Merchant shipping

“ I use the word “vain” because it is clear, if the experience of other nations, or the experience of your own nation is of any value, that all the money paid to “encourage shipping” is actually lost, for French ships, with all this protection, do not increase at the same rate as other nations, or at the same rates in the branches of your own trade, where they are guarded with unusual care, as they do in those branches where they are thrown into competition with the shipping of other countries. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For the first time English ships were engaged in the trade between England and Italy as carriers alone, deriving their remuneration entirely from the amount of freight they earned. About this time, also, the spirit for discovery in far distant and then unknown regions began to open up new and vast fields of employment for merchant shipping, from which England, in after years, derived greater advantages than any other nation. ”

“ Your coasting trade is confined strictly to French vessels. The vessels of all other nations are actually prohibited from entering it. In that trade there were entered and cleared in 1850, 2,447,556 tons of shipping. In 1860, 2,917,823 tons were entered and cleared. In your trade with the United Kingdom your Shipowners have had to contend on equal terms with the owners of British shipping, yet what are the results? ”

“ 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. ”

“ And while our people have been large gainers by the repeal of the Navigation Laws, an Act which that year came into operation, our Shipowners have been greatly benefited, for in 1860 we owned 5,710,968 tons of shipping, showing an increase in ten years of Free-trade nearly as great as the increase during thirty-five years of Protection.
But the increase in the amount of business carried on in British ships to and from the ports of Great Britain is even more remarkable. ”

“ On referring to the Customs’ entries and clearances, it will be found that out of the 5,000,000 tons of British shipping annually so entered, 2,000,000 came from our own colonies and dependencies, but that no less than 3,000,000 of British shipping are entered from foreign countries (“Hear, hear!” and confusion) , thus proving that our trade with foreign countries is much more valuable to us than the trade with our own possessions (cries of “Question!”) ”

“ 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. ”

“ He, further, showed the increase of our shipping since the relaxation of the shipping laws, maintaining that the dread of foreign competition was altogether irrational, and demonstrating, by statistics, the large share of the American direct and carrying trade we had already secured in open competition with American ships hence, and with foreign ships from their own ports to American shores ”

“ In a word, while the bulky articles which require ships for their conveyance to distant parts of the world have enormously increased, the shipping of the world has been comparatively stationary during the past year, and the many losses and disasters at sea during 1860 have tended materially to diminish the already scanty supply of shipping necessary to conduct the oversea trade of the world. ”

“ In Great Britain there is a wide and real appreciation of the value of merchant shipping. But the fact that Britain is an island depending upon lands across the seas for the very food that gives it life makes the importance of ships more evident. Not only for that, of course, are ships vital to Great Britain. To buy food her people must manufacture goods to sell to foreign peoples. Does the manufacturer weave textiles? His raw materials come from the United States, from Egypt, from Australia and New Zealand. Does he manufacture tires? ”

“ But that the great ships will decay, doth not necessarily follow; for the main trade of all the white cloth, and much of other kind, is shipped from the Port of London, and will be still, it being the fittest Port of the kingdom for Germanie and the Low Countries, where the Merchant Adventurers' trade only lieth; who shall have little cause to alter their shipping. Then the Levent Sea, Muscovy, and East Indies, whither we trade with great ships, the employing of them will be still requisite in the merchants' discretion ”

“ The vast amount of shipping, now being built to class in Lloyd’s Register, is doubtless due chiefly to the confidence which the British shipping community repose in the Society’s present rules for the building of vessels, and the manner in which they are administered. ”

“ The principle of commerce is to send out supplies in relays. Then again, we find that passengers do not go out in masses, but, at such intervals, as suit them best. And, in times of war, statesmen find it the wisest plan to send out not 1000, much less 10,000 men in one bottom, but from 400 to 600, at the utmost, in one ship. And this must appear to be sound policy, when we picture to ourselves what might be the result of sending out a whole army in the Great Eastern. ”

“ America, however, declining to accept this proposal—Views of the Committee thereon, and on the liability of Merchant Shipping—Burden of light dues—Pilotage Charges made by local authorities now, generally, abolished, as well as those of the Stade dues—The report of 1860, generally, accepted by the Mercantile Marine—Magnificent English Merchant Sailing vessels, 1859-1872—The Thermopylæ—Sir Lancelot and others—Americans completely outstripped—Equal increase in the number as well as the excellence of English shipping—Results of the Free-trade policy. ”

“ TRANSPORTS LEAVING SOUTHAMPTON ON THE NIGHT PASSAGE TO FRANCE V MANNING
SEA-LABOUR cannot be likened to employment on shore. Once signed and boarded and to sea, there can be no dismissal and replacement of the men such as may be seen any morning at the street gates of a workshop or shipyard. Good or bad, we are bound as shipmates for a voyage. Ordinary laws and regulations cannot reach us in our sailing; we are given the Merchant Shipping Act for our guidance, the longest and wordiest Act on the Statute Book, a measure that presupposes a discipline that no longer exists. ”

“ In 1850, we built 133,695 tons, and in 1861, 310,900 tons; showing an annual decrease between the former periods of 11,976 tons, but an annual increase between the latter of 177,205 tons.
The reason of these extraordinary results is obvious. Shipping is not the parent, it is the child of commerce. If your Government apply to its merchant shipping the principles we have adopted, you will find that the results will be very much the same, for these principles are applicable to all countries. Shipping has no creative power in itself, like land, or manufactures, or minerals ”

“ To a people so fond of money, and so industrious, one would have thought that the fact of such vessels conducting the most valuable trade on the Chinese coast, would have induced them to make some endeavour, by means of shipping better found and better fitted than are any they possess, to retain a trade for centuries originally and exclusively their own. ”

“ These restrictive laws often compel merchants to buy what they require, at greatly enhanced prices, articles not produced in the country from whence they are imported; as is the case in your importations from England of cotton, sugar, coffee, hemp, jute, silk, foreign wool, and numerous other articles, all arising in a great measure from the fact that the differential duties [315] imposed by your Navigation Laws oblige you to import foreign manufactures or produce, either in your own ships or in the ships of the country where the articles were produced. ”

“ For the moment English mercantile effort took a direction that did not bring it into conflict with larger interests, but when the natural expansion of trade and shipping brought the country into collision with other powers the struggles of centuries, which had shaped and hardened a skilful and dauntless maritime population, bore their natural fruit in a school of seamen able to use and direct the instruments which the increasing wealth and ambition of the nation placed in their hands. ”

“ In the present work he sketches the history of American shipping but devotes most of his space to future problems of foreign trade. Among the chapters are: Our past glories on the sea; Organization of the United States shipping board; Preparing for ship construction under war conditions; Methods by which tonnage was acquired; The new merchant marine; American commerce in the western hemisphere; American commerce in Australia and the Far East; The economical operation of ships; Reaction of ships upon national industries; Americanization and re-orientation. ”

“ In building fit vessels, the trade in which they are to be employed must be considered.
To embrace to the utmost advantage these various [Pg 119] essential qualities in a merchant-vessel, the trade in which she is to be employed requires to be considered with her mercantile capabilities in relation to cost and speed. ”

“ But whatever changes Ministers may consider most expedient to adopt, they must not lightly tamper with the merchant fleets which the skill and genius of our people have created, or with the position they have achieved since relieved from those legislative enactments, by which they were bound for more than two centuries. These fleets are now the largest, and unquestionably the finest, in the world, and instead of foreigners overstocking our own ports as was prophesied, we now conduct the greater portion of the maritime commerce of foreign nations. ”

“ Goods which can or may be legally imported into the ports of the United Kingdom from the ports of France, if so imported in French vessels, shall be subject to no higher duties than if imported in British vessels; and, reciprocally, which can or may be legally imported into the ports of France from the ports of the United Kingdom, if so imported in British vessels, shall be subject to no higher duties than if imported in French vessels. ”

“ While modern American "commerce" is increasing in a way that seems marvellous, American shipping has been almost entirely driven from the foreign "carrying trade." The English enactments relating to the colonies, from the settlement of Virginia down to and including the "famous Act of Navigation," were all designed to favor all colonial commerce as well as shipping. ”

“ For our people were then essentially a maritime people. Their greatest single manufacturing industry was ship-building. The fisheries—whale, herring, and cod—employed thousands of their men and supported more than one considerable town. The markets for their products lay beyond seas, and for their commerce an undisputed right to the peaceful passage of the Page 25ocean was necessary. Yet England and France, prosecuting their own quarrel, fairly ground American shipping as between two millstones. ”

“ A reference to our Board of Trade returns (a copy of which I will send to you on my return to England) shows the enormous increase of our commerce, and the consequent increase of the wealth and prosperity of our people.
Since the 1st of January, 1850, ships of all nations have been allowed to enter and leave our ports, and to trade to our colonies and possessions on the same terms in all respects as our own vessels. ”

“ We see the wool which your own people require, instead of being imported, as it ought to be, direct from Australia to the ports of France, sent, by the Navigation Laws of France, to the ports of England, and from thence imported at greatly enhanced prices to the consumers. It is the same with the produce of India. ”

“ Nevertheless, when it was first proposed in 1821 to allow British ships to import non-prohibited articles from any part of the world, the proposal was, for the time, effectually resisted by our shipowners, on the plea that the cheaply built and navigated vessels of other countries would carry the produce of America and Asia into continental ports, and leave to British ships only the small profit to be derived from its conveyance across the English Channel! ”

“ Thus young men of good position and talent were led to enter the American merchant service, and had much greater inducements than they would then have had in Great Britain to take a zealous interest in the economy, discipline, and success of the ship they commanded ”

“ Though the entries and clearances of British ships engaged in trade between the United Kingdom and her colonies, and foreign countries, could at both periods be obtained with accuracy, there were no certain returns of the amount of tonnage and of the number of men engaged in the Coasting trade, as the Customs did not take any notice of vessels sailing in ballast or with cargoes of a certain description. ”