was not all.</p>
+
+<p>Through night and day for a fortnight he kept
+his fleet under way without mishap, and then at
+daybreak one February day when the fleet was
+E.N.E. of Pulo-Auro, which was visible, the
+<em>Royal George</em> made a signal that she had sighted
+four strange sail to the south-west. Commodore
+Dance therefore signalled the <em>Alfred</em>, <em>Royal George</em>,
+<em>Bombay Castle</em> and <em>Hope</em> to go down and examine
+them. It happened that in the Commodore’s ship
+there was a passenger named Lieutenant Robert
+Fowler, R.N., lately in command of a ship that
+had been wrecked. He now offered to go in the
+fast-sailing brig <em>Ganges</em>, which was in the convoy.
+The Commodore assented, and she went away also
+to examine the strange vessels. Before long the
+look-out ships signalled that the strangers were
+actually a French squadron consisting of a line-of-battle
+ship, three frigates and a brig.</p>
+
+<p>At 1 p.m. the British Commodore signalled his
+scouts to return, and formed the line of battle in
+close order. Admiral Linois, who was in command
+of the French squadron, as soon as he could fetch
+in the wake of the East Indiamen, put about.
+The Commodore expected his rear to be attacked,
+but at nightfall the enemy, preferring a daylight
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span>action, hauled close to the wind. The British
+ships lay-to all night, the men at their quarters,
+ready for action, and at daybreak the enemy were
+seen also lying-to, but were three miles to windward.
+Both forces now hoisted their colours, and
+as the whole of the China fleet had been only
+recently painted, they presented a wonderful sight
+with their clouds of canvas. Admiral Linois’ flag
+was in the 74-gun ship <em>Marengo</em>, his other units
+being the 40-gun frigate <em>Belle-Poule</em>, the 36-gun
+frigate <em>Sémillante</em>, the 22-gun <em>Berceau</em>, and the
+16-gun <em>Aventurier</em>. It was no chance meeting,
+for the French Admiral was on the look-out for
+this China fleet, of whose strength and time of
+departure he had been informed.</p>
+
+<p>At 9 a.m., as the enemy showed no intention of
+engaging, Dance formed the order of sailing and
+continued his course, his fleet being under easy sail
+on the starboard tack; whereupon the French
+filled and edged towards the merchantmen. Four
+hours later, as it was obvious that Linois was trying
+to cut off the rear of the fleet, Dance signalled his
+fleet to tack in succession, bear down in line ahead,
+and engage on arriving abreast of the enemy. This
+manœuvre was perfectly carried out, the <em>Royal
+George</em> leading, all of them in close order and under
+t’gallant sails.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_4_4" href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> At 1.15 p.m. Linois opened fire
+upon the <em>Royal George</em> and leading ships, but this
+was returned in a very determined manner. For
+about three-quarters of an hour the two enemies
+blazed away at each other. The brunt was borne
+by the <em>Royal George</em>, but the <em>Ganges</em>, <em>Earl
+Camden</em>, <em>Warley</em> and <em>Alfred</em> were all hotly engaged.
+These five ships gave the French such a hot time
+that by two o’clock <em>Marengo</em> and her consorts
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span>ceased firing, hauled their wind, broke off the
+engagement and stood away under all sail to the
+eastward. The French warships had been beaten
+by British merchantmen and especially by clever
+tactics. But that was not all.</p>
+
+<p>Dance now made the signal for a general chase,
+and for two hours these merchant ships chased the
+warships; and then, remembering that his first duty
+was to his ships and their valuable cargoes, Dance
+feared that further pursuit would take his fleet too
+far from the mouth of the Malacca Straits, so
+ordered his fleet to tack, and eventually entered the
+straits. The <em>Royal George</em> had one man killed,
+one wounded, and she received some shot holes in
+her hull and sails; the other British ships were
+practically untouched. The sixteen East Indiamen
+carried from thirty to thirty-six guns each, though
+not one of these ships was armed better than the
+<em>Aventurier</em>, and this point is to be remembered,
+that a warship is always more or less ready to fight,
+whereas these East Indiamen were full of cargo
+and the decks were greatly lumbered. The
+Commodore by his determination and promptitude
+had saved the whole fleet, and it is to the credit
+of these sixteen merchantmen that their smart
+appearance, the regularity of their manœuvres, and
+their bold advance made the French Admiral
+wonder whether, after all, these were not British
+men-of-war escorting the others.</p>
+
+<p>For this remarkable victory the Commodore,
+officers and crews were liberally rewarded. The
+Patriotic Fund Committee, which had originated
+in Lloyd’s coffee-house in 1803, presented the
+Commodore with a sword of the value of £100
+and a silver vase of the same worth. Captain
+Timmins of the <em>Royal George</em> also received a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span>sword, as did the other captains and Lieutenant
+Fowler. The directors of the East India Company
+set aside about £50,000, and rewarded their
+Commodore with 2000 guineas and a piece of
+plate valued at 200 guineas. Captain Timmins
+received 1000 guineas and plate, the other captains
+receiving 500 guineas each and a piece of plate.
+The chief officers each received 150 guineas, the
+second officers 125 guineas, and so on through the
+ship, each seaman receiving six guineas.</p>
+
+<p>Dance was given also £5000 by the Bombay
+Insurance Society. He was offered a baronetcy,
+but declined it and accepted a knighthood, and
+thus concludes one of the finest incidents in the
+history of the Merchant Service. This action showed
+that the ships and men were not merely magnificent
+for their own particular job, but that they could
+tackle any emergency that came along.</p>
+<br>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_4_4" href="#FNanchor_4_4" class="label">[4]</a> For list of an East Indiaman’s sails, see Appendix.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span></p>
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X">
+    CHAPTER X
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">MIGHTY MERCHANTMEN</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Most of the vessels in this fleet of East Indiamen
+had been built at the Blackwall yard, or at
+least refitted there. In the year 1789 the East India
+Docks were brought into being, or rather begun,
+for they were not opened for another couple of
+years. This wet dock had become very necessary,
+for the East Indiamen had no accommodation provided
+for them now that they had become so big.
+And as long as they lay out in the river a good
+deal of their valuable cargoes was subject to
+pilfering. A joint-stock company was formed with
+a capital of £200,000, and it was decided that the
+hatches of every ship arriving from either India
+or China should be locked down before the ship
+reached Gravesend, and that the captain and one
+officer should remain on board until the ship was
+moored in the docks and the keys of the hatches
+handed over to an officer of the East India
+Company.</p>
+
+<p>At the beginning of the nineteenth century the
+price of building these ships was £13 12<em>s.</em> 6<em>d.</em> a ton.
+By 1803 it had gone up to £19. Five years later
+there were ten of these ships lost; in fact the
+first decade of the new century was unfortunate
+generally. There were losses owing to disasters
+at sea, and the French war paralysed the Indian
+trade. But the Blackwall yard was kept busy,
+and in 1813 it built ten frigates for the British
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span>Government of from 1078 to 1571 tons, owing
+to the lessons which had been learnt from the
+American frigates. Having built so many East
+Indiamen, this mercantile yard was eminently fitted
+for constructing such craft. And now that the
+firm consisted of Sir Robert Wigram, George
+Green, Money Wigram and Henry Loftus Wigram,
+we can see the time approaching when the famous
+Blackwall frigates were to make their appearance,
+though we shall not come to them immediately.</p>
+
+<p>In 1814 was launched for the East India Company
+the 1263-ton <em>Lady Melville</em>, and the firm of
+Wigrams &amp; Greens was now making a great deal
+of money. Three years later came the fine 1325-ton
+<em>Waterloo</em>. The only other port in the kingdom
+that in any way rivalled London was Liverpool.
+In 1751 there were only 220 ships belonging to
+Liverpool, but the opening of the American trade
+five years later gave it a great impetus. Then
+came those years of war which checked this, but
+on the resumption of peace in 1815 the Mercantile
+Marine received a wonderful impetus which has
+culminated in the magnificent Atlantic liners of
+to-day. There was the great industrial awakening
+in Yorkshire and Lancashire, a big trade was to
+be built up with America, and the haven of the
+Mersey was geographically suitable for the exports
+and imports. Britain was supreme at sea, foreign
+shipping had almost disappeared, the demand for
+tonnage was increasing rapidly, and the Mercantile
+Marine was very much encouraged. In fact, from
+1815 to 1860 the service passed through the most
+popular days of its long career.</p>
+
+<p>The first thirty years of the nineteenth century,
+just before the Indian monopoly was lost, saw the
+East India Company ships at their very best. We
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span>have spoken of the “Merchant Service” as a
+generic term, for convenience; but, strictly speaking,
+it pertained to the service in the ships of the
+East India Company, to distinguish it from service
+in the Free Traders and the Royal Navy. During
+this time to be able to get into the company’s
+service was about as good as a commission in the
+Navy. The ships themselves were as fine as any
+naval corvette, with similar discipline and similar
+personnel. Run like men-of-war, owned by a very
+ancient and wealthy company of unique character,
+the officers were of a social status equal to their
+cousins and brothers in His Majesty’s vessels. It
+was only when this old monopoly was taken away,
+and the romantic mixture of trade and sea-adventure
+gave way to keen competition in the race
+for wealth, that ships, officers, men and methods
+became of a different standard for a time. But
+this is always excepting the famous Blackwall frigates,
+which were destined to keep up the fine
+traditions of the old Indiamen.</p>
+
+<p>An officer in the East India Company was made
+to realise that he was being honoured to be allowed
+to enter such a service. The captains and first
+four officers were always sworn in before being
+allowed to proceed to duty on board. They enjoyed
+the very lucrative privilege of being able to participate
+in the company’s monopoly. The captain
+of a 755-ton ship and upwards, for instance, was
+allowed as much as fifty-six tons for his private
+trade, and he could even do better than this by
+using as dunnage bamboos which could be sold in
+London. From China he could bring home
+9336 lbs. Therefore, although his pay was only
+£10 a month—and we must not forget that a
+sovereign in those days was worth very much
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span>more than it is to-day—the captain was able to
+make very nice profits. The officers were also
+allowed a liberal amount of wine, beer, butter,
+cheese, spirits and groceries. No wonder that an
+officer was so often able to retire after a very few
+voyages and buy a ship for himself.</p>
+
+<p>The 1200-ton East Indiaman carried a captain,
+six mates, surgeon, purser, boatswain-gunner,
+master-at-arms, midshipmen, caulker, cooper,
+cooks, carpenters, quartermasters, sailmaker,
+armourer, butcher, baker, poulterer, officers’ servants,
+stewards; the crew numbering a hundred
+and thirty. No one could become captain unless
+he had voyaged to and from India or China as
+chief or second mate. These officers were better
+seamen than navigators, but navigation was still
+crude and somewhat unscientific in those days.
+The full uniform of the captain was a fine blue
+coat with black Genoa velvet round the cuffs,
+black velvet lapels, black velvet panteen cape.
+The gilt buttons bore the company’s crest. Whenever
+officers appeared before the Court of Directors
+they were compelled to wear full uniform, but
+undress uniform when appearing before the
+Committee.</p>
+
+<p>Strict instructions were given to the captain
+that his new hands were to wear the clothes provided
+by the company. The pay of the “foremast
+men” was £2 5<em>s.</em> a month, but in addition to this
+they were entitled to a pension from what was
+known as the Poplar Fund. Any captain, officer
+or man who had served aboard these ships for eight
+years and had regularly contributed to the fund
+was entitled to a pension. The size of the pension
+was based on the amount of capital which an officer
+possessed. Thus, if a captain said he was not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span>worth £2500, or £125 a year, he received a pension
+of £100. Allowances were made to the widows
+and orphans of those who had served the company
+for seven years, and if a man had been wounded
+or maimed so as to be incapable of further sea
+service he was qualified for a pension even if he
+had not served eight years.</p>
+
+<p>We mentioned some time back the fine East
+Indiaman <em>Warren Hastings</em>. In the engagement
+which is to be described she lost her purser and six
+men, and thirteen were wounded, including her
+chief, third and sixth officers and surgeon’s mate.
+Therefore, although these were really merchant
+ships, built to carry cargoes, with neither the facilities
+nor the crew of a man-of-war, yet there was
+always the possibility of the personnel being killed
+or disabled for life. In the case of the <em>Warren
+Hastings</em>, extra special trouble had been taken to
+enable her to defend herself against any French
+frigate she might meet. She mounted twenty-six
+18-pdrs. on her main or lower deck, fourteen on
+her upper deck, and four 12-pdrs. on her poop.
+She left England in February 1805 and reached
+China, then left again for home, but in a less suitable
+condition of defence; for of her main-deck
+ports four had been caulked up so as to give space
+for a storeroom, and the four guns had been placed
+in the hold. Of her crew, forty Chinamen remained
+at Canton, and a British man-of-war had
+pressed eighteen of her English seamen. Four of
+her upper deck guns had also been stowed below.
+She therefore now mounted only thirty-six guns.</p>
+
+<p>It was on June 21 at 7.30 a.m., when the ship
+was in Lat. 26° 13’ S., Long. 56° 45’ E. that <em>Warren
+Hastings</em>, steering W. by S. before a strong breeze
+from N.E. by E., under a press of sail, sighted to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span>the south-west a strange ship under treble-reefed
+topsails and courses. This was the French 40-gun
+frigate <em>Piémontaise</em>, 1093 tons, with a crew of 385,
+and able to fire a broadside of twenty-three guns,
+against the <em>Warren Hastings</em>’ eighteen. The latter
+had a tonnage of 1856, but a crew of only 138.
+The Frenchman had twenty-eight 18-pdrs. on her
+main deck. She also carried eighteen other guns
+on her quarter-deck, a total of forty-six carriage-guns.
+But she also carried swivels and musketoons
+in her tops and along her gunwales. On each fore
+and main yard-arm there was a tripod to contain
+a 5-cwt. shell, so that if she got alongside her
+enemy its fusee could be lit by a man lying out on
+the yard, and it would then be allowed to fall on
+the enemy’s deck, and after its explosion the French
+would be able to rush on board. It was thus in
+idea a revival of mediævalism. The historian
+James even went so far as to refer to the Frenchmen
+as being “armed more like assassins than
+men-of-war’s men; each having, beside the usual
+boarding weapons, a poniard struck through the
+button-holes of his jacket.”</p>
+
+<p>Thus, in every respect except tonnage the East
+Indiaman was a more powerful vessel, and the
+preliminary tactics are interesting. At 9 a.m.,
+when the Indiaman was well on her weather-quarter,
+the Frenchman shook out the reefs from
+her topsails and stood towards the merchantman,
+who held on her course. Half an hour later the
+frigate set her t’gallant sails and stuns’ls, and at
+10 a.m. hoisted the British blue ensign and pendant.
+There was nothing wrong in this <em>ruse de
+guerre</em>, and often during the war of 1914-1918
+British ships hoisted neutral colours <em>before</em> opening
+fire on German submarines. <em>Warren Hastings</em>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span>suspected the frigate was not a British man-of-war,
+but hoisted her colours and made her private signal.
+For, in order that East Indiamen might be able to
+make themselves known on the high seas to British
+men-of-war, a special code of signals was always
+arranged by the Admiralty during war-time. This
+code was sent sealed to the Secret Committee
+of the company and then handed over to the
+commanding officer of each ship.</p>
+
+<p>The Frenchman took no notice of the signals,
+continued rapidly to approach, so that at 11 a.m.
+the Indiaman shortened sail and cleared for action:
+it was quite obvious now what was going to happen.
+At noon the frigate took in her stuns’ls, staysails
+and mainsail, and then hauled down British colours
+and hoisted French. After opening fire and disabling
+part of the Indiaman’s rigging, the Frenchman
+again attacked, this time killing and wounding
+several of the merchantman’s crew, badly damaging
+the foremast, cutting away all the foreshrouds on
+the port side and the ensign. The latter was
+quickly hoisted again at the maintopgallant masthead.</p>
+
+<p>A third attack followed, during which the <em>Warren
+Hastings</em>’ foremast was finally crippled. Thus,
+owing to the wind and heavy sea, the latter could
+carry sail on only her main and mizzen masts, and
+now opened fire. A hot engagement followed, and
+unfortunately her mainmast was now damaged as
+well as her standing and running rigging, besides
+the further loss of men killed and wounded. The
+fifth attack found her with only the main topsail
+set, and the enemy poured in a terrible fire, which
+knocked the spanker boom into splinters and carried
+away the mizzen-mast, which, falling forward, disabled
+every remaining effective gun on the upper
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span>deck. Troubles came not singly, for the lower
+deck was on fire, the rudder was rendered useless,
+and whilst the surgeon was operating, a shell
+entered and destroyed all his instruments. For
+four hours and a half the Indiaman had sought to
+defend herself, but in spite of the zeal and perseverance
+of her officers and men she was compelled
+in her crippled state to lower her colours.</p>
+
+<p>Then, being thoroughly unmanageable, the Indiaman,
+with the heavy sea running, happened to fall
+off, and crashed alongside the <em>Piémontaise</em>, who
+was to leeward. Thereupon a number of Frenchmen
+leapt aboard the merchantman with daggers
+and threatened to kill the lot, dragged the captain
+about the ship and accused him of having tried to
+ram the frigate so as to cripple her masts; and then
+stabbed the captain, whereupon he fainted through
+loss of blood. The second officer, surgeon, and a
+midshipman and boatswain’s mate were similarly
+stabbed. Presently this fury died down, the
+Frenchman took the Englishman in tow and both
+arrived at the Isle of France on July 4.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, life in these merchant ships, although
+well rewarded, was at any time during those long
+years of hostilities liable suddenly to become most
+exciting. Ships and men were sent to the bottom
+or taken captive, but the service went on. Lest
+the reader should imagine these incidents isolated
+events, let the following be related. On May 2,
+1809, a small squadron of homeward-bound Indiamen
+had cleared the Sandheads of Bengal River,
+escorted by H.M. sloop <em>Victor</em>. After three
+weeks the latter, in dark and squally weather of
+the night of the 24th, parted company. By the
+30th, owing to stress of weather, two ships had left
+the convoy, and there now remained only the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span><em>Streatham</em>, <em>Europe</em> and <em>Lord Keith</em> in company.
+The first two were 820-ton craft; the third was a
+vessel of 600 tons. The first two carried thirty guns
+apiece; the <em>Lord Keith</em> had not more than twelve.</p>
+
+<p>At five-thirty on the morning of May 31, when
+in Lat. 9° 15’ N., Long. 90° 30’ E., these three
+were on the starboard tack with the wind S.W.
+by S. when a strange ship was seen seven miles off
+to the west of south. This was the French 40-gun
+frigate <em>Caroline</em>, which mounted forty-six guns in
+addition to her swivels. She had been cruising
+off the Sandheads and had captured a few ships.
+Subsequently she had learned from an American
+ship, the <em>Silenus</em>, which had sailed from the Sandheads,
+of the number and probable route of the
+Indiamen. But when first sighted the <em>Caroline</em>
+was taken by the Indiamen for the <em>Victor</em>.
+<em>Streatham</em>, being the senior ship, made the private
+signal about 6 a.m., but having got no answer
+from the Frenchman, signalled the other two to
+form into line, <em>Lord Keith</em> leading, followed by
+<em>Streatham</em> and <em>Europe</em>, but the two last mentioned
+were a considerable distance apart. Half an hour
+later the <em>Caroline</em> hoisted colours and attacked
+<em>Europe</em>, who quickly returned the fire. At the
+end of half an hour the latter was disabled. Most
+of her guns were put out of action, yards, foremast,
+sails and rigging cut to pieces and hull
+damaged in several places. And then the enemy
+raked her from forward and proceeded to deal with
+<em>Streatham</em>, which by eight o’clock was so utterly
+crippled that she had to lower colours. Meanwhile
+<em>Lord Keith</em> and <em>Europe</em> had been firing at
+<em>Caroline</em>, who now recommenced the action with
+the last mentioned. Presently <em>Europe</em> closed
+<em>Streatham</em>, but on learning that the latter had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span>surrendered, and that <em>Lord Keith</em> had escaped,
+running before the wind, also determined to up
+helm. Then <em>Caroline</em>, after securing <em>Streatham</em>,
+went in chase and captured <em>Europe</em>. On account
+of the leaking condition which the two prizes were
+now in, it took three days to get them in a seaworthy
+condition, but on July 22, with their
+valuable cargoes, they were brought by <em>Caroline</em>
+and anchored in the Bay of St. Paul, Isle of
+Bourbon. It had been a heavy loss to the East
+India Company, though the gallant merchant
+captains, with their ill-armed and badly-manned
+ships (the crews consisting partly of cowardly
+Portuguese and lascars), had done all that was
+possible. The one consoling feature was that
+<em>Lord Keith</em> managed to get right away, and
+actually arrived safely back in English waters.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1121_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1121_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">A CONVOY OF EAST INDIAMEN.<br>
+    H.E. India Company’s ship “Inglis” leaving St. Helena in July 1830, with H.M. Frigate “Ariadne” and the H E. India Company’s ships
+    “Windsor,” “Waterloo,” “Scaleby Castle,” “General Kyd,” “Farquharson” and “Lowther Castle.”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>Similarly on July 3, 1810, three outward-bound
+Indiamen, the <em>Ceylon</em>, <em>Windham</em> and <em>Astell</em>, each
+of them of 800 tons, were about thirty miles west
+of the island of Mayotta on a northerly course
+with a fresh S.S.E. breeze when three ships were
+sighted close-hauled on the port tack. These were
+the two French frigates <em>Bellone</em>, <em>Minerve</em>, and the
+recaptured ship-corvette <em>Victor</em>, about nine miles
+distant, and it was about six o’clock, just as the
+day was dawning. Half an hour later the senior
+Indiaman <em>Ceylon</em> made the private signal, and, as
+no answer was returned, the merchant ships prepared
+for action. Presently, as <em>Astell</em> signalled
+she was overpressed, the other two shortened sail.
+Captain Meriton made the following signal from
+<em>Ceylon</em>: “As we cannot get away, I think we had
+better go under easy sail, and bring them to action
+before dark.” To this <em>Astell</em> replied: “Certainly.”
+<em>Windham</em> answered: “If we make all sail and get
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span>into smooth water under the land, we can engage
+to more advantage.”</p>
+
+<p>The wind increased so much that the Indiamen
+were compelled to heave-to, and took in the third
+reef of their topsails. It was not an ideal day for
+an engagement, as the ships heeled over so that
+they could not keep open their lower-deck ports.
+Captain Meriton formed his ships in line abreast,
+<em>Ceylon</em> in the centre, and at 2.15 p.m. <em>Minerve</em>
+opened fire on <em>Windham</em> and <em>Ceylon</em>. There was
+a heavy sea running and the action became general.
+During the afternoon Captain Hay of <em>Astell</em> was
+severely wounded, and the command was taken
+over by the chief mate. <em>Windham</em> had her sails
+and rigging considerably damaged, and about 4.30
+p.m. a temporary lull occurred, when <em>Minerve</em>
+carried away her main and mizzen topmasts. And
+then Captain Meriton was wounded, so the command
+of <em>Ceylon</em> devolved on her chief mate, who
+a few minutes afterwards was himself wounded
+and was succeeded by the second mate. This ship
+had received great punishment throughout the
+engagement: her masts, sails and rigging were
+badly damaged, many of her guns disabled, her
+hull so injured that she was making three feet
+of water an hour; six of her people were killed
+and twenty-one wounded. Therefore before half-past
+seven she hauled down her colours and was
+taken prize. <em>Astell</em>, already much injured, put out
+her lights, made sail and escaped during the extreme
+darkness of the night. <em>Windham</em> was now left
+alone, and finding that she was too damaged to
+make sail, continued the action to help <em>Astell’s</em>
+escape, and then hauled down her colours and was
+taken captive.</p>
+
+<p>The captains, officers and men had fought very
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span>gallantly against the French, who were in superior
+force, and the East India Company, who always
+could afford to treat their servants handsomely,
+awarded each of the three captains the sum of £500,
+with a fine reward for the officers and men. On
+Captain Hay of the <em>Astell</em> the company also settled
+a pension of £460 a year, and distributed £2000
+among the officers and crew. Furthermore, the
+Admiralty, to show their appreciation of the ship’s
+gallantry, granted to the crew a protection from
+impressment for three years. One of the men,
+Andrew Peters, had bravely nailed the pendant
+to the maintop masthead, and having done so was
+killed while descending the rigging.</p>
+
+<p>It is fine to read of the resource, the able seamanship
+and great gallantry of these wonderful
+old ships right through two centuries until well
+into a third. But there was a new era coming,
+and the final link with Tudor romance and
+mediæval shipping ideas was just about to be
+severed. Looking back on events, it seems to us
+moderns perfectly amazing that the East India
+Company should have enjoyed so rich and enormous
+a monopoly so long, and in the year 1814 they lost
+this privilege so far as India was concerned. The
+result was that a new impetus was given to shipbuilding
+and shipowning, and the element of competition
+was introduced with free trade and no
+favour. In the task of making the Mercantile
+Marine of Britain such a solid, dignified, stately
+and honourable service for all those years the
+company did much; nor is this influence by
+any means dead, for it set a high standard for
+subsequent independent shipowners to follow, and
+it permeates the big shipping lines of to-day. What
+the Orient had meant in a small way to the Tudor
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span>and Stuart seamen and merchants, it was to mean
+on a much bigger scale to the traders of the nineteenth
+century, and the wealth of Great Britain
+was to benefit thereby.</p>
+
+<p>From 1814 the owners of the Blackwall yard
+began to build East Indiamen for themselves to
+own and manage. In 1824 they built the <em>Carn
+Brae Castle</em>, 570 tons, which was the first ship
+expressly built for the passenger trade to Calcutta,
+and the finest ship of her day. She was lost rather
+unnecessarily by the officer of the watch allowing
+her to stand too close into Freshwater Bay, Isle
+of Wight, one day when the captain and passengers
+were at dinner. In that same year Mr. Green had
+purchased the <em>Sir Edward Paget</em>, which was the
+first of the well-known passenger ships to India
+and Australia. She was elaborately fitted and
+made quite a sensation. She was commanded by
+Captain Geary, R.N., and in this connection the
+following true anecdote is recorded. The house
+flag which she wore was a white ground with a
+red St. George’s cross through the centre. One
+day, after arrival at Spithead, the Admiral at
+Portsmouth sent his lieutenant off to inquire what
+ship was wearing an admiral’s flag, and on learning
+that she was a merchant ship, at once ordered it
+to be hauled down. A blue handkerchief was then
+sown on the centre of the flag, and as this satisfied
+the lieutenant it was allowed to be hoisted again,
+and continued to be the distinguishing flag of the
+Wigram and Green ships until, some years later,
+the partnership in the firm was dissolved.</p>
+
+<p>After this ship returned to Blackwall from her
+first voyage, Mr. Green proceeded on board to
+make his usual inspection, and, much to his dismay,
+was received with manned yards, with a salute,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span>and the ship’s band playing “The Conquering
+Hero.” But the <em>Sir Edward Paget</em> was not a
+man-of-war and Mr. Green was not an admiral;
+and it was all very fine, but not suitable. He
+resented this kind of reception, and the general
+man-of-war appearance everywhere on board so
+astonished him, that he was not surprised also to
+find that when the accounts of the voyage were
+balanced the style was not financially profitable.
+The result was that a new captain came to the
+ship and there was a new set of regulations before
+she went on her second voyage.</p>
+
+<p>In 1825 a couple of 1325-ton ships were launched
+by the yard, and here we get the final resemblance
+to the ships of the Caroline period, for the figure-head,
+poop, decorations and so on have been considerably
+modified. By the year 1830 the firm had
+ceased to build any more vessels to be employed
+by the East India Company; for although that
+corporation had lost its Indian monopoly, as already
+stated, it still retained a like privilege in regard to
+China. But the public mind was opposed to this
+being continued; in 1832 Parliament had to face
+the question, and in April of 1834 the company
+lost its commercial charter for ever. But, seeing
+this revolution was approaching, individual firms
+had in the meantime been preparing to compete
+in this Eastern trade. Not merely did the Greens
+and Wigrams from 1830 build ships for themselves,
+but they ordered them from the Tyne firm of
+T. &amp; W. Smith, and this firm also began to own
+East Indiamen themselves in competition with the
+Greens and Wigrams.</p>
+
+<p>In 1831 the Blackwall firm consisted of George
+Green, Money Wigram, Henry Loftus Wigram,
+Richard Green and Henry Green, but they were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span>to pursue a strange policy, which, if good for the
+Mercantile Marine, was destined to ruin the firm.
+The owners of the Blackwall yard began to build
+ships not for the firm, but for individual members
+of the firm—so many for the Green family and so
+many for the Wigrams, but especially for the
+former. Thus it came about that a Green fleet
+competed with a Wigram fleet, whilst by the year
+1841 the ships owned by the firm itself numbered
+only two. Finally in 1843 the partnership was
+dissolved.</p>
+
+<p>But in 1832 they launched the 577-ton <em>London</em>
+for Money Wigram, and this was the real pioneer
+of the celebrated Blackwall frigates of which we
+shall speak in a later chapter. We thus enter on
+that last stage of ship development which was to
+precede the golden age of the sailing ship, when
+the clippers made eternal fame for themselves.
+This yard was still the biggest private concern in
+Europe, though Liverpool as a great port was now
+going ahead. The beginning of the American War
+in 1812 had given it a serious set-back, but after
+peace came in 1814 there was a new era as well for
+the Atlantic shipping as for the East. For America
+was going ahead. She had shown that she knew
+how to build during the war frigates of an improved
+kind, and in peace she was now producing better-designed
+merchantmen than ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>In 1816 was inaugurated the famous Black Ball
+Line of New York packets, which were the precursors
+of the present-day Atlantic liners. These
+Black Ball liners were full-rigged ships of from
+300 to 500 tons register, with full bodies and bluff
+bows, and yet they averaged at first only twenty-three
+days on the outward voyage to Liverpool
+and forty-three days homeward-bound. This was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span>the only means of communication in those days
+between America and Liverpool, and in 1836 was
+started the Dramatic Line, consisting of 700-ton
+sailing ships. The world’s trade was increasing,
+industrialism was prospering, the markets of the
+whole world were now open to all, and there was
+a long spell of peace ahead. Transatlantic shipping
+was encouraged so that these packet ships increased
+in tonnage, and in 1846 the 1400-ton <em>New World</em>
+was built, being then the largest sailing ship in the
+world. Other famous vessels were the <em>Isaac Webb</em>,
+<em>Albert Webb</em> and <em>Guy Mannering</em>. The ships of
+these two lines were exceedingly fine craft, and
+made remarkable passages across to England, the
+Black Ball liners eventually averaging twenty-one
+days and the Dramatic liners twenty and a half
+days. The nineteenth century in regard to the
+sailing ship alone was certainly a most wonderful
+period.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1181_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1181_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">A FINE PIECE OF SEAMANSHIP.<br>
+    The “Chesterfield” packet (Captain Robert Lea Jones) rescuing the crew of a sinking ship. About 1795.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XI">
+    CHAPTER XI
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">PACKET SHIPS AND BRIGS</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>As far back as the reign of Elizabeth a State
+post-office was instituted for foreign letters, for the
+reason that the merchants now required it. Owing
+to England’s geographical position, this, of course,
+connoted the employment of sailing ships. By
+1635 the weekly continental service was doubled
+and accelerated. This arrangement improved
+during the seventeenth century, and there were
+packet stations at Dover for France, Harwich and
+Yarmouth for Holland and Hamburg, and at
+Holyhead and Milford for Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>But it was Falmouth which became the headquarters
+for the post-office packet service as far back
+as 1688. The reason for this is obvious when you
+consider its location in regard to the Bay of Biscay,
+and the facility with which even those unhandy
+sailing craft could come in and out in all weathers
+and practically all winds. A very safe harbour, with
+plenty of room and water, right at the western end
+of the English Channel and easy of access, it was
+ideal for the departure of travellers and mails for
+Spain and the West Indies. The result was that,
+as the service became more numerous, shipyards
+were created in Falmouth, inns were built for the
+travellers, and a seafaring population grew up.</p>
+
+<p>The North Sea packets were of about sixty tons,
+but the Falmouth packets were of 200 tons and
+heavily armed. They were not owned by the post-office,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span>but hired by private contract, as the East
+India Company used to charter their ships. In
+fact, never did the post-office own the ships, although
+the officers and men were its servants, and not the
+contractor’s. The Falmouth packet service began
+in a quiet way in 1688 with the hiring of two craft,
+and for years it was run at a loss. But there were
+political reasons for keeping up connection with
+Spain, and during the eighteenth century both the
+Spanish and West Indian trades became important;
+and even by 1702 packet ships from Falmouth were
+running to Barbados, Jamaica, the southern States
+of North America, to Corunna in Spain, and in
+1704 also to Lisbon. It was a separate method of
+causing to grow up a body of fine seamen; it was
+one of the best schools for encouraging navigation,
+which was still in a most crude position; and
+generally it was one of the great influences towards
+building up the Mercantile Marine. It was not
+until Cromwell’s time that any real naval fighting
+service as distinct from the Merchant Navy had
+come into being, and right up to the Napoleonic
+Wars the two services were closely allied and
+practically interchangeable. We have to remember
+also that merchantmen and packet ships had to
+fight enemy warships whenever required. Of a
+peaceful voyage there was hardly such a thing.</p>
+
+<p>Such incidents as that of May 16, 1744, when the
+<em>Townshend</em> packet fought against the Spaniards;
+or of July 25, 1759, when the packet <em>Fawkener</em>
+was attacked by a large French sloop between
+Barbados and Antigua, are by no means isolated.
+Indeed, although they were forbidden to seek
+engagements and were reminded that their first
+duty was the safety of the mails, yet if they saw a
+chance of obtaining wealth at sea by attacking a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span>likely ship, they did so in spite of any authority.
+These men were, like the age in which they lived,
+a hardy, rough, corrupt lot of dare-devils.</p>
+
+<p>They carried cargoes of their own, contrary to
+regulations; they stole, they smuggled, they
+mutinied—but we cannot go through the whole
+decalogue. On the other hand, they were real
+sailormen, and the rule that a packet was to put to
+sea from Falmouth immediately on receiving the
+mails, whatever the wind might be, provided only
+she could carry a double-reefed topsail, was maintained.
+The regularity of their voyages was the
+nearest thing to the running of a modern steamship.
+In 1798 there were sixteen packet ships to keep up
+the Falmouth to West Indies service, and “on the
+quiet” captains, officers and crews would take out
+quantities of cheese, potatoes, boots, shoes and so
+on, sell them on commission for English merchants,
+and then bring back such goods as wines, lace,
+tobacco, brandy, which would be smuggled ashore
+and then sold all over the country by special men.
+This went on until 1810, when the Lisbon and
+West Indian packets were strictly forbidden to
+carry on these trades. The order brought the
+crews up with a round turn, and a terrible moan
+went about in disgust. Their wages were certainly
+too low, and this was the means of remunerating
+themselves. Anger and indignation finally
+culminated in a mutiny.</p>
+
+<p>And yet the captains used to make no meagre
+living, even reckoned in the money of the nineteenth
+century. They were paid £8 a month
+during war-time and £5 in peace; but besides this
+they received large sums in respect of the fares of
+passengers. One captain alone was making £1000 a
+year by this means, and then there were the fees for
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span>carrying bullion, to say nothing of their commission
+for selling goods, both exports and imports. For
+instance, they were paid thirty-five guineas by
+every passenger who proceeded from Falmouth to
+Gibraltar. By the year 1808 there were thirty-nine
+packets at Falmouth—quite a fine fleet for
+any one port in those days. Every week one sailed
+for Lisbon, one for San Sebastian or other part of
+the north Spanish coast, whence communication
+with the British Army in the Peninsula was maintained.
+Each week, too, one packet sailed for the
+West Indies, whilst others at longer intervals set
+forth towards the Mediterranean, Brazil, Surinam,
+Halifax and New York. People were beginning
+to travel, and between 2000 and 3000 passengers
+thus passed through Falmouth to and from these
+ships yearly. It was a very encouraging factor for
+the Mercantile Marine, especially as the Falmouth
+packets alone kept 1200 men permanently employed
+afloat.</p>
+
+<p>Contemporary artists of the early nineteenth
+century have left for us paintings showing some of
+the North Sea packet ships. Turner’s well-known
+picture in the National Gallery of the English
+packet arriving in Calais in 1803 is an instance.
+These craft were never bigger than about eighty
+tons, and during the French wars ran for a time
+between Yarmouth and Hellevoetsluis in Holland.
+But a West Indian packet such as the <em>Duke of
+Marlborough</em> with her 1804 tons and brig-rigged,
+was a very different sort of ship. And in the very
+year when Commodore Dance put Admiral Linois
+to flight, this packet ship, whilst bound for the
+Leeward Islands, was in the month of April chased
+by a schooner and captured.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figleft illowp45" id="p1221_ill1" style="max-width: 53.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1221_ill1.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    CAPTAIN W. ROGERS,<br>
+
+    <span class="fs80">Of the “Windsor Castle” packet. About 1808.</span>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<figure class="figright illowp45" id="p1221_ill2" style="max-width: 54.125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1221_ill2.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    CAPTAIN JOSEPH HUDDART, F.R.S.,<br>
+
+    <span class="fs80">Who served in the H.E. India Company’s service for ten years.
+    He lived 1741-1816, and was a celebrated hydrographer.</span>
+
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<div style="clear:both;"></div>
+
+<p class="center no-indent fs80">(<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em>)</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>As mentioned in the last chapter, the famous
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span>American packets which ran from New York to
+Liverpool, came out in 1816. This famous Black
+Ball Line was for years the pioneer, and began
+with five 400-ton ships. During the first ten years
+these vessels averaged twenty-three days on the
+eastward and forty-three days on the westward
+voyage, the fastest eastward being the passage of
+<em>Canada</em> in fifteen days eighteen hours. These
+ships were flush-decked. Between the foremast
+and mainmast was the galley, and in the long-boat
+were carried the sheep and pigs and fowls for the
+ship’s food. A cow was also carried in a house
+over the main hatch, and the passengers’ cabins
+were aft.</p>
+
+<p>These liners carried a black ball painted on the
+foresail and were commanded by real hard-case
+captains who had caused much anxiety to British
+shipping whilst in command of privateers during
+the war of 1812. In these ships passengers, mails
+and bullion were conveyed, two vessels leaving each
+month. In 1821 two more lines were started, one
+of which was the Red Star Line of packets to
+Liverpool. After the Dramatic Line was founded
+in 1836 the packet ships gradually increased to
+about 1000 tons, and the competition had become
+keener, packets now running from North America
+to Liverpool, Havre and London. Captain A. H.
+Clark, in his interesting volume The <em>Clipper Ship
+Era</em>, states that all packet ships carried a white
+light at the bowsprit cap from sunset to sunrise;
+but of course side-lights had not yet come in. It
+is interesting to remark in this connection that
+probably the first institution of side-lights was in
+1834, for from January 1 the City of Dublin Steam
+Company began to use a white light at the foremast
+head, a red on the larboard bow and a white
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span>on the starboard bow, the two latter being attached
+to the houses forward of the paddleboxes. Then
+for a few years there was a diversity in practice,
+each company doing what it thought best in this
+respect to minimise risk of collision at sea.</p>
+
+<p>Up to 1846 the system in use by the British
+packet ships of Liverpool was to have a white light
+under the cross-trees below the foot of the foresail,
+with a red light on the port paddlebox and a white
+light on the starboard paddlebox, but apparently
+the Milford steam packets carried a red light on
+the starboard bow, a green light on the port
+bow and a “common light” (presumably white)
+at the foremast head. It is claimed that this
+was also the fashion adopted by the P. &amp; O.
+Company. In 1846 the Royal Mail Steam Company’s
+ships carried masthead and bow lights, but
+colourless. The subject is a little difficult to elucidate,
+but it is certain that there were in existence
+different usages as late as this date, and it was not
+until at least two years later that any sort of
+uniformity came in. It has been stated by another
+authority that it was only as a result of the collision
+between the Collins liner <em>Arctic</em> and the French
+ship <em>Vesta</em> on September 21, 1854, when the former
+foundered with the loss of 323 lives out of 368,
+that the carrying of side-lights was made compulsory
+and not optional.</p>
+
+<p>Even in the American packets most of the crew
+were British, and often enough gaol-birds of the
+worst type, but the captains were pretty tough and
+accustomed to handling men as well as ships, and
+the mates were of the same order. These ships
+could reel off their twelve knots pretty regularly,
+and sometimes did the voyage in sixteen days.
+With their high-steeved bowsprits, their black hulls
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span>and square painted ports, and carrying plenty of
+canvas, even to skysails and stuns’ls in summer
+weather, they used to race against each other,
+sometimes even for very high stakes. For quite a
+long time the Atlantic packet ships were able to
+laugh at the steamships, but gradually from 1840
+the progress of the marine engineer and shipbuilder
+wore down the competition. Regularity and reliability
+of running with increased comfort were
+bound to have their influence on the carrying of
+mails, passengers and merchandise.</p>
+
+<p>Ralph Waldo Emerson in his <em>English Traits</em> has
+left on record an account of his passage across the
+Atlantic from Boston in 1847 aboard the packet ship
+<em>Washington Irving</em>. She was of 750 tons register,
+the mainmast measured 115 feet from deck to truck,
+and the length of the ship from stem to stern on
+deck was 155 feet. “The shortest sea-line,” he
+goes on to remark, “from Boston to Liverpool is
+2850 miles. This a steamer keeps, saving 150
+miles. A sailing ship can never go in a shorter
+line than 3000, and usually it is much longer. Our
+good master keeps his kites up to the last moment,
+studding sails alow and aloft, and by incessant
+straight steering never loses a rod of way....
+Since the ship was built, it seems, the master never
+slept but in his day-clothes whilst on board....
+Hour for hour, the risk on a steamboat is greater;
+but the speed is safety, or twelve days of danger
+instead of twenty-four.”</p>
+
+<p>In one week the <em>Washington Irving</em> made 1467
+miles, but to Emerson, as to most passengers in
+those days, this form of travel was anything but
+pleasant. “I find the sea-life an acquired taste,”
+he sums up rather sadly, “like that for tomatoes
+and olives. The confinement, cold, motion, noise
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span>and odour are not to be dispensed with. The floor
+of your room is sloped at an angle of twenty or
+thirty degrees, and I waked every morning with
+the belief that someone was tipping up my berth.
+Nobody likes being treated ignominiously, upset,
+shoved against the side of the house, rolled over,
+suffocated with bilge, mephitis and stewing oil.
+We get used to these annoyances at last, but the
+dread of the sea remains longer.... Such discomfort
+and such danger as the narratives of the
+captain and mate disclose are bad enough as the
+costly fee we pay for entrance to Europe; but
+the wonder is always new that any sane man can
+be a sailor.” Emerson found the worst inconvenience
+was the lack of light in the cabin, but the
+fifteen days from the time they left soundings were
+to him long, joyless and severe.</p>
+
+<p>The American poet James Russell Lowell has
+left us a character sketch of a chief mate whom he
+describes as “not an American, but I should never
+have guessed it by his speech, which was the purest
+Cape Cod, and I reckon myself a good taster of
+dialects.... He used to walk the deck with his
+hands in his pockets, in seeming abstraction, but
+nothing escaped his eye.... He is as impervious
+to cold as the polar bear. On the Atlantic, if the
+wind blew a gale from the north-east, and it was
+cold as an English summer, he was sure to turn
+out in a calico shirt and trousers, his furzy brown
+chest half bare, and slippers without stockings.
+But ... he comes out in a monstrous pea-jacket
+here in the Mediterranean when the evening is so
+hot that Adam would have been glad to leave off
+his fig-leaves.... He ... always combs his hair,
+and works himself into a black frock-coat (on
+Sundays he adds a waistcoat) before he comes to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span>meals, sacrificing himself nobly and painfully to
+the social proprieties. The second mate, on the
+other hand, who eats after us, enjoys the privilege
+of shirt-sleeves, and is, I think, the happier man of
+the two.”</p>
+
+<p>But besides the shipping engaged in the East
+Indian, West Indian, American, Spanish, Mediterranean
+and North Sea routes, the Mercantile Marine
+was being built up by the fishermen and coasters, and
+we should be providing an inaccurate picture if we
+did not consider them. In an earlier chapter we saw
+how important were the fishing fleets down to the
+end of the seventeenth century, and what a backbone
+they have always been to the navies and
+Mercantile Marine. In 1704 Queen Anne reorganised
+the various laws relating to the herring
+fishery and permitted the use of all harbours and
+shores for landing fish on payment of reasonable
+dues. A certain number of foreigners were being
+employed by the British to help with the fishing,
+but in 1747 the Dutch still had 3000 herring
+vessels and were employing 40,000 fishermen.
+This was a great falling off since 1679, but still
+it was a considerable industry, and bringing in
+£5,000,000. Not without reason these Hollanders
+called their herring fisheries their gold mine, and
+in the mid-eighteenth century they were employing
+over 1000 Englishmen in their craft. Thus each
+nation learned a good deal of each other’s methods,
+and this standardisation has continued to this day.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow the English fishery companies continued
+to be unsuccessful, for in October of 1750
+one more was incorporated, but the craft and gear
+were purchased at expensive rates, more fish were
+obtained than could be sold, and thus the company
+failed. But it was not merely the Dutch who
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span>were rivalling the English and Scottish fishermen.
+During the latter half of the century the Swedes
+and the Danes were very active. In fact, British
+men-of-war had to be requested to afford protection
+against the encroachments of foreigners. The
+British fishing craft were often badly built, of ill
+design and not well-found, but legislation was
+introduced to assist them. In 1771 a bounty of
+thirty shillings a ton for seven years was granted
+to all decked vessels of from twenty to eighty tons,
+provided they were of British origin and ownership
+and engaged in the herring fishery. These craft
+were to meet for fishing at Yarmouth, Leith,
+Inverness, Bressay Sound, Kirkwall, Oban, Campbelltown
+and Whitehaven. But it is rather curious
+that the Scottish fishing was abandoned to
+foreigners, who brought in the catches, and then
+the fish were exported to the British West Indies
+as food for slaves; but from 1809 the Scottish
+fishing began to prosper once more. During the
+nineteenth century the rights of the European
+States over their territorial waters were defined,
+for the constant quarrels between the French and
+British fishermen as to where they could dredge
+for oysters off the coast were somewhat of a
+nuisance.</p>
+
+<p>It is since the Sea Fisheries Act of 1868 that all
+fishing vessels have been compelled to be registered
+and licensed, and then in 1886 was instituted a
+Fishery Department in the Board of Trade. The
+twentieth century has been notable for the way
+steam and motors have gradually begun to take
+the place of sailing craft. The steam drifters are
+able to follow the herring down the coast, but the
+big steam trawlers are the principal fishing craft in
+the British Isles to-day. During the war most
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span>of the British steam fishing craft were taken up by
+the Admiralty for mine-sweeping or anti-submarine
+work, but by the year 1921 the national fishing had
+recovered so much that the total landings amounted
+to over £16,000,000. It is from the North Sea
+trawlers that most of the fish still comes, and of
+this a considerable quantity is caught by the
+trawlers from Hull and Grimsby. One unfortunate
+result of the war has been the loss of the Russian
+and much of the German trade; for in 1913 the
+United Kingdom exported £5,500,000 worth of
+cured and salted herring, of which Russia and
+Germany together took 80 per cent. To-day from
+Hull alone there are about 250 steam trawlers
+fishing and employing about 3000 hands aboard.
+If you add to this the number of steam, motor and
+sailing fishing craft from the other ports, it is at
+once obvious that these fleets form a very considerable
+portion of the Mercantile Marine.</p>
+
+<p>We may take Hull as representative of modern
+fishing, but it is only as the result of centuries
+of experience. Certainly as far back as 1535 the
+quantity of fish there landed was considered so
+important as to require an Act of Parliament to
+regulate the trade. Perhaps the least known was
+the very important Hull whaling trade, which was
+carried on for two and a half centuries until about
+1868, when, owing to the scarcity of whales, the
+industry died out, the last whaling voyage being
+made by the <em>Truelove</em>, which had been built
+in Philadelphia 104 years previously. This vessel
+made seventy-two whaling voyages, during which
+she took about 500 whales, and besides these
+activities filled in the time by general trading, in
+the Oporto wine trade, and even as a “Letter of
+Marque.” Other whalers also went to the Arctic
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span>from Whitby, Scarborough and London. You
+may guess how important was the industry when
+we state that in the year 1821 no fewer than sixty-one
+whalers left Hull, thirty-two for the area
+between Greenland and Spitzbergen, and twenty-nine
+for the Davis Straits.</p>
+
+<p>But there was still another school for seamanship,
+and it was one of the most important sections of
+the Mercantile Marine, for two reasons: it not
+merely trained some of our finest officers and men,
+but it was until late in the nineteenth century a
+wonderful fleet of coasters, which passed away only
+at the coming of the steam collier. We refer to
+those brigs which used to bring coal from the Tyne
+to the Thames. These little two-masted vessels
+were manned by crews who were paid by the
+voyage. The result was that they were interested
+in making a quick passage. A contemporary writer,
+who was himself a privateer for a time, regarded
+these collier crews as the most perfect in working
+their ships in narrow channels, as the East Indiamen
+were the finest in the open seas.</p>
+
+<p>This was in the eighteenth century, but from
+the time of the Stuarts these <em>Geordie</em> brigs had
+been plying their trade and building up a fine body
+of seamen who formed a kind of pool from which
+ocean-going ships could obtain officers and crews
+for bolder enterprises. In this branch of the
+Mercantile Marine the famous discoverer, Captain
+Cook, learnt his seamanship, which was to lead to
+such important events. You may remember that
+whilst still in his teens he became apprenticed for
+three years in 1746 to the Whitby owners of the
+450-ton vessel which carried coal from Newcastle
+to London, and after two years he served for a
+time in the 600-ton collier <em>Three Brothers</em>. He
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span>then served aboard her in the Norwegian and
+Baltic trades. In the seventeenth century these
+“coal cats,” as they were called, were sometimes
+three-masted vessels with square mainsail, square
+foresail, lateen mizzen, and sometimes a main topsail,
+but of course no triangular headsails, which
+did not come in until later.</p>
+
+<p>Captain H. Y. Moffat, who was born in 1844
+and served as a boy in the collier-brig <em>Premium</em>,
+has published some interesting facts illustrating
+this kind of seafaring. His pay was £8—not a
+week, nor a month, but a year. The second year
+he was to have £10, and the third year £12. Each
+of these brigs carried a couple of boys, though the
+rest of the crew were still paid by the voyage.
+They lived in a dirty, dark, small fo’c’sle, and
+during the summer the brig would often run coals
+across to Hamburg and Rotterdam, but in the
+winter to London from South Shields. If the
+surroundings were hardly ideal for a boy, and
+the pay utterly inadequate, it was a splendid
+chance for him to learn his seamanship in a rough
+school. If the brig had a head wind anywhere
+between Yarmouth and London—that is to say,
+among all those shoals, these lads were kept busy
+heaving the lead all the time night and day; for
+in those times there were no gas-buoys.</p>
+
+<p>As to the men, they knew their job perfectly,
+but they could neither read nor write. They went
+aboard the ship with their marlin-spike, pricker,
+palm, rubber, sail-hook, needles, etc., and even with
+a well-scrubbed handspike for the windlass. Many
+of the modern, dry-nursed steamship seamen, better
+educated and better fed though they are, would have
+no right to be reckoned in the same category of
+efficiency as these rough mariners, who still used
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span>the old-fashioned hour and half-hour sand-glasses
+in their brigs. It was one of the most glorious
+sights to see a fleet of these colliers beating up the
+Thames. A waterman was always employed to
+assist each brig working up the river, and he would
+come aboard anywhere between Woolwich and
+Greenwich. If they were beating up with the
+flood tide, there might be fifty or a hundred brigs
+all of a bunch, and it would often happen that a
+brig could not fore reach because of the colliers
+just ahead. The waterman would therefore put
+the helm down, let her come up into the wind, and
+shake, but not so long as to lose way. This was
+known as a “waterman’s nip,” and with great care
+he could make the brig take as long to reach from
+one side of the river to the other as would allow
+the crew time to eat their dinner. The collier
+crews were the smartest men afloat for breaking
+out the anchor, for the reason that in working their
+way in and out of so many narrow channels they
+frequently had to bring up. It was always said
+that whenever an ex-collier’s crew shipped aboard
+another vessel the windlass required only half the
+men to work it.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, everywhere the mariner in his own particular
+sphere was an expert at his job, and though
+he could never suspect it, he was making history,
+helping on the development and civilisation of the
+world. It was a lawless, irreligious, even blasphemous
+age in which he lived, and it is easy enough
+to criticise him for his wild excesses. But, having
+regard to the morals of the time, his poor pay, the disgraceful
+conditions of service, and the hard life which
+he was compelled to endure, is it to be wondered
+at that when he came ashore he was dragged into
+debauchery? The responsibility rests largely on
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span>those who enriched themselves by his bravery, his
+seamanlike skill and devotion to duty. There is
+not one of us to-day who is not a debtor to these
+old-time mariners for what they have done on our
+behalf, no matter what their ship.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XII">
+    CHAPTER XII
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">THE SAIL-CARRIERS</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>If you set aside the forty years from 1837 to
+1877 you cover the period which is unsurpassed
+for the glories of the sea. It is a period when the
+Mercantile Marine in every ocean rose to such a
+standard of seamanship as was never seen before nor
+will ever be witnessed again. It is a time when
+the triumph of the shipwright and the skill of the
+sailor combined to bring about the golden age.
+Every log-book, ship-illustration or reminiscence
+that bears on this epoch should be regarded with
+the utmost care and preserved for the wonderment
+of posterity, for at present we are living so close
+to this epoch that we hardly appreciate its worth.
+Those who come after us will rightly envy us for
+having seen at least some of the ships and spoken
+with those who handled them. For it was a
+time when wooden ships were run by men of
+iron.</p>
+
+<p>The traditions inherited from the old East India
+Company after the latter had lost its monopoly in
+India and China were too noble and inspiring to
+be dissipated at once. The high grade of officers
+and men remained for a long time a standard, especially
+when the captain of an East Indiaman even
+as late as about 1830 was making anything between
+£6000 and £10,000 a voyage. So, too, the Blackwall
+yard still retained its name for building the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span>best ships. And though they had ceased to construct
+the stately but slow vessels which had been
+good enough as long as the monopoly lasted, a big
+advance came in the year 1837, when Richard
+Green launched the 818-ton <em>Seringapatam</em>. She
+was, in fact, the first of a new order of things. In
+her the double stern and galleries were abandoned,
+and owing to her finer lines she became famous for
+her quick and regular passages to the East, and
+was destined to be the model for many vessels to
+follow. It was such men as Green, Wigram,
+Somes, Dunbar, Baines and others who built up
+the Mercantile Marine after the East India Company
+left the sea; for these men saw their grand
+opportunity, and seized it. Most of these purchased
+some of the best of the company’s ships.
+The <em>Earl of Balcarres</em>, for instance, was sold for
+£10,700, and she voyaged for fifty-two years before
+she became a hulk. The same price was paid for
+that fine ship the <em>Thames</em>; the <em>Lady Melville</em>
+fetched £10,000, the <em>Buckinghamshire</em> £10,550 and
+others realised between £4000 and £10,000. In
+certain cases the company, seeing their approaching
+fate, began to sell as far back as 1830.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the captains, officers and men from the
+honourable company were now taken on by these
+enterprising new shipowners about to enjoy the
+benefits of free trade. But not more than one-fifth
+of these “old-timers” changed over to the new
+régime, at any rate straight away. Why? Firstly,
+these private owners were not too anxious to
+employ a personnel who had been accustomed to
+work in ships where expense had not been of the
+first consideration. Secondly, some officers thought
+it beneath their dignity to serve in “free trade”
+vessels, and in any case their remuneration could
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span>not be as high as had been possible during the
+company’s extravagant existence. So the captains
+and officers appealed to their late employers for
+pensions. They had entered the East India Company’s
+service expecting provision for life, but now
+they found themselves awkwardly placed. Not
+without reluctance the company eventually decided
+to grant compensations to all commanders
+and officers who had been in their employ for five
+years from April 22, 1834. Every commanding
+officer therefore received £1500 and the other
+officers received proportionate amounts. But, in
+addition to this, each commander also received
+£4000 for three unexpired voyages, £3000 for two
+voyages and £2000 for one voyage, which they
+would have made had they continued in the
+service. Nor was that all; for those commanders
+who had served for ten years were given a pension
+for life of £250 a year, the chief mates getting £160
+a year, and so the scale ranged down to the carpenters
+and gunners. The only condition was that
+these assured the company of their inability to
+obtain further employment, and that any income
+which they possessed was to be in abatement of
+these pensions. Thus, to the very end, the old
+East India Company treated its officers and crews
+very handsomely, especially when we remember the
+value of a sovereign in those days.</p>
+
+<p>The <em>Seringapatam</em> was the first of those famous
+Blackwall frigates which were the direct descendants
+of the defunct East India Company. The
+last of the series, also built by Green’s Blackwall
+yard, was the <em>Melbourne</em> (afterwards well known as
+the <em>Macquarie</em>), launched in 1875. Most of this
+historic fleet were built at the Blackwall yard, at
+Smith’s Tyne yard, at Sunderland or in India,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span>but especially at Blackwall. They were all high-class
+ships which were run in a high-class manner.
+The discipline was strict, the personnel was excellent,
+and they were in every way worthy successors
+of the old monopolists. If you talk to any of the
+officers still alive who served in these Blackwallers,
+or read their reminiscences, you will understand at
+once that it was thought an honour to be allowed
+into this new service.</p>
+
+<p>These ships differed from any other merchant
+vessels in that they carried midshipmen and not
+apprentices. These midshipmen were drawn from
+the same families who supplied officers to the
+Royal Navy, and were known as “young gentlemen.”
+Very often in the case of a country rector
+who had two sons, you find the eldest going into
+the Navy and the younger into a Blackwall frigate.
+If a guardian could get a boy into one of these
+ships, there was no further cause for worry: a fine
+career was assured. He went to sea in what were
+happy ships and he gradually rose in his profession
+until he was making about £5000 a year in the case
+of the best captains. The guardian or parent had
+to pay a premium of £60 a voyage for the young
+midshipman, but those were the days when the
+commanding officers were the finest navigators in
+the world and had time to instruct the aspirant.
+It was a life totally different from that of a modern
+apprentice.</p>
+
+<p>For some time the officers in these ships were
+allowed to wear the lion and crown of the East
+India Company on their uniform buttons, but
+eventually the house flags of the companies were
+substituted. A great deal of the old dignity and
+semi-naval routine were retained in this new
+service, with action stations and sail-drill. For
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span>they were frigate-built and carried guns, so that
+they could readily be turned into corvettes and be
+useful fighting units. In an interesting little book
+entitled <cite>Reminiscences of a Blackwall Midshipman</cite>,
+published some years ago, Mr. W. I. Downie
+remarked with pride: “It was a fine service and
+afforded a good opening for younger sons, whose
+elder brothers were in the Army or Navy, but
+whose parents could not very well spare the means
+to dispose in the same way of all their sometimes
+numerous progeny.” He himself joined up in the
+’sixties, having considered himself disappointed at
+not entering the Royal Navy, but lucky to obtain
+a berth as midshipman in Green’s Blackwall frigate
+<em>Trafalgar</em>, and bound to India. This ship was
+built in the year 1848, and was of 1038 tons, her
+construction being of teak.</p>
+
+<p>When lying at anchor with a few guns on her
+maindeck and her boat-booms swung out and
+boats in the water, she might be taken for a frigate,
+even by a seafaring man, but for the house flag
+at her main. She had painted ports, square yards
+and enormous whole topsails. In such a ship no
+officer or man dared address a superior on duty
+without saluting. It was because of this excellent
+discipline and semi-naval character that these well-found
+ships created such a fine pride of service
+among its personnel. We shall speak presently
+of the other development in shipping which was
+to proceed collaterally with the Blackwallers, but
+it may be mentioned here that the latter frequently
+used to race in the ’sixties against the clippers met
+on the high seas. Downie mentions that these
+frigates often were able to hold the clipper ships,
+especially in hard winds, for though the Blackwallers
+had high bulwarks and heavy sterns, which
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span>made them in comparison look clumsy, yet underwater
+they had fine lines.</p>
+
+<p>Every known device was resorted to in the effort
+to squeeze out an extra half-knot, and the third
+mate of the Blackwaller would be sent down with
+a gang of men to roust the lee cable out of the
+chain locker and range it along the weather side
+of the deck. The fourth mate would take another
+gang to pump fresh water out of the lee tanks
+into those of the weather tanks that were empty.
+In light winds the hose would be taken aloft to
+wet the sails—the old dodge of making the canvas
+hold the wind better. Nor did they hesitate to
+race even against such flyers as the crack clippers
+<em>Taeping</em> and <em>Fiery Cross</em>, and in one instance they
+competed with another sailing ship and beat her
+home by twenty-four hours; and this after racing
+for 16,000 miles! Yes, they were sail-carriers in
+those days. The Mercantile Marine was full of
+expert seamen.</p>
+
+<p>This <em>Trafalgar</em>, for instance, carried, besides her
+commander, five mates, several midshipmen, a full
+crew, a bo’sun and his two mates, carpenter, sail-maker,
+fiddler and cooper. The last two would
+seem strange to a modern apprentice, but the
+former used to sit on the capstan and fiddle while
+the hands were heaving up the anchor with an
+endless “messenger,” and would provide the music
+for hornpipes danced in the second dog-watch.
+The cooper was a necessary rating, for casks and
+barrels were used a good deal, and when not
+wanted were taken to pieces and reconstructed
+as required. The midshipmen received their
+occasional invitations to dine with the captain, as
+to-day in the naval service. Sundays and Thursdays
+were the occasions when there was champagne
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span>at the captain’s table, and a midshipman thought
+himself lucky if his turn to be invited occurred on
+one of these days.</p>
+
+<p>The voyage was begun by the ship being towed
+out of dock down to Gravesend, where she brought
+up for twenty-four hours to enable the crew to get
+over their final shore carouse. The captain—in
+this case a tall, thin man wearing an eyeglass, himself
+a scientist and a great authority on the law of
+storms—would come on board, and the tug would
+take the ship down to the North Foreland and then
+cast off. If it was a fair wind the Blackwaller
+would then carry on down Channel. If it was
+foul she would anchor and wait for a slant in the
+Downs. In spite of their sailorlike, alcoholic weakness,
+these hands were very fine fellows, specially
+selected, who had sailed in the old East Indiamen
+or Blackwallers since boyhood, and very rarely did
+they ever serve in other ships. There was, then,
+practically continuity of employment, and it is the
+lack of this which in the twentieth century is the
+weakest element of the Mercantile Marine.</p>
+
+<p>In these ships there was nothing slovenly, and
+every one had to be correctly and smartly uniformed.
+The officers’ cap in those days had the
+old-fashioned peak at right angles, like that still
+worn by the officers of the Dutch Navy to-day.
+Every morning the captain’s steward would convey
+to the midshipmen the instructions as to what rig
+was to be worn, as, for instance, in fine weather
+blue jackets, white waistcoats and trousers. In many
+other merchant ships there was trouble with the
+crew, which consisted of a mixture of pier-jumpers,
+gaol-birds and the riff-raff of all the European
+ports; but it was seldom that the Blackwall men
+gave any trouble. Every Sunday there was service
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span>on the poop in fine weather, or in the saloon when
+the weather was bad, and all hands were supposed
+to attend. In harbour the Blackwall ships always
+looked smart and clean, with yards squared to
+mathematical precision like a naval frigate.</p>
+
+<p>As a sign of mourning the custom was to paint
+all the white parts of the ship a pale blue, such as
+the white ribbon round the hull, the lower masts,
+the boats, and so on. There were some ships in
+which the discipline was stricter than in others,
+according to whether the captain was more disposed
+towards man-o’-war fashion. Those ships which
+ran to India were more strict in their discipline
+and more formal in their routine than the vessels
+which sailed to Australia. In the former the
+passengers consisted chiefly of Army officers and
+their families, or civil servants going out to take
+up their appointments, or of consumptives voyaging
+for their health. But in the Australian ships
+life was more easy-going, with concerts, theatricals,
+dances, and even bazaars. In both ships there was
+a good deal of fraternising and philandering between
+the younger officers and the eternal feminine, which
+was natural enough during those long voyages.</p>
+
+<p>The late Captain W. B. Whall, who died not
+long since, served as a midshipman in the Blackwaller
+<em>Hotspur</em> during the ’sixties, and fortunately
+has left behind in his <cite>School and Sea Days</cite> some
+interesting recollections. The commander of this
+famous 1000-ton East Indiaman was Captain Henry
+Toynbee, F.R.G.S., F.R.A.S., uncle of Arnold
+Toynbee, the social economist and philanthropist.
+Whall describes how, after the <em>Hotspur</em> had
+anchored off Gravesend, the captain would be
+received on board in true naval style. This commanding
+officer, who, by the way was uncle to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span>Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the famous scout, will
+always be remembered for his amazing skill as a
+navigator. Captain Whall said he recollected on one
+occasion when the <em>Hotspur</em> had been ninety days
+out of sight of land, and had sailed over three
+oceans bound for Calcutta direct, Toynbee came
+up on deck about 8 p.m. and told the chief officer
+to send a man up to the foretopsail yard and to
+order him to look two points on the starboard bow,
+and he would then see the Lower Floating Light.
+The hand had barely got his head over the sail
+when he cried from aloft: “Light two points away
+on starboard bow.” And this was without having
+sighted anything since the Lizard!</p>
+
+<p>In contrast to this fine ability of an East Indiaman
+navigator must be placed the rough-and-ready
+methods of those fine but ignorant skippers of the
+fruit-trade schooners which were built and sailed
+like yachts and went down as far south as the
+Azores. Often when full-rigged ships were blown
+by easterly gales from the western end of the
+English Channel as far west as the Fastnet, these
+splendid little fore-and-afters would be able to
+make excellent passages to windward. In old
+waterside inns of the West country you may still
+see pictures of these ships with the canvas cut in
+realistic fashion to obtain verisimilitude. They
+made wonderfully fast passages, and they were
+most perfectly handled, but the captains, not being
+capable always of working out their longitude, used
+to hail any passing ship and hang out a blackboard
+with the question: “What is your longitude?”</p>
+
+<p>Such a ship as the <em>Hotspur</em>, well manned, well
+navigated, would go round the Cape and land her
+forty passengers in Calcutta within three months.
+They would come aboard at Gravesend with their
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span>own cabin furniture, but included in the fare was
+an ample supply of liquor. Often the charge for
+a stern cabin for a man and wife would be £300
+from Calcutta to England, and the ship would
+have also probably 500 troops aboard, or a total
+of 600 souls. The decks would be encumbered
+with sheep, hay, potatoes, bananas, hen-coops, and
+yet if any disaster had occurred there was accommodation
+in the boats for not more than about 100.
+Whall, who served in these ships for ten years,
+never once saw a Blackwaller heave-to in a heavy
+gale. But that was because they were well found
+and so well manned under the best commanders.
+In those days the sailor ashore loved his grog too
+much, and when he left the ship at the end of a
+voyage with probably £40 on him, he would proceed
+to get drunk, then perhaps some one in the
+East End would drug him, and finally, when he
+awoke up next day he would find himself without
+so much as a penny. But at sea he was the best
+fellow in the world, well-disciplined, able to go
+aloft in the heaviest weather to hand or reef a sail
+and lay out on a yard. He was an expert at the
+wheel or with the lead or marlin-spike, and a
+captain knew that his men could be relied upon
+from the moment the ship left Gravesend. It was
+thus that such ships as <em>Flying Cloud</em>, <em>Sovereign of
+the Seas</em>, <em>James Baines</em> and <em>Marco Polo</em> could on
+occasions reel off their eighteen knots, or 420 knots
+in the twenty-four hours. In fact during the
+’fifties the sailing ships could make passages as
+fast as any mail steamer afloat.</p>
+
+<p>Every one who has had command of vessels and
+men realises how important is the spirit of emulation
+and the pride of ship and service. Whall,
+the son of a rector, remarked that all who served
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span>in these ships looked down on the officers of the
+Liverpool contemporary sailing ships as being less
+polished and wearing no uniform, though he admitted
+they were perhaps smarter sailormen than
+the Blackwallers. In his memoirs <cite>My Life at Sea</cite>,
+that experienced mercantile officer, Commander
+W. C. Crutchley, R.N.R., says of a certain renowned
+clipper ship: “The officers and men of
+that craft considered themselves very superior
+beings to those who had not the good fortune to
+sail under the blue St. Andrew’s Cross; but they,
+in their turn, were looked down upon by the men
+sailing in the ships of Green, Dunbar, Wigram
+and Smith. In those days it would have required
+a very careful M.C. to give the varying grades
+of the Merchant Services their due order of
+preference.”</p>
+
+<p>It was the same at Southampton at one time
+between the officers of the Royal Mail and the
+P. &amp; O. Lines, who would not foregather on any
+account, owing to their mutual jealousies. But
+those were the days when ship-love and pride of
+service were more accentuated than to-day. And
+yet in even some of the contemporary crack steamships
+there was plenty to find fault with, and
+Crutchley, who served in the Union liner <em>Roman</em>,
+which ran to South Africa, complains that even
+in that ocean steamship there was neither engine-room
+telegraph nor standard compass; for orders
+were shouted down the engine-room skylight, and
+the ship was steered from right on the poop, with
+a binnacle on either side, that on the starboard
+being the one used for navigating.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1441_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1441_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">S.S. “NORTHUMBERLAND.”<br>
+    2,180 tons, 500 horse-power. Henry Skinner, Commander. About 1871. She was one of Money Wigram &amp; Sons’ Australian steamships.
+    The famous house flag will be seen at the main.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>We have digressed from our main theme in
+order to show the spirit which actuated the Mercantile
+Marine at that important period which
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span>followed the abolition of the monopoly and saw
+the numbers of shipyards, ships and mariners
+rapidly increasing, thanks to freedom and competition.
+It is now time for us to watch this
+progress in detail. If we compare the <em>Seringapatam</em>
+with one of the East India Company’s ships
+of say 1826, we can see indeed more points of
+resemblance than of difference. Both are frigates,
+each has a bluff bow and heavy stern that remind
+us of the Stuart ships, yet in the new type inaugurated
+by <em>Seringapatam</em> it meant a daring
+advance to omit the heavy double stern and
+quarter galleries. She still retained her ship rig,
+her white ribbon, her square ports and her high-steeved
+bowsprit, but in her was the first break,
+architecturally, with the olden times. The sailing
+ship was now in a new era.</p>
+
+<p>Even in the very year of Queen Victoria’s accession,
+Money Wigram launched for the Australian
+trade the 293-ton <em>Emu</em>, for this was beginning to
+open as an important lane of commerce. And in
+that same year the yard built such different ships as
+the 461-ton whaler <em>Active</em> and the 621-ton steamer
+<em>Neptune</em>, the latter for the General Steam Navigation
+Company. It was a couple of years later
+that they launched the 852-ton <em>Earl of Hardwicke</em>
+for Richard Green. This ship was originally fitted
+with paddles and 100-horse-power engines to be
+used in calms, but they were found unsuitable and
+removed in the following year. And then in 1839
+they launched the <em>Owen Glendower</em>, which was
+such a splendid sailing ship that foreign merchantmen
+used to salute her with the respect as for a
+man-of-war. She was a sister ship of the <em>Earl of
+Hardwicke</em>. In that year, too, they built the
+Opium clipper <em>Moa</em> for Jardine, Mattheson &amp;
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span>Co., though we shall come to the clipper ships
+presently. Three years later the Blackwall yard
+launched the two magnificent 1223-ton flush-decked,
+frigate-built sister ships <em>Queen</em> and <em>Prince
+of Wales</em>, as well as the 449-ton <em>Sylph</em>.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1461_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1461_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">AUXILIARY S.S. “KENT.”<br>
+    2,300 tons. G. Fairles Gibbs, Commander. Built and owned by Money Wigram &amp; Sons. About 1876.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>And here we come to another severing of olden
+ties, for this was the last ship which was ever
+built by the firm of Green, Wigrams &amp; Green.
+In the following year the partnership expired, a
+wall was built through the yard, and the western
+portion was made over to Money Wigram &amp; Sons,
+whilst the eastern half became the property of
+Richard and Henry Green. Sentimentally it
+seemed a pity that after all those years the
+separation should have taken place; but, as
+already foreshadowed, it was bound to come,
+owing to the difference in interests. The firm
+had become <em>individually</em> interested in shipowning,
+and not collectively. Thus Wigram never
+owned so large a fleet as Green, and where a
+firm is divided against itself obviously it must
+come to an end before long. Richard Green and
+Henry Green went on building and increasing
+their ownership until the discovery of gold in
+Australia, when they launched many ships to cope
+with the rush. Richard Green did not die until
+1863, and just before his death one of his ships had
+made a voyage to China. In his life he did much
+to improve the Mercantile Marine, and it was he
+who was the chief mover and first chairman of
+what was originally known as the Thames Marine
+Officers’ Training Ship, better known to-day as
+H.M.S. <em>Worcester</em>. In the year 1922 this ship
+celebrated its sixtieth anniversary, and during its
+existence has been able to turn out 3000 officers
+for the Mercantile Marine, of whom so many
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span>distinguished themselves during the Great War.
+Thus, directly through the Blackwall yard there
+is an intimate connection between the merchant
+ships of the time of Queen Elizabeth and those
+liners of to-day.</p>
+
+<p>The two finest ships in the Mercantile Marine
+of 1851 were the East Indiamen <em>Marlborough</em> and
+<em>Blenheim</em>, owned by Messrs. T. &amp; W. Smith, who
+had begun running ships to the East soon after the
+monopoly had gone, in competition with Green
+and Wigram. It was the gold-diggings of South
+Australia and Victoria from 1851 onwards which
+made a sudden demand for shipping passengers
+out from England: in fact by 1853 the demand
+was greater than the supply. But the only suitable
+vessels available for first- and second-class
+passengers were these famous Blackwall frigates,
+and the Greens were thus in a position to transfer
+some of their large fleet from the Calcutta to the
+Australian trade. Money Wigram, not having
+yet become a large shipowner, began to build for
+this Melbourne trade.</p>
+
+<p>The Blackwall frigates were devoid of sheer, had
+long poops, short maindecks, and were beautifully
+built of picked teak and oak. Green’s ships were
+not as sharp-ended as Smith’s or Wigram’s, but
+Somes’ and Dunbar’s were real old-fashioned,
+clumsy-bowed craft. The fastest of Green’s ships
+were the <em>Alnwick Castle</em>, <em>Clarence</em>, <em>Windsor Castle</em>
+and <em>Anglesey</em>. The fastest of Wigram’s fleet was
+the <em>Kent</em>. The old East India Company’s influence
+for a time so dominated these Blackwall
+frigates that dignity, comfort and safety first were
+rather the mottoes of the fleet, unlike the clipper
+ships, always snugging down for the night. Some
+of the best-known Green ships were the 835-ton
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span><em>Madagascar</em>, built in 1837, the 852-ton <em>Earl of
+Hardwicke</em>, already mentioned, built in 1838, but
+afterwards wrecked on the South African coast in
+1863; the <em>Owen Glendower</em>, built in 1839, the
+<em>Agincourt</em> (958 tons), in 1841, the <em>Prince of Wales</em>
+(1223 tons), in 1842, the <em>Monarch</em> (1444 tons), in
+1844, the <em>Alfred</em> (1291 tons), in 1845, the <em>Barham</em>
+(934 tons), in 1846. The <em>Prince of Wales</em> and
+<em>Queen</em> of 1842 were both 1223-ton ships, the
+former built for Green and the latter for Wigram
+at the Blackwall yard. Pierced for fifty guns and
+flush-decked, they were ready with their crew of
+seventy-eight each to be turned into naval corvettes
+at once.</p>
+
+<p>The <em>Anglesey</em>, built in 1852, of 1018 tons, holds
+the record for having made the biggest day’s run
+by a Blackwaller. This was 380 miles, and her
+passage from Melbourne to the Start in seventy-nine
+days with a crew of forty-six was a remarkable
+achievement. Wigram’s 927-ton <em>Kent</em>, built in
+1852, was invaluable during the gold rush to
+Australia. She was one of the crack sailing ships
+in history, and actually beat the tea-clippers. It
+was a great innovation when, in 1866 and 1868
+respectively, the Blackwall yard built the 1451-ton
+<em>Superb</em> and the 1458-ton <em>Carlisle Castle</em>, for both
+were of iron, and owing to Richard Green’s prejudice
+against iron the firm had to wait until after
+his death to discard teak. The former became a
+popular passenger ship to Melbourne; and the last
+of these famous Blackwall frigates was the <em>Melbourne</em>,
+built for the Greens at the Blackwall yard
+in 1875 as the finest iron passenger sailing ship in
+the world. Of 1857 tons and 269·8 feet long, her
+passenger accommodation was excellent—a great
+difference from the old East Indiamen.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1481_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1481_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">S.S. “NORFOLK.”<br>
+    3,196 tons, 2,500 horse-power. J. Pyne O’Callaghan, Commander.
+    One of Money Wigram &amp; Sons’ Australian ships. About 1879.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span></p>
+
+<p>Until 1887 <em>Melbourne</em> sailed regularly to the
+Australian port of the same name, and was then
+bought by Messrs. Devitt &amp; Moore, who changed
+her name to <em>Macquarie</em>. In 1897 she was used as
+one of this firm’s cadet ships, six years later she
+was sold to the Norwegians and changed her name
+to <em>Fortuna</em>, and these owners eventually sold her,
+so that now she is used as a hulk in Australia. So
+ended one interesting period in one of the most
+important developments of the Mercantile Marine.
+The combination of personal interest on the part
+of builder and owner; the great pride in the ship
+not merely as a money-maker, but as a thing of
+beauty and queen of the sea; the ability of officers
+and men serving under a captain who was anxious
+to maintain the dignity of his line—all these
+brought about a high standard of seafaring which
+was thoroughly let down when owners without
+consciences sent crews to sea in ill-found steam
+coffin-ships. The fine, historic reputation of the
+Merchant Service received a shock, the best men
+were attracted by other walks in life, and so for a
+while the standard deteriorated. There are many
+who believe, rightly, that the Mercantile Marine
+of any country could and should be run with fixity
+of employment and the same lofty standard as the
+fighting navies. If that were done, the grade of
+officers and men would be as high as it was in the
+days of the East Indiamen. Let it be realised
+what a nation’s merchant ships mean to the
+country, and then the public will concede it proper
+respect and give to that service its best sons.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIII">
+    CHAPTER XIII
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">CRACKING-ON</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>We have seen in the development of our subject
+that it was only after many centuries that the
+accommodation of the passenger aboard ship was
+ever considered. We have noticed how the ship
+was built primarily not for speed, but for carrying
+the maximum of cargo with the greatest safety.
+But now there comes into our story the desire for
+speed as the dominating factor, far more important
+than any other consideration, and it is in the clipper
+ships that we get the first merchant vessels that
+were constructed to cross the seas with the utmost
+despatch.</p>
+
+<p>It is to North America that this is due. Whilst
+our bluff, dignified, heavy East Indiamen were
+slowly making their last voyages before the China
+monopoly was to come to an end, a remarkable
+ship, built by her owner regardless of cost, was to
+appear in Baltimore. This was the <em>Ann McKim</em>,
+of 493 registered tons. This flush-decked vessel
+came out in 1832. She was very fast, but had
+small carrying capacity, and was the first clipper
+ship ever built, and having regard to the daring
+improvement which America had made in frigates
+and privateers, it is not surprising that this fast
+type of merchant ship should come from the same
+country. The contrast, indeed, between the old
+East Indiamen and the young clippers is exactly
+what exists between the Old World and the New.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span>Convention was put aside, shipbuilders thought out
+problems for themselves and had the courage to
+put their convictions into hulls.</p>
+
+<p>But the first real out-and-out clipper ship was
+the <em>Rainbow</em>, which was launched at the beginning
+of 1845 in New York. She was a 750-ton vessel
+with hollow lines at the bows, and her greatest
+breadth much further aft than had been thought
+practicable. When constructed, she turned out to
+be a handsome vessel, exceptionally quick, and she
+was the fastest vessel in the world. But after
+trading some time out to China, she was lost in
+1848, probably off Cape Horn. Now the cause of
+attraction towards China at first was the trade in
+opium. It is not to the credit of British, American
+or Parsee firms that this pernicious drug was imported
+into China, where it had been declared
+illegal by the Government as far back as 1796;
+but this illicit trade certainly did much to develop
+fast-sailing ships.</p>
+
+<p>But besides the opium, there was the China tea
+trade after the East India Company’s monopoly
+had run out, and happily this did even more than
+the opium to improve the evolution of the quickest
+fleet of ships under sail that the world has ever
+seen. In 1846 the 890-ton <em>Sea Witch</em> was launched
+in New York, and she made a wonderful series of
+voyages to China and back, her best day’s run being
+358 miles, which was far superior to that of any
+contemporary steamer. Then came such celebrated
+American clippers as the <em>Samuel Russell</em>, 940 tons,
+the <em>Memnon</em>, 1068 tons, and others. The American
+trade with China was so important that in one year
+forty-one ships with tea, silk and spices reached
+New York from China. The American clippers
+were certainly the fastest ships of the period, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span>the <em>Sea Witch</em> was still to hold the record for a
+long time.</p>
+
+<p>But now come two important events which were
+to have noteworthy results on the Mercantile
+Marines of the world. The first of these was the
+repeal of the British Navigation Laws in 1849, and
+the second was the rush in that same year to
+California, caused by the discovery there of gold in
+1848. We will deal briefly with these factors and
+pass on. Considerable opposition was made to
+this repeal, and indeed the first result was that the
+tonnage of British shipping entering British ports
+largely decreased and that of American shipping
+increased. After a few years this competition
+proved a stimulus to both countries, but especially
+it caused British owners to wake up in the Atlantic,
+as the introduction of competition into the Eastern
+route had already done so much good.</p>
+
+<p>During the ’forties and ’fifties the American
+Mercantile Marine was in many respects superior
+to the British, for the reason that the baneful
+monopoly had caused a kind of self-satisfaction,
+and therefore no progress to speak of. The long
+series of Navigation Laws beginning in 1651, and
+the steady, comfortable, close trade to the East,
+had lulled British shipping into a kind of stupor.
+It was only when competition was thrown open to
+the world that British shipping really got going.
+The first American ship to carry tea from China to
+England was the <em>Oriental</em>, which left China in
+August 1850 and reached the London River
+ninety-seven days out from Hong-Kong with 1600
+tons. This was the fastest passage which had yet
+been made to England. As a beautiful, powerful,
+speedy, well-found ship the like of her had never
+been met with in the Thames. Those who had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span>never seen anything but the East Indiamen were
+amazed at the innovation by the United States
+Mercantile Marine. But the shock did a world of
+good. The arrival of tea, in an American ship, in
+record time, from a country where there had been
+a British monopoly for so long, caused shipowners
+and builders furiously to think.</p>
+
+<p>The result was that two ships were ordered to be
+built at Aberdeen, for during the last few years
+Messrs. Hall of that port had been building some
+fast schooners. The <em>Stornoway</em> and <em>Chrysolite</em>
+were thus launched, and have been called the first
+British tea-clippers, though they were less beamy
+and powerful than the American clippers. The
+first ship sailed out to Hong-Kong in 102 days, the
+<em>Chrysolite</em> also went out during 1851 in the same
+time, and on her way home her best day’s run was
+320 miles, and she even reached fourteen knots.
+She got to Liverpool in 103 days, after a very fine
+maiden voyage. Then came increased competition
+as the result of <em>Chrysolite’s</em> achievement, for the
+American Navigation Club challenged the British
+shipbuilders to a race with cargo on board from
+England to China and back for £10,000 a side.
+This stake was even doubled, but the challenge
+was unfortunately never accepted by British shipowners
+until Richard Green in 1852 built the tea-clipper
+<em>Challenger</em>, which in that year went out to
+China, and after loading tea at Shanghai, fell in
+with the American clipper <em>Challenge</em>, three times
+the size of the British ship. From Anjer they
+raced home with their tea, and <em>Challenger</em> beat the
+<em>Challenge</em> into the dock in London by a couple of
+days. It is only fair to add that British naval
+architects had an opportunity of learning from
+American progress in a very direct manner. For
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span><em>Oriental</em> had been previously placed into the
+Blackwall dock and her lines taken off; and now
+<em>Challenge</em> went in for the same purpose. Thus,
+the American clipper ships, with their original
+design, did have a very powerful effect on the
+future of British shipping.</p>
+
+<p>The competition in the China tea trade continued,
+the British clippers of this time made the
+rivalry very keen, and it is always a matter of
+regret that there never was another real race
+between the two countries. But now we must see
+how the California gold affected the clipper.
+Briefly these are the facts. In 1848 San Francisco
+was a mere hamlet, but this sudden discovery of a
+means to wealth caused a tremendous flow of
+emigration to the West. Every one wanted to
+go, and every one wanted to get there in the
+quickest possible time. Leaving out the difficulties
+in those days of transcontinental travel, the only
+way possible was by means of ships. The American
+clipper was thus the solution, and they were therefore
+built in great numbers and in a small space of
+time. In fact within four years 160 were launched,
+and they sailed from New York to San Francisco
+in the remarkable time of 100 to 120 days. Here,
+then, was yet another incentive to the increase of
+the Mercantile Marine, to the shipbuilders and to
+those attracted by the sea. It is comparable only
+to the impetus which we have seen was received
+by the Elizabethan seamen. There has seldom
+been in history such an extensive and speedy
+migration of people, all anxious to get rich quickly.
+Once again the ship was invaluable in the service
+of man.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1849 over 90,000 passengers landed
+in that San Franciscan hamlet from ships. On the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span>other hand, it became most difficult to get crews
+to bring the ships back; for the seamen, too, had
+gone gold-seeking as soon as the ship had anchored.
+The California clipper period, as Captain Clark
+says in his <em>The Clipper Ship Era</em>, covers the period
+1850 to 1860, and it is during the first four of these
+years that nearly all the 160 ships were built, most
+of them being constructed in the neighbourhood of
+New York and Boston. It is claimed for them that
+they were the fastest sailing ships which the world
+ever saw, and the skippers cracked-on because these
+vessels were able to earn enormous rates if only the
+passengers could be landed at their port in the
+quickest time. Every one was making money—the
+shipowner, captain, crew and then the gold-seekers.
+Ashore the riggers, shipwrights, painters,
+sail-makers, metal workers, spar-makers, pump-makers,
+blacksmiths, carpenters, caulkers were in
+such demand that there was prosperity for all, and
+plenty of it. And it is to this period that a good
+many of the fast-dying sea-chanties can be traced.</p>
+
+<p>What of the crews that manned the American
+clippers? “The history of men before the mast
+on board American ships,” says Captain Clark, “is
+not a history of American sailors, for strictly
+speaking there have never been any American
+merchant sailors as a class; that is, no American
+merchant ship of considerable tonnage was ever
+manned by native-born Americans in the sense
+that French, British, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish,
+Spanish or Danish ships are manned by men born
+in the country under whose flags they sail.” This
+statement was written in 1910, and of course requires
+some modification to-day. But the advent
+of the Californian clippers necessitated getting men
+from anywhere—some sailors, many others not,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span>and a whole lot of “bad hats” among them. Of
+the Californian clippers built in 1851 one was the
+celebrated <em>Challenge</em>, already referred to, a vessel
+of 2006 tons, one of the largest clippers ever built,
+though absolutely the biggest was the <em>Great
+Republic</em>, built in 1853. This was constructed by
+Donald McKay, the famous Nova Scotian builder.
+She was of 4555 tons register, and was the first
+ship to have an engine merely for hoisting the
+yards and working the pumps. Rigged with four
+masts, she had the misfortune to get on fire when
+nearly ready for sea, but was rebuilt, being the
+largest merchant ship of her time, though registering
+now only 3357 tons.</p>
+
+<p>The famous American clipper <em>Dreadnought</em> came
+out in 1853, and voyaged between New York and
+Liverpool, and on one occasion made this passage
+in fifteen days twelve hours, and on another
+occasion in thirteen days eight hours, though she
+was wrecked eventually off Cape Horn. But the
+Australian gold discovery in 1851 had the same
+effect on shipping that the China tea trade and the
+California gold rush had created. The fastest
+vessels were required, competition became keen,
+and there was no time to waste. Those owners,
+therefore, who had ships that could carry passengers
+were in a splendid position from the first, for about
+300,000 or 400,000 people each year for the next
+three or four years had to be transported. From
+America no less than from England these ships
+sailed away, and there was the same difficulty in
+Melbourne with the crews as there had been in
+San Francisco.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp85" id="p1561_ill" style="max-width: 43.1875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1561_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy the White Star Line.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">SAILING NOTICE OF THE WHITE STAR CLIPPER “RED JACKET.”<br>
+    (See p. <a href="#Page_157">157</a>.)</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>For British shipowners the difficulty was that
+there was but little accommodation in most ships,
+so they thought of the American clippers, which
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span>had been doing such fine work. James Baines &amp;
+Co. of Liverpool therefore had the clipper <em>Marco
+Polo</em> built at St. John’s, New Brunswick. She
+was a very handsome ship of 1622 tons, with considerable
+rise of floor, very fine aft, and she carried
+a very large spread of canvas. This was the
+pioneer of the clipper ships for the Australian trade
+and the first of the Australian Black Ball Line,
+her passenger accommodation being a great improvement
+on the ships usually trading to Australia.
+She left Liverpool in July 1851, and made a record
+passage in sixty-eight days to Melbourne, and
+during the ensuing years of the gold rush was a
+very popular and successful ship. The British lines
+running out to Australia at this time were the
+White Star (twenty years before they entered the
+Atlantic steam competition) and James Baines &amp;
+Co.’s Australia Black Ball Line, just mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>These two firms both had clippers which were
+built in New England, and one of these, the <em>Red
+Jacket</em>, was for the White Star Line. Named
+after a noted Indian chief, with a full-length figure-head
+of him at her bow, this fine ship was one of
+the most famous of the clippers, and made a fine
+passage from New York to Liverpool in thirteen
+days, one hour, when she first came out in February
+1854, and on one of the days made 413 miles.
+During that same year she sailed from Liverpool
+to Melbourne in sixty-nine days. In his recently
+published <cite>Reminiscences of a Liverpool Shipowner</cite>,
+Sir William B. Forwood has left an interesting
+account of a voyage he made in this magnificent
+sailing ship of 2006 tons, three years after she came
+out. “On the morning of the 20th November,
+1857,” he says, “I embarked by a tender from the
+Liverpool pierhead. It was nearly the top of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span>high water. The crew were mustered on the
+forecastle, under the 1st Mate, Mr. Taylor. An
+order comes from the quarter-deck. ‘Heave up
+the anchor and get away.’ ‘Aye, aye, sir.’
+‘Now then, my boys, man the windlass,’ shouts
+the Mate, and to a merry chantie:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">“‘In 1847 Paddy Murphy went to Heaven</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">To work on the railway, the railway, the railway,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">Oh, poor Paddy works upon the railway.’</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“‘The anchor is away, sir,’ shouts the Chief
+Officer. ‘Heave it a-peak and cathead it,’ comes
+from the quarter-deck, and the tug <em>Retriever</em>
+forges ahead and tightens the tow-rope as we
+gather way. Bang, bang went the guns, and twice
+more, for we were carrying the mails, and goodbye
+to old Liverpool, and the crowds which lined
+the pierhead cheered, for the <em>Red Jacket</em> was
+already a famous ship, and it was hoped she would
+make a record passage.</p>
+
+<p>“Next morning we were off Holyhead, with a
+fresh westerly breeze and southerly swell. We
+were making but poor headway, and shortly the
+hawser parted. ‘All hands on deck,’ was shouted
+by Captain O’Halloran, and a crew of eighty men
+promptly appeared on deck, for we carried a double
+crew. ‘Loose sails fore and aft; hands in the
+tops and cross-trees to see that all is clear and to
+overhaul gear; let royals and sky sails alone.’</p>
+
+<p>“The boatswain’s whistle sounded fore and aft
+as the men quickly took their positions and laid
+hold of the halyards and braces.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1581_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1581_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>Photo, Henry Hughes &amp; Son, Ltd.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">CRACKING-ON!</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>“‘Mr. Taylor, loose the headsails.’ ‘Aye, aye,
+sir.’ The topsail, courses and topgallant sails were
+all loose and gaskets made up. ‘Now then, my
+men, lead your topsail halyards fore and aft, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span>up with them.’ Away the crew walk along with
+the halyards, and then with a long pull and a pull
+all together the topsail yards are mastheaded to
+the chantie:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">“‘Then up the yard must go,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent4">Whiskey for my Johnny,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent2">Oh, whiskey for the life of man,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent4">Whiskey, Johnny.’”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>With the man at the wheel, keeping his eyes on
+the weather-luff of the foreroyal, and allowing the
+sail to be just on the tremble, so as not to lose an
+inch to windward, the <em>Red Jacket</em> went tearing
+through the seas, throwing them on either side in
+a sparkling cascade. By evening the wind had
+increased, and the captain ordered life-lines to be
+run fore and aft, and the decks to be sanded and
+the scuppers to be free. The clipper plunges
+along, the man at the wheel eases her a few spokes
+when a squall strikes her, and then bang goes
+the second jib, blown out of the bolt ropes with the
+report of a gun. With seas coming in over
+the forecastle, the hands set another jib, and by
+this time the clipper is indeed travelling, for by the
+log she is doing eighteen knots.</p>
+
+<p>During bad weather the fifty saloon passengers
+and 600 steerage were kept below and the atmosphere
+was stifling. There was none of the comfort
+or luxury of a modern steamship, and the clipper
+was heeling over in a way that would alarm many
+travellers to-day. But at last, after sixty-four
+days, the <em>Red Jacket</em> had made Port Philip Heads,
+and so a record voyage to Australia. Those were
+the days when travelling by sea was romantic and
+not as monotonous as a railway journey. With
+the captain cracking-on to make a fast trip, with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span>sails carrying away, spars and gear as well, there
+was always some sport, some adventure. Between
+1850 and the following ten years Prince’s Dock,
+Liverpool, was crowded with fine clippers raising
+their lofty masts and crossing their great spars.
+And those were the days of wonderful feats of
+seamanship. Sir William Forwood says that he
+remembers seeing the 600-ton Brocklebank sailing
+ship <em>Martaban</em> come sailing into George’s Dock
+Basin under all canvas. Her halyards were then
+let go and sails clewed up so smartly that the ship,
+as she passed the pierhead, was able to throw a
+line on shore and make fast. Could you beat this
+for seamanlike skill and discipline?</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1601_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1601_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>Photo, Henry Hughes &amp; Son, Ltd.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">SPARS AND STAYS.<br>
+    Looking for’ard along the decks of a sailing ship.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>But it is with the celebrated China tea-clippers
+from about 1860 onwards that this skill reached
+such heights of proficiency. British shipowners
+no longer found it necessary to have their clippers
+built in America, and the Merchant Shipping Act
+of 1854, together with the enterprise learnt in a
+hard school, as the result of competition, enabled
+British shipping to go ahead. The California
+boom, which had produced America’s finest clippers,
+was dead. The great quantities of American
+timber would soon be not wanted for shipbuilding,
+now that iron was coming in and steam was
+replacing sails. But that which gave the final
+character to the American Mercantile Marine was
+the outbreak of civil war in 1861 between the
+North and South. From that it never recovered
+until the new efforts, begun in 1917, to rebuild a
+service that had been such a keen competitor
+during the clipper-ship period. In the meantime,
+during the ’sixties and onwards, the British Mercantile
+Marine, by the enterprise of the shipowners,
+the assistance of legislation, the protection of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span>British Navy, the scientific progress of shipbuilders
+and engineers, and by the skill and endurance of
+its officers and crews, regained its supremacy after
+a stiff fight, and opened up new trade routes in all
+parts of the world. And this not merely in regard
+to the big lines, but especially in respect of the
+tramp steamers going out with coal and bringing
+back all sorts of essential produce.</p>
+
+<p>The Clyde was gradually beginning to take the
+place of the Blackwall yard, and this became still
+more so as the need for coal and iron increased,
+owing to the fact that the Thames is not convenient
+to coalfields. It was in 1855 that Steele
+of Greenock built his first tea-clipper, the <em>Kate
+Carnie</em>, about 600 tons, and thereafter he built,
+among other beautiful and eye-pleasing ships, the
+historic <em>Taeping</em>, <em>Serica</em>, <em>Ariel</em> and <em>Sir Lancelot</em>,
+all under 900 tons, yet exceedingly fast. From
+1855 to 1881 is the comprehensive period of these
+China tea-clippers, and their evolution should be
+compared with that of the Blackwall frigates
+already dealt with. The Steele clippers had a full
+midship section and fine ends, but some of the
+other clippers were fined away like the hulls of
+schooner yachts. Unlike the obstinate Blackwallers,
+many tea-clippers had a certain amount of
+sheer. From 1863 both the Clyde and Aberdeen
+firms launched composite-built clippers, and these
+were so beautifully tight as to require practically
+no pumping, and so the cargoes of tea arrived in
+perfect condition.</p>
+
+<p>The British tea-clippers of the period under
+consideration were smaller than the American
+clippers, had less sheer, less freeboard, and were
+more slim and graceful, with decks unencumbered
+except with small houses; with less heavy spars,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span>less beam, and were designed to carry small cargoes
+of tea with the utmost despatch. They were a
+small fleet in numbers, but their excellence was
+rather in a sustained average speed throughout
+their voyages than in hourly or daily runs. The
+longest day’s run by a tea-clipper was 363 miles,
+and this record was made by <em>Cutty Sark</em>, and the
+only other clipper that could rival her was the
+<em>Thermopylae</em>. These tea-clippers were economical
+to run, handled by magnificent British seamen,
+and commanded by captains of great experience,
+courage and enterprise. The composite construction
+of wooden planking and iron frames gave
+these little ships unusual strength, they were ballasted
+with shingle, and in light weather could
+utterly outsail a Black Baller, a Californian clipper
+or a Blackwall frigate. But because of their comparative
+smallness it is not to be imagined that
+in heavy weather they could compete with the
+American clippers of much greater tonnage and
+freeboard. <em>Cutty Sark’s</em> rival, <em>Thermopylae</em>, being
+of her own nationality, on one occasion did 358
+miles, and <em>Ariel</em> 340 miles, in the twenty-four
+hours.</p>
+
+<p>But these tea-clippers needed proper handling,
+like sensitive horses, and required to be humoured.
+Those were the days when the love of ships by
+owners, captains and crews was something real,
+when clippers were treated like human beings and
+given everything they wanted; and their loss often
+meant the breaking of the owner’s heart. The
+personal relationship between the owner, his ship
+and captain was something very different from to-day.
+Before the advent of limited liability companies
+and telegraph cables, instructions were given
+personally by the owner, who would himself come
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span>down to see his ship start. In many cases the
+captains were financially interested in the ships,
+and it must be remembered that the best clipper-ship
+captains were hard to find. Remembering
+that an owner required neither a mere dare-devil
+nor one who merely played for safety, but a captain
+who would crack-on without losing ship or gear,
+and whilst getting the last ounce out of the ship
+would know instantly when to ease up, it is obvious
+that an ideal commander would be a mixture of
+courage, iron nerve, initiative, driving power, sound
+judgment based on experience, consummate seamanlike
+ability and great physical endurance.</p>
+
+<p>It was when such skippers got command of these
+lovely little ships that the tea was raced home in
+such splendid time. They had to watch their
+ships from hour to hour during the three months’
+race from China to England, rarely going below,
+getting very little sleep, and the result was that
+many eventually broke down. But we must think
+of them as the keenest lot of captains who ever sailed
+the seas, and up to every dodge to get the ship
+home quicker than the other fellow. They looked
+for risks and accepted them freely, but they were
+not foolhardy, and they knew just how much their
+ships could stand. Backed up not by mutinous
+crews, as was often the case in the American
+clippers, but by thorough seamen, all British, a
+captain knew that he could rely on them to aid
+him in getting the most out of his ship; for they
+were not less keen than himself, and were betting
+against the other ships. It meant hard work, but
+no sailorman will ever grouse at this if he is in
+tune with the reason. They took a pride in their
+vessels and were jealous of a ship’s honour. Could
+the same be said nowadays of the crews of steamships?
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span>Sentiment in seafaring has a tremendous
+practical value if only it is appreciated and properly
+trained.</p>
+
+<p>In his volume <em>The China Clippers</em>, Mr. Basil
+Lubbock says that “in the heyday of the racing,
+Foochow was the loading port par excellence, and
+the Pagoda anchorage, just before the tea came
+down the river, showed perhaps the most beautiful
+fleet of ships the world has ever seen. The crack
+ships, which were always the first to load, began
+to assemble about the end of April; and until the
+tea came down were all engaged in painting,
+varnishing and smartening themselves up, and in
+other ways, such as sheathing over their channels,
+preparing for the fray. Then what a sight they
+made when all was spick and span, with their
+glistening black hulls, snow-white decks, golden
+gingerbread work and carving at bow and stern,
+newly-varnished teak deck-fittings, glittering brass
+and burnished copper. Every ship, of course, had
+her distinctive mast and bulwark colours.”</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1641_ill1" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1641_ill1.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">PORT OF LIVERPOOL.<br>
+    In 1798.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1641_ill2" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1641_ill2.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">SCREW S.S. “LADY JOCELYN.”<br>
+    1,800 tons, 300 horse-power. Owned by General Screw Steam Shipping Co.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>The tea-clipper <em>Fiery Cross</em>, launched in 1860 at
+Liverpool and wood-built, was to become famous
+for her fast passages home. It was customary in
+those days for the first vessel who landed the new
+teas in England to receive a premium. This vessel
+won the premium on four occasions. Then in
+1863 Steele built the <em>Serica</em> and <em>Taeping</em>, two
+of the most famous clipper ships. The former
+was wood-built and of 708 tons. The latter was
+composite-built and of 767 tons, and it was in 1865
+that two more Steele composite tea-clippers were
+launched, also to become famous. These were the
+853-ton <em>Ariel</em> and the 886-ton <em>Sir Lancelot</em>. Very
+beautiful craft they were, and no ship-lover can
+regard the existing pictures of these handsome
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span>craft without a thrill of emotion. Symmetry,
+grace, proportion, curves, easy lines as to hull;
+a good sail-plan, tall masts and fine spars; carrying
+in light winds all sorts of kites and fancy sails, the
+supreme test came in the ever-memorable race of
+1866, which is one of the greatest events in the
+whole history of merchant ships under sail. On
+May 28, 1866, there was a whole fleet of these
+clippers loading at Foochow. At 5 p.m. <em>Ariel</em>
+began her voyage, by dropping down and anchoring
+for the night; and then followed the <em>Fiery
+Cross</em>, <em>Taeping</em>, <em>Serica</em> and <em>Taitsing</em>, at intervals.
+On August 12 <em>Ariel</em> passed the Cape Verde
+Islands, next day came <em>Taeping</em>, <em>Fiery Cross</em> and
+<em>Serica</em>, the <em>Taitsing</em> not passing until the 19th,
+but she had made up these three days by September
+1. On September 5 <em>Ariel</em> picked up the
+Bishop Light, sighted <em>Taeping</em>, and the two raced
+up Channel, doing their fourteen knots. <em>Ariel</em> got
+her pilot at six the next morning off Dungeness,
+followed immediately by <em>Taeping</em>. In the Downs
+<em>Taeping</em> got the more powerful tug, and thus
+reached Gravesend nearly an hour sooner, and
+finally docked twenty minutes before <em>Ariel</em>. It
+was a near thing after racing for three months
+from one end of the world to the other. <em>Serica</em>
+docked on the same tide, <em>Fiery Cross</em> was only
+about a day later, and <em>Taitsing</em> arrived in the
+river on September 9. And there were plenty
+more of these races, for the skippers cracked-on
+and made these clippers do marvellous things
+through the water.</p>
+
+<p>But in 1868 there was built at Aberdeen the
+famous clipper <em>Thermopylae</em>, 947 tons, a bigger
+and more powerful ship than the Steele clippers,
+and a veritable witch at sailing, whether on the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span>wind or to windward, and a wonderful sea boat,
+too. In November 1868 she started on her maiden
+voyage from Gravesend, and reached Melbourne in
+sixty-three days. Mr. Downie, already quoted,
+whilst a midshipman in a Blackwaller, happened
+to be in Melbourne when <em>Thermopylae</em> came in,
+and went aboard to look over this new wonder
+ship. “She had immensely square yards,” he says,
+“and most beautiful lines, fore and aft. Her
+apprentices told me her skipper had driven
+her all the way, carrying on tremendously, but
+her spars and rigging were all new, and of the
+best material, and stood the severe strain in
+splendid fashion.”</p>
+
+<p><em>Thermopylae</em> broke records, and in 1869 got
+home from Foochow in ninety-one days, though
+<em>Sir Lancelot</em> less than a fortnight later arrived
+after a voyage of only eighty-nine days. But then
+came the splendid <em>Cutty Sark</em>. She is the only
+one of this long line of tea-clippers still afloat
+and at work. In the autumn of 1921 she came
+into the London river, and I was able to go all
+over her. But she had changed her name to
+<em>Ferreira</em> and was Portuguese-owned and rigged
+as a barquentine. For all that, and the disappointing
+way in which she was being kept up,
+she was in excellent condition, with a yacht-like
+hull, every line of which suggested grace and speed.
+Composite-built, this 921-ton vessel was a little
+bigger than <em>Thermopylae</em>, and was launched in
+1869. Under Captain Moodie this vessel cracked-on,
+and she could do her seventeen and a half
+knots, and anyone who has examined her bow and
+stern will readily believe this.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1661_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1661_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">AUXILIARY SCREW S.S. “INDOMITABLE.”<br>
+    1,170 tons. Owned by R. James Brown, Sunderland.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>And here, in the height of their glory, we must
+now leave these clippers; for the opening of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span>Suez Canal told owners pretty plainly that the
+future for them was to leave sail and go in for
+steam. In 1881 <em>Thermopylae</em> made her last passage
+as a tea-carrier, and all the other clippers had
+either gone or were out of the running, and used
+in other trades. Crews began more frequently to
+go into steamships, famous captains retired, and
+the younger men, like the crews, preferred the
+more comfortable life in a mechanically-propelled
+vessel. But for years the American and British
+clipper ships were the glory of the Mercantile
+Marine, as at one time the old East Indiamen
+had been before the days of healthy competition.
+The influence of the scientific French architects
+on the American builders of frigates and privateers
+is traceable through the clipper ships which
+followed. Thus mutually one nation is linked
+with another in the development of that great
+service which has meant so much for the good
+of the world.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIV">
+    CHAPTER XIV
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">THE TRIUMPH OF STEAM</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The speed of life, the rate of progress, and the
+development of new ideas have since the beginning
+of the nineteenth century been so rapid that all
+the previous history of the Mercantile Marine, as
+in other spheres of activity, seems ridiculously slow
+and unduly protracted until we realise that a ship
+could not become efficient until she had the right
+type of hull and the correct distribution of sails,
+nor be able to steam until suitable engines had
+evolved by invention and long practice.</p>
+
+<p>It is a cliché to speak of the “wonderful” nineteenth
+century, and yet in regard to its effects on
+the sea services it is but expressing a literal truth.
+The amazing fact is, that just as the sailing ship
+was becoming perfect the steamship was beginning
+to take its place; and just as the clippers had
+definitely created the golden age of sail, steamers
+had become reliable, indispensable and destined to
+make sailing vessels out of date. If steam and
+iron, and then steel, had not been introduced into
+marine progress for another hundred years, and
+the clippers had been allowed to have the seas to
+themselves, it would have seemed but fair and
+natural, having regard to the centuries and centuries
+which had been necessary to bring about, at last,
+so perfect a creation of man’s science, art and
+bitter experience.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1681_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1681_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">LORD YARBOROUGH’S YACHT “FALCON.”<br>
+    351 tons. Off Cowes. About 1829. Afterwards used as a merchant ship.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>But it was not to be. The story of the steamship,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span>like that of the sailing ship, is one of evolution;
+but compressed into a few years instead of
+many centuries. As early as 1736 a steam vessel
+had been patented by Jonathan Hulls, to be used
+as a steam tug. It is even said that such a craft
+was built and experimented with in the following
+year; but at any rate the experiment was not
+continued. The essential idea was the use of a
+single paddle at the stern. Now follows the trend
+of invention. In 1783 a two-paddle-wheel steam
+craft, turned by a single horizontal steam cylinder,
+constructed by the Marquis de Jouffroy, actually
+went ahead for some time against the current of
+the Saône. For some time Patrick Miller had
+been experimenting with the old idea of propelling
+craft by hand-worked paddle-wheels. In 1787
+William Symington had obtained a patent for a
+new steam-engine, and he was now asked to design
+an engine that would turn these paddle-wheels.
+Thus in the autumn of 1788 the engine was put
+into a double-hulled vessel, no bigger than the
+smallest yacht, measuring 25 feet long, with 7 feet
+beam, the engine being geared with chains and the
+two paddle-wheels being placed between the two
+hulls, one wheel astern of the other. This curious
+vessel was actually tried on Dalswinton Loch and
+was able to do her five miles an hour.</p>
+
+<p>Then in 1801 was built the stern-wheeler <em>Charlotte
+Dundas</em> at Grangemouth, having engines supplied
+by Symington. She also had a double stern with
+two rudders controlled by a steering-wheel. She
+proved her efficiency to the extent of towing a
+couple of 70-ton, loaded vessels for nearly twenty
+miles along the Forth and Clyde canal; but as the
+owners of this waterway feared for the damage
+done to the banks of the canal, the ship was condemned.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span>We have to look upon these as hardly
+anything more than interesting experiments, but
+six years later we see the first real steamship, not
+in England nor Scotland, but in North America,
+yet produced by a combination of British and
+American brains. This was the <em>Clermont</em>, measuring
+133 feet long and 18 feet beam, and was produced
+by Robert Fulton, an American engineer, born in
+Pennsylvania of Irish parentage. In 1797 he came
+to Paris, where he devoted his attention to steam
+navigation, and in 1803 built a small steamboat
+which went up the Seine. Three years later he
+went back to America, having seen the trial trip
+of the <em>Charlotte Dundas</em>. He arranged with the
+British firm Boulton &amp; Watt to make for him the
+principal portions of a suitable engine, and these
+were sent across the Atlantic to him and fitted into
+the wooden ship <em>Clermont</em>. The result was that
+in 1807 this craft travelled by steam power from
+New York to Albany up the Hudson, a distance
+of 150 miles, in thirty-two hours. This was a
+veritable triumph, and definitely settled the question
+as to whether steam vessels would ever become of
+practical utility. It is, indeed, one of the landmarks
+of history, and when we look on the ocean
+to-day and see such mighty steamships as <em>Olympic</em>,
+<em>Aquitania</em>, <em>Majestic</em> and <em>Berengaria</em>, to say nothing
+of the many thousands of smaller steamers all
+over the world, it is nothing short of remarkable
+that in little more than a hundred years such a
+stupendous change should have come about. The
+advancement of the ship seems suddenly to have
+been telescoped.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1701_ill1" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1701_ill1.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">CLIPPER SCREW S.S. “HELLENIS.”<br>
+    755 tons, length 206 ft. Owned by the Anglo-Ionian Steam Navigation Co., Ltd.
+    Built at Stockton. In 1861.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1701_ill2" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1701_ill2.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">S.S. “ORINOCO.”<br>
+    2,250 tons, 800 horse-power. Lieut. G. M. Chapman, R.N., Commander.
+    Owned by Royal West India Mail Company.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>But the successive stages were not easy, and
+there was much to be learnt. In 1811 on the
+Clyde was launched the <em>Comet</em>, a clumsy little
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span>thing of 40 feet length on the keel, and able to
+steam five miles an hour by means of one paddle
+on each side, as in the case of the <em>Clermont</em>. During
+the next few years paddle-steamers began to be
+built and introduced on the Clyde, Thames and
+Mersey. By 1817 a steamer called the <em>Caledonia</em>
+had been taken from the Clyde to the Thames,
+whence, after receiving new engines, she steamed
+to Rotterdam. A year later came the 90-ton <em>Rob
+Roy</em>, constructed by William Denny and engined
+by Napier with thirty nominal horse-power. After
+running for some time between Greenock and
+Belfast, she was transferred to the Dover-Calais
+route, but in the meantime steamer development
+was proceeding in other parts of Europe. For in
+1815 a small craft called the <em>Elizabeth</em> was running
+on the Neva, another steamer was carrying passengers
+between Cronstadt and St. Petersburg,
+whilst in Germany the first vessel of this kind to
+be built was the <em>Prinzessin Charlotte</em>, a double-hulled
+thing with a single paddle-wheel between
+the hulls. She was running on the Elbe and Spree
+as early as 1816.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far small steamers had shown their utility
+for inland waters and for short sea passages; but
+now comes another important event. In the year
+1818 there was built in New York the 350-ton
+full-rigged ship <em>Savannah</em>, but she was also fitted
+with a low-pressure engine of ninety horse-power,
+and a couple of paddle-wheels, one on each side.
+These were so arranged that they could be hoisted
+on board. In the following year she crossed the
+Atlantic to Liverpool in thirty days, but this was
+largely a sailing passage, for she did not use her
+engines except for eighty hours, and by the time
+she had reached the Irish coast she had consumed
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span>all her fuel. On her return to America her engines
+were removed and she became a sailing ship simply.
+Still, for the first time in history a ship had been
+driven by steam in the Atlantic, and it showed
+what could be expected presently.</p>
+
+<p>And then came a surprise. In that yard which
+had been building nothing else but sailing ships
+since the time of Elizabeth, in that yard where the
+flower of the British merchant fleet had always
+been constructed, there was now actually being
+made a steamer! It seemed incredible, but it
+was true, and it caused a great sensation at the
+time. In 1820 had been formed the first steamship
+company, under the title of the General Steam
+Navigation Company, and they gave the order
+for their first steamer to the Blackwall yard of
+Wigram &amp; Green. This ship was the 401-ton
+paddler <em>City of Edinburgh</em>, for the Edinburgh
+trade, and she was launched in 1821, the same
+year as the yard also launched the 1333-ton East
+Indiaman <em>Duchess of Atholl</em>, one of the finest sailing
+ships of the time. It was significant of the
+big change that was coming over the Mercantile
+Marine, though for many a year most of the officers
+and men heartily despised any one who deserted
+sail for steam.</p>
+
+<p>In the following year this same yard launched
+the 180-ton paddler <em>King of the Netherlands</em> for
+the same owners, and in 1823 they built three
+more steamers of from 244 to 510 tons. The <em>City
+of Edinburgh</em> had been launched in March, and had
+caused so much interest that the future William IV
+and Queen Adelaide went to look over her and
+were surprised at the magnificence of her passenger
+accommodation. The engines were of only 100
+horse-power, yet the Press at the time referred to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span>them as “extremely powerful.” Then in the following
+June was launched at Port Glasgow the 420-ton
+three-masted schooner <em>James Watt</em>, which had
+a long, narrow funnel, about as tall as her mainmast,
+and a paddle-wheel on either side of the
+ship driven by engines of the same horse-power as
+those for the <em>City of Edinburgh</em>.</p>
+
+<p>The steamship had thus got a good start, though
+as regards ocean work the engines were auxiliary
+rather than the main propelling power. In 1825
+the 176-ton auxiliary <em>Falcon</em> reached Calcutta via
+the Cape, and the 470-ton <em>Enterprise</em> made the
+same voyage in 113 days, but for 103 days she
+used steam. This was the biggest test which
+marine machinery had so far endured. It proved
+a good deal, and therefore it is not surprising that
+two years later there were eighty steamers classed
+in Lloyd’s Register, and five years later there
+were 100. But the Atlantic had not yet been
+conquered by steam, and when we realise that
+<em>Aquitania</em> was not in commission until 1914, we
+can well appreciate the rate of progress that was
+afterwards made. In 1831 a vessel named the
+<em>Royal William</em>, 176 feet long, was built in Quebec,
+and fitted with engines made by Boulton &amp; Watt
+that had been sent across the Atlantic. Two years
+later this ship crossed the ocean to Cowes, having
+done the 2500 miles in seventeen days, yet there
+is some doubt as to whether she used her engines
+throughout the whole voyage.</p>
+
+<p>But the year 1838 was to be remarkable in the
+story of the Atlantic, for on April 4 there started
+from Cork the 703-ton paddler <em>Sirius</em>, which
+reached New York on April 22. She had steamed
+all the way, but it had been a near thing, for her
+fuel gave out and she had even to burn some of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span>her spars. At one stage of the voyage her captain
+had to quell a mutiny, for the crew began to
+assume that the ship would never get across.
+Twelve hours after her arrival came into New
+York the four-masted paddler <em>Great Western</em>,
+which had left Bristol on April 7. She was a
+much larger ship, of 1321 gross tons, and had
+been specially designed by that engineering genius
+Brunel to withstand Atlantic weather. On the
+return voyage she took fifteen days, and <em>Sirius</em>
+seventeen. <em>Great Western</em> was a most successful
+ship, both technically and commercially. At the
+end of the first year she earned a dividend of 9 per
+cent., thirty-five guineas being the fare, and she
+carried 152 passengers. She was not broken up
+until 1847.</p>
+
+<p>So far no steamer had crossed from Liverpool
+to New York, though the sailing ships were still
+doing the voyage in about three weeks, but in
+1838 a second <em>Royal William</em> accomplished this.
+She was hardly the kind of paddler to choose for
+Atlantic work, and had really been built for the
+Liverpool-Kingstown route. Built and engined at
+Liverpool, being 3 feet shorter but 2 feet wider
+than <em>Sirius</em>, she was thus the first of those steamers
+to maintain the communication between Liverpool
+and New York, which has meant so much to the
+mutual commerce and development of ideas in the
+two countries. On April 2, 1839, the three-masted
+paddler <em>British Queen</em> left Portsmouth and reached
+New York on April 16, or three days quicker
+than the first <em>Royal William</em> had done the journey
+in the opposite direction under sail and steam.
+Encouraged by the success of <em>Sirius</em>, which had
+been chartered because the <em>British Queen</em> was not
+yet ready, the British Queen Steam Navigation
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span>Company had also built the sister ship <em>President</em>,
+1863 tons and 700 horse-power; but after sailing
+from New York on March 11, 1841, with a few
+passengers, <em>President</em> was never heard of again,
+and thus the company came to an end.</p>
+
+<p>We have now reached a stage when a change
+was coming over the Mercantile Marine slowly
+but without a doubt. A new competition was
+beginning, yet so far sail was ahead and improving
+all the time. But from the number of new shipyards
+which were springing up, and the interest
+which they and owners were taking in the steamship,
+it was obvious even soon after Queen Victoria’s
+accession that in the steamship lay the future of
+the trading and passenger ship. It is to be noted
+that during the time of the Honourable East India
+Company their ships were primarily and essentially
+freighters. They earned their profits by carrying
+valuable exports and imports. The few passengers
+who travelled were officials going out to India in
+the service of the company, or returning home.
+To-day the finest merchant ships in the world are
+not freighters, but passenger ships. It is the tramp
+which has succeeded to the carrying trade of those
+pioneer ships; and after the Indian monopoly had
+disappeared, and there came a need for people to
+go out East, it was quite an innovation to provide
+more accommodation for passengers. Then the
+same thing happened in regard to China, but especially
+with the emigration to Australia. Gradually
+this element increased, people began to travel all
+over the world, for business, for administrative
+reasons, for pleasure; and as the number of passengers
+increased so the amount of cargo space was
+encroached upon. Especially was this the case in
+the transatlantic ships, so that to-day the principal
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span>liners on that route carry practically no cargo
+beyond mails and the passengers’ luggage. Thus,
+within a hundred years, the needs of the public
+have entirely altered the characters of the shipping.</p>
+
+<p>It was natural enough that the East should for
+so long have instigated all the improvements in
+shipping, for the reason that travellers went to the
+Orient long before America was discovered, and
+the East India Company had a continuous need
+for the best ships. But since the introduction of
+steam and the rapid progress of the United States,
+it is the West, and not the East which has always
+seen the greatest enterprise in shipping. Bigger
+and better vessels, compound engines, twin screws,
+triple screws, quadruple screws, turbines, oil fuel,
+increased speed, luxurious accommodation—all
+these most important and progressive factors in
+the Mercantile Marine have come as a result of
+the Atlantic, and not the Oriental trade.</p>
+
+<p>In reality it is all traceable to the year 1840,
+though the establishment of Lloyd’s Register in
+1834,&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_5_5" href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> the founding of the Marine Department of
+the Board of Trade in 1846 and the repeal of the
+Navigation Laws in 1849 have also to be reckoned
+as having powerfully contributed to the improvement
+of British shipping. Some time since I had
+in my hands the log of the sailing ship <em>Elizabeth</em>,
+which sailed from the Thames in the spring of
+1833, arrived in China the following January, left
+there in March, called at St. Helena in June,
+then crossed the Atlantic and reached Halifax in
+August. She was, I believe, the last of the ships
+owned by the Honourable East India Company to
+leave China before the monopoly ended. Now, as
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span>showing the interlocking of human affairs, it is
+interesting to observe that at Halifax she went
+alongside Mr. Cunard’s wharf, for he was the East
+India Company’s agent in that port. Curiously,
+five years previously, in reply to a letter sent to
+his firm by Messrs. Ross &amp; Primrose, Cunard had
+written: “We have received your letter of the
+22nd inst. We are entirely unacquainted with the
+cost of a steamboat, and would not like to embark
+in a business of which we are quite ignorant.
+Must, therefore, decline taking any part in the one
+you propose getting up.”</p>
+
+<p>Now in those days the arrangements for postal
+contracts were in the hands of the British Admiralty,
+who were so impressed by the wonderful steamship
+achievements of 1838 that they proceeded to
+issue circulars inviting tenders for the carrying of
+American mails by steamers. It so happened that
+one of these circulars fell into the hands of Samuel
+Cunard of Halifax, who owned a number of sailing
+ships trading between Boston, Newfoundland and
+Bermuda. He had been one of the shareholders
+of the first <em>Royal William</em>, which had crossed in
+1833 from Nova Scotia to Cowes. Having read
+the circular and made up his mind, he came to
+London in order to raise the required money, but
+the merchants would have nothing to do with the
+scheme. From the secretary of the East India
+Company he obtained a letter of introduction to
+Mr. Robert Napier, a Clyde shipbuilder and
+engineer, who in turn introduced him to Mr.
+George Burns, and the latter introduced him to
+Mr. David MacIver. Each of these two last
+mentioned was an expert in the shipping business,
+and in a few days the necessary capital of £270,000
+was subscribed. A tender was then made to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span>Admiralty for the conveyance of Her Majesty’s
+mails once a fortnight between Liverpool, Halifax
+and Boston. This was accepted in competition,
+and a contract was signed for seven years. It was
+agreed that the service was to be carried on by
+four ships, that fixed dates of sailings should be
+adhered to, and that the company should be
+subsidised to the extent of £81,000 a year.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the famous Cunard Company was founded.
+Cunard came to London, Burns to Glasgow and
+MacIver to Liverpool, and to these three men we
+owe a great deal of the subsequent development
+of Atlantic shipping and the progress of the
+Mercantile Marine. The company was at first
+known as “The British and North American Royal
+Mail Steam Packet Company,” and in the year
+1840 these four wooden ships were built on the
+Clyde and supplied with engines by Robert Napier.
+The first was the <em>Britannia</em>, followed by the
+<em>Acadia</em>, <em>Caledonia</em> and <em>Columbia</em>. They were
+propelled by paddle-wheels, carried 115 cabin
+passengers and 225 tons of cargo, and they were
+all approximately 1154 tons, and 207 feet long.
+Regardless of superstition, <em>Britannia</em> began her
+maiden voyage on a Friday, which happened to be
+July 4, a day which commemorated another kind
+of Independence. After a fine trip of eleven days
+and four hours she reached Halifax, and thence
+proceeded to Boston, just a fortnight plus eight
+hours out from Liverpool. The citizens of Boston
+celebrated the historic event with banqueting and
+enthusiasm, and thus was forged one of those links
+which have bound the two nations together for so
+many years ever since.</p>
+
+<p>Following the precedent of the Cunard Company,
+the Royal Mail Line in March 1840, obtained a contract
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span>to carry the mails in at least fourteen “good
+substantial and efficient steam vessels” to the
+West Indies, whither previously the mails had been
+carried in gun-brigs. The contract was for ten
+years from December 1841. All the ships were
+named after British rivers, and they used to depart
+from Falmouth, the voyage taking from seventeen
+to eighteen days. It is evidence of the great
+spread of shipbuilding already that these fourteen
+ships were built at Northfleet on the Thames,
+Greenock, Dumbarton, Leith and even Cowes.
+The fleet cost about £1,000,000 sterling, but the
+Government gave them a subsidy of £240,000 a
+year. The undertaking was very successful, and
+presently Southampton took the place of Falmouth.
+Then in 1851 the Royal Mail Line extended their
+service to South America. Gradually the heavy
+subsidy dropped to £85,000 a year, and was finally
+abolished in June 1905.</p>
+
+<p>As further evidence of the solid belief which the
+steamship had now won, it is only necessary to
+refer to the Pacific Steam Navigation Company,
+which received its charter in 1840. It is now
+amalgamated with the Royal Mail Line, but in
+those days, whilst the latter served the east side
+of South America, the Pacific Steam Navigation
+Company served the Pacific coast of that continent
+by going round through the Magellan Straits.
+Their two ships the <em>Chile</em> and <em>Peru</em> were in fact
+the first two steamers which ever passed through
+those straits. What a wonderful change since the
+time of Drake’s ships!</p>
+
+<p>But there is still one more important event
+which belongs to the year 1840, for this was the
+date when there was incorporated by royal charter
+the Peninsular &amp; Oriental Steam Navigation
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span>Company. The foundation of the Peninsular
+Company dates back to 1837, and a regular service
+of mail packets was instituted from London to
+Lisbon and Gibraltar, though even a little prior
+to this date its ships had begun running to the
+Peninsula. The first steamship owned by the
+Peninsular Company was the 209-ton paddler
+<em>William Fawcett</em>, built in the year 1829, and
+she ran from London to Lisbon and Gibraltar.
+In 1840 the line was extended to Malta and
+Alexandria, and its title changed from Peninsular
+to Peninsular and Oriental. There was as yet no
+Suez Canal, so from Alexandria passengers and
+goods were sent by the Mahmoudieh Canal to the
+Nile, whence they proceeded by steamer to Cairo,
+and from there travelled through the desert on
+camels as far as Suez. It was thus a laborious
+business, 3000 camels being employed for transporting
+a single steamer’s loading, every package
+requiring three separate transfers; and for nearly
+thirty years this continued until the Suez Canal
+was opened in 1869.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1801_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1801_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">TWO EARLY MAIL STEAMSHIPS.<br>
+    This picture of 1842 shows two of the General Steam Navigation Company’s vessels at Rotterdam. The 600-ton “Ocean” leaving,
+    and the 500-ton “Giraffe” arriving.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>But this company first sent a steamer to India
+via the Cape in 1842. This was the 1800-ton
+<em>Hindostan</em>, with 500-horse-power engines. In
+1844 the P. &amp; O. undertook the mail service from
+England to Alexandria, and thus from Suez to
+Ceylon, Calcutta and China. The service between
+Suez and Bombay was carried on by the East
+India Company, in order to keep alive their navy,
+but in 1854 this service was absorbed by the
+P. &amp; O., who in 1852 had also started a branch
+line from Singapore to Australia. Then in 1869
+came the opening of the Suez Canal, and thus was
+broken down the last barrier which separated
+India from the trader. A tremendous impulse was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span>given now to shipping; for the first time vessels
+need not go round the Cape of Good Hope, and
+so once again the Mediterranean ceased to be a
+backwater and the route to the East was now more
+like what it was before the Portuguese, Dutch
+and Elizabethan English had begun to undertake
+their Oriental voyages. It is interesting to remark
+that in the same year which saw the opening of
+the Suez Canal the two fastest clipper ships which
+ever sailed were both afloat—<em>Thermopylae</em> and
+<em>Cutty Sark</em>. The latter made her maiden voyage
+in the following February. Thus, at a time when
+sailing ships were passing the Cape at a record
+speed, the canal was being opened and putting
+an end to the sail-driven vessel’s usefulness after
+so many centuries, linking it up with Vasco da
+Gama and earlier.</p>
+<br>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_5_5" href="#FNanchor_5_5" class="label">[5]</a> By the amalgamation of the Register of Shipping (1760)
+and the New Register Book of Shipping (1799).</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</span></p>
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XV">
+    CHAPTER XV
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">THE IRON AND STEEL AGE</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>In a very few years, then, the increasing success
+of the steamer, together with the opening of the
+Suez Canal and firm establishment of several
+steamship companies carrying mails east, west and
+south, gave the glorious sailing ships a blow from
+which they have never since recovered. Mechanically-propelled
+craft were now seen everywhere.
+In 1841 the Blackwall yard launched the 666-ton
+paddler <em>Princess Royal</em> and the 875-ton paddler
+<em>Trident</em> for the General Steam Navigation Company.
+The latter craft was one of the fastest
+vessels afloat, and on Queen Victoria’s first visit to
+Scotland this ship so far surpassed the royal yacht
+in speed that <em>Trident</em> was chartered for Her
+Majesty’s party on the return voyage.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1821_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1821_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">S.S. “TRIDENT.”<br>
+    Of the General Steam Navigation Company, arriving at Woolwich on September 13, 1842, with Queen Victoria on board after her visit
+    to Scotland. “Trident” was of 875 tons.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>From 1840 to about 1860 the Cunard ships had
+practically a monopoly of the Atlantic steamship
+trade, though as long as they used paddle-wheels
+they were not very serious competitors with the
+sailing craft. It was the advent of iron and steel,
+of the high-pressure and compound engines which
+was to give the steamships the virtues of economy
+and efficiency and thus a superiority over the old-fashioned
+craft. From 1850 for the next eight
+years there was in the North Atlantic a certain
+amount of opposition from a steamship company
+called the Collins Line, which had been subsidised
+by the United States Government. After a burst
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span>of keen rivalry, the Collins Line withdrew from the
+contest. In 1850 came the Inman Line, which
+kept up the running for many years until in 1893
+it was reorganised and became merged in the
+American Line. In 1866 was founded the Guion
+Line, which certainly had a great influence for a
+time in accelerating the development of the big
+steamship. And then in 1870 came the White
+Star Line, which, excepting the Cunard Line and
+a temporary influence of the two German lines, has
+done more for the improvement in design and
+speed and comfort in regard to steamships than
+all the other companies put together.</p>
+
+<p>We must now see how this all came about. It
+depended really on two things: first, the use of
+iron, and subsequently steel, for the building of
+bigger hulls; and secondly, the invention of the
+screw propeller to take the place of the old-fashioned
+paddle-wheel. Briefly how this came
+to pass is as follows. As far back as 1821 a
+Mr. Aaron Manby had built an iron craft 120 feet
+long and 18 feet wide, and she steamed from
+London to Paris, being employed for the next
+twenty years on the Seine. She was thus the first
+iron ship to put to sea, and was called the <em>Aaron
+Manby</em>, after her builder. Then in 1832 Laird &amp;
+Co. of Birkenhead built the 148-ton paddler <em>Lady
+Lansdowne</em> for the trade between England and
+Ireland. But it was not until 1843 that the first
+really large iron ship, the famous <em>Great Britain</em>,
+was built, intended as an improvement on the
+<em>Great Western</em>.</p>
+
+<p>But before we speak of the <em>Great Britain</em> we
+must see something of the way the propeller
+came in, for the two subjects are intimately connected.
+At its best the paddle-wheel, except for
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span>excursion steamers and certain kinds of tugs, is a
+very clumsy means of driving a ship through the
+water. It is the most obvious, because historically
+it is analogous to the action of the duck, of the
+first primitive man who paddled his small craft, or
+of the later Egyptians who rowed with oars down
+the Nile. But for open sea work the paddle-wheel
+is an awkward encumbrance, and apart from
+tugs and pleasure steamers it was last seen, in
+European waters at least, in the mail steamers
+running from England to Flushing and Ostend
+comparatively recently.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1841_ill1" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1841_ill1.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">THE “ROBERT F. STOCKTON.”<br>
+    (Captain Ericsson, 1839.)</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1841_ill2" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1841_ill2.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">AN EARLY CROSS-CHANNEL STEAMER.<br>
+    This picture of 1855 shows the English and French Royal Mail Steam Packets
+    “Queen” and “Empress.”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>But for a long time there had been efforts made
+to introduce the screw propeller. As far back as
+1804 John Stevens crossed the Hudson in a little
+vessel driven by a screw propeller, but it was not
+until thirty-two years later that John Ericsson, a
+Swedish engineer, reintroduced the screw and
+patented it. In 1837 his propeller was successfully
+tried in the 45-foot <em>Francis B. Ogden</em>, and in the
+following year the Lairds built at Birkenhead
+the 63-foot <em>Robert F. Stockton</em>, which obtained the
+extraordinary speed of thirteen knots on the
+Thames, going with the tide, and she afterwards
+went across the Atlantic, where she was turned
+into a tug. But in England Francis Smith was at
+work on the screw problem and obtained a patent
+in the same year as Ericsson, and his invention was
+tried with success in a 6-ton boat. Smith’s patent
+was bought by a syndicate; and in 1838 was
+launched the 240-ton three-master <em>Archimedes</em>,
+fitted with Smith’s screw, and after she had
+steamed round Great Britain and across the Bay
+of Biscay, the prejudiced and “old-timers” began
+to believe in the new idea. Next year was
+launched the much larger <em>Novelty</em>, which was the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span>first cargo ship to be fitted with a screw, and she
+proceeded from London to Constantinople and
+back. She was also the first ship to be fitted with
+an iron mast.</p>
+
+<p>We have thus arrived at the stage when the iron
+ship and the screw propeller had become practicable,
+and thus the future of the steamer was
+moulded. Wood was all very well until the
+demand for increased tonnage arrived, but when it
+was proposed to construct the 3618-ton <em>Great
+Britain</em> there was nothing for it but to use iron.
+Here was a ship to be 822 feet long with 50½ feet
+beam, able to carry 260 passengers and 1200 tons
+of cargo. As no contractor could be found willing
+to build such a ship, the Great Western Steamship
+Company at Bristol constructed her themselves.
+She was designed by Brunel, but she turned out to
+be an awkward, ill-fated monstrosity. Launched
+in July 1843, she was unable to enter the river
+until December of the following year, owing to
+delay in the alteration of the dock. It was
+originally intended to fit her with the usual paddle-wheels,
+but the arrival of the <em>Archimedes</em> in the
+port caused Brunel to modify the designs, so that
+his ship should be driven by a six-bladed propeller.
+She was a curious, six-masted craft with a bowsprit
+and painted ports, and in July 1845, after making
+a trip to London, left Liverpool with sixty
+passengers and 600 tons of cargo, reaching New
+York after a voyage of fifteen days. On the return
+journey her best day’s steaming was 287 miles.
+One night during September of the following year,
+after leaving the Mersey, she ran ashore off the
+Irish coast in Dundrum Bay, where she remained
+for eleven months exposed to all weathers. Brunel
+cleverly had a wooden breakwater, loaded with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span>stones, built round her, and she was eventually
+refloated and taken into Liverpool. She was now
+sold for a quarter of her original cost of £100,000,
+was turned into a full-rigged ship for the Australian
+trade, and eventually became a coal hulk.</p>
+
+<p>But in spite of her failure this ship showed that
+an iron hull and a screw as propeller were a
+practicable combination. She was divided into
+five water-tight compartments, she was fitted with
+bilge-keels to minimise rolling, and instead of the
+heavy wooden bulwarks possessed by contemporary
+ships and inherited from the time when the Tudor
+ships mounted their cannon, <em>Great Britain</em> had
+iron rails with netting, so that any seas shipped
+could get away easily. Thus, this unfortunate
+vessel, in spite of her ill-luck, did introduce new
+ideas into the Mercantile Marine. It was in 1856
+that the Cunard Company built the <em>Persia</em>, of iron.
+She was a 3300-ton ship, but had paddle-wheels,
+and then, six years later, came their <em>Scotia</em>, which
+was the last and finest paddle-ship ever built for the
+Atlantic service. She had seven water-tight compartments
+and a double bottom, thanks to the
+influence of <em>Great Britain</em>, and she lowered the
+record of crossing the Atlantic to just two hours
+under the nine days. The sailing ship as a
+passenger-carrier across that ocean was now definitely
+beaten, and the future simply consisted in
+the more thorough perfecting of the steamships;
+there was no going back now, notwithstanding the
+fact that in the Eastern trades the full-rigged ships
+were still making such wonderful passages.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp85" id="p1861_ill" style="max-width: 54.3125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1861_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">THE FAMOUS “GREAT EASTERN.”<br>
+    After her launching in 1858.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>The advance of engineering and science, the
+amount of valuable data which had been obtained
+during these years of steam propulsion, had already
+brought steamship building to be no rule-of-thumb
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span>method, but a highly technical art. About the
+middle of the century, John Scott Russell, for
+instance, made some valuable researches regarding
+the resistance of a ship’s hull passing through the
+water, and in 1860 Sir Edward Harland, founder
+of the famous Belfast yard of Harland &amp; Wolff,
+introduced steamers into the Mediterranean with a
+length of ten times their beam. This novel idea
+was so successful that when he came to build the
+White Star steamships he carried out that same
+idea, which was yet another important influence in
+the evolution of the modern Atlantic liner. But
+even in 1852 a tremendous improvement was seen
+in the hull of the <em>Victoria</em>, which was built of iron
+to the design of Brunel &amp; Scott Russell for the
+Australian Royal Mail Steam Navigation Company.
+She was designed to embody the wave-line
+theory and for a speed of ten knots, and instead
+of the clumsy, ponderous hulls, you find in the
+<em>Victoria</em> smoothness, gracefulness and sweet lines.
+It is therefore not altogether surprising that she
+won the £500 prize offered by the Colonies for
+the fastest voyage to Australia, her time from
+Gravesend to Adelaide being sixty days, including
+two days’ delay at St. Vincent. She was propelled
+by a two-bladed screw.</p>
+
+<p>Thus in the fewest possible years a remarkable
+change had come over the Mercantile Marine,
+and though the old die-hards—those fine artists of
+the marlin-spike—still heartily despised every kind
+of steamship, yet others could see well enough that
+an entirely new order of things had begun owing
+to the advance in engineering. The ship, as in
+regard to other creatures, had to advance with the
+times. The first settlement in Australia had taken
+place as far back as 1788, and now required better
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span>lines of communication. So, too, with the East
+and the great strides which North and South
+America were making. Pioneers, emigrants, business
+men were exercising a pressure which could
+be met only in bigger and faster ships. Thanks
+to the peace and prosperity of the mid-Victorian
+era, new ideas were emerging. Gone were the
+days of monopolies and worn-out rules: the last
+trace of mediævalism in shipping had been severed,
+and men were thinking out freely and unfettered
+the problems of transport.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1881_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1881_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">THE FAMOUS “GREAT EASTERN.”<br>
+    Also known as the “Leviathan.” Length 680 ft., beam 83 ft.; beam across paddle-boxes 120 ft.; depth (deck to keel) 58ft.; 22,500 tons;
+    draught (laden) 30 ft.; paddle engines 1,200 horse-power; screw engines 1,800 horse-power. Accommodation for 4,000 passengers.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>It was quite a remarkable achievement that in
+1853 the <em>Himalaya</em> was built at Blackwall for the
+P. &amp; O. line. Here was an iron vessel of 4690
+tons, which succeeded in making a record run to
+Gibraltar at an average speed of thirteen and a half
+knots. No wonder that the year after she was
+built she was purchased by the British Government.
+And then came that wonder of the world,
+the historic <em>Great Eastern</em>, which was the biggest
+ship ever built for nearly fifty years, until the
+White Star <em>Baltic</em> came out in 1905. The <em>Great
+Eastern</em> is best described as a costly freak, but she
+shows the marvellous courage and enterprise of
+the Victorian age. It was Brunel’s idea that a
+ship should be built so as to carry a very large
+number of passengers and an enormous cargo all
+the way to Australia without having to coal anywhere
+on the voyage. She was to be 679 feet
+6 inches long, with 82 feet 8 inches beam, of
+18,915 tons, and driven by both paddles and a
+screw. This five-funnelled, six-masted giantess
+was built by Scott Russell on the Thames. She
+began to be built on May 1, 1854, but she was not
+launched at Millwall until the last day of January
+1858, the first attempt to persuade her to enter the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span>water being unsuccessful. As a financial speculation
+she was a failure. The attempts to launch her
+and the ensuing delay ran into thousands of pounds,
+and the company which owned her had to be wound
+up, but she was sold to a new company for £160,000.
+She was unfortunately now put on the Atlantic
+route, where she was a financial failure also; then
+from 1865 to 1873 she was used in laying the
+Atlantic submarine telegraph cables, for which she
+was found suitable, and finally in 1888 she was
+beached and then broken up. Though in a commercial
+sense she had never succeeded, the <em>Great
+Eastern</em> did prove that she was perfectly sound
+structurally, and never exhibited any signs of weakness
+in spite of her enormous length. But she was
+really years before her time.</p>
+
+<p>To have built this, or indeed any big ship, of
+wood could not have been possible. What rendered
+practicable the increased length of ships, able
+to carry high-powered engines with much space for
+passengers and cargo, was the invention of the
+rolling-mill, which had been brought about by
+Henry Cort, who died in 1800. Before this was
+introduced, the iron after leaving the furnace had
+to be hammered into shape. But nowadays iron
+and steel can be turned out into suitable plates, so
+that shipbuilding really consists in riveting together
+so many plates as to form a steel box with shaped
+ends. Instead of the soft sounds of the adze and
+caulking chisel and the wholesome smell of tar,
+the shipyard of to-day is a pandemonium of
+monotonous, buzzing pneumatic riveting hammers.
+There is no loving selection of timbers and
+planking: the steel plates and girders are just
+there ready to be put into position. It is highly
+unsentimental, but inevitable that development
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</span>should proceed along these lines. During the
+’seventies steel had been used for shipbuilding more
+or less tentatively, but it was not until the Allan
+liner <em>Buenos Ayrean</em> that a steel ship was seen in
+the Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p>Mild steel, because of its ductility and strength
+and lightness, became much more suitable than
+iron, and opened up another era in the story of the
+steamship. With the exception of yachts, lifeboats
+and certain fishing craft, this is now used
+universally for constructing hulls. In 1873 the
+French had employed steel in building their warships,
+and in 1881 the Cunard <em>Servia</em> came out
+thus constructed. She was the largest and most
+powerful ship then built with the exception of
+<em>Great Eastern</em>, her measurements being 515 feet
+long, 52 feet beam and 7392 tons gross. She
+lowered the Atlantic voyage to seven days, one
+hour, thirty-eight minutes.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1901_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1901_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy the White Star Line.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">S.S. “OCEANIC.”<br>
+    The first White Star Line steamship. Launched 1870. She measured 420 ft. over all. She was the first of the modern steamship era.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>But a most important influence on the future of
+the Mercantile Marine was created when the
+White Star Line began their competition in the
+Atlantic trade. Previously their flag had flown
+at the masthead of a fine fleet of sailing clippers.
+In 1867 the managing owner of the White Star
+Line retired, and Mr. T. H. Ismay took over
+control. He began by using iron for his Australian
+clippers instead of wood, and two years later gave
+an order to Harland &amp; Wolff, Belfast, to build
+steamships for the Atlantic. In August 1870 was
+launched the first of the fleet. This was the
+<em>Oceanic</em>, 420 feet long, her beam being only one-tenth
+of her length. That proportion was a radical
+departure in shipbuilding, and very different from
+the beamy old “waggons,” as the old sailing ships
+were sometimes called. This <em>Oceanic</em> is really the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span>first of the modern steamships, and contained so
+many new ideas as to make all the other steamships
+old-fashioned. For instance, she introduced the
+practice of having the saloon extending the entire
+width and placed in the middle of the ship instead
+of aft. The state-rooms were placed forward and
+abaft the saloon, instead of opening out on to it,
+which had been the custom derived from the
+sailing ships. Moreover, the introduction of glass
+side-lights on a much larger scale made the interior
+of the ship lighter and more pleasant. In fact,
+what with this, the revolving chairs instead of the
+hard seats, the oil-lamps instead of the spluttering
+candles, and other details of comfort, the passenger
+saw that he was so well looked after that the
+White Star became at once a popular line. Ever
+since that time one company has vied with another
+to give the Atlantic passenger the maximum
+amount of pleasure and luxury. How little do
+many of them appreciate the contrast between the
+crack steamships of to-day and of fifty or sixty
+years ago, when everything had to be learned by
+hard and costly experience!</p>
+
+<p>The <em>Oceanic</em> was a 3808-ton vessel, and became
+the fastest steamship afloat, her four-cylinder compound
+engines enabling her to average fourteen
+and a quarter knots. The first Atlantic line to
+build all its steamers of iron had been the Inman
+Line, which from 1850 to 1892 was one of the
+chief competitors in that ocean. Founded by
+William Inman, its successful policy was to capture
+the emigration trade which had been carried on by
+the sailing ships. Their first ships had been the
+<em>City of Glasgow</em> and <em>City of Manchester</em>, built of
+iron and propelled by a single screw. They inaugurated
+the custom of calling at Queenstown,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</span>and began running to New York instead of
+Philadelphia. The first so-called Atlantic “greyhound”
+was built by the Guion Line. In 1879
+came their <em>Arizona</em>, which unfortunately ran at
+full speed into an iceberg, but her water-tight
+bulkhead enabled her to get into St. John’s,
+Newfoundland. Her advent was followed by the
+<em>Oregon</em>, built in 1882, and she created a sensation
+by making the run from Queenstown to New York
+in six days, fourteen hours. This was a 7375-ton
+ship, which, with her speed of nineteen knots, made
+her the fastest vessel afloat, and was purchased by
+the Cunard Company; but she in turn was eclipsed
+by the two famous Cunarders, <em>Umbria</em> in 1884
+and <em>Etruria</em> in the following year. These two
+wonderful craft were to be used as armed cruisers
+if required, and never were more satisfactory ships
+built to give their owners so little trouble. In
+respect of speed, also, they broke all records,
+<em>Etruria</em> crossing from Queenstown to New York
+in six days, six hours and thirty-six minutes in
+1885, while seven years later <em>Umbria</em> surpassed
+this by maintaining an average of over nineteen
+and a half knots.</p>
+
+<p>And whilst all this activity was proceeding in
+the Atlantic, ships driven by steam were running
+regularly to the East, though the competition in
+this sphere was not keen. In 1877 the Orient
+Line was founded. One of their ships, the <em>Austral</em>,
+launched in 1881, was lying in Sydney Harbour
+with her scuttles open, but owing to a heavy list
+caused through unequal coaling the water poured
+in and she sank in fifty feet of water. She was,
+however, refloated several months later.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1921_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1921_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">S.S. “SULTAN.”
+    2,225 tons, 240 horse-power. J. Maddison, R.N.R., Commander. About 1873.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1923_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1923_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">S.S. “ORIENT.”
+    About 1879. Owned by Orient Steam Navigation Company. 5,386 tons, 5,400 horse-power, length 460 ft., beam 46 ft. 6 in.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>Up till the ’eighties it was customary for the
+crack liners to carry three and even four masts
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span>with yards and both a fore staysail and square-sails.
+It was a practice which exhibited the last
+suspicion of steam, for it was argued that if the
+propeller should become damaged, or the shaft
+break there would at least be canvas enough for
+her to get along. But, with the introduction and
+general adoption of the twin-screw, masts became
+fewer, yards and canvas disappeared, and the
+seaman who had been brought up to go aloft and
+lay-out along a yard found himself a mere deckhand.
+He had seen the golden age of the full-rigged
+pass away, and the last resemblance in the
+steamship to the Blackwall frigates and the clippers
+remained only in the clipper bows of the Inman
+Line, who for so long kept up the useless but
+ornamental bowsprit even as late as the ’nineties.
+It is with the launch of their <em>City of New York</em>
+and <em>City of Paris</em>, the latter in 1888, that twin
+screws of a large size were introduced into the
+Mercantile Marine, and here begins the final chapter
+in the steamship’s development, for it gave her
+an independence and increase of efficiency which
+never before has she possessed nor since lost.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVI">
+    CHAPTER XVI
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">THE MODERN MERCHANT SHIP</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The dominating factors which now influenced
+the development of the Atlantic liner were speed
+and comfort. Owing to the rapid increase of
+commerce between the United States and Great
+Britain, the West had long since taken the place
+of the Orient as a magnetic attraction for the
+shipowner. It is the Atlantic and not the route
+to India which has seen the great improvements
+in the modern ship, and even if there had been
+keener competition to the East, it would not have
+been possible to increase much the size of steamships
+for the reason of the limitations imposed by
+the Suez Canal. It is conceivable, however, that
+some day the route to Australia round the Cape
+may become a lane of keen rivalry to the advantage
+of ship development.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1941_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1941_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">S.S. “SPAIN.”<br>
+    5,000 tons register. Of the National Line (New York to London).</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>The struggle for the speed supremacy of the
+North Atlantic went on. The <em>City of Paris</em> was
+a flier. She could do her nineteen and twenty
+knots. But the White Star Line replied with the
+<em>Teutonic</em> and <em>Majestic</em>, both launched in 1889.
+They, too, were fliers, for the former broke the
+record by steaming from Queenstown to New
+York in five days, eighteen hours, eight minutes,
+while the latter did it in five days, sixteen hours,
+thirty-one minutes. They were, of course, twin-screw
+ships, but of only 9984 tons, which in this
+advanced twentieth century seems quite small for
+a crack liner. The competition was continued by
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span>the Cunard Company launching in 1892 the <em>Campania</em>,
+and in the following year the <em>Lucania</em>, fitted
+with twin screws and triple-expansion engines.
+Beautiful ships these were, with lovely lines and
+an amazing turn of speed. Steel had, of course,
+long since taken the place of iron, and in the
+building of these two wonderful vessels the plates
+were made of unprecedented size, and so they
+required a smaller number of rivets. These were
+600-feet ships, and it was their length which helped
+to give them the 22-knot speed. <em>Campania</em> made
+the run between Queenstown and New York in
+five and a half days, and averaged just under
+twenty-two knots for a whole year’s east-bound
+voyages. This was a truly remarkable performance,
+for the real criterion of efficiency is that a ship
+should be able not merely to make one spectacular
+hour’s run, nor break the record for one day or one
+voyage, but to keep on doing this all the time.
+Here is the test of good steamship management
+ashore, perfect organisation aboard and the reason
+for the highest praise to her officers and crew.</p>
+
+<p>The point we have now reached represents the
+era of keen competition for the best-equipped and
+speediest steamships in the Atlantic, and therefore
+of all the Mercantile Marines in the world. In
+this race the Collins Line, though subsidised by
+the American Government, had already disappeared,
+the reorganised Inman Line, which had
+been absorbed in the American Line, in spite of
+its fine ships, ceased to be a dangerous competitor.
+In the end it became a contest between the two
+British lines, the Cunard and the White Star.
+The German liners now entered the Atlantic as
+very serious competitors. It will be more convenient
+to deal with the German Mercantile
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span>Marine in a separate chapter, but it may be said
+here that it was the wonderful achievements of
+<em>Campania</em> and <em>Lucania</em> which created such emulation
+that the North German Lloyd Company
+scrapped their old-fashioned ships and in 1897
+produced the <em>Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse</em>, which
+by her mean speed of 22·81 knots beat the
+Cunarders, and thus for the first time Germany
+won the “blue riband” of the Atlantic, as the
+expression was in the ’nineties.</p>
+
+<p>In 1899 came the British reply in size though
+not in speed. This was the White Star <em>Oceanic</em>,
+13 feet longer than the memorable <em>Great Eastern</em>,
+measuring 705 feet, as against the German’s 648
+feet 7 inches. <em>Oceanic’s</em> 28,500 tons displacement
+showed the extraordinary development which had
+taken place in the shipbuilding art in the fewest
+years, and she was able to maintain a speed of
+twenty knots. The Cunard’s next ships were two,
+<em>Ivernia</em> and <em>Saxonia</em>, each of about 14,000 tons
+gross—that is to say, roughly the size of the
+German champion, but with an average speed of
+fifteen and a quarter knots. They were comfortable
+and economical rather than record-breakers. But
+the <em>Ivernia</em> was the first Atlantic liner to break
+away from the triple-expansion and use the
+quadruple-expansion system. The White Star
+Line, in 1901 and 1908, respectively, brought out
+two enormous but slow ships in the <em>Celtic</em> and
+<em>Cedric</em>, the former being 20,880 tons and the
+latter 21,034 tons, with an average speed of sixteen
+knots, and at this time also came their 15,801-ton
+<em>Arabic</em>, with the same speed.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1961_ill1" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1961_ill1.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy the White Star Line.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">THE “BRITANNIC.”<br>
+    This White Star liner was built in 1874, and broke the record for speed. She
+    measured 468 ft. long. Speed 16 knots; 5,000 tons.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1961_ill2" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1961_ill2.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy the Cunard Line.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">THE “CAMPANIA.”<br>
+    Launched for the Cunard Company in 1892. Length 600 ft.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>There was therefore a kind of lull in British enterprise,
+and in 1903 the Germans caused another sensation
+by the <em>Kaiser Wilhelm the Second</em>, which was able
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span>to do her twenty-three and a half knots as an average
+speed from New York to Plymouth. But a new
+development was again to take place. Competition
+was so keen in the steamship world, there was such
+an impetus to the builder, and so many clever minds
+were working on the problems of propulsion, that
+it was inevitable that all these wonderful changes
+should come about in such rapid succession. In
+the year 1886 the triple-expansion engine had come
+into general use. This had been followed by the
+quadruple-expansion, as already mentioned, and
+now came a still further change. For some time
+the turbine engine had been employed for driving
+electric dynamos on land, for pumping stations,
+colliery fans and so on. But in 1894 this type was
+installed experimentally in the 44-ton craft called
+the <em>Turbinia</em>, which was seen racing along Spithead
+at thirty-four knots. It was a wonderful sight,
+but it was not until 1905 that this type of engine
+was introduced into merchant ships, when the
+Atlantic ships <em>Virginian</em>&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_6_6" href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> and <em>Victorian</em> of the
+Allan Line were fitted with Parsons’ triplicate
+turbines driving three propellers. In the same year
+the Cunard produced their first turbine liner,
+<em>Carmania</em>, which on her trial attained a speed of
+twenty knots. She was built of a strength in
+excess of Board of Trade requirements, no fewer
+than 1,800,000 rivets being used in her construction,
+each plate being 32 feet long. But for the excellence
+of her construction she would never have been able
+to emerge successfully from her famous duel when
+she sank the <em>Cap Trafalgar</em> off the South American
+coast during the first autumn of the recent Great
+War.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</span></p>
+
+<p>Events happen so quickly, and one sensation
+follows so rapidly on another, that we are apt
+sometimes to get quite a wrong perspective. To
+me the <em>Carmania</em> is one of the most interesting
+ships afloat. For nine years before the war she
+did most excellent work as one of the finest
+passenger ships, carrying many thousands of people
+across the Atlantic in comfort and luxury. Then
+came the war, and <em>Carmania</em> became an armed
+merchant cruiser and was sent into South American
+waters. She met the Hamburg-South America
+liner <em>Cap Trafalgar</em>, a very similar ship, also armed
+as a merchant cruiser, off the island of Trinidada,
+and then fought a terrific duel which lasted eighty
+minutes, during which the Cunarder was pierced
+by seventy-nine shells, set seriously on fire and
+generally made desolate. But she sank the <em>Cap
+Trafalgar</em>, and to-day, and since the war, <em>Carmania</em>
+has resumed carrying her thousands across to New
+York in perfect luxury again, with verandah cafés,
+costly furniture, palm trees and the rest, just as if
+nothing serious had ever happened. Truly the
+modern ship is an amazing creature.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p1981_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p1981_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy the Cunard Line.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">BERTHING A BIG LINER.<br>
+    The “Mauretania,” assisted by tugs, coming alongside the quay at Southampton.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>During the war 56 per cent. of the Cunard ships
+were sunk, including the memorable <em>Lusitania</em>;
+and the White Star Line, owing to the same reason,
+lost close on 150,000 tons. The <em>Mauretania</em> and
+<em>Lusitania</em> had followed the <em>Carmania</em>, and were
+the outcome of an agreement made with the British
+Government to produce two ships capable of maintaining
+a minimum average ocean speed of from
+twenty-four to twenty-five knots in moderate
+weather. This has not only been maintained, but
+surpassed. <em>Mauretania</em> was built in 1907, with
+turbines, a length of 790 feet, and her tonnage is
+31,000 gross. In spite of all her running before
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</span>the war, during the war, and since, she still holds
+the record not merely for the Atlantic, but for all
+seas in respect of merchant ships. The test accepted
+by most shipping experts is two-fold: the highest
+average speed for the whole voyage, and the fastest
+passage in days, hours and minutes. On this
+reckoning <em>Mauretania</em> still leads, in spite of her
+younger sisters, for as recently as 1922 she averaged
+25·29 knots eastward-bound in June. Her fastest
+passage in July of that year of five days, eight
+hours, nine minutes, entitles her still more to
+possession of the “blue riband” of the Atlantic.
+But as showing the remarkable consistency in
+running, if we take her three consecutive passages
+eastward across the Atlantic in June and July 1922,
+there are only <em>five</em> minutes difference between the
+fastest and the slowest. It is superfluous to comment
+on this achievement. At a time when her
+fighting sister <em>Indomitable</em> is being broken up, this
+powerful merchantman still goes on beating
+records. Recently fitted to burn oil-fuel, this
+turbine-driven, quadruple-screw, twenty-five knotter
+will long be remembered in maritime history as
+<em>Lusitania</em> will in naval history.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_7_7" href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</span></p>
+
+<p>The next famous Atlantic ships were the two
+White Star liners <em>Titanic</em> and <em>Olympic</em>. The tragic
+end of the former, when she foundered during her
+maiden voyage, is too well remembered to need
+relating again. The <em>Olympic</em> left Southampton on
+her maiden voyage in June 1911. She is a triple-screw
+vessel of 46,489 tons gross register, and thus
+much bigger than <em>Mauretania</em>, but not quite so
+fast. Those of us who remember passing <em>Olympic</em>
+at sea during the war, zigzagging through the
+submarine zone with 5000 soldiers on board and
+the ship’s boats swung out, will never forget the
+sight. One hears many impossible yarns about
+certain claims, but apart from her magnificent work
+in bringing armies from America to Europe safely,
+this ship did definitely sink a German submarine.
+This may be regarded as some compensation for
+the loss of that new triple-screw White Star
+<em>Britannic</em>, a vessel of 48,158 tons gross register,
+which was destined never to cross the Atlantic,
+for which she had been constructed. The reader
+will remember that on November 21, 1916, after
+much excellent service as a hospital ship, she was
+sunk by enemy action in the Zea Channel, Ægean
+Sea.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p2001_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p2001_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy the Cunard Line.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">MODERN NAVIGATION.<br>
+    Captain Sir James Charles, K.B.E., C.B., R.D., R.N.R., and officers of the “Aquitania” taking the sun’s altitude.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p><em>Olympic</em> came out as the world’s biggest ship,
+and she is one of the fastest. On one occasion
+coming up Channel she recently touched 27·82
+knots for a brief spell, but her best average speed
+for a whole voyage is 22·55 knots, and her quickest
+passage is five days, nineteen hours, 12 minutes.
+For the consideration of the big German liners
+who were competing with these efforts the reader
+is referred to the chapter dealing with the rise and
+fall of the German Mercantile Marine, but the
+next British mammoth was the <em>Aquitania</em>, which
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</span>was put into the Cunard service just before the
+war began. She is over 900 feet long, she can
+steam at a little more than twenty-three knots,
+and her best passage, east-bound, has been five
+days, nineteen hours, forty-one minutes. Her gross
+tonnage is 47,000.</p>
+
+<p>I watched <em>Aquitania</em> being built, from the time
+when she was a mere mass of steel, and finally saw
+her take the water in the Clyde, and walked all
+over her half an hour before this impressive event
+took place. She was barely ready for her intended
+work than she was turned into an armed merchant
+cruiser and joined Admiral Phipps Hornby’s
+Cruiser Squadron on the Atlantic trade route. But
+it was rather like putting a race-horse to do the
+work of a cart-horse. <em>Aquitania</em> was then, like
+other merchantmen, coal-burning, and her endurance
+was only six days, for she was built for the
+purpose of rushing across the Atlantic, then filling
+up and returning as fast as she could. She was
+thus not suitable for patrolling, and after colliding
+with a Leyland liner, whilst under the command
+of a naval officer, <em>Aquitania</em> terminated her engagement
+as a warship, and then did far more useful
+work during the time of hostilities, until she again
+took up her peaceable service.</p>
+
+<p>This was the last British-built merchant ship to
+be constructed of mammoth size that is still afloat.
+The White Star <em>Homeric</em>, which joined the Atlantic
+service in the spring of 1922, is an ex-German
+vessel. This ship is neither as big nor as fast as
+<em>Aquitania</em>, but she is the largest twin-screw steamer
+afloat. Her best average speed for a whole trip is
+18·69 knots, and her best voyage is six days, nineteen
+hours, twenty-two minutes. But the slump
+which followed the war and the depression which
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</span>came over the shipping trade made it undesirable
+to lay down any more of these leviathans for the
+present, and there was still another reason.</p>
+
+<p>In Germany were two such vessels, one of which
+was already built and had been running for a year
+or two, and the other, a still bigger ship, was not
+yet finished. These two ships were handed over
+to Great Britain, the former being the <em>Imperator</em>,
+52,022 tons, launched in 1912, which used to call
+at Southampton on her way from Germany to
+New York. The other ship was the 56,551-ton
+<em>Bismarck</em>, whose keel had been laid by the Kaiser
+in the year 1914. The <em>Vaterland</em>, as mentioned
+in another chapter, measuring 950 feet and 52,282
+tons, was acquired by the United States. The
+<em>Imperator</em> now became the <em>Berengaria</em>, and was
+taken over by the Cunard Company; the <em>Bismarck</em>
+became the <em>Majestic</em>, and was put into the White
+Star service in the spring of 1922. She was built
+at the Blohm and Voss yard, Hamburg, and with
+her enormous tonnage and length of 956 feet is the
+biggest ship in the world.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p2021_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p2021_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy the Cunard Line.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">S.S. “BERENGARIA.”<br>
+    This Cunarder is the ex-German “Imperator,” 52,022 tons, launched 1912. She measures 919 ft. long.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>Though built in Germany, which learned the art
+from Great Britain, these two ships are now the
+pride of the British Merchant Fleet, and they are,
+together with the <em>Mauretania</em> and <em>Aquitania</em>, consumers
+not of coal, but of oil. The <em>Berengaria</em>
+measures 919 feet long, is practically 100 feet in
+beam, and represents an enormous amount of
+capital; but she was laid aside for six or seven
+months so as to have a complete overhaul and to
+be converted from coal-burning. With that fuel
+she had been able to do a little over twenty-three
+knots, and her best average speed has since been
+23·38 knots for the whole voyage; her fastest trip
+being five days, eighteen hours, forty-seven minutes.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</span>You can imagine the responsibility of her captain,
+handling such an enormous steel island. Let us
+forget for a moment such things as her new ballroom,
+able to accommodate 250 dancers. Let us
+forget, too, the cafés, gymnasia, palm courts,
+Turkish and swimming-baths and the numbers of
+private suites, the velvet carpets, and baronial
+halls; let us just think of her as a ship.</p>
+
+<p>Eighty-five feet above the water is the sun-deck
+promenade, and away above that again rises the
+bridge. Here are all sorts of gadgets, such as a
+bell that rings automatically when the temperature
+of the sea drops below a certain degree, and so the
+warning is made to the officer of the watch that
+icebergs are about. Tell-tale lamps act as fire-indicators,
+and another bell rings to call attention
+to the fact that there is smoke in some section of
+the ship. Steam pressure is then made to drive
+water down a pipe to spray around the particular
+compartment. There are telephones galore, from
+the bridge to the engine-room, boiler-rooms, baggage-hold,
+purser’s office, engineer’s office and, via
+the ship’s central exchange, to all parts of the ship.</p>
+
+<p><em>Berengaria</em>, like <em>Vaterland</em>, had a good deal of
+trouble with her water-tube boilers, which were
+similar to the German naval pattern, but in <em>Majestic</em>
+British engineers introduced some modifications
+whilst she was still being completed at Hamburg.
+The point is this. Whereas these water-tube
+boilers are all right for a man-of-war, which normally
+steams at fifteen knots and only occasionally
+is whacked up to twenty-one and above, the liner
+is driven hard all the time, and has to maintain
+her full speed day and night until she gets across
+the ocean. The amount of oil-fuel required for
+<em>Berengaria</em> to cross the Atlantic once is about
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</span>6000 tons, and this is carried in side or wing-bunkers.
+A hundred tons an hour can be supplied
+to each of the four boiler-rooms, and the engines
+are, of course, turbines.</p>
+
+<p>It is said that £1,000,000 was the price the
+White Star Line paid for the <em>Majestic</em>, and she
+was a great bargain at that, for she would cost four
+times that amount to be built to-day. There are
+forty-eight boilers, and she can carry enough oil-fuel
+for the round voyage Southampton-New York-Southampton.
+This means not merely greater
+efficiency in regard to steaming, but saves time and
+expense in bunkering and cleaning ship, for it takes
+only six hours and very few men to get the 7000
+tons on board. Her best average speed in a passage
+is over twenty-four knots, and her quickest voyage
+five days, nine hours, forty-two minutes. When she
+was handed over to the Reparations Commission
+under the terms of the Peace Treaty her speed was
+returned as twenty-three knots. But the White
+Star officials were not a little surprised to find,
+while bringing the ship to Southampton from Hamburg,
+that her turbines would develop much more
+power than they were credited with, and that she
+was really a 25-knot ship. In fact, on one occasion
+she did an average of twenty-seven knots for over
+five hours eastward-bound.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p2041_ill1" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p2041_ill1.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy the White Star Line.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">S.S. “OLYMPIC.”<br>
+    This 46,439-ton White Star liner was completed in 1911. During the war she sank
+    a German submarine.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p2041_ill2" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p2041_ill2.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy the White Star Line.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">S.S. “MAJESTIC.”<br>
+    This 56,551-ton White Star liner is the ex-German “Bismarck,” and is the biggest ship
+    in the world. The illustration shows her coming out of dock at Southampton.</p>
+</figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>It is significant that more than half the length
+of the ship is taken up with the propelling
+machinery. Never were such large machinery and
+boiler plant installed in one vessel. If you think
+of an eight-roomed house and multiply this by 400,
+you get some idea of her interior space. She is
+practically a floating town, with its smart hotel,
+suites, clubs, and so on located on her nine steel
+decks; and four propellers to keep this town hurrying
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</span>across the Atlantic. Swimming-bath, two
+royal suites, 1245 state-rooms, a restaurant, palm
+court, foyer, lounge—there is no end to her
+luxurious internal arrangement. And yet there
+are all sorts of cunning devices to ensure safety.
+To guard against fire, the steel bulkheads have
+been coated with fireproof material; the main staircases
+are so arranged that they can be isolated and
+thus ensure a means of escape to the upper decks.
+There are 450 fire alarms distributed throughout
+the ship, which indicate automatically to the officer
+on the bridge.</p>
+
+<p>There are three wireless stations. The largest
+enables her to maintain permanent connection with
+both the Old and the New World during the whole
+voyage. The second is for use over a distance of
+800 miles, and the third is for emergency. There
+are anti-rolling tanks, submarine signalling gear,
+and indeed every ingenious device that the wit of
+man could invent for the safety and welfare of the
+4000 passengers she takes care of each trip. During
+Cowes week 1922 King George V paid to her, and
+through her to the British Mercantile Marine, a
+singular honour in going aboard to inspect her.
+His Royal Standard was broken out at the main,
+and this is one of the very few occasions during the
+last four hundred years when a merchant ship,
+serving as such, has legally hoisted this flag. It
+did occur in the year 1913, when His Majesty
+inspected the <em>Mauretania</em> at Liverpool; and on
+that day a Harbour Board tug while taking the
+King to and from the liner flew the Royal Ensign.
+But prior to that I think we have to go right back
+to the year 1495, when Henry VII granted to
+John Cabot and his sons the right to fly the royal
+banners and flags during their voyages of discovery.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</span></p>
+
+<p>From the <em>Majestic</em> to the earliest merchantmen
+of the Mediterranean, even looking back a hundred
+years to the time when the old East Indiamen of
+1000 tons were wallowing along, or the Falmouth
+packets were braving the Atlantic, seems to us a
+period of time that is hardly believable. In spite
+of wars and every kind of crises, never has the
+merchant ship so utterly and marvellously transformed
+herself within such a few years. It is a
+triumph of man over matter that he can build up
+such a creation as a 50,000-ton ship, but there are just
+two things which always seem to me more wonderful
+still. The first is that you can ever launch
+such a mass of steel safely from the land down the
+ways into the water; and the second is that, having
+fitted her out for sea, she can be made obedient to
+the mind of her commander—checked, spurred on,
+controlled and moved about across the sea at will,
+with confidence and remarkable regularity. It is
+an interesting experience to control finance, it is
+a great task to control men, and it is a responsible
+task to control the ship of State. But to control
+the biggest ship in the history of the world, costing
+over £1,000,000 sterling and containing several
+thousands of travellers, from quay to quay, through
+any kind of weather that may come along—this to
+me seems, above all, a full-sized man’s job. It is
+one that brings forth everything that is best and
+noble in the calling of a sailor—courage, coolness,
+organising ability, leadership, self-reliance, dependability,
+tact, discipline.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p2061_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p2061_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy the White Star Line.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">ON THE BRIDGE OF THE WORLD’S BIGGEST SHIP.<br>
+    Captain Sir Bertram Hayes (third from the right), with the Second Captain and other officers of “Majestic”.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>Below are the saloons, orchestra, dancing,
+laughter, luxury and thousands of brilliant lights.
+On the bridge the silent darkness of a black, starless
+night; just the glimmer from the bowls of the
+gyro-compass repeaters, the quartermaster at the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</span>wheel, a couple of messengers standing by, and
+the officer of the watch. And always the wild
+roar of the wind as the ship tears on her way at
+twenty odd knots; while forward is the swish of
+the sea as the fine bows throw each bursting wave
+aside. It is a study in contrasts, just that immeasurable
+gulf which has always existed between
+the life of the landsman and the sailor from the
+earliest days of history until the present-day. To
+the former “the wonder is always new that any
+sane man can be a sailor,” as Emerson put it. But
+it was the same philosopher who admitted that
+“the sea is masculine, the type of active strength.”</p>
+
+<p>And, happily, there is such a contagion as sea-fever.
+Without it there would have been no
+Phœnician, Venetian, Spanish, Portuguese, Norse,
+mediæval or later mariners; no new worlds to discover—nothing
+but a very restricted communication
+and the minimum of progress. It would have
+been a very stunted, dull existence. There would
+have been no fine merchantmen of the sea and
+none of that glorious breed of seamen, virile, strong
+and masculine. Let us be thankful for all that
+the sea has taught us.</p>
+<br>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_6_6" href="#FNanchor_6_6" class="label">[6]</a> Now owned by the Swedish-American Line and named the
+<em>Drottningholm</em>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_7_7" href="#FNanchor_7_7" class="label">[7]</a> The speeds given for <em>Mauretania</em>, <em>Majestic</em>, <em>Berengaria</em>,
+<em>Aquitania</em>, <em>Olympic</em> and <em>Homeric</em> are from New York to Cherbourg
+Breakwater or to the Eddystone Light. The passages quoted
+are really not faster than what was previously accomplished on
+the Liverpool to New York route before these big liners were
+transferred to the Southampton to New York route. Thus the
+fastest Atlantic voyage ever made was by <em>Mauretania</em> when she
+steamed from Queenstown to New York in four days, ten hours,
+forty-one minutes. <em>Lusitania</em> accomplished this in only sixty-one
+minutes longer. The best average speed ever made by a liner
+for one day was 27·10 knots by <em>Lusitania</em>, eastward-bound;
+but the best average speed for a whole voyage was made by
+<em>Mauretania</em>, before being converted to oil. She kept up 26·06
+knots.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</span></p>
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVII">
+    CHAPTER XVII
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">THE RISE AND FALL OF THE GERMAN
+    MERCANTILE MARINE</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>For about seventy years the German Mercantile
+Marine had an interesting career. It began in
+quite a small way, it was conducted with courage,
+enterprise, far-sightedness and, eventually, with an
+astute cunning which many people would describe
+under a stronger term. Its rise was meteoric, and
+its descent at the time of its zenith was swifter still.
+It is just because the true value of the sea began to
+be appreciated, that Germany was able to build up
+such a vast and highly efficient service within one
+generation. The result was that on the eve of the
+Great War she was second only to the British
+Empire as a big owner of steamships.</p>
+
+<figure class="figleft illowp45" id="p2081_ill1" style="max-width: 45.4375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p2081_ill1.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy the Cunard Line.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">Captain C. A. Smith, C.B.E., R.D., R.N.R., of the “Berengaria.”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<figure class="figright illowp45" id="p2081_ill2" style="max-width: 45.375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p2081_ill2.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy the White Star Line.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">Captain Sir Bertram Hayes, K.C.M.G., D.S.O., R.N.R.,
+    of the “Majestic.”</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<div style="clear:both;"></div>
+<p class="center no-indent">BIG SHIP MASTERS.</p>
+<br>
+
+
+<p>At that date 60 per cent. of Germany’s shipping
+was in the hands of ten lines, working together
+with a solidarity that amounted practically to a
+shipping union. These ten were the Hamburg-America
+Line, the North German Lloyd, the
+Hamburg South-American Line, the Hansa Line,
+the German Australian Line, the Kosmos Line,
+the Roland Line, the German East Africa Line, the
+Woermann Line and the Hamburg-Bremen-Africa
+Line. A month before the outbreak of war
+this huge organisation comprised 3,194,000 gross
+tons, to say nothing of the German Levant Line
+of 155,000 tons. Well organised, reaching to
+every part of the world, subsidised by the
+German Government to the extent of £107,950
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</span>a year, this association was extremely successful
+in obtaining an enormous amount of the world’s
+carrying trade and in furthering Germany’s political
+aspirations. It was able to put up the
+severest competition and to draw away from the
+United Kingdom a good deal of carrying trade,
+and in their fight with the British companies of
+steamships the Germans were helped not merely
+by subsidies, but by attractive through-rates over
+their railway system. It was their unity and
+energy in organisation, their ability to cut rates,
+and their attention to the smallest details which
+gave them their vast success.</p>
+
+<p>It is important to emphasise one great distinction.
+The British Isles depend for their supplies
+and overseas trade on the tramp steamer.
+Of the British tonnage before the war 60 per cent.
+represented tramp tonnage and only 40 per cent.
+liners, and it was essential for the nation to have
+a large amount of “loose” tonnage able to trade
+at short notice to any part of the world, taking out,
+for instance, cheap coal and coming back with cargoes
+of grain, cotton, wool, rice and so on. This
+policy was the exact opposite of Germany, which
+built up its Mercantile Marine on liner trades, and
+especially in the Atlantic, their interest in tramp
+steamers being quite small. Now of those ten
+German lines just mentioned the Hamburg-America
+and the North German Lloyd, owning
+on the eve of war 1,093,000 and 716,000 gross
+tons respectively, were at once the creative forces
+and the mainstays of German shipping. Therefore
+if we consider their history we have before us
+practically the whole evolution of the German
+Mercantile Marine.</p>
+
+<p>The Hamburg-America Line at the time war
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</span>broke out was the largest merchant steamship
+enterprise in the world, owning between 400 and
+500 ships, with seventy-five distinct services, its
+vessels calling at 400 of the leading ports of the
+world and carrying over 400,000 passengers a year.
+It was thus an enormous corporation, that makes
+the old Honourable East India Company look
+ridiculous. As a means of providing national
+wealth and the ready transportation of German
+goods into the remotest corners of the globe it was
+invaluable. It was founded on May 27, 1847, with
+a capital of 465,000 marks, and it ordered three
+sailing ships in England of about 717 tons each,
+which carried a score of first-class passengers and a
+couple of hundred emigrants and a little freight.
+These were full-rigged, three-masted vessels, with
+heavy quarters, the white riband and painted
+square ports and the high-steeved bowsprit so
+familiar in English shipping. The average trip
+from Hamburg to New York took forty days, and
+twenty-nine days on the return voyage. These
+three ships were the <em>Deutschland</em>, <em>Nordamerika</em> and
+<em>Rhein</em>.</p>
+
+<p>In 1854 the company had already prospered so
+much, thanks largely to the emigrant traffic, that
+it decided to go in for steam. The screw was
+replacing the paddle in British ships and iron was
+being used instead of wood. They therefore gave
+an order to Caird of Greenock to build a couple
+of 2026-ton screw steamers having a speed of about
+twelve knots. The first of these was the <em>Borussia</em>,
+a three-masted vessel with sails, clipper bow and
+one funnel. She made her appearance in 1856.
+Hitherto British and other seamen had been
+largely employed for crews, but now only Germans,
+dressed in uniform, and disciplined after
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</span>the custom of a man-of-war, were allowed. The
+German Mercantile Marine was beginning to exist
+by itself.</p>
+
+<p>The best speed obtained with these ships was
+sixteen days, and in 1858 came the <em>Saxonia</em> and
+<em>Austria</em>, which reduced the passage eastward-bound
+to a little over twelve days, the firm’s fleet now
+consisting of eight sailing ships and four steamers.
+Presently the former were all sold, and a fortnightly
+service to New York was instituted, and other
+steamships were added. At the outbreak of the
+American Civil War this line was carrying the
+United States mails and calling at Southampton,
+and, after leaving the English port, New York was
+reached in ten days. By the early ’seventies the
+fleet already numbered twenty-five steamships, and
+was also running to the Spanish Main, Mexico and
+West Indies.</p>
+
+<p>The White Star and the Hamburg-America
+were the first Atlantic lines to adopt the twin-screw
+system for passenger ships. It was in 1887
+that the latter ordered the two steel, twin-screw
+ships <em>Columbia</em> and <em>Auguste Victoria</em>. The former
+was built at Birkenhead by Lairds, but the latter
+was constructed at Stettin, and this was the first
+time a German yard had attempted a ship of such
+a size, for she measured over 500 feet long, and she
+was of 8430 tons burthen. These two vessels were
+immediately followed by two others, similar in
+type, of which one was built on the Clyde and one
+at Stettin. With their three funnels, high speed,
+improved ventilation, commodious cabins, bathrooms,
+suites of rooms and general high standard
+of comfort, this quartette made a sensation. It was
+the introduction of the German floating palaces into
+the Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</span></p>
+
+<p>Reference to the previous two chapters in this
+volume will show that the British Atlantic companies
+were meeting this competition, but if you ask
+how was it that, notwithstanding the fact that the
+German Empire had been proclaimed as recently
+as 1871, this new Mercantile Marine had been able
+to build up such a trade in so few years, the answer
+is this. The repeal of the British Navigation Laws
+in 1849 enabled the Prussian ships to have the
+opportunity which came at the right moment.
+But, secondly, it was the enormous increase of
+emigrant passengers anxious to leave the European
+continent and try their fortunes in the New
+World. I have no wish to weary the reader with
+statistics, but the following few figures will substantiate
+this argument. They are derived from
+a Board of Trade analysis based on information
+afforded by the United States Immigration Bureau,
+and are therefore beyond dispute.</p>
+
+<p>Bearing in mind that the first Hamburg-America
+ship sailed in 1847, we find that whereas the average
+annual emigration from Germany to the U.S.A.
+had been only 19,000 up to 1844, during the next
+ten years it jumped to 95,000, dropped during the
+next decade to 49,000, but then rose to 113,000 in
+the decennial period ending 1874, was 109,000 up
+to the year 1884, then dropped to 28,000 by 1904,
+but rose to 34,000 in the decade ending 1914.
+But in addition to these figures must be added
+others. By reason of her geographical position
+Germany was most favourably placed for capturing
+the emigrant traffic from the rest of the continent,
+and of this she made the best advantage. It was
+not until the decade ending 1874 that the Russians,
+for instance, began pouring out from their own
+country to North America, and gradually the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</span>German ships carried most of these. How valuable
+such a traffic was can be at once realised.
+Beginning with an average of 2000 Russian emigrants
+to the United States, this figure in ten
+years had increased to 10,000, then to 38,000 and,
+finally, just before the war averaged 199,000.</p>
+
+<p>In 1894 the German Government erected what
+were known as control stations at various places
+on the Russian frontier, ostensibly to prevent the
+spread of cholera by Russian emigrants travelling
+through Germany. The erection and management
+of these controls were vested in the Hamburg-America
+and North German Lloyd Lines. But
+whatever was their original purpose, these stations
+came to be used by the German steamship companies
+for confining the increasing stream of
+emigrants to their own lines, who made it as
+difficult as possible for persons not travelling by
+those lines to get through the control stations.
+In addition to this, the German Government so
+legislated as to make it very awkward and more
+costly for emigrants to get to America in British
+ships. Thus, Germany, by doing everything from
+intimidation and bluff to legislation, did succeed in
+obtaining a most valuable emigrant traffic, and so
+was able, quite apart from her own increasing
+exports, to build up a thoroughly up-to-date and
+steadily improving Merchant Navy.</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be wondered at that now she had learnt
+to construct steel steamships for herself she made
+a bold bid for Atlantic merchant ship supremacy.
+By the year of the Paris Exhibition in 1900 this
+line had fourteen twin-screw steamers to carry
+passengers across. The latest was the celebrated
+<em>Deutschland</em>, which was to win the “blue riband”
+of the Atlantic; for this record-smasher succeeded
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</span>in lowering the voyage between New York and
+Plymouth to five days, seven hours, thirty-eight
+minutes, and on one trip averaged 23·51 knots.
+This four-funnelled ship was of 16,502 tons and
+measured 686 feet long. She was certainly an
+eye-pleasing vessel, for it was before the practice
+of building lofty superstructures had become the
+fashion. Her biggest day’s run was 601 knots,
+and the sumptuousness of her passenger comfort
+made her a very popular ship. In 1906 came the
+<em>Kaiserin Auguste Victoria</em>, 24,581 tons, 687 feet
+long, and able to carry 4000 passengers and crew.
+She was at the time the biggest steamer in the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>But before we mention the mammoth German
+liners we must see briefly how the North German
+Lloyd grew up. Their first transatlantic steamer
+was the <em>Bremen</em>, built by Caird of Greenock in
+1858, but their real progress commences with the
+year 1881, when the first German “express”
+steamer entered the line. This was the 4510-ton
+<em>Elbe</em>, a four-masted screw ship built on the Clyde,
+and during the next ten years Glasgow built <em>Ems</em>
+and seven other British-made vessels, whose speed
+varied from sixteen to eighteen knots. They were
+able to carry 1200 passengers. But when we come
+to the ’nineties the passenger trade was so good
+that the North German Lloyd could afford to
+scrap its old-fashioned craft and build the twin-screw
+<em>Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse</em>. This was to
+become an historic ship.</p>
+
+<p>She measured 14,349 gross tons, and appeared
+in 1897. The Germans were jealous of the achievements
+which had been made by the Cunard <em>Campania</em>
+and <em>Lucania</em>, and by attaining a mean speed
+of 22·81 knots on her trip from New York to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</span>Europe did outstrip the Cunarders’ fine record;
+and thus for the first time the “blue riband” of
+the Atlantic temporarily passed to Germany. She
+was “made in Germany”—at Stettin—and this
+triumphant voyage did a great deal to encourage
+the German Mercantile Marine and German shipbuilders.
+She had been constructed on the understanding
+that if during the trial trip across the
+Atlantic she did not come up to the requirements
+of the contract, the North German Lloyd were to
+be allowed to reject her. Actually she surpassed
+the builders’ undertaking.</p>
+
+<p>In 1907, whilst coming across the Atlantic in
+October weather eastward-bound, this handsome
+ship fractured her rudder; but instead of taking
+her into Halifax, the nearest port, her captain held
+on for Plymouth and thence to Bremerhaven, the
+ship having been manœuvred by means of her
+twin screws. It was a fine achievement, but some
+ships are born to be adventurous. At the beginning
+of the Great War the <em>Kaiser Wilhelm der
+Grosse</em> was in Germany. She was fitted out as
+a raider, left Hamburg on August 4, 1914, evaded
+the Grand Fleet, passed round the north of Iceland,
+and on August 7 sank a British trawler, then proceeded
+down the Atlantic, sank a couple and
+molested two more ships, and finally went into
+the Rio de Oro, a lonely anchorage in Spanish
+territory in North-West Africa. But on August
+26 arrived H.M.S. <em>Highflyer</em>, and as the German
+refused to leave territorial waters, the British
+cruiser opened fire and destroyed her. Thus, after
+nearly twenty years’ service, this former Atlantic
+greyhound ended her days as an armed merchant
+cruiser.</p>
+
+<p>The North German Lloyd’s <em>Kaiser Wilhelm II</em>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</span>was the next ship of this line to cause a sensation.
+This was in 1903, and she was certainly a triumph
+for the Stettin builders. Of 20,000 registered tons,
+she was a little faster even than the <em>Kaiser Wilhelm
+der Grosse</em>, for she kept up an average speed of
+23·58 knots between New York and Plymouth
+in one voyage. Very useful was this speed to
+become eleven years later, for she was in the North
+Atlantic when war broke out, and got safely into
+New York on August 6. The <em>George Washington</em>,
+of 26,000 gross register tons, was launched as the
+biggest of all the ships in the German Mercantile
+Marine, though, with the speed of eighteen and a
+half knots, by no means the fastest. She was added
+to the N.D.L. in 1908, and was able to carry just
+under 3000 passengers for her owners when the list
+was full. A very useful and luxurious ship she
+turned out to be, but on the day after the war
+began she arrived in New York, was interned, and
+is now one of the ships in the American Mercantile
+Marine. The <em>Berlin</em>, another N.D.L. steamer,
+passed into the owners’ hands in 1909. She was
+of 19,200 gross tons, and originally could do her
+eighteen knots. In the autumn of 1914 she laid
+the big minefield off the north coast of Ireland, on
+which H.M.S. <em>Audacious</em> and other ships foundered.
+<em>Berlin</em> afterwards scurried north and interned
+herself in Norway.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p2161_ill1" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p2161_ill1.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy the Cunard Line.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">STOKEHOLD OF AN OIL-FUEL CUNARDER.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p2161_ill2" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p2161_ill2.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>By courtesy the Cunard Line.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">STARTING PLATFORM<br>
+    Of the engine-room in a Cunarder.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>Such, then, was the progress of these two main
+supports of the German Mercantile Marine until
+the coming of the mammoth Atlantic liners. The
+ships of the Hamburg-America and the North
+German Lloyd were admittedly as good, and sometimes
+better than, their competitors, the Cunard
+and White Star; and during the period immediately
+preceding the war, competition was very keen not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</span>merely on the New York route, but in the trade
+with Central America, South America, East Africa
+and Australia. The German Mercantile Marine
+was everywhere, and cutting rates in an alarming
+manner. Her sea-borne trade was increasing, but
+the bulk of her shipping still remained, on the eve
+of war, in the ten powerful companies; and her
+main strength was still in the Atlantic trade of the
+two big lines we have just been considering.</p>
+
+<p>The North Atlantic had long since earned the
+title of the cockpit where the mercantile supremacy
+at sea was to be fought out. Germany’s final bid
+was a great effort. For in the year 1912 was built
+the 23½-knot <em>Imperator</em>, a stupendous creature of
+52,022 tons, with her swimming-bath and super-luxury.
+In 1914 was put into service the 26·75-knot
+<em>Vaterland</em>, which was bigger still, for she
+measured 950 feet long, against <em>Imperator’s</em> 905
+feet, and her tonnage worked out at 52,282. The
+former at the outbreak of war was lucky to be in
+Germany, where she remained until after hostilities.
+She was handed over to the Cunard Company, who
+changed her name to <em>Berengaria</em>. The <em>Vaterland</em>
+got into New York on the day war was declared
+between Great Britain and Germany, and was
+interned. She was eventually used for carrying
+American troops to Europe, and after the war she
+passed into the American Mercantile Marine, who
+changed her name to <em>Leviathan</em>. When she was
+seized from Germany there were no plans of her
+available. The United States Shipping Board,
+on making inquiries from her German builders
+as to the price of these plans, were asked the
+enormous sum of $1,000,000. This was declined,
+and the colossal task of preparing these plans from
+the ship herself was successfully undertaken. But
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</span>you may imagine what it means to run a ship
+of this size when it cost the American Mercantile
+Marine $50,000 a month merely to keep her
+efficient whilst laid up. Finally there was finished
+in Germany during 1922 the third mammoth, of
+56,000 tons. Originally intended to be called the
+<em>Bismarck</em>, she was handed over to the White Star
+Line, who changed her name to <em>Majestic</em>.</p>
+
+<p>Before the war Germany’s Mercantile Marine,
+according to the Managing Director of the Hamburg-America
+Line, consisted of 5,459,000 gross
+tons. Of this amount approximately she lost
+owing to war operations 2,700,000 tons. By
+reason of the Treaty of Versailles she lost a further
+2,900,000 tons approximately, leaving her about
+400,000 tons.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_8_8" href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> If we select the spring of 1922 we
+are neither too near the ending of the war nor too
+far removed from it to notice the efforts which are
+being made to revive a merchant fleet which so
+suddenly vanished from its high position. The
+Hamburg-America Line in 1922 had but forty-three
+vessels of 165,707 gross tons, and the North
+German Lloyd only twenty-five ships of 127,098
+gross tons. A mighty contrast to the summer of
+1914. But both these and other lines were going
+ahead with their building, and it was unofficially
+estimated that the German Merchant Fleet on
+May 31, 1922, consisted of 1,546,000 gross tons.</p>
+
+<p>In accordance with the Peace Treaty all German
+merchant ships of any importance were handed
+over to the Entente Powers. This, in part, was as
+compensation for the loss of tonnage during the
+U-boat campaign. But Germany recompensed her
+shipping companies for the merchant vessels thus
+surrendered and gave them every encouragement
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</span>to build up once more the fleets which meant so
+much to her, financially and politically. For
+the Shipping Redemption Agreement of 1921
+indemnified these companies, provided labour for
+the shipyards, and ensured co-operation of the
+industries inland. The money paid to the companies
+was taken from the national funds, but its
+distribution and the supervision of the building
+programme have been entrusted to a Shipowners’
+Trust Company. Thus Germany still realises all
+that a Mercantile Marine means to her, and she has
+every intention of building it up again during the
+coming years.</p>
+<br>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_8_8" href="#FNanchor_8_8" class="label">[8]</a> That is, tonnage built during the war.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</span></p>
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVIII">
+    CHAPTER XVIII
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">THE AMERICAN MERCANTILE MARINE</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Throughout the course of this story the reader
+will have observed many references to the American
+Mercantile Marine. Let us now consider how
+it began, developed, waned and again revived. We
+have seen how the enterprise of the New England
+builders was to have a profound effect on British
+shipping, but we desire now to regard the subject
+as a whole.</p>
+
+<p>So long as a country, wherever situated, has a
+seaboard, it is very evident that its civilised community
+will soon begin building craft of some kind.
+The early colonists in America built a 30-ton
+vessel as far back as 1607, and it is from this
+<em>Virginia</em> that we must trace the American Mercantile
+Marine. Seven years later a small ship was
+launched at New Amsterdam, as, of course, New
+York was then called, and by the second decade of
+the seventeenth century there were over 1000 ships
+in colonial waters; for numbers of shipwrights had
+come over from England. During the eighteenth
+century at Portland, Maine, and elsewhere were
+built square-rigged ships, privateers, and the first
+schooners as well as brigantines. This was quite
+apart from the shipping and timber sent to England,
+and during the year 1769 the twelve colonies
+launched 389 ships, representing 20,000 tons.</p>
+
+<p>In few countries of the world has the relation
+between war and mercantile shipping been so
+accurately reflected, as we shall see as we go on.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</span>The immediate result of the American revolution
+was to throttle the Atlantic trade, and five of the
+first eleven Acts of Congress were laws to encourage
+American shipping. In 1789 the State gave
+special privileges to shippers engaged in the East
+Indian and China trades. Many of these shippers
+and owners were located in Massachusetts, and
+made fine profits, as, for instance, the <em>Mount Vernon</em>
+of Salem, which in 1799 made a profit of $100,000
+in a single round trip to China; and one ship
+made 700 per cent. on a cargo of pepper from
+Sumatra.</p>
+
+<p>The registered American tonnage in the foreign
+trade grew from 123,893 tons in 1789 to 667,107
+tons in 1800; for during the wars growing out of
+the French Revolution the American Mercantile
+Marine actually became the principal carriers of
+Europe, as at one time the Dutch and the English
+had been. Thus for a second time the marine
+showed how sensitive it was to the effect of war.
+But the war of 1812 caused severe losses to American
+merchant ships, yet, on the other hand, American
+privateers played havoc with English shipping.
+The effect, even in those days of comparatively few
+ships, is at once seen by looking at the port of Liverpool,
+the natural haven for American ships arriving
+in Europe; for whereas in 1810, 6729 ships entered
+that port, only 4599 came in during the year 1812.
+On the other hand, as soon as peace returned these
+figures jumped up, and from 1815 to 1860 shipping
+went ahead quickly.</p>
+
+<p>For the United States were fast developing their
+industries, opening up trade, and therefore had
+every need of a Mercantile Marine. The legislation
+of Congress in 1828 opened up American ports
+to cargo-carrying British ships from any country
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</span>where American vessels were on a similar footing
+to British ships, and two years later the West
+Indies were opened to American shipping. In
+1849 Great Britain adopted the Free Trade policy,
+and full reciprocity was established between British
+and American merchant vessels. The history of
+the clipper ships and the competition between
+Great Britain and the United States for the ocean-carrying
+trade has already been related in this
+volume. It is only necessary once more to emphasise
+that war had yet again a good deal to do with
+the future of the American Mercantile Marine, for
+the Civil War of 1861 took away any chance which
+remained to American ships of continuing as the
+great sea-carriers. The American mind had to
+concentrate on fighting. Meanwhile, much of the
+tonnage had passed under other flags, while in
+Great Britain the accessibility of coal deposits, the
+cheapness of labour, the successful introduction of
+iron for shipbuilding, the great advances in ship
+construction, and especially the wonderful progress
+of the steamship, had been able to give back to
+Great Britain her supremacy as a Mercantile
+Marine. And when the Civil War was over,
+America was too interested internally to pay a
+maximum amount of attention to ocean trading.</p>
+
+<p>For the riches of the country were only beginning
+to be developed. Mines and manufactures, railroads
+and so on were now needing all the available
+capital. The New England shipyards, which for
+many years had been so valuable owing to the
+ample supplies of timber ready to hand, became
+unwanted in proportion as the Clyde, with its
+adjacent coalfields, was becoming more important
+for building ships of iron and then steel. It would
+be untrue to say that America ignored the building
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</span>of iron ships, and in the early ’seventies she was
+interested in a mild way. The ’eighties passed
+without much enthusiasm for the subject, and then
+in 1894 and following year the Cramp shipyard
+launched the two fine transatlantic liners <em>St. Louis</em>
+and <em>St. Paul</em>, both being constructed of steel.
+There were many other steel ships built, and
+orders were received from abroad, but, broadly
+speaking, and in strict reference to merchant ships
+and not warships, America was not even now a
+shipbuilding country.</p>
+
+<p>Those splendid schooners with which the port of
+Gloucester is for ever associated, and those other
+sailing craft along the American coast do not alter
+the statement, nor do the vessels on the American
+lakes and rivers. We are thinking of ocean-going
+ships, which are the essential feature of any Mercantile
+Marine. The trade between the Atlantic
+and Pacific ports still remained for the old full-rigged
+clippers, because there were not enough
+cargoes east-bound to make it worth while for the
+steamship. And so America went on, content to
+allow her Merchant Service to be comparatively
+small and unprogressive.</p>
+
+<p>But once again it required a war to call the
+national mind to consider what a Mercantile
+Marine means to a country. The Spanish war of
+1898 did this to the extent that there was aroused
+a strong support for the Panama Canal project.
+The Act permitting this dates from 1892, and it is
+really from this year that the new phase begins,
+though only gradually. If you make direct and
+shorter roads on land leading to important trading
+centres, you obviously at once attract trade. If in
+the same manner you shorten communications by
+sea, it will have a similar effect. Quite apart from
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</span>its warlike strategic value, which is outside our
+subject, the theory of the Panama Canal was based
+on the fact that it would reduce the sea route from
+New York to San Francisco by most of 8000 miles,
+and to Sydney and Yokohama by about 4000 miles.
+The 1892 Act also authorised admission to American
+registry of foreign-built vessels not more than
+five years old.</p>
+
+<p>Then again came another war, the Great War,
+which began on August 4, 1914, the year in which
+the canal was opened. Too late America had
+begun to learn the value of a Mercantile Marine,
+and now she foresaw that there would be an inadequate
+supply of shipping to carry her trade across
+the ocean. Immediately she tried to make up for
+this by passing a law a fortnight after the outbreak
+of war removing the age limit in the Act of 1892.
+And now it becomes necessary to look into the
+matter somewhat closely, otherwise what followed
+is not intelligible.</p>
+
+<p>When the European War broke out, America,
+having regard to her population, wealth, overseas
+trade and length of littoral, was in a curious
+position. The following figures are for June 1914,
+and are eloquent. In that month, of all the world’s
+<em>sea-going</em> steel and iron steam tonnage the British
+Empire owned 47·7, Germany 12, Scandinavia 8·7,
+France 4·5, the United States 4·3 and Japan 3·9
+per cent. As the war went on America realised
+at last that 71 per cent. of the world’s steamships
+were in the hands of belligerents, and therefore the
+means of transport for American exports and imports—in
+other words, the exchange of wealth—had
+been taken away. Even farmers and cotton-growers
+who had never seen the sea in their lives
+began to take an interest in the subject when they
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</span>suffered losses. It took the Great War to wake
+up the great American nation, as it had taken the
+American clippers to make our sailing shipowners
+become active.</p>
+
+<p>Shipbuilding in America suddenly began to
+revive, for from the end of 1915 ships were required
+by Britain, France and Norway. Mines
+and submarines had caused losses to the two first,
+while the third required more ships than ever for
+the profitable trade she was doing with Great
+Britain and France. Moreover, the American
+Mercantile Marine needed ships for herself; and
+the result was that in 1915 there was a net increase
+of nearly 500,000 tons added to its commercial
+service, including shipping which had been transferred
+to it. The position in the carrying trade
+outside America was this. A large number of
+ships were interned in various ports, some thousands
+of tons had been sunk by the German mines
+and submarines, and yet the Allies were now
+requiring more for maintaining food for nations and
+supplies for the armies in the field. In addition to
+this, many ships had been taken from the Merchant
+Service for purely naval purposes and other
+objects, such as supply-vessels to the Fleet. And
+the unrestricted submarine campaign which Germany
+began in April 1917 was to make matters
+considerably worse; for in April of that year
+545,282 tons of British merchant shipping alone
+were lost by enemy action.</p>
+
+<p>It was on September 7, 1916, that Congress
+passed a law creating the United States Shipping
+Board, the original aim of which was to develop
+more effectively the American Mercantile Marine.
+A very few months later, on April 6, 1917, the
+United States declared war on Germany, and on
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</span>May 4 the first American warships to reach Europe,
+consisting of six destroyers, steamed into Queenstown
+harbour. It is a day firmly fixed in my own
+memory, as the vessel I was then commanding was
+the first to go alongside them, north of Daunt’s
+Rock lightship. Now with America a participant
+in the war, and about to send armies to Europe
+together with necessary military supplies, the need
+for American merchant tonnage became positively
+acute. In the whole of the United States there
+were not more than sixty-one shipyards, of which
+only thirty-seven were building steel craft.</p>
+
+<p>But America realised that ships must be built at
+once, regardless of cost, both very quickly and in
+large numbers. Thus in a strange and romantic
+manner there came unexpectedly a revival of the
+wooden ship. An American writer has pointed
+out that of the entire transportation of American
+troops about 48¼ per cent. were carried in
+British ships, and 43 per cent. in American Navy
+transports. But, with a fine patriotic effort, shipbuilding
+of all kinds now went ahead, and soon
+there were 341 shipyards building sea-going craft.
+Actually 1284 launching ways were now occupied.
+It was a remarkable lesson which war
+had taught in respect of the Mercantile Marine.
+There is no room to go into details, but it is
+sufficient to call attention to this exceptional effort,
+which showed what could be done. Fabricated
+ships, that is, vessels constructed by assembling
+the standardised plates made in the engineering
+shops, rendered possible only through the existence
+of numerous steel rolling mills, began to take the
+water; and if some of these craft were not always
+well built, we must remember that they were a
+temporary measure, and not intended to last.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</span></p>
+
+<p>The total construction of ships in the United
+States during the years 1910-1916 had averaged
+450,000 tons a year. In 1917 it was nearly 1,000,000,
+in 1918 it was 3,223,506 tons, but in 1919 it was
+6,558,823 tons, up to the end of the year in each
+case. These figures are given for the purpose of
+showing what can be done in a country which
+makes up its mind to have a commercial marine.
+America had been a long time learning its
+lesson, but there was no question that she had
+learned. Therefore it is not to be expected that
+she will let this hardly-acquired realisation be
+forgotten. Indeed, the evidence is strongly the
+other way. On June 5, 1920, was approved the
+Merchant Marine Act for the promoting and maintaining
+an American Merchant Marine. It is
+sufficient evidence merely to read the declaration
+of policy as stated by Congress: “That it is necessary
+for the national defence and for the proper
+growth of its foreign and domestic commerce that
+the United States shall have a merchant marine of
+the best-equipped and most suitable types of vessels
+sufficient to carry the greater portion of its commerce
+and serve as a naval or military auxiliary in
+time of war or national emergency, ultimately to
+be owned and operated privately by citizens of the
+United States; and it is hereby declared to be the
+policy of the United States to do whatever may be
+necessary to develop and encourage the maintenance
+of such a merchant marine.”</p>
+
+<p>With the failure of any immediate benefits of
+this policy it is not necessary here to deal. But of
+all the many results of the Great War, few historically
+are more interesting than this revival.
+Competition between British and American shipping
+is inevitable, but it is merely a repetition of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</span>what happened in the clipper era; and we have
+seen that in the long run this spirit of emulation
+has always benefited the Merchant Service. Comparing
+the figures given above for June 1914, let
+us place alongside them those for June 1921, which
+are as instructive as the first. For now we find in
+the percentage of the world’s total sea-going steel
+and iron steam tonnage that the British Empire
+owns 39·3, the United States 22·7, France and
+Japan each 5·6, but Scandinavia 7·7. Thus to
+have leapt from 4·3 to 22·7 in so short a space of
+time, and to have become second only to the British
+Empire, is a remarkable achievement.</p>
+
+<p>The future remains to be seen. But we have
+noticed that the absence of competition caused the
+East Indian portion—and that was the greater part—of
+the British Mercantile Marine to get into a
+rut. It was only the opening up to all of the
+East, the free and unfettered rivalry there and in
+the Atlantic, which brought about progress and
+improved conditions both for the trader and the
+passenger. In the face of the lessons of history, is
+it not better to welcome competition rather than
+to endeavour to hinder, by a series of laws which
+may do good, but may also cause international
+friction, more dreadful wars, and do little for the
+advancement of civilisation and the attainment of
+noble aims? The practical value of history is that
+we are able to see at a glance the mistakes of our
+forefathers. If it is not that, it is a mere academic
+study. The world now realises that an adequate
+merchant fleet is as necessary as an adequate
+fighting Navy. But it has required to be confronted
+with big events before it could thoroughly grasp
+that essential fact.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIX">
+    CHAPTER XIX
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">THE MINOR MERCANTILE MARINES</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>One important result of the war was to readjust
+the respective positions of the nations of the world
+in regard to their merchant fleets. Considering
+only steel and iron steam tonnage, the nations
+were in the following order of precedence immediately
+prior to the war: British Empire,
+Germany, Scandinavia, France, the United States;
+Japan, Holland, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Spain,
+Greece. But to-day the following is the order:
+British Empire, United States, and then there is
+an immense drop to Scandinavia, France, Japan,
+Italy, Holland, Spain, Germany and Greece about
+equal, and no Austro-Hungarian merchant ships.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Scandinavia still occupies the third place,
+she represents only 7·7 of the world’s steam tonnage
+as against the United States’ 22·7 and the British
+Empire’s 39·3. Outside the belligerents the Scandinavians
+were the most important merchant fleet
+throughout the period of hostilities, and Norway
+was more important than Sweden. From the
+earliest times in European history the sea-spirit
+has been a real influence in Scandinavia, and some
+of the finest sailormen in the world have come
+from there. It is that spirit which has built up the
+Scandinavian merchant fleets, not merely through
+the sailing-ship days, but after. To them were
+sold many of Britain’s clippers and other vessels
+as steam gradually became dominant; and even
+now they purchase obsolete British steamships, give
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</span>them another name and put them into service
+again. The Allan liner <em>Virginian</em>, the first
+Atlantic turbine steamer, for instance, is now
+running in the Swedish-American Line.</p>
+
+<p>The war found the Scandinavians with a comparatively
+large merchant fleet, not merely of
+steam vessels, but of sailing craft. Only those
+who were in the North Sea at that time could
+realise this fact, and as the years went on it became
+still more emphasised. For they were able to sell
+their agricultural produce to Germany for high
+prices, and they sold, also at a high rate, large
+supplies of food and of timber to Great Britain.
+The result was that the enormous demand for
+merchant ships brought great wealth to these Northmen.
+They placed a large number of orders with
+British shipbuilding firms prior to peace, and in one
+area alone these orders amounted to 450,000 tons.
+But then came the slump, ships were not wanted,
+because trade became bad, many shipowners were
+soon in financial straits and merchant captains
+found themselves without employment. The result
+is, that notwithstanding the boom, they owned in
+June 1921 only 7·7 as against 8·7 in June 1914 of
+the world’s sea-going steam tonnage. On the other
+hand, they have shown considerable enterprise in
+evolving the ocean-going motor ship. But whereas
+the Baltic meant so much to their shipping, the
+revolutionary upheavals in Russia and Germany
+have thoroughly disorganised that most important
+section of their trade. To take one instance alone,
+before the war, and even during those years,
+Sweden used to export in small steamships large
+quantities of iron ore to Germany, but now these
+exports have considerably diminished. Nevertheless,
+the possession of these Scandinavian merchant
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</span>fleets, consisting as they do principally of small
+rather than big ships, is a strong factor to be
+considered in the future.</p>
+
+<p>To-day the French Mercantile Marine is of the
+same strength as Japan, owing to the last-mentioned
+country having gone ahead rather than the former
+having gone astern. The acquisition of a number
+of ex-German liners after the Armistice was something
+of a windfall, though it was a long time
+before some of the big craft were requisitioned.
+The Messageries Maritimes, for example, took
+over from the French Government the <em>Lucie
+Woermann</em> (4836 tons) and several bigger ships.
+But as an influence in the shipping world, France
+is very different from what she was during the time
+of Louis XIV and after. The naval architects and
+shipbuilders in France during the seventeenth and
+eighteenth centuries were in many cases as good,
+and frequently better than, those of England or
+Holland or Spain. But this supremacy had long
+since left them by the time the steamship became
+prevalent.</p>
+
+<p>During the war the French Mercantile Marine
+was used entirely for the prosecution of the one
+great cause, but France lost during that period
+1,129,000 out of 2,556,000 tons of merchant shipping
+with which she commenced hostilities. This has
+been more serious for France, because whilst
+during hostilities the shipyards of Great Britain,
+the United States and Japan were able to carry on
+building, the French yards were almost exclusively
+engaged in manufacturing for their armies. In
+fact, they were unable to launch more than 143,000
+tons throughout the war, though afterwards about
+a hundred ships were ordered in Great Britain,
+representing nearly 500,000 tons.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</span></p>
+
+<p>The French Mercantile Marine to-day consists
+of between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000 tons. Of this
+the fine big Atlantic liners running to New York
+make up a fair proportion, especially when we
+think of the 34,568-ton <em>Paris</em>, one of the largest
+liners afloat, and a singularly impressive ship to
+behold. As a result of the war Germany had to
+hand over to the Allies 521 ships, of nearly
+3,000,000 tons displacement; and of these France
+was allotted 116, amounting to about 500,000 tons.
+But the greater part of her merchant fleet is based
+on the Mediterranean, running from Marseilles to
+the Black Sea, and her possessions in Asia and
+the Pacific, West Africa, and to North and South
+America. Most of her exports go to her colonies;
+and the short voyages across the Mediterranean to
+Algeria and Morocco, transporting corn, wine, sheep
+and vegetables, will ever be a valuable means of
+employing small tonnage ships. But it has needed
+a war to teach France that the whole of her shipbuilding
+and marine transportation required overhauling
+and revising. Her shipping industry was
+based rather on the policy of making profits out of
+other industries than of becoming a means of
+creating new trade routes and fresh avenues to
+wealth. It is only now that she is realising the
+riches of her colonies which merely wait to be developed
+fully. To France, curiously enough, belonged
+the honour of owning the largest and finest
+sailing ship in the world. This was the <em>La France</em>.
+Fitted with auxiliary motors in the early days of
+the combustion engine, these were afterwards removed.
+She sailed out to the Pacific in 1922, but
+had the misfortune to pile up on a New Caledonian
+reef close to her destination and became a total
+wreck. Thus perished the last link France had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</span>with its former race of brilliant designers of sailing
+ships.</p>
+
+<p>In the rise of nations few phenomena are more
+striking than the way the Japanese merchant fleet has
+leapt into prominence in so few years. Even before
+the war she possessed only 3·9 of the world’s steam
+steel tonnage, and was the sixth power in the world
+as a sea-carrier; to-day she is actually bracketed
+fourth with France, and owning 5·6 of the percentage
+of tonnage. The Japanese are essentially
+copyists, and practically everything they know of
+shipbuilding or shipping in the modern sense has
+been derived from Great Britain. The war came
+as a grand opportunity to them, and as soon as the
+Germans vanished from the Eastern trades, the
+Japanese stepped in and took what they wanted at
+a time when our traders were busy with other
+matters. Thanks to the heavy subsidies granted
+by their Government, they have put up a keen
+competition, including the Indian coasting trade.
+Both geographically and economically Japan is
+well situated so as to expand her merchant fleet
+throughout the Orient and the Pacific, and all the
+evidence points to her intention to take every
+advantage of her opportunities.</p>
+
+<p>According to the most recent figures, the Japanese
+merchant fleet contained nearly 800 steamships of
+over 1000 tons, representing nearer 3,000,000 than
+2,000,000 tons. The purchase of a large number
+of second-hand ships from other countries at a time
+when, owing to the slump, they could be bought
+for less than half their cost in Japan, is one of the
+latest instances of her enterprise. The Italian
+proportion of ownership in steamships has increased
+a point as a result of the war and after, and the
+addition in 1921 of the big <em>Giulio Cesare</em> was a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</span>considerable acquisition to such a small marine.
+Built in England, this 22,500-ton (gross) steamer
+was the largest vessel the Wallsend yard had
+launched since they constructed the <em>Mauretania</em>.
+She can do her nineteen knots and more, and being
+intended for the Genoa-Buenos Ayres route, was
+fitted with ample luxury to tempt the South
+Americans. But there is also a big emigrant trade
+from this port westward, and more than half the
+accommodation in the ship is intended for them.
+The outcome of the war brought Trieste, Austria’s
+only port, into the hands of Italy, and this may
+have an important effect on Italian shipping in the
+future. It used to be to Austria what Fiume was
+to Hungary, and both States used to give large
+subsidies to their Mercantile Marines and encourage
+transport to and from these ports. Just before the
+war the Austro-Hungarian merchant ships represented
+only slightly over 1 per cent. of all the
+world’s sea-going steel steamers, but now this
+amount has dropped to nothing. Fiume was the
+port whence emigrants by the thousand poured
+from their Slav, Teuton and Magyar homes on
+board the liners bound for the United States. It
+was Hungary’s only port, and then the World
+War put an end to its glory and made it a source
+of grave international anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>But its close connection with the Mercantile
+Marine prosperity can be seen at once. For one
+steamship line alone used to take from there
+30,000 emigrants annually. They used to run
+three steamships a month during the winters when
+bad harvests had caused the people to leave their
+homes for the New World, and each of these ships
+was carrying most of 2000. Then, having made
+$500 in America, they would for the most part
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</span>return, and thus there was still further traffic for
+the shipping. The Austrian Lloyd Company
+owned about eighty steamships, though chiefly of
+small tonnage, but some were built in Trieste of
+about 4000 tons. With one steamship company
+the Hungarian Government actually entered into
+a contract, to last ten years, by which the former
+were to be guaranteed 30,000 emigrants a year;
+and a bonus of a hundred francs was to be paid for
+every passenger short of that number. It cannot
+be too much emphasised that the emigrant traffic
+has been one of the foundations of some steamship
+companies.</p>
+
+<p>During the war the direct services from Scandinavia
+to America were strengthened; but the French
+emigrant traffic has never been great. Before the
+war the Italian steamship lines were largely under
+German influence. No emigrants could be carried
+to or from Italy except in a licensed ship; and a
+vessel more than three years old, not previously
+employed in the Italian service, could not receive
+a licence unless her speed was at least eighteen
+knots. But from the European continent by far
+the greatest emigrant traffic went from Bremen
+and Rotterdam in the two big German lines.</p>
+
+<p>The present position of Holland and Spain,
+almost at the bottom of the list, shows pathetically
+that a country which in its day has been the
+greatest sea-carrier, which owned and built the
+finest ships in the world, may in a century or
+more be pushed out of the struggle unless her
+fighting fleet is able to secure free passage for the
+merchant vessels. Holland, at least, owns a small
+fleet of first-class liners, principally for the North
+American trade and to the Dutch East Indies.
+With regard to the former, Rotterdam has been to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</span>them a useful port for attracting a good many
+emigrants every year. Prior to the war the
+German lines were too wise to compete against
+the Dutch, preferring not to separate forces in
+concentrating against the Cunard and White Star
+Lines. Most Dutch steamship lines enjoy a
+measure of support from the Dutch railways, but
+in the past there was also a good deal of support
+from Germany.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="p2361_ill" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/p2361_ill.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption>
+    <p class="right fs80">[<em>Photo, Henry Hughes &amp; Son, Ltd.</em></p>
+    <p class="center no-indent">A FAST-DISAPPEARING SHIP TYPE.
+    Steam and motors have almost banished the full-rigged ship from the Mercantile Marine, but a very few still survive.</p>
+  </figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>The future of Mercantile Marines is the future
+of trade itself; for shipping not merely takes goods
+to market, but actually creates those markets in
+localities hitherto undeveloped. The sailing ship
+as an ocean-carrier is certainly fast disappearing,
+and everything now is reckoned on a basis of
+economy, but with strict regard to speed and
+efficiency. The need for shipping, apart from
+temporary slumps in the cycle of trade through
+prosperity to depression, must increase as the resources
+of the world become greater. If the tramp
+steamer forces her way up a shallow river and finds
+an abundance of a certain commodity which by
+some sudden turn in social life is much in demand
+in London or New York, this new trade will go on
+and on until a town is built on the banks, the river
+is dredged, and eventually liners call there not for
+cargoes, but to bring passengers. The town needs
+its regular mail service, the inhabitants require costly
+manufactured goods from England or America; and
+so, in the end, it grows to be a colony with its own
+special exports and imports. The arrival of every
+ship increases the trade, agents from commercial
+corporations land and start a new vein of development.
+Finally, after a couple of centuries, perhaps,
+the colony decides to have its own merchant fleet,
+and after it has got thoroughly used to this, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</span>had some risk of war, it realises that its Merchant
+Marine must be protected by a fighting Navy.
+To-day Australia has its own liners, and Navy, and
+yet it was only in 1788 that the first thousand
+settlers landed there. In the exchange of wealth
+the sea is, so to speak, the counter across which
+the deal is done. You may live inland and forget
+all about the sea; you may hate it or you may fear
+it; but it is there all the time, and it means
+everything to any ambitious community. It is
+by means of the merchant ship that the sea is,
+partially at least, controlled for the sake of land
+development and the convenience of communities.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XX">
+    CHAPTER XX
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">THE FUTURE OF THE MERCANTILE MARINE</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>If the attention of the reader has been thus far
+secured, he will have appreciated the fact that to
+any nation owning a seaboard the possession of a
+Mercantile Marine is as important as having a
+fighting Navy. We have seen that Great Britain,
+the United States, France, Germany, Japan—not
+to mention the rest—all realise more than ever
+the prime importance of an efficient and adequate
+merchant fleet. You find this in the official statements
+as well as in the remarks by their shipping
+experts. As we said at the beginning of this
+volume, it has taken a great war to cause this
+right thinking, but you may be assured that from
+now onwards the merchant fleets are coming into
+their own, and the service is going to be regarded
+before long with some of the old respect that was
+ascribed to it in the palmiest days of the sailing ship.</p>
+
+<p>It is sea-borne trade which makes a Mercantile
+Marine. It is the great coalfields conveniently
+near big harbours that have helped to build up
+the modern British marine after her shipping
+was temporarily eclipsed by the American. The
+development of the world consequent on the coming
+of the industrial age, the great increase of
+overseas trade therefrom resulting, caused a loud
+and universal call for cheap maritime carriage.
+The steamer satisfied that call, for the reason that
+she was built economically near to the coalfields,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</span>and economically propelled because she had cheap
+coal. She could therefore afford to carry goods
+cheaply. Then, as we have also seen, this tramp
+is the forerunner of the liner, and so the story goes
+on like a stone gathering momentum as it comes
+down the mountain.</p>
+
+<p>So it all depends on cheap fuel quite as much as
+on cheap labour. The Scandinavians have had the
+latter for years, but it never enabled them to build
+up such a merchant fleet as one might have
+expected. The world’s greatest shipping centre
+to-day is the Port of London, notwithstanding the
+great set-back it received during the war, when
+the presence of German submarines in the English
+Channel diverted much of its ancient trade to
+western ports. Had it not been for the possession
+of an enormous merchant fleet, consisting of a large
+proportion of small and moderate-sized steamers,
+the Allied cause would most certainly have been
+lost, irrespective of the Army in the field or the
+Navy at sea. The British and German blockades,
+though exerted in the one case by big ships and
+in the latter by submarines, had the same effect:
+the paralysing of the merchant fleet. Take the
+blockade away and the war could have gone on as
+long as a couple of men were alive. The pivot of
+the whole thing is therefore the merchant ship, and
+she in turn depends on her fuel.</p>
+
+<p>The fuel of the future will be oil, and you will
+find only a minority of experts to deny this.
+Whether aircraft will ever become the principal
+passenger-carriers over the world is possible, but
+remote. For the carriage of goods the dependence
+will remain on merchant shipping, and one of the
+incentives to the use of oil-fuel will be brought
+about by increased competition. Oil is the more
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</span>economical fuel, for the reason that, other things
+being equal, one ton of oil-fuel as now used in
+Diesel engines drives a vessel three times as far
+as one ton of coal burnt under the boilers of a
+steamship. And yet oil is twice as efficient as
+coal when the ship has water-tube boilers and
+geared turbines. This is the statement of Sir
+Westcott Abell, the Chief Ship Surveyor of
+Lloyd’s Register. The biggest liners have now
+been converted into oil-burning, and it is conceivable
+that before long we may have Diesel-engined
+Atlantic leviathans instead of steamers. The
+absence of boilers will mean more room for
+passengers and cargo, therefore increased earning
+capacity.</p>
+
+<p>Whether we think of oil as used for Diesel or
+for steam engines, it certainly looks as if the future
+Mercantile Marines of the world will be in the
+main oil-driven. In that case the outlook for
+the British Mercantile Marine, which has been
+based on cheap coal, may cause some anxiety.
+The possession of ample oil-wells in other parts
+of the world may, and probably will, get over the
+difficulty; but it is one thing to have coalfields at
+home, and quite another consideration to fetch oil
+from the other end of the earth. Moreover the
+commercial fight for oil-areas may conceivably lead
+to international strife, and the prolongation of the
+war might depend on how long the supplies of oil
+could be maintained for the shipping. In any
+forecast of the world’s Mercantile Marines due
+regard must therefore be paid to the use and
+supply of oil.</p>
+
+<p>The introduction of oil-fuel into the modern
+Atlantic ships has done away with the old,
+laborious work of stoking, and necessitated from
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</span>the fireman a higher skill, more technical knowledge
+and keener concentration; and he has to
+be on the move continually in order to see that
+the burners are in good order and the flame is
+continuous. During bad weather, or fogs, fires can
+be extinguished, and thus economy gained. More
+bunker-fuel is being consumed on the ocean at the
+present than ever, and although during the last
+twenty years a complete revolution has been made
+in the engine-room by the use of turbines and
+geared turbines, it is only with the introduction
+of oil-fuel that the stokehold has become more
+progressive. In many cases ex-naval men are now
+employed in the British oil-fuel liners. Their
+experience of years in oil-fuel ships well fits them
+for this skilled “stoking” in the modern merchantmen.
+And here may be the beginning of another
+improvement. It is well known that the crew’s
+accommodation in most men-of-war is superior to
+that in most merchantmen, especially in regard to
+cleanliness. During the war it was surprising to
+naval officers commanding armed merchant cruisers
+that such conditions were allowed in liners which
+would never be tolerated in fighting ships. One
+British admiral, in particular, was so impressed as
+to express his opinions afterwards in print. Now, if
+the introduction of highly skilled ratings from the
+Navy continues, it may be taken as certain that
+the standard of life in the crew’s quarters will
+become higher and thus a high-grade type of man
+will be attracted. There is going to be a general
+levelling up in the Mercantile Marines of the
+world, so long as there is peace assured. The
+world is wearied of war, and asks only to be
+allowed to develop its resources in peace. Every
+one nowadays is interested in commerce, and the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</span>time will come when the practice which existed
+in the East India Company’s ships will be reverted
+to. Only the sons of the best families will be
+thought to be good enough for the national
+merchant ships: only the best sons will offer
+themselves for the honour of controlling the ships
+which maintain the country’s life-giving trade. In
+the time of the Elizabethans, before the East India
+Company; in the Spanish and Portuguese and
+Venetian trade supremacies, the pick of the nation
+were engaged in overseas commerce; and in the
+twentieth century, when so much technical knowledge,
+so much responsible capability are required
+of a man, none but the best types of officers and
+men should be accepted or offered. Permanent
+employment, good pay, pride in ship and service,
+high standard of accommodation, and the most
+careful selection of candidates will go a long way
+towards bringing about this desired end.</p>
+
+<p>In the olden days the sailor was a very gallant
+fellow, whose job it was to go aloft and lay out
+along a yard and handsail in the foulest weather.
+At sea he was heroic; on shore he was often a
+drunken reprobate. Things have altered. The
+modern shipman is just as gallant, as we know
+from his exploits afloat during the war. But he
+is better educated, uses his head more and his fists
+less. He reads and thinks and reasons for himself,
+and if he knows nothing of the old seafaring, he is
+highly skilled in the working of the hundreds of
+wonderful appliances which are essential to the
+modern merchant ship. To him the shore is not
+always symbolical of debauch. He is better treated
+than his ancestors, and his undoubted rights have
+begun to be respected. The result is that there
+is a general improvement going on through the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</span>Mercantile Marine not merely in regard to the
+ships themselves, but in the personnel.</p>
+
+<p>The romance of the sailing-ship days has to be
+merged to-day in the bigger romance of sea-borne
+trade. It is ridiculous to say, as one lecturer
+recently stated, that the Mercantile Marine has
+no fine traditions like the Navy, and therefore
+there is no enthusing force at the back of it. To
+make such a statement—and I regret to say that
+it was uttered by a distinguished merchant ship
+captain—is to be ignorant of sea history. During
+the recent war, during all the previous wars,
+through the ages of peace, back and back as far as
+we have any records, you will find the marine
+merchantman doing fine things, piling up the finest
+traditions. If that is not so, the whole purpose of
+this volume has been missed. I have endeavoured
+to show what the Mercantile Marine has done for
+the world throughout time in all kinds of ships.
+Sailors are a conservative race, and there is at
+heart very little difference between the best of
+each century. To them we all owe more than
+we can ever repay or even realise.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the average merchant ship of the future
+is to be the cruiser-stern vessel with oil-fuel and
+geared turbines, or with Diesel engines, matters
+less than the spirit which animates the officers and
+men. In the British Mercantile Marine the officers
+are drawn from many sources, but the chief training
+establishments are in the <em>Worcester</em>, lying in the
+Thames, the <em>Conway</em>, lying in the Mersey, and in
+the Nautical College, Pangbourne. It is to these
+three institutions especially that we look for the
+future mercantile officer, on whom great responsibilities
+rest for the upholding and carrying on of
+the magnificent heritage of tradition. In the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</span>United States this preparation for the sea is being
+carried out with that thoroughness which was
+shown during the war for making sailors out of
+raw landsmen. The recruiting for the American
+Mercantile Marine, according to the latest official
+report to hand, already consisted of a personnel
+which was 68 per cent. American. Its Sea Training
+Bureau has training stations and training ships,
+and in the first three years turned out between
+30,000 and 40,000 unlicensed ratings. In addition,
+there are the Navigation and Engineering Schools
+and advanced courses for men already holding
+licences. Such subjects as the operation, repair,
+adjustment and general upkeep of marine turbines,
+and matters dealing with electricity and oil, are
+included in the last-mentioned curricula. The
+result was that in four years licences were granted
+to over 10,000 graduates as masters, first, second
+and third mates, chief engineers, first, second and
+third assistant engineers. And by means of a Sea
+Service Bureau maintained at various Atlantic,
+Gulf and Pacific coast ports, during one year over
+100,000 officers and men were placed in United
+States ships.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, with glorious traditions behind them, and
+an equally glorious future in front, the Mercantile
+Marines of the nations of the maritime world have
+every reason to be proud of their respective services.
+Competition there assuredly will be, not merely
+between British and American, but, presently,
+German merchant fleets. That is all for the good
+of the services concerned and for the world in
+general. The lesson from past history is that
+maritime legislation in the long run is better
+omitted except where it is necessary as a reply
+to that of another country setting up unfair
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</span>competition. The real freedom of the seas is to allow
+the merchant ship to pursue her way freely, unhampered;
+and to find her trade where she can,
+and be allowed to develop that trade as it has been
+in the past by Venetian, Spaniard, Dutch, Briton,
+American and others. To interfere with this
+system is to court trouble which in the long run
+fails to benefit the very organisation it was intended
+to protect. Navigation laws are all very well in
+intention; but far better still is it to allow free
+trading over the seas, free flow of emigrants and
+commerce, fair opportunities for all. The best
+must win in the last instance, but why not let each
+marine go about its own business as each trading
+concern ashore is allowed to carry on its own affairs?
+The merchant fleets mean too much to be controlled
+by the State in any country, except
+under exceptional circumstances and with the
+most weighty excuse. That is one of the lessons
+in the history of our subject, and we may leave it
+at that.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX">
+    APPENDIX
+    <br>
+    <span class="fs80">SAILS OF THE <em>ESSEX</em> EAST INDIAMAN</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The following is a list of the sails which the
+<em>Essex</em> could set, and it is worth placing on record
+now that the sailing ship is so rapidly becoming
+a rarity. These details have been taken from a
+contemporary manuscript which has been kindly
+sent me by Colonel E. B. Urmston, C.B., whose
+great-grandfather served in East Indiamen from
+the time when he joined as a midshipman in 1763,
+and afterwards commanded several of these ships
+between 1783 and 1803. In 1795 he brought home,
+as Commodore, a fleet of thirty East Indiamen
+without a convoy of any of H.M. ships, and later
+in the same year was Commodore of the East
+Indiamen fleet which accompanied Sir Ralph
+Abercrombie’s expedition to the West Indies.
+His eldest son, Sir James Urmston, joined the
+company’s service as a “writer” in 1798, and
+became President of the company’s factory and
+affairs in China.</p>
+
+<p>This memorandum, already turning yellow with
+age, was made in 1816, at the time Lady Urmston
+came home in the <em>Essex</em>, and with the aid of
+existing pictures of East Indiamen it would not
+be impossible to reconstruct a model on fairly
+accurate lines. It will be seen that she was able
+to set twenty-seven sails on her foremast, twenty-one
+on her mainmast, and seventeen on her mizzen:
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</span>total sixty-five. It is interesting as showing that
+at least one of these Indiamen was a real sail-carrier.
+She was commanded by Captain Nisbett.</p>
+
+
+<table class="autotable fs90" style="width: 100%">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl" style="width: 33%">
+ON THE FOREMAST 26.
+</td>
+<td class="tdl" style="width: 33%">
+ON THE MAINMAST 21.
+</td>
+<td class="tdl" style="width: 33%">
+ON THE MIZZENMAST 17.
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+Fore course
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Main course
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Square cross jackyard
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">topsail</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">topsail</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Mizzen topsail
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">t’gallant sail</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">t’gallant sail</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">t’gallant sail</span>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">royal</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">royal</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">royal</span>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">skysail</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">skysail</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">skysail</span>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">moon-raker</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">moon-raker</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">moon-raker</span>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">cloud-scraper</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">cloud-scraper</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">star-gazer</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">star-gazer</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">storm staysail</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">staysail</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Driver
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">topmast staysail</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">topmast staysail</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Ring-tail
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+Jib
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">middle</span> <span style="padding-left: 1em">”</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Watersail
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+Inner jib
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">t’gallant</span> <span style="padding-left: 1em">”</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Gaff topsail
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+Flying <span style="padding-left: 1em">”</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">royal</span> <span style="padding-left: 1em">”</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Upper <span style="padding-left: 1em">”</span>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+Outer <span style="padding-left: 1em">”</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">upper</span> <span style="padding-left: 1em">”</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Mizzen staysail
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+Cutter’s topmast jib
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">topmast staysail</span>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+Upper <span style="padding-left: 1em">”</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">t’gallant</span> <span style="padding-left: 1em">”</span>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+<em>On the bowsprit</em>:
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+Sprit sail
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Mizzen royal staysail
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+Sprit topsail
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">topmast stuns’l</span>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">outer topsail</span>
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+” <span style="padding-left: 1em">t’gallants’l</span>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+<em>Studding sails</em>:
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+Common lower studding sail
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Lower studding sail
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+Outer lower studding sail
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Common topmast studding sail
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+Common topmast studding sail
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Outer topmast studding sail
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+Outer topmast studding sail
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Common t’gallant studding sail
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+Common t’gallant studding sail
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Outer t’gallant studding sail
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+Outer t’gallant studding sail
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Royal t’gallant studding sail
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">
+Royal t’gallant studding sail
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+Upper t’gallant studding sail
+</td>
+<td class="tdl">
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_248"></a><a id="Page_249"></a>[Pg 249]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="INDEX">
+    INDEX
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<ul class="index">
+  <li class="ifrst">Aaron Manby, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Abell, Sir Westcott, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Abercrombie, Sir Ralph, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ability of an East Indiaman navigator, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Acadia</em>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Acre, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Active</em>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Admiral Watson</em>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Adriatic, The, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Agincourt</em>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Ajax</em>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Albert Webb</em>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Alfred</em>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Allan Line, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Alnwick Castle</em>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">American clippers, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">American Line, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">American Mercantile Marine, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">American packets, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">American trade, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">American War, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Anglesey</em>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Anglo-Dutch wars, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Ann McKim</em>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Aquila</em>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Aquitania</em>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Arabic</em>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Archimedes</em>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Arctic</em>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Ariel</em>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Arizona</em>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“Art of Seafighting, The,” <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Astell</em>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Aventurier</em>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Audacious</em>, H.M.S., <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Auguste Victoria</em>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Austral</em>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Australian Black Ball Line, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Australian gold discovery, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Australian Royal Mail Steam Navigation Co., <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Austria</em>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Austrian Lloyd Company, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Baden-Powell, Sir Robert, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Baines, James, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Balearic Isles, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ballasting, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Baltic</em>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Barcelona ordinance, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Barham</em>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Beatty, Earl, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Belle-Poule</em>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Bellone</em>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Benbow, Admiral, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Berceau</em>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Berengaria</em>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Berlin</em>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Berthing a big liner, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Big Ship Masters, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Bismarck</em>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Black Ball Line, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“Black Book of the Admiralty,” <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Black Sea, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Blackwall, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Blenheim</em>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Blohm &amp; Voss, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Boddam</em>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Bombay Castle</em>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Bombay Insurance Society, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Bona Confidentia</em>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Bona Esperanza</em>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Borussia</em>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Boulton &amp; Watt, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Bremen</em>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Britannia</em>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Britannic</em>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Co., <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">British crews in American packets, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">British Navigation Laws, Repeal of, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>British Queen</em>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Brunel, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Brunswick Basin, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Buckinghamshire</em>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</span><em>Buenos Ayrean</em>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Burns, George, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Cabot, John, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cabot, Sebastian, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Caird of Greenock, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Caledonia</em>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Campania</em>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Canada</em>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Canton</em>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Cap Trafalgar</em>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cargatores, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Carlisle Castle</em>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Carmania</em>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Carn Brae Castle</em>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Caroline</em>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Carthaginians, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Cedric</em>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Celtic</em>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Ceylon</em>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Challenge</em>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Challenger</em>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Chancellor, Richard, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Charlotte Dundas</em>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Chaucer, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Chile</em>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“China Clippers, The,” <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">China fleet, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Christiana</em>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Chrysolite</em>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Cidona</em>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cilicians, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">City of Dublin Steam Company, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>City of Edinburgh</em>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>City of Glasgow</em>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>City of Manchester</em>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>City of New York</em>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>City of Paris</em>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Claremont</em>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Clarence</em>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Clark, Captain A. H., <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Clermont</em>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“Clipper Ship Era, The,” <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Clipper ships, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Clyde, The, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Coal brigs, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Cogge</em>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Collins Line, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Columbia</em>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Columbus, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Comet</em>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Communal idea, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Continental Service, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Convoy of East Indiamen, A, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Convoy system, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Conway</em>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cook, Captain, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cort, Henry, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cost of building ships, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Coutts</em>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“Cracking-on,” <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cramp shipyard, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cretans, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Crutchley, Commander, R.N.R., <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Cumberland</em>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cunard Company, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cunard losses, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Cunard, Mr., <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Cutty Sark</em>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Cybèle</em>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Dalmatia, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dance, Commodore, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Demand for merchant shipping, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Denny, William, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Deptford, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Desertion, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Deutschland</em>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Devitt &amp; Moore, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Diesel Engines, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Discipline, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Dogger</em>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Dorsetshire</em>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Downie, W. I., <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Drake, Francis, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dramatic Line, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Dreadnought</em>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Drottningholm</em>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Duchess of Atholl</em>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Duke of Marlborough</em>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Duke of Richmond</em>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dunbar, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Dutch East India Company, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst"><em>Earl of Abergavenny</em>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Earl of Balcarres</em>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Earl Camden</em>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Earl of Hardwicke</em>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">East India Company, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">East India Docks, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">East Indiamen, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Edward Bonaventure</em>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Efficiency of the old-time mariner, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Egyptians, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</span><em>Elbe</em>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Elizabeth</em>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Emerson, Ralph Waldo, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Emigrant traffic, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Emmanuel</em>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Ems</em>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Emu</em>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Enemies, attacks by, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">English Maritime Law, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Enterprise</em>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ericsson, John, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Essex</em>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Etruria</em>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Europe</em>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Evolution of the ship, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Exeter</em>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst"><em>Falcon</em>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Falmouth</em>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Falmouth, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Falmouth packet service, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Fawkener</em>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Ferreira</em>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Fiery Cross</em>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Fishermen and Merchantmen, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Fishermen’s quarrels, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Fishery Department, Board of Trade, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Flying Cloud</em>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Forrest, Captain Thomas, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Forte</em>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Fortima</em>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Forwood, Sir William B., <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Fowler, Lieut. Robert, R.N., <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Francis B. Ogden</em>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Free Trade, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Free trade vessels, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">French Mercantile Marine, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">French Naval Architects, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Fulton, Robert, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Future of the Mercantile Marines, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst"><em>Ganges</em>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Geary, Captain, R.N., <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">General Steam Navigation Company, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Genoa, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Geordie</em>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>George Washington</em>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">German Australian Line, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">German East Africa Line, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">German liners, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Giulio Cesare</em>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Godezere</em>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Grâce Dieu</em>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Great Britain</em>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Great Eastern</em>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Great Republic</em>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Great Western</em>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Great Western Steamship Company, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Greeks, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Greens, The, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Grotius, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Growth of the Mercantile Marine, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Guion Line, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“Gulliver’s Travels,” <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Guy Mannering</em>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Hakluyt, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hall, Messrs., <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hamburg-America Line, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hamburg-Bremen-Africa Line, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hamburg-South America Line, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hansa Line, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hanseatic League, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Harland, Sir Edward, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Harland &amp; Wolff, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hawkins, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hay, Captain, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Heligoland, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Hellenis</em>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Henry Addington</em>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Herbert, of Cherbury, Lord, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Herring exports in 1913, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Highflyer</em>, H.M.S., <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Himalaya</em>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Hindostan</em>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Holy Land, The, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Homeric</em>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Hope</em>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hornby, Admiral Phipps, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Hotspur</em>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hour-glasses, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Huddart, Captain Joseph, F.R.S., <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Hulls, Jonathan, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Illyrians, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Imperator</em>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Indian Empire, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Indomitable</em>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Inman, William, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</span>Inman Line, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ionians, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Iron and Steel, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Iron Mast, The first, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Isaac Webb</em>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ismay, T. H., <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Istria, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Italian Mercantile Marine, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Ivernia</em>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">James, Sir William, Bart., <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>James Baines</em>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>James Watt</em>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Japanese Merchant Fleet, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Jardine, Mattheson &amp; Co., <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>John Tutteburie</em>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Jouffroy, Marquis de, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Judith</em>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst"><em>Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse</em>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Kaiser Wilhelm II.</em>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Kaiserin Auguste Victoria</em>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Kate Carnie</em>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Kent</em>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>King of the Netherlands</em>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Kosmos Line, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst"><em>La France</em>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Lady Jocelyn</em>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Lady Lansdowne</em>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Lady Melville</em>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Laird &amp; Co., <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Laws of Oleron, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Leicester</em>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lennox, Captain Charles, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Letters of Marque, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Leviathan</em>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Linois, Admiral, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Liparian Isles, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Liverpool, Port of, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lloyd’s Register, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">London, Port of, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Lord Keith</em>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Lord Macartney</em>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lowell, James Russell, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lubbock, Basil, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Lucania</em>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Lucie Woermann</em>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lucy, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Lusitania</em>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Lycians, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">MacIver, David, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">McKay, Donald, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Macquarie</em>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Madagascar</em>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Madre de Dios</em>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Majestic</em>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Malocello, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Manby, Aaron, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Marco Polo</em>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Marengo</em>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Marine Insurance Company, The first, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“Mariner’s Jewel, The,” <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Maritime Acts, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Maritime Law, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Marlborough</em>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Martaban</em>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mastery of the Sea, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Mauritania</em>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mediterranean, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Merchant Shipping Act of 1854, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Merchant Ships of the North, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Merchantman as privateer or pirate, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Melbourne, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Melbourne trade, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Memnon</em>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mercantile Marine of the Sixteenth Century, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mercantile Marines, The Minor, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mercantile Supremacy at Sea, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Meriton, Captain, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Messageries Maritimes, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Michelson, Godeke, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Middle Ages, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“Midshipman, Reminiscences of a Blackwall,” <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Midshipmen, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mighty Merchantmen, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Milford steam packets, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Miller, Patrick, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Minerve</em>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Moa</em>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Modern Merchant Ship, The, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Modern Navigation, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Moffat, Captain H. Y., <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Monarch</em>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Moneys, The, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Monson, Sir William, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Moodie, Captain, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Moslem power, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Mount Vernon</em>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Mourning, sign of, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Napier, Robert, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Navigation Acts, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Navigation Laws, Repeal of, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Neptune</em>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</span><em>New World</em>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Nisbett, Captain, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Nordamerika</em>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Norfolk</em>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">North German Lloyd, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">North Sea fisheries, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Northumberland</em>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Novelty</em>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst"><em>Ocean</em>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Oceanic</em>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">O’Halloran, Captain, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Oliva</em>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Olympic</em>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Opium trade, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Oregon</em>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Orient</em>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Orient Line, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Oriental</em>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Orinoco</em>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Osterley</em>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Owen, Sir Douglas, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Owen Glendower</em>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Pacific Steam Navigation Company, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Packet Ships and Brigs, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Panama Canal, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Paris</em>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Park, Robert, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Patriotic Fund Committee, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Peninsular &amp; Oriental Steam Navigation Company, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Pepys, Samuel, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Persia</em>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Peru</em>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Peters, Andrew, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Pett, Phineas, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Phœnicians, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Piémontaise</em>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Piracy, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Pisa, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Plimsoll mark, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Polar Expedition, The first, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Poplar Fund, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Portsmouth, Admiral of, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Premium</em>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>President</em>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Prince of Wales</em>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Prince Henry the Navigator, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Princess Royal</em>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Prinzessin Charlotte</em>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Privateer, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Quadruple-Expansion Engine, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Queen</em>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Rabelais, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Rainbow</em>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rainier, Rear-Admiral, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Red Dragon</em>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Red Jacket</em>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Red Star Line, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Regent</em>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Rhein</em>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rhodian sea-law, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Richard Cœur de Lion, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rise and Fall of the German Mercantile Marine, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Rob Roy</em>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Robert F. Stockton</em>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Rogers, Captain W., <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Roland Line, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Roman</em>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Roman merchant ships, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ross &amp; Primrose, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Royal Fishery Company, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Royal George</em>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Royal Mail Line, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Royal Oake</em>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Royal William</em>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Russell, John Scott, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst"><em>St. Blazius</em>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>St. Louis</em>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>St. Paul</em>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sail-Carriers, The, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Samuel Russell</em>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>San Felipe</em>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Savannah</em>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Saxonia</em>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">“School and Sea Days,” <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Scotia</em>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Screw Propeller, The, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sea Fisheries Act of 1868, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sea language, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Seamanship, Fine, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Seamen as authors, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Sea Witch</em>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Selden, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Sémillante</em>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Sercey, Rear-Admiral, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Serica</em>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Seringapatam</em>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Servia</em>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Seventeenth-Century Seafaring, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Ship-money, Levying of, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Shipbuilding in America, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Shipper Berline of Prussia</em>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</span>Ship’s bell, Introduction of, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Shipwrights Company, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Side-lights, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Signal code, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Silenus</em>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Simon of Utrecht, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Sir Edward Paget</em>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Sir Lancelot</em>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Sirius</em>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Smith, Francis, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Smith, T. &amp; W., <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Somes, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Southampton, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Sovereign of the Seas</em>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Spain</em>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Spanish Armada, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Spars and Stays, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Speculum Nauticum</em>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">State post-office, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Steam, Iron and Steel, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Steele of Greenock, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Stertebeker, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Stevens, John, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Stokehold of an Oil-Fuel Cunarder, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Stone ballast, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Stornoway</em>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Streatham</em>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Sylph</em>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Suez Canal, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Sultan</em>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Superb</em>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Swift, Dean, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Symington, William, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst"><em>Taeping</em>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Taitsing</em>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Taunton Castle</em>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Teutonic</em>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Thames</em>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Thermopylae</em>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Three Brothers</em>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Tilbury</em>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Timmins, Captain, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Titanic</em>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Townshend</em>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Toynbee, Arnold, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Toynbee, Captain Henry, F.R.G.S., F.R.A.S., <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Trades Increase</em>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Traditions, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Trafalgar</em>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Trident</em>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Triple-Expansion Engine, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Triumph of Steam, The, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Truelove</em>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Turbine, The, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Turbinia</em>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst"><em>Umbria</em>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Union Line, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">United States Merchant Marine Act, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">United States Shipping Board, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Urmston, Sir James, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Urmston, Colonel E. B., C.B., <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Urso</em>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst"><em>Valentine</em>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Vasco da Gama, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Vaterland</em>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Venetian Statutes, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Venetians, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Vesta</em>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Victor</em>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Victoria</em>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Victorian</em>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Victual Brothers, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Virginia</em>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Virginian</em>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Vivaldi, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+
+
+  <li class="ifrst">Walpole, Capt. Hon. Richard, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Warley</em>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Warren Hastings</em>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Washington Irving</em>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Waterloo</em>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">West Indiamen, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">West Indies Service, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Wexford</em>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Whall, Captain W. B., <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">White Star Line, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wigrams, The, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>William Fawcett</em>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Willoughby, Sir Hugh, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wilson, Captain Henry, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Windham</em>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Windsor Castle</em>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Woermann Line, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Woodford</em>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx"><em>Worcester</em>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">World’s Biggest Ship, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+
+  <li class="indx">Wreckers, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<p class="center no-indent fs70">
+  <span class="smcap">Made and Printed in Great Britain.</span><br>
+  <span class="smcap">Richard Clay &amp; Sons, Limited,</span><br>
+  <span class="smcap">Printers, Bungay, Suffolk.</span>
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter transnote">
+  <h2 class="nobreak fs150 bold" id="Transcribers_Notes">
+    Transcriber’s Notes
+  </h2>
+
+
+<ul>
+  <li>pg 43 Changed: pilgrim trade to Santiago de Campostela<br>
+  <span style="padding-left: 2em">To: pilgrim trade to Santiago de Compostela</span></li>
+
+  <li>pg 122 Changed: between Yarmouth and Helvoetsluis in Holland<br>
+  <span style="padding-left: 2em">To: between Yarmouth and Hellevoetsluis in Holland</span></li>
+
+  <li>pg 128 Changed: Inverness, Brassey Sound, Kirkwall, Oban<br>
+  <span style="padding-left: 2em">To: Inverness, Bressay Sound, Kirkwall, Oban</span></li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+<br>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78205 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #78205
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78205)