Merchant ship

“ Leeward Ship. See Leeward.
Merchant-Ship, a vessel employed in commerce, to carry commodities of various sorts from one port to another.
The largest merchant-ships are those employed by the different European companies of merchants who trade to the East Indies. They are in general somewhat larger than our forty-gun ships: they are mounted with twenty cannon on their upper deck, which are nine pounders, and six on their quarter-deck, which are six pounders. Plate IX. fig. 5. ”

“ A vessel was a community venture, and the custom still survives in the ancient ports of the Maine coast where the shapely wooden schooners are fashioned. The blacksmith, the rigger, the calker, took their pay in shares. They became part owners, as did likewise the merchant who supplied stores and material; and when the ship was afloat, the master, the mates, and even the seamen, were allowed cargo space for commodities which they might buy and sell to their own advantage. Thus early they learned to trade as shrewdly as they navigated, and every voyage directly concerned a whole neighborhood. ”

“ One thinks of the old merchant marine in terms of the clipper ship and distant ports. The coasting trade has been overlooked in song and story; yet, since the year 1859, its fleets have always been larger and more important than the American deep-water commerce nor have decay and misfortune overtaken them. ”

“ In these days a ship is often chartered to carry a cargo to a particular port, and there the captain obtains another cargo, such as the market affords him, to some other port, and so he may wander over the world in the most unforeseen manner before he finds a profitable opportunity of returning to his starting-place. So, probably, in those times the spirited merchant would not merely oscillate between home and a given foreign point, but would carry on a traffic of an adventurous and hazardous but exciting kind, from one of the great European ports to another. ”

“ We are well aware that the merchant ship, like the warship, is a compromise, and that the ingenuity of the naval architect is sorely taxed to meet the many demands for speed, coal capacity, freight capacity, and luxurious accommodations for passengers. ”

“ As I write, the actual head of the greatest shipping concern the world has ever known, is a Wall Street banker, whose knowledge of the sea was gained from the deck of a private steam yacht or the cabin de luxe of a fast liner, and who has applied to the shipping business only the same methods of stock manipulating that made him the greatest railroad director in the world before he thought to control the ocean as well. With steam, the sailor has become a mere deckhand; the captain a man of business and a disciplinarian, who may not know the names of the ropes on a real ship ”

“ The economy begins with the construction, for the original cost of an iron ship is less than that of a wooden one, and, apart altogether from her superior capacity for cargo, it runs on with the course of the ship’s service as the result of several causes ”

“ To such doubters, before the war, there was always ready the routine reply that a navy protected commerce; and American shipping, then the second in the world, literally whitened every sea with its snowy cotton sails, a distinctive mark at that time of American merchant shipping. In my first long voyage, in 1859, from Philadelphia to Brazil, it was no rare occurrence to be becalmed in the doldrums in company with two or three of these beautiful semi-clipper vessels, their low black hulls contrasting vividly with the tall pyramids of dazzling canvas which rose above them. ”

“ It must be a matter of deep interest to all present, because you are all directly or indirectly interested in the shipping trade, to know whether such a ship as the Great Eastern is, or is not, likely to answer in a commercial point of view, and I venture on this topic because I have heard strong opinions expressed to the effect that, commercially, she will be a great triumph. ”

“ The steamship has not only revolutionized commerce, and war, but exchanges. Long before the arrival of the tardy sailing-ship, at her destined port, with her ponderous cargo, the nimble mail-steamer deposits a duplicate of her invoice, and bill of lading, with the merchant to whom she is consigned; and when the ship has landed her cargo, the same, or another steamer, takes back a bill of exchange, for the payment of the freight. ”

“ Clearing a cargo from an English port was a complicated process. When the goods were brought down to the wharf they were taken over by the packer and his underlings, whose duty it was to pack them and enter them at the custom-house, giving a true inventory of the contents of the bales. The merchant having paid the duties to the customers, the latter sent ‘cocketts’ or tallies for the same to the searcher, who searched the ship to see if they were true. ”

“ Merchant ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though following the sea as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless deep itself. ”

“ Their crews were nearly four times as numerous as would be required for modern merchant sailing-ships of similar size.
At the close of the great wars in the early part of this century commercial pursuits naturally received a strong impetus. Great competition arose, not only between individual owners, but also between the shipowning classes in various countries. This caused considerable attention to be paid to the improvement of merchant-ships. The objects sought to be attained were greater economy in the working of vessels and increased speed combined with cargo-carrying capacity. ”

“ Fig. 192.--Merchant Vessel in a Storm.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Grand Kalendrier et Compost des Bergers," in folio: printed at Troyes, about 1490, by Nicolas de Rouge. C
"Mortal man, living in the world, is compared to a vessel on perilous seas, bearing rich merchandise, by which, if it can come to harbour, the merchant will be rendered rich and happy. The ship from the commencement to the end of its voyage is in great peril of being lost or taken by an enemy, for the seas are always beset with perils. So is the body of man during its sojourn in the world. ”

“ Here the master does not superintend personally, but gives general instructions to the chief mate, whose duty it is to see to their execution. In order to understand this distinction, it is necessary to define the two great divisions of duty and labour on shipboard. One is the working and navigating of the vessel; that is, the keeping and ascertaining the ship’s position on the ocean, directing her course, the making and taking in sail, trimming the yards to the wind, and the various nautical manɶuvres and evolutions of a vessel. ”

“ There were, however, merchant-ships which traded to far-distant shores. They were probably good wholesome craft, of somewhat tub-like form, of about the size of a vessel of the present day of one hundred to one hundred and fifty tons, rigged with two or three big sails, with one bank of oars, and manned by a hardy and numerous crew, who patiently waited for the coming of a fair wind before they ventured to make sail; and who, though generally addicted to hugging the shore, yet at times ventured to stand out into the boundless ocean, guided alone by the stars. ”

“ Before the merchant will buy a ship, he must see her register, and ascertain from inspectors, builders and owners, if she is every way sound and seaworthy; he will not be satisfied with a new coat of paint, and a flowing pennant with its radiant swallow's tail. ”

“ This important section of the Merchant Shipping Act of 1854 requires all sea-going vessels to be provided with a certain number of boats in proportion to their tonnage and the trade in which they are engaged. It lays down rules as to the meeting and passing of ships at sea, and the use of lights and fog-signals—a regulation of daily increasing importance and more completely carried [Pg 312] out in 1863, from the vast number of vessels now traversing the ocean, and especially the English and other great channels of commerce. ”

“ State of British merchant shipping, temp. George I.
War, as we have too frequently seen, is a terrible obstacle to all industrial pursuits, and to no branch of commerce—however much a certain class of shipowners may have realised by having their vessels employed as government transports—is it a greater source of [Pg 211] lasting injury than to the mercantile marine. ”

“ All over the world, in every sea, are thousands upon thousands of ships of every kind and description, night and day speeding onward, each to its destined port. Lines of Passenger-ships regularly plough the main, starting on fixed days, and seldom failing to arrive on fixed days. Merchant ships innumerable follow certain routes, going from country to country over the Ocean, carrying the world’s produce. ”

“ I add, to the end that all men should understand somewhat of the great masses of treasure daily employed upon our Navy, how there are few merchant ships of the first and second sort, that being apparelled and made ready to sail, are not worth one thousand pounds, or three thousand ducats at the least, if they should presently be sold. What then shall we think of the Navy-Royal, of which some one vessel is worth two of the other, as the shipwright has often told me. ”

“ There appear to be now employed in these questionable operations, no less than 117 Government surveyors, “shipwrights,” and “engineers,” stationed at different ports in the United Kingdom, twelve of whom are retired officers of the Royal Navy, besides a good many so-called “shipwrights,” who can have very little knowledge of the construction of merchant ships or of their requirements. ”

“ If the Norman Conquest gave the first great impulse to English over-sea trade, the events of the close of the fourteenth and first half of the fifteenth centuries may be held to mark the second important era in the development of merchant shipping by the opening up of fresh markets. ”

“ But, if we are insistent in our search, we may borrow from the naval charters, and read that not all the glory of our sea-history lies with the thunder of broadsides and the impact of a close boarding. Engagement with the elements—a contest with powers more cruel and implacable than keen steel—efforts to further able navigation, the standard of our seamanship—drew notable recruits to the humbler sea-life. The small crews and less lavish gear on the freighters brought the essentials of the sea-trade to each individual of the ship's company. ”

“ Its commerce is speculative but vast and successful. It is a frequent circumstance that a ship goes out without a cargo for a voyage around the world. In such a case the captain puts his elder children to school, takes his wife and younger children and starts for some semi-barbarous place where he procures some odd kind of cargo which he exchanges with advantage for another somewhere else; and so goes trafficking around the world, bringing home a freight of the highest value. ”

“ The challenge to our seafaring we met by skill and hardihood—keener and more polished arms than the weapons of our sea-fathers. The coming of competitors spurred us to sea-deeds in the handling of our ships and cargoes, dispatch in the ports, and activity in the yards, that brought acknowledged victory to our flag. Every sense and thought that was in us was used to further our supremacy. The craft and workmanship of the builders and enterprise of the merchants provided us with the most beautiful of man's creations on the sea—the square-rigged sailing ship of the nineteenth century. ”

“ INTERESTING as the ocean fleet is from the point of view of the passenger who crosses the seas on business or pleasure bent, the part that steamships play in the commerce of the world is even more worthy of consideration. There is a vast region between decks and down in the lower hold of which the ordinary traveller knows little. And yet the ship’s cargo brings to the owners a large portion of their revenue, and makes possible the magnificent steamships of to-day. ”

“ The shipping reports of the daily newspaper prove more fascinating than the ticker tape, and the tidings of a successful voyage thrill one with a sense of personal gratification. For the sea has not lost its magic and its mystery, and those who go down to it in ships must still battle against elemental odds—still carry on the noble and enduring traditions of the Old Merchant Marine. ”

“ Then—as later, in the keen sailing days of our clipper ships—their hardest taskmasters were foremast hands, watchmates, the men they lived with and ate with and worked with—bitter critics, unpersuadable, who saw only menace and a threat to their own safety in the shipping of a man who could not do man's work. On the decks and about the spars of a merchant vessel, each man of the few seamen carried two lives—his own and a shipmate's—in his ability to 'hand, reef, and steer.' There was no place on board for a 'waister,' a 'swabber,' longshoreman, or sea labourer. ”

“ Men, thick-set, sturdy, bronzed, branded in solid suits of good blue cloth, all with that look in the eye which stamps the seafarer. Other men whom one supposed to have something to do with sea-trade—ship's chandlers, perhaps, or shipping-agents. ”

“ Since the introduction of steam, the merchant navies of the world have increased to an enormous extent; and in [Pg xix] comfort, beauty, and speed, the vessels of the present day immeasurably surpass those of any other period. Modern appliances in their propulsion, while altering the mode in which commercial pursuits are conducted, have also materially changed the seats and centres of maritime commerce. ”