Mail steamer

“ Besides the hurried rush of those who with these varied objects in view leave the steamer, there are crowds of incomers in the shape of porters, visitors, and coalheavers, and passengers for the States, who prefer the comfort and known punctuality of the Royal Mail steamers to the delay, danger, and uncertainty of the intercolonial route, though the expense of the former is nearly double. There are the friends of the passengers, and numbers of persons who seem particularly well acquainted with the purser, who bring fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, and lobsters. ”

“ Not a steamer had crossed the Atlantic by steam alone when the queen came to the throne, and her accession was in the year previous to that during which Wheatstone in this country, and Morse in America, introduced electric telegraphy. We, who enjoy express trains, six-penny telegrams, half-penny post-cards, and the parcel post, can scarcely realize that we are so near the time when mail-coaches and sailing-packets were almost the only means of conveyance, and when postage was a serious burden. ”

“ At every place we leave the mail, for the steamer has a well-regulated post-office aboard, with a postmaster and assistant, who worked night and day during the first part of the journey, but they take their ease later, as we go farther north where stations are few, and the mail has been mostly delivered. ”

“ From the talk about railways, steamers, and the House of Assembly, it is pleasant to turn to the one thing which has been really done, namely, the establishment of an electric telegraph line to St. John, and thence to the States. By means of this system of wires, which is rough and inexpensive to a degree which in England we should scarcely believe, the news brought by the English mail steamer is known at Boston, New York, New Orleans, Cincinnati, and all the great American cities, before it has had time to reach the environs of Halifax itself. ”

“ The steamers, with the outward mails on board, would proceed from Fayal on the 10th and 25th of each month, and reach New York, by Halifax, on the 7th and 23d of each month, or in thirteen days. Leaving New York on the evening of the 9th or 10th, and the 25th or 26th of the month, with the return mails from the States, and calling at Halifax for all those from British America, the steamer would reach Fayal in thirteen days, or on the 8th and 23d of each month, exactly in time, as will by-and-by be shown, for the homeward-bound West Indian and Brazil mails coming up to the same place ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Island of Fayal is chosen as the point of communication in preference to Terceira, &c. because during the few months when one side is exposed to storms, the other side is well sheltered, and the distance is very short from the one side to the anchorage on the other. As each of the steamers from the westward and southward will proceed to Falmouth in her turn, so if all the mails are up at Fayal before the outward steamer arrives from Falmouth, the steamer whose turn it is to proceed on to Falmouth, will go forward with the mails without any delay, except to take in coals. ”

“ We have already seen how the size and weight of engines and boilers must increase, as well as the bulk and cost of the fuel, to gain a little speed. But it is not generally known how large a quantity of consumable stores and baggage go in a well-supported mail packet. The greater the postal efficiency of a steamer the less is it able to carry freight; and the time will doubtless soon come when the fast mail packets will take nothing except a few express packages. The Persia now takes scarcely any freight, and the Vanderbilt can not think of doing it when she makes fast trips. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fast lines of mail steamers follow one another around the same course pursued by these floating cities, and passengers can go to or from any of these moving abodes to any part of any continent whenever they wish; so that if a dealer wishes a vehicle of special design, he can send his order by mail to any one of the six vehicle cities and have it completed by the time the floating city arrives at his port. If the community receiving the order cannot complete the work in time, the order is sent with one of the mail steamers to the next vehicle city in line. ”

“ If in attaining this average mail speed the advantages are clearly in favor of the side-wheel, there is no hope that we shall accomplish the mail service at cheaper rates than heretofore, as this agency can not be introduced toward that end; for not only is the prime cost of the steamer the same, as also the consumption of fuel per mile, but there are other and numerous disadvantages connected with the propeller, which are wholly unknown to the side-wheel. ”

“ No fewer than 64 powerful mail steamers, of the united burthen of 96,000 tons, and representing a money value of at least £4,000,000, ply, part on the Atlantic side (Southampton viâ St. Thomas, and New York to Aspinwall) , part on the Pacific side to the various harbours on the west coast of America, and keep up regular communication between Europe and that series of States, consisting of not less than 11,000,000 human beings. ”

“ We must add to this list the new steamer "Great Eastern," whose tonnage is twenty-seven thousand tons, and which will make the entire present mercantile steam tonnage of Great Britain 660,330 tons. The greater portion of these steamers, exclusive of those engaged in the foreign mail service, are employed in the coasting and foreign continental trade; while some few of them run in the American merchant service, and many others in the subsidized mail service of foreign countries, such as the lines from Hamburgh and Antwerp to Brazil, and from those cities to the United States. ”

“ In January 1851, the company by contract with the government inaugurated a monthly service to Brazil and the river Plate, and new steamers were built which greatly increased the rapidity of transit. This company was therefore the first to institute direct mail communication by steamer between Europe and the countries of South America, as it had also been with the West Indies. The company’s vessels were employed continuously during the Crimean War in the transport of troops. ”

“ While the various ways by which this latter (p. 019) could be effected are here stated, still the former will be found to be the most economical, certainly not the most inconvenient, and, on many accounts, the preferable mode. At Havannah the North American steamer would meet in the most regular manner, and to a day, the steamers from Havannah to Vera Cruz; and from Havannah to Jamaica, Barbadoes, &c. &c. The route and time of these boats would be as follows:—
Two powerful boats would be perfectly sufficient to perform this work, giving two mails each month ”

“ Conceded (Section IV.) that high, adequate mail speed is extremely costly, in the prime construction of vessels, their repairs, and their more numerous employées; that the quantity of fuel consumed is enormous, and ruinous to unaided private enterprise; and that this is clearly proven both by theory and indisputable facts as well as by the concurrent testimony of the ablest writers on ocean steam navigation: Conceded (Section V.) that ocean mail steamers can not live on their own receipts ”

“ As late as 1873 a steamer from Europe with 20,000 letters on board was considered a record breaker. To-day the Cunard steamers 63 and other transatlantic ships carrying what is called a "full European mail," usually bring some two hundred thousand letters, and an average of three hundred sacks of newspapers and printed matter for New York City, not to mention the five hundred and odd sacks for Canada, Mexico, and transpacific countries, and a few United States exchange offices, which are now taken direct to the trains and not handled at the New York office. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 main transaction of any business being made more quickly, it will be essential for the papers to pass with greater dispatch. If there were twenty telegraphic wires working day and night, which never can be the case from their expensiveness, they could not do in a month the correspondence and business done by one steamer's mail. Beside this, those who got their dispatches first would have a decided advantage over those who would be compelled from the mass of business to wait several days. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The British and French mail steamers give the port a wide offing. It has no politics, little crime, rarely gets even two lines in an English newspaper, and does nothing toward making contemporary history. ”

“ Elder, Dempster & Co. maintain a service of Mail Steamers between Antwerp and the River Congo, under the title of the Compagnie Belge Maritime du Congo, an inter-insular Mail Service at the Canary Islands, and a Coastal Service at Jamaica. They do also a large Ocean Tramp business, being prepared to carry cargo, when sufficient inducement offers, to and from any port in the world. ”

“ Five steamers were therefore built to fulfil the requirements of the trade. The first of these, the “Tongariro,” of 4163 tons, left England in October 1883. The company about this time received the contract of the New Zealand government for a monthly mail service, with a guaranteed time .of 45 days. The managers gradually eliminated all the sailing vessels from the fleet, and more recently replaced the original single-screw mail steamers with large modern twin-screws. In addition to passenger vessels the company owns several cargo boats, some of which are among the largest afloat. ”

“ Its dimensions were, as we have said, three hundred cubits, by fifty, by thirty. Those of [45] several of the fleetest Atlantic mail steamers are three hundred feet in length, fifty feet in breadth of beam, and twenty-eight and a half in depth. They have, like the ark, upper, lower, and middle stories. It is, to say the least, singular, that the ship-builders of the present day, neglecting the experience acquired by man from forty-two centuries spent more or less upon the sea, should so directly and unreservedly return to the model of the vessel constructed to outride the Flood. ”

“ Cunard as to the feasibility of the plan, and receiving from him an assurance that it might be carried into effect without in any way retarding the regular mail service, they are of the opinion that the necessary directions may be given for this purpose, subject to the following conditions:
“1. That the mail steamers shall not be delayed.
“2. That they shall not be required to alter the course they would otherwise have taken. ”

“ Many of the views advanced with regard to the Pacific Mail Company will apply to the United States Mail Steamship Company. That Company, at the outset, built very fine steamers, and ran them incessantly, until they were unfit for duty. They have constantly supplied their place, and have at all times, by building and by chartering at the highest prices, kept up a large and costly fleet for their ramified service. The service contemplated in their original contract, at $1.883/4 cents per mile, is but about two thirds of that actually performed. ”