PORTS AND PORT EQUIPMENT
Not all of the story of the sea is in the story of ships. Ships have
always required shelter from the stress of sea, where repairs could
be made, where cargoes could be loaded and unloaded, where crews and
passengers could be taken on board or put ashore. In ancient times a
river’s mouth might have been sufficient, or a natural indentation in
the coast line where a small protected body of water lay in the lee of
a jutting headland. Sometimes a small bay, almost completely surrounded
by land, and still deep enough for ships to ride at anchor, served as
a harbour of refuge. Sometimes islands might be found that protected a
small arm of the sea.
All such places along the Mediterranean coast early became known to
navigation, for the early sailor was inclined to skirt the shore,
fearful of the perils of the open sea. At first these sheltered spots
were left, of course, as Nature had made them. Perhaps a bar at the
mouth made entry difficult; perhaps the prevailing winds drove piled-up
seas into the broad mouths of others; perhaps marshes surrounded others
still, and in such cases these harbours were less used than those
without such disadvantages.
But wherever a fine harbour existed there grew up a port, for ships,
except those meant for war, have no uses save to carry the goods and
passengers that originate ashore. If, on some one of these finer
harbours, a port sprang up, and if a rich interior country was easy
of access from it, because of a navigable river, perhaps, or because
caravan routes converged there, or an easy defile through some
mountain range led to some rich valley not too far distant, these ports
became important. They grew in size because the ease of land or inland
transportation permitted the people of the interior to bring their
goods for sale. Because of their increased size they attracted the
makers of cloth, of leather goods, of glass, of metal ware and cutlery,
and of all the great list of goods that go to make up commerce. These
artisans came to important ports because the ease of distribution made
it simpler for them to sell their wares.
[Illustration: A MAP OF THE PORT OF NEW YORK
_The Lower Bay has not yet been developed, but about the Upper Bay and
along the Hudson and East rivers hundreds of piers are in everyday
use. While New York is a huge port and while it can continue to grow
for many years it has numerous disadvantages, one of the chief of
which is the absence of a belt line railroad._
]
At first, the ships being small, they could be drawn up on the beach,
but as trade increased it was found advisable to build warehouses
and sea walls, so that goods could be stored and easily loaded and
unloaded. The port having become important, it became vital to protect
it from pirates and other enemies, so walls were built about it on the
landward side, and sometimes sea walls were built on the water side, in
which a narrow entrance was left open during the day and closed with
a heavy chain or a floating barricade at night. These sea walls were
often as important to shield the ports from storms as to protect them
from enemies. Thus the early ports developed, and within these walls
were not only all the traders with their goods, but shipyards and those
who supplied ships with cordage, lumber, and sails, as well.
This simple type of port was the rule down to long after the Middle
Ages. As a matter of fact, the great complete structure of the modern
port has been developed within very recent times—principally since the
introduction of steam.
Naturally enough such cities as Venice and Genoa, in their heyday,
about or a little after the year 1200, were no longer simple ports, but
by comparison with even minor ports of to-day they were simple places.
With the development of steam, however, ports became more and more
complex. The increased size of ships, the great investments that
demanded no loss of time in loading and unloading, the vast increase
in the amount of freight and the number of passengers handled—all
these, and many other reasons, compelled ports to add complexity to
complexity, until the person unfamiliar with the great doings of a
busy modern port stands aghast at the vast collection of quays and
docks, jetties and sea walls, steam tugs and canal boats, ferryboats
and barges, floating grain elevators and great suction dredges, ocean
liners and ocean tramps, and a great variety of complicated equipment
in the shape of shipyards, coal pockets, factories, warehouses,
railroad terminals, and many other things too numerous to mention.
[Illustration: A MAP OF THE PORT OF LIVERPOOL
_While Liverpool is much smaller, so far as mere area is concerned,
than New York, it handles about the same amount of freight. Freight
ships load and unload in the tidal basins while passenger steamers use
floating landing stages._
]
Ships do not make a port. Even a fine harbour will not do that alone.
New York is to-day one of the very greatest of the world’s great ports,
but had Nature erected a barrier of insurmountable mountains around it,
even though the harbour and the entrance from the sea had been left
exactly as they are now, it would have been an inconsequential place,
important, perhaps, as a naval base, but unimportant as a centre of
trade, for communication with the interior would have been rendered
difficult or impossible, so that the wheat of the great Northwest, the
iron and steel of Pittsburgh, the manufactured products of a thousand
centres would have found their way to Baltimore or Philadelphia or
Boston or to some other port easier of access.
Thus a port depends on two things—first, ease of access to the sea;
second, ease of access to a productive hinterland.
Nor can a port become highly important if its trade is all in one
direction. If it imports but does not export, ships can come loaded
but must go away empty, and to do that they must charge very high and
possibly prohibitive rates for the freight they bring. If the port
exports but does not import, then ships must come empty before they
can secure their cargoes, and the result is the same. A healthy port,
then, must have a _constant and steady_ stream of freight bound in
both directions. Montreal would be a more important port than it is
if it served a hinterland that bought in larger quantities the goods
manufactured in Europe, for Montreal could export very nearly all the
wheat that ships could take from her harbour. But her imports are so
much less than her possible exports that ships cannot afford to come in
sufficient numbers to carry away all that she could send, especially as
the wheat can be, and a large part of it is, diverted to Philadelphia,
New York, Boston, and Portland.
Imagine a rich country, producing goods in large quantities which are
salable in foreign lands, and anxious and willing to buy, in equal
quantities, the goods of these foreign lands. Imagine such a country
without a single harbour—with, perhaps, a long unbroken coast of sandy
beach on which relentless surges pound the whole year through. Would
such a country long remain without a port? Not so. No matter how
difficult and costly the task might be, a port would be _built_ upon
that very coast. A harbour would be dredged. Great sea walls would
be erected. Vast warehouses, great quays and docks, busy railroad
terminals would soon be in operation, and where Nature had made no
harbour, man would have one.
But Nature is seldom so unkind. All around the world are natural
harbours which need only the clever hand of man to become busy with the
transfer of goods. Some, of course, have more natural advantages than
others. Some are almost entirely the work of man, as others are almost
entirely the work of Nature, but their natural advantages must be many
ere it is worth the time of man to improve them.
[Illustration: A MAP OF THE PORT OF RIO DE JANEIRO
_Rio Bay is probably the finest in the world, but mountains paralleling
the coast form a handicap to the easy transportation of goods inland._]
The natural advantages of a port, however, are of the greatest value
when they combine many things far distant from the port itself with the
natural advantages of the harbour, its surroundings, and its outlet.
To cite New York once more, among its great advantages are these:
First, a fine harbour, with ease of access to the sea yet with thorough
protection from its storms. Second, suitable land surrounding the
harbour, on which factories, warehouses, piers, and shipyards can
be erected. Third, a great and navigable river leading into a rich
country. Fourth, a fine canal connecting the upper reaches of that
river with a far greater land, rich in people of great purchasing and
producing power, rich in mines, in farms, in factories. Fifth, routes
leading overland into the interior along which great railroads have
been built that reach with their network ten thousand centres that
otherwise could not buy the goods imported to New York or sell their
own either there or beyond the seas. These five things have created
at the mouth of the Hudson one of the greatest seaports of all time.
Without any one of them New York could not be the port it is, but of
the five, the first two are the least important, for a harbour could
be made, and had the surrounding land been a marsh it could have been
built into dry land. Without the trade of the great land to the West,
however, New York could not have been the port that it is to-day.
But an account of all the factors that go to make a port would take one
far afield, so with only this inconsequential statement in reference to
the vast economic structure that lies behind a port, I shall confine
myself directly to the port itself and to its environs, its equipment,
and its activities.
No two ports are identical, but the major ports of the world divide
themselves more or less readily into types which I may be permitted
to call the European and the American types, inaccurate as those
classifications may be. I shall describe, in more or less detail, these
two types, and add to this something from other ports that fall less
readily under these two inaccurate classifications.
To begin with it needs to be said that mere size has little bearing on
a port’s ability to handle large quantities of freight. By comparison
with the area of the port of New York the area of the port of Liverpool
is limited, New York being perhaps six times larger. Across the Mersey
from Liverpool are the Birkenhead Docks, which, so far as mere area
is concerned, are hardly larger than the Cumminipaw Terminal of the
Central Railroad of New Jersey which lies across the Hudson from
the Battery. The port of New York, including the New Jersey side of
the Hudson and the Bay, has a developed waterfront several times as
great as the port of Liverpool including the Birkenhead Docks, yet
the tonnage of overseas freight handled in each of these two ports is
roughly the same.
The same comparison can be made with many other European ports, which
are all far smaller than New York although several equal or exceed New
York in the tonnage of transoceanic freight handled.
But let us take New York and describe it, in order that other ports may
be compared with it.
[Illustration: A MAP OF THE PORT OF CAPE TOWN
_Table Bay is open to the force of north and northwest winds. Before
the bay could protect ships from the frequent storms blowing from
these directions a series of breakwaters had to be built, in the lee
of which ships could anchor._
]
Entering New York Bay from the ocean a ship passes between Coney
Island on the right and Sandy Hook on the left. Within these two
points lies the Lower Bay, a great and largely undeveloped body of
water around which practically none of the port’s equipment is placed.
Standing on up the channel, with Long Island on the right and Staten
Island on the left, the ship enters the Narrows, a restricted passage
connecting the Lower and the Upper bays. Once through the Narrows the
port begins to show itself. The Upper Bay is smaller than the Lower
and is roughly rectangular, while at each corner a river or a strait
connects it with other bodies of water. Of these the Narrows, just
mentioned, is the most important, for through it flows far and away the
greatest stream of shipping. The Hudson River is second in importance,
for this great and navigable stream penetrates far into the interior
and is connected with the Great Lakes by the Erie Canal, or, as the
newly finished improvement on the Erie Canal is called, the State Barge
Canal. The other two exits from the Upper Bay are the East River—a
strait connecting the Bay with Long Island Sound—and, least important,
the Kill von Kull, leading from the Upper Bay to Newark Bay.
Piers and huge railroad terminals are to be found on every side, and,
more important still, they line the Hudson River for four or five miles
on each side from its mouth at the Battery, to Fifty-ninth Street on
the Manhattan side, and to Fort Lee in New Jersey. Similarly, but to a
less extent, the East River is lined with piers while a great railroad
terminal is located on Long Island Sound just beyond where the East
River ends. Yet thriving as it is, this great port, compared with some
other great ports, is an inefficient place.
Marseilles is a smaller port than New York, yet Marseilles, for every
linear foot of equipped quay, averages annually 1,500 tons of cargo
transferred as against 150 at New York.
The reason for this is that the ports are two different types. In
New York the piers are long and narrow and are built on piles from
the shore line out into the water to the pier line. Such structures
are inefficient in many ways. The piers being narrow, they make it
difficult for a roadway to be kept open throughout their entire length,
and force the handlers of freight to store it high on both sides.
Furthermore, the strength of the structures will seldom permit of the
erection of numerous cranes along each side in order to expedite the
loading and unloading of ships.
[Illustration: A MAP OF THE PORT OF MARSEILLES
_In this case the city grew up practically without a harbour. Finally
a breakwater was erected parallel to the shore in order that ships
might be protected from the sea._
]
In Hamburg there are quays 1,500 feet long with 3-ton cranes spaced
every 100 feet. In all of New York Harbour there is no installation
similar to this. It is true that at the Bush Terminals there is an
excellent installation of warehouses, piers, railroad facilities, and
other port equipment—an installation comparable to the best—but New
York as a whole could be greatly improved, although it is only fair to
say that the difficulties and expense would be great.
But while foreign ports are likely to be more lavishly equipped with
loading and unloading machinery, it must be remembered that they, long
since, have developed the small areas at their disposal and cannot
readily expand, while New York, great as it is, still has room for
expansion and could add many times its present equipment to what it now
has.
Furthermore, New York labours under another, and a very serious,
handicap. It has grown to be one of the world’s great manufacturing
centres. It abounds in factories. The wholesale houses, the stores, and
other places of business handle huge stocks of goods, and the railroad
facilities are limited. Every port should have a “belt line” railroad,
that is, a railroad circling it about, crossing all the lines that
come to it from any direction. With such a railroad, freight could be
brought into the city by any line, turned over to the Belt Line, and
switched to almost any of the industrial sections or quays. But New
York has no such railroad. To begin with, New York proper is on the
Island of Manhattan, and only one freight line comes into the city.
The others all have their terminals in New Jersey, save for one on the
north shore of Long Island Sound and one in Brooklyn. Therefore, it
is necessary to transfer the freight intended for New York by means
of “car ferries.” Furthermore, all the freight landed on New York
piers must be transported by trucks, or reëmbarked on canal boats
and barges. Except on the New Jersey side of the Bay and the Hudson
River, on Staten Island and at the Bush Terminals, there are few places
in the entire port where railroads can run their cars to warehouses
conveniently placed for the reception of cargoes.
Busy as are the piers on Manhattan Island they are devoted almost
exclusively, so far as freight is concerned, to the shipments intended
for the business houses located in Manhattan. The congestion always
noticeable along West Street is due to the unfortunate location of the
principal borough of New York City on an island, and little of this
busy district is given over to the handling of foreign commerce.
[Illustration: A TUG BOAT
_The bows of these boats are often protected by pads to which much wear
often gives an appearance of a tangled beard._]
Were the facilities for handling freight more highly developed, a large
percentage of the cost of shipment would be eliminated. While the port
of New York is fortunate in many respects, its plan is such that it
is difficult to see how a highly efficient system of freight transfer
could be installed without disproportionate expense. Lacking this
system, there is a great deal of freight handled in the most expensive
possible way—by hand—which could be handled more cheaply were it
practicable to instal the most highly developed mechanical assistance.
This manual labour necessitates higher rates for the shipment of
freight. How great these costs are is apparent when one realizes that
once aboard ship, a cargo of coal could be carried from New York to
Rio de Janeiro for what it would cost, to move by hand, a pile of coal
the same size as the cargo, a distance of sixty feet. Such a statement
gives one a little grasp on the huge costs of unnecessary freight
handling.
What I have termed the “American type” of ports are those that have
piers built on piles out from the shore line. Alongside these piers the
ships are tied up, and largely with their own derricks they hoist their
cargoes from their holds and deposit them on the pier. Sometimes these
piers are two stories high, with one floor intended for incoming and
the other for outgoing freight. These piers may be from a few hundred
to a thousand or more feet in length, and the longer they are the
broader they must be in order that there may be enough space between
the freight on both sides for the trucks that cart the freight to or
from them, for the longer the pier the more freight it will have and
the more trucks it will need to accommodate in order to have it moved.
But piers are not the best arrangement for handling freight. A more
nearly ideal arrangement is a warehouse served on one side by ships
and on the other by a railroad and trucks. In this case the warehouse
becomes a reservoir capable of taking quickly into storage the
huge cargoes of many ships. From this reservoir of imports freight
trains can be loaded conveniently without congestion. On the other
hand, exports sent to the warehouse by rail can arrive in trainload
or carload or even less-than-carload shipments and can be stored
conveniently until a cargo is on hand, when it can quickly be put
aboard ship. In such a port as New York such a warehouse would need, as
well, to be equipped to load and unload lighters and canal boats. Were
all of the piers of the port of New York rebuilt along these lines—and
that is practically impossible—the port could handle with ease and the
minimum of expense many times its present tonnage.
[Illustration: A NEW YORK HARBOUR FERRY
_While these double-ended ships are large, they do not compare in size
with the liners. Yet they carry hundreds of thousands of passengers to
and fro across the Hudson and the Upper Bay._
]
What I have called the “European type” of port is one in which piers,
such as those in New York, are practically unknown. Many European ports
have a handicap that does not trouble ports of the United States. This
handicap is the high tide. While the tide at New York has a range of
4½ feet, at Boston 9½ feet, at Baltimore 1 foot, Liverpool is troubled
with a range of 25 or 30 feet, and many other ports have as much, or
almost as much. This means that while a ship may be tied up to a pier
at New York and not be bothered by an extreme movement up and down
great enough to make her any difficulty in the handling of her cargo,
ships in Liverpool cannot be berthed at unprotected piers, for if they
were they would find their decks far below the deck of the pier at low
tide, while at high tide the water would raise them until their decks
would be above it.
There are two ways of overcoming this difficulty. At Liverpool great
landing stages are built, floating in the water parallel to the shore.
Running from these to the shore are great hinged gangplanks which
permit the landing stage to rise and fall with the tides while these
gangplanks, which are really more like bridges, hold them parallel to
the shore and serve as bridges as well. A ship, made fast to one of
these landing stages, rises and falls as the stage does, and the two
maintain their relative positions to each other regardless of the stage
of the tide. In Liverpool these stages are largely used for passenger
ships.
The other method, which is also in use at Liverpool as well as at many
other ports, is to build a sea wall across the entrance to the docks,
and in this sea wall to build a “lock,” or a water gate. When the tide
is in, the water gate is opened and the harbour or the dock is flooded
to the level of high tide. As the tide recedes this lock is closed and
the water level behind it remains the same. Ships pass in and out,
either at high tide, when the lock or gate can be left open for a time,
or, if at other stages of the tide, by means of the lock, which, being
made up of two gates at the opposite ends of a long, narrow, canal-like
passageway, makes it possible for the ship to pass into the lock, where
the water level can be made to coincide with the level of the dock or
of the water outside. Then, by opening the inner or the outer gate, as
the case may be, the ship can enter the dock or the unprotected waters
outside.
Equipment of both these types is to be found at a number of European
ports, while still other ports, not troubled with a great range of
tide, do not find it necessary to instal them.
[Illustration: A NEW YORK HARBOUR LIGHTER
_Lighters take various forms and perform various tasks. European
lighters are more likely to have pointed ends. American lighters very
often have square ends. Occasionally they have engines of their own,
but generally they depend on tugs for power._
]
But the principal difference between the European and American types
is to be found in the use by the former of huge quays, sometimes more
or less similar in general shape to the American piers, but infinitely
larger. Also they are surrounded by stone sea walls and are of dry
land. On these great quays are warehouses, railroad tracks, derricks,
cranes, and even great railroad yards. They are of various sizes and
various shapes, but all of them, by comparison with piers, are very
large. At Manchester, for instance, where a harbour has been built in
that inland city and connected with the Irish Sea by the Manchester
Ship Canal, there are only eleven or twelve quays, but their area is
152 acres, and they have a water frontage of more than five miles. The
railways and sidings on and immediately adjacent to the quays have a
total length of well over thirty miles. Great warehouses, some as many
as thirteen stories high, are built on these quays, with berthing space
for ships on one side and railroad sidings on the other. Inland canals
as well as railroads serve this port and, of course, much local freight
is moved by truck. Manchester is an excellent example of what I have
termed the European type of port.
But as I have said, no two ports are identical. Each port has
advantages and disadvantages, problems and solutions of its own.
Descriptions of a few scattered ports may be of some service in giving
an idea of the variety of problems and solutions that may arise, before
I turn to a description of the details of port equipment.
I have given a little space to the arrangement of the ports of New York
and Manchester, and Liverpool has been mentioned. Let us turn, then, to
Rio de Janeiro, a port very different from these.
Rio is on one of the most magnificent harbours in the world, and is
becoming an increasingly important port. It labours, however, under a
very serious handicap in that it has no waterway leading into the vast
interior of Brazil. Furthermore, other easy routes inland from Rio are
interfered with by the mountain ranges that lie close to the coast.
Railroads have been built across these mountains for some distance
into the interior, but the grades are heavy, and by present methods it
would be expensive and difficult to send great quantities of freight by
these routes. For this reason Rio is not likely ever to become a South
American New York. Here, then, is a case of a magnificent harbour that
will probably never be used to its capacity.
The harbour itself is about sixteen miles long and is from two to
eleven miles in width. It is deep enough to accommodate the world’s
greatest ships and could readily be equipped with an almost perfect
arrangement of terminal facilities. As it stands the port is excellent,
but by comparison with other large ports its tonnage of freight is
limited. Quays similar to those so often used in European ports are in
use in Rio, and in the development of the port the European system is
being followed.
[Illustration: A MISSISSIPPI RIVER STERN-WHEELER]
Capetown is less fortunate in its harbour than Rio, for Table Bay,
upon which Capetown is situated, is twenty miles wide at its entrance
and is fully exposed to the north and northwest gales. This handicap
necessitated the construction of huge breakwaters which enclose two
basins of a total area of about seventy-five acres. In addition there
is a good anchorage in the lee of one of the breakwaters, and the port
is expanding in order to utilize this protected spot. Here again the
several miles of quays are of the European type.
Marseilles, on the other hand, can hardly be said to have a harbour at
all. It is situated on an indentation of the coast which is slightly
protected by Cape Croisette, but which is entirely unprotected from
the west. This has necessitated the erection of a breakwater parallel
to the shore line behind which are a series of basins in which are a
dozen or so docks and quays. The Mediterranean is practically tideless,
so the basins at Marseilles do not require locks, but the basins, in
almost every respect, except for the absence of dock gates, are similar
to those, for instance, at Liverpool. A glance might suggest that
Marseilles would be an inefficient port, but the contrary is the case.
I could go on almost indefinitely listing ports that differ as greatly
from these as these differ from one another, but I could hardly show
more clearly how diverse are the problems to be solved by the designers
and builders of ports. There are many books, of which “Ports and
Terminal Facilities,” by Roy S. MacElwee, Ph. D., is one, that discuss
the numerous economic, engineering, and structural phases of ports, and
to these I refer the person interested in the technicalities of port
design, construction, and operation. This outline, being consciously
non-technical and limited, must pass on to other things.
What is most obvious to the casual observer at a busy port is the great
and varied stream of shipping that seems for ever on the move. For a
moment I shall turn to this collection of ships in order to explain the
uses of the different types and the necessity for them.
A ship arrives in a busy port from a foreign country. The ship is
large and is designed so as to be easily handled at sea. She is not,
however, easy to handle in the restricted and crowded waters of a port.
It takes a quarter- or a half-mile circle for her to turn around in,
if she is under way, and she is not entirely to be trusted if the tide
catches her in narrow waters. A collision may result, and so there are
tugboats which, among their numerous duties, are employed to tow her
about the harbour, or to assist in turning her, or to push her awkward
nose across the sweep of the tide in order that she may enter a dock or
swing into a narrow slip.
[Illustration: A MODERN VENETIAN CARGO BOAT
_This is hardly more than a barge, with a sail plan of a modified
form, somewhat suggesting the lateen rig common in the Mediterranean,
and something like the lug sails common in French waters._
]
Tugs are even more necessary when sailing ships appear, for a large
sailing ship without auxiliary power is hard to handle in a crowded
and narrow harbour. Barges, too, require outside power, which the tugs
furnish, for few barges have power of their own. Canal boats are barges
of a sort, and once in a port can no longer depend upon the mule teams
that tow them through canals. So the tug’s life is a busy and a varied
one. It swings on the end of a huge hawser in its attempt to keep the
_Leviathan_ or the _Majestic_ from sideswiping a pier. It tows barges
loaded with coal, or piled high with any other kind of cargo. It tows
a string of empty and wall-sided canal boats up the river, or steams
along with one lashed to each side. Tugs carry no cargo, but they are
for ever straining at hawsers in their energetic furthering of commerce.
Lighters are of any size and of a great variety of shapes. In New
York they are likely to be capable of carrying from three hundred to
six hundred or seven hundred tons of freight, and are merely huge
scows, their sides parallel, their ends square, their decks slightly
overhanging the water at bow and stern. Often there is a small deck
house for the accommodation of the “crew,” which generally consists
of one man, who serves as watchman, and also handles the lines as the
lighter is made fast to tugs or piers or to the sides of other vessels.
Other ports have other types of lighters. In Hamburg they range in
size from comparatively small boats to comparatively large ones. The
small ones, and even some of the larger, are often propelled along the
shallow canals of the port by poles, or are pulled along the quays by
men to whom lines are passed. These Hamburg lighters are often built
of steel (the New York lighters are usually of wood) and have pointed
bows and sometimes pointed sterns. They are broad and sturdy, some
have decks, some covered decks, and some are open. In bad weather
the freight on these open lighters is covered by tarpaulins. It is
interesting that the largest Hamburg lighters about equal in size the
smallest New York lighters. In vessels so simple as lighters are, there
can be few differences save those of size and general shape, so one
will find that most lighters fall into one or the other of the types I
have mentioned. They are sometimes loaded directly from ships. They may
be loaded from freight put ashore on piers, quays, at grain elevators
and ore pockets. At some ports where the draft of water does not permit
a heavily laden ship to enter, the lighters are sent out to where the
ship is at anchor and “lightens” her, if she is discharging, or takes
her her cargo if she is loading. Lighters, then, are floating delivery
wagons, subject to many uses.
Canal boats hardly require much space. They are merely barges whose
uses are largely restricted to canals. They have no power of their own,
and their journeys are generally at the end of a towline hitched to
a mule or a team which walks along a tow path beside the canal. They
are unbeautiful but useful, and usually have a deck house for the use
of the bargeman, who is often accompanied by his wife and children.
There are no masts from which to spread sails or fly signal flags,
but in lieu of this, one sometimes sees the housewife hanging out her
washing on a clothesline stretched wherever she can place it. In their
attempt to secure the comforts of home the bargeman’s family is likely
to have with it a dog or a couple of pigs, and sometimes both. Such a
collection of human and animal passengers can live on a canal boat with
a considerable degree of comfort, for the dangers of the sea are not
for them. Although life on a canal boat is subject to some handicaps,
at least it does not include danger from high seas and uncharted reefs.
The introduction of the gasolene engine has made possible successful
small boats, of almost every size and shape, speedy, slow, seaworthy,
or cranky, depending on their design or lack of design. They scoot
everywhere on a thousand errands and add a nervous note to ports that
otherwise would seem to be calm and self-possessed. These motor boats
are infinite in number and are put to every use. Here, however, I shall
not do more than recognize the very apparent fact that they exist.
These vessels I have named are all a port would need to take care of
its overseas commerce. Most ports, however, are busy with an infinite
number of other ships engaged in coastwise or inland trade. River
steamers, fishermen, ferryboats, and coasting freighters are perhaps
commoner than ocean-going ships. Then, too, one sometimes sees a
floating grain elevator, not dissimilar in appearance to some grain
elevators ashore. There are water barges, which supply ships with
fresh water. There are dredges, seemingly for ever at work. There are
glistening yachts and frowning warships. There is everything that
floats rubbing elbows with everything else that floats, and yet despite
the seeming confusion, the whole port is orderly, and seldom indeed
are there collisions or accidents to mar the smoothness of the flow of
commerce.