Pacific Mail Steamship Company

“ The Pacific Mail Steamship Company, for example, in order to pay expenses, to say nothing of profits, are obliged to charge a higher fare to passengers, to exact higher rates of freight from shippers and to demand a larger postal contract from government than they could afford to take, if by being allowed to supply themselves with ships in the cheapest markets of the world and of the best quality that competing 9 shipyards could turn out, they might save one-third of their cost and have better steamers. ”

“ The Pacific Mail Steamship Company has besides, in the Pacific, seven steamers of different tonnage, but aggregating near five thousand tons. They transport the mail only when exigencies make its transportation by them necessary or expedient.—Mr. ”

“ Chinese Eastern Railway Steamers—Coastwise. Spain Spanish Royal Mail—Europe via Suez. Holland Shell Transport and Trading—Coastwise and Europe.
When the Panama Canal opens, many more Atlantic lines, such as the Royal Mail, International Marine, German lines, etc., will probably extend their service in time to China, and many trans-Pacific lines, especially Japanese and the Pacific Mail, will extend to America’s eastern coast, not to speak of new lines which may be formed. The British-India Steamship Company intends to extend its Calcutta line across the Pacific and to New York. ”

“ The Pacific Mail Steam-ship Company, formed in 1847, is much the largest maritime undertaking yet organised, as distinctly American and under the flag of the United States, and their first steamer, the California, which left New York on the 6th of October, 1848, was the first to bear the American flag to the Pacific Ocean. To form a steam-ship establishment 4000 to 5000 or, as it was at that time, 13,000 miles from home, where the necessary supplies could only be obtained with the greatest difficulty in a country wholly new, was an undertaking of no ordinary hazard and difficulty. ”

“ In the year 1840, a contract was made by the Admiralty with the Royal Mail Steamship Company, at £240,000 sterling, or $1,200,000 per annum, for fourteen steamers to carry the mails from Southampton to the West Indies, the ports of Mexico on the Gulf, and to New Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, and Charleston. These ships are of the first class, and are to conform in all respects, concerning size and adaptation to the purposes of war, to the conditions prescribed in the Cunard contracts. ”

“ The difficulty in bringing about a substantial lessening of competition by agreement with a water carrier is found in the fact that the sea is free, so that new ships and new shipping companies can readily take the place of those that are withdrawn. The peculiar strength of the Pacific Mail in negotiating with the railroad company lay in the fact that it enjoyed for many years the exclusive privilege of through-billing freight between San Francisco and New York, including the privilege of quoting a through rate. ”

“ Besides the inland steamers there are coasting lines from Victoria and Vancouver to Portland and San Francisco, and to Puget Sound and Alaska. There are also four regular lines of steamships to Japan and China, namely, the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company, with its beautiful fleet of “Empress” steamers; the Northern Pacific Steamship Company; the Oregon R. R. and Navigation Company, and the Nipon Yunen Kaisha of Japan. There is also the direct line of steamers to Australia elsewhere referred to. ”

“ The first regular steamship service with San Francisco was started in 1867 on a monthly schedule. In 1886 regular service with Alaska was established, and the Ancon, first steamer, brought some $35,000 in gold; the Alaska Steamship Company was formed in 1895. The Northern Pacific Railroad placed the Phra Nang in service with the Orient from Tacoma in 1891. The Miike Maru, first transpacific steamship from
the Orient, arrived on Puget Sound from Japan in 1896. From then the ports of the world lay open to steamship service out of Puget Sound. ”

“ American authors suffer the same loss, however, as he, in seeing their valuable works appropriated by foreigners.
PACIFIC MAIL STEAMER.
It was with a feeling of national pride that we repeatedly saw the Pacific Mail Company’s steamer “China,” Capt. Doane, thirty days from San Francisco, come into the harbor promptly on the day she was due. She is a noble ship of four thousand tons. Capt.195 Doane came on board our ship, and invited us to inspect his vessel. It is one of the principal events of the month with Americans to have the Pacific Mail Steamers appear. ”

“ Automobiles also are coming into a limited use.
In a country where formerly no ships large enough to make long voyages were allowed to be made, steamship companies are now flourishing. The Ōsaka Shōsen Kwaisha (Osaka Merchant Marine Company) is a very large and prosperous corporation, whose business is chiefly coasting trade, but which also runs to Formosa, the Ryūkyū Islands, the Bonin Islands, Korea, China, and America. The largest steamship company in Japan, and one of the largest in the world, is the Nippon Yūsen Kwaisha (Japan Mail Steamship Company) . ”

“ The trading company knew nothing of his steamship agency, and he was informed that it was of vital importance that the lead should be transported promptly, and go forward by the earliest possible steamer without delay, in order to enable the trading company to fulfil a proposed agreement which it was about to make for the sale of the lead in Japan, and which would require its delivery there at a fixed date. Fitch thereupon named a rate, and undertook to forward the lead from New York to Yokohama, on or before September 29, via the Northern Pacific steamer sailing from Tacoma October 30, 1894. ”

“ This entirely new and important, though hazardous, branch of the service necessitated an increase of the capital of the company to 2,000,000l. In furtherance of their views the directors sent their steamer Pacific, of 2000 tons register and 450 horse-power, from Valparaiso, in May 1868, as the pioneer of the new mail line. ”

“ The early efforts of government and steamship companies to establish a line between Australia and America are well worth our notice. In 1869 Colonel Woods, mail commissioner of the New Zealand Government, was told to devise the best route for steamers carrying mails across the Pacific. He recommended establishing a service from Sydney via Wellington and Tahiti, to San Francisco, and claimed that a 2,500-ton steamer could accomplish the journey in twenty-five days under ordinary conditions. ”

“ The sudden reversal of its course at the bottom causes it to leave the suspended water in the bottom of the separator, whence it is drained off by pipes.
The most interesting illustrations of recent practice in marine engineering and naval architecture are found in the steamers which are now seen on transoceanic routes for the merchant service, and, in the naval service, in the enormous iron-clads which have been built in Great Britain.
The City of Peking is one of the finest examples of American practice. This vessel was constructed for the Pacific Mail Company. ”

“ Although we are departing from our historical sequence in the development of the steamship, it is convenient here to sketch very rapidly the progress of the Royal Mail Line farther still, for the evolution of a steamship company is not necessarily that of the steamship. A small company may be famous for having one or two ships that are always the last word in modern ship-building and marine engineering; a large company may possess a considerable aggregate of tonnage, but its ships may be behind the lead of others in improvements. ”

“ Seeing that ocean speed is attainable at so high a cost, we naturally conclude [Pg 85] that fast mail steamers can not live on their own receipts upon the ocean.
Since Great Britain established her first ocean steam mail in 1833, she has gone on rapidly increasing the same facilities, until her noble lines of communication now extend to every land and compass every sea. The last great contract which she conceded was last year, to the "European and Australian Company," for carrying the mails on a second line from Southampton via Suez to Sydney, in Australia, at £185,000, or $925,000 per year. ”

“ Several of the old ships will now have to be retained on the mail line till other vessels to replace the missing ships can be constructed, and in the meantime much inconvenience will be experienced by the disorganization into which the general mail service will necessarily be thrown by the non-employment of steamers of sufficient power and speed with which to maintain the chain of communication between this country and the West Indies, Central America, The Gulf of Mexico, Pacific, &c. ”

“ America has supported the transatlantic lines, but almost every civilized people with a seacoast has outdone us in building the ships. For a time, indeed, it seemed that we should speedily overcome the lead that England immediately took in building steamships. Her entrance upon this industry was, as we have seen, in 1838. The United States took it up about ten years later. In 1847 the Ocean Steam Navigation Company was organized in this country and secured from the Government a contract to carry the mails between New York and Bremen. ”

“ The first serious effort to apply steam power to vessels of any size dates back to only 1838-1840, years which witnessed the establishment of the Royal Mail, the Peninsular and Oriental, and the Cunard Steamship Companies. Their first vessels were steamers of 1,200 tons, having a speed of eight or nine knots. Such vessels were not formidable competitors of the old packet ships, except in the passenger trades; their average passage across the Atlantic, occupying from thirteen to seventeen days, not being a great improvement upon the passages of the sailing-packets. ”

“ But the application of steam power to the performance of long voyages is even as yet in its infancy. The chief difficulty hitherto experienced in making short and regular passages to a distant port has been the large quantity of coals required to be carried, which diminishes the power of carrying cargo in our mail steamers. It is estimated that our Cunard Company’s and the Collins’ boats would have to diminish their speed, and to forfeit some of their character for regularity in the transmission of mails to and from America, were the two countries a thousand miles farther apart. ”

“ From 1894 to 1902 there was an increase from 200,000 tons to over 1,000,000 tons of foreign shipping in which American capital has held large interests. An American corporation has been established, which is the largest and most completely equipped steamship company, but only sixteen of its 136 steamers are entitled to the American flag. In the formation of this company—the International Mercantile Marine Company—the following companies were purchased:
Shipping, Coastwise and Interior. ”

“ As in the case of specie, they are too valuable to be kept long on the ocean; but in the general traffic of the world there is so little of this class of freight that steamers can place no reliance on it as a source of income. These freights have abounded most between [Pg 42] France and England and the United States. This is the principal reason why the New-York and Havre line of mail steamers has run on so unprecedentedly small a subsidy; a sum not more than half adequate to the support of a mail line but for that class of freights. ”

“ It is intended that this Company’s vessels, which are to be powerful paddle-wheel steamers of 3000 tons, shall proceed at stated periods from Milford Haven to Aspinwall (Navy Bay) , on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus; from whence passengers and cargo will be conveyed by railway to Panama, on the Pacific side, and there re-embarked for Australia, accomplishing the whole distance, to or from, in about fifty-five days. That the power of fulfilling this promise is within the reach of an energetic Company, has recently been proved by the experiment made by the United States steamer, “Golden Age.” ”

“ No system of such magnitude can mature or cheapen when but a few years are assigned to it, and when there is no certainty that it will survive the life of a single ship. Companies undertaking the mail service under such circumstances must be paid larger sums for their general establishment, that they may be enabled to meet the exigencies and caprices of irregular legislation, which may at the close of their contracts suddenly throw a dozen good ships out of [Pg 142] employment. Every well-regulated and efficient company necessarily builds new steamers through all the stages of its existence ”

“ Should the propeller, like the side-wheel, run fast enough on the average trips of the year to carry the mails, which would certainly be at the expense and abandonment of any considerable freighting business, then the Government might with propriety pay for the mails, as these steamers would not injure the freighting business of sailing vessels. The outcry by sail owners against steamers as competitors can not be against the mail packets ”

“ I have long considered a wise, liberal, and extended steam mail system vitally essential to the commerce of the country, and to the continued prosperity and power of the American Union. Yet, I am thoroughly satisfied that this very desirable object can never be attained by private enterprise, or otherwise than through the direct pecuniary agency and support of the General Government. The abandonment of our ocean steam mail system is impossible so long as we are an active, enterprising, and commercial people. ”