THE MERCHANTS OF THE SEA
The history of shipping in an earlier chapter will also answer as a
history of early international commerce. It began with the Egyptians
and Phenicians, and was confined to their parts of the Mediterranean
until after the middle ages, when it moved steadily to the western
borders of Europe.
How great, rich, and influential were Tyre and its people we have
already seen. A thousand years before the Christian era they controlled
the commerce of the ancient world by reason of their wisdom as traders
and their skill and energy as navigators and seamen. Turn to the
twenty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel, and see how the Phenician metropolis
was regarded, even in the time of that prophet, six hundred years
before Christ. These Syrians had gradually extended their commerce
until it took in the whole known world; and by their caravans to
and from the interior of Arabia, Persia, India, and the Soudan, by
their trains (perhaps of pack-horses) across Europe, by their marine
expeditions to the Nile,—which they forced open to trade, for ancient
Egypt was much like China in its exclusiveness,—and by their ships to
all the Mediterranean ports, and up and down the Atlantic coast, they
gathered and exchanged in the bazaars of Tyre and Sidon the products,
manufactures, and luxuries of every country that had anything to sell.
To the Phenicians, indeed, was ascribed, by the Latin and Greek writers
of a few centuries later, the invention of navigation; and even when
Phenicia had become of little account as a nation, its conquerors noted
with admiration the skill of the men of that coast in seamanship.
“They steered by the pole-star, which the Greeks therefore called the
Phenician star; and all their vessels, from the common round _gaulos_
to the great Tarshish ships,—the East-Indiamen, so to speak, of the
ancient world,—had a speed which the Greeks never rivaled.”
Later, in the days of the Roman supremacy, the trading-ships were as
important to the country as its soldiers, for nearly every free man was
in the army, and the slaves made poor farmers. A large part of the
grain, as well as cattle, to supply the wants of the people, had to be
brought from Egypt, which was pretty sure to have “corn,” as the Bible
calls it, when the rest of the world was suffering from short crops.
Egypt supplied grain to Rome during the second Punic war, thus enabling
her to resist the invasion of Carthage, and it is possible that Rome’s
later political alliance with Egypt was largely due to her interest in
Egyptian crops. Large fleets of grain-ships, convoyed by armed vessels,
were continually passing between the African coast and the Tiber, and
so many were the risks they ran of wreck or capture, that the arrival
of a flotilla with its precious freight of food was always a cause of
rejoicing, at any rate, among the poor.
These merchant ships of classical times were broader and heavier
than the war-galleys, and although they carried a few oars to help
themselves in a difficulty, they ordinarily moved by means of sails,
probably lugs. One of the grain-ships plying between Egypt and Italy
about 150 A. D., according to Lucian, was one hundred and eighty feet
long, slightly more than one fourth as broad, and forty-three and a
half feet deep inside,— more like a barge than a “ship.” The largest
used in this trade would carry about two hundred and fifty tons. The
transports that accompanied one of Justinian’s fleets, A. D. 533, are
stated to have carried one hundred and sixty to two hundred tons of
supplies each.
These Roman vessels were made of pine, and were coated with a
composition of tar and wax, then painted, often with elaborate
decorations in bright colors, with pigments mixed with melted wax. Now
and then one was built of truly vast proportions, as that one which
brought from Egypt to Rome the first of the stolen obelisks.
[Illustration: A CAPTAIN IN THE MERCHANT MARINE.]
With that grand awakening of interest in education, industry, and
discovery which took place in the fourteenth century, the city of
Venice gained the lead in power, and her merchants became the most
enterprising and wealthy. It was the expansion of commerce that urged
the explorations that marked the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
for by this time Venice had her banks—the first in the world to
approach the character of modern banks—and her exchange on the famous
Rialto bridge; Genoa was in close rivalry; Spain was gathering immense
quantities of gold in South America; and England was coming to the
front as a maritime power. The trade with Cathay—as India, China, and
the Oriental islands were called collectively—was chiefly by caravans
across the Persian deserts, and Spain, England, and Holland had
small shares in it, since the only water-route known was through the
Mediterranean and Red seas, where, between the perils of the ocean,
the extortionate charges and stealings of the Arabs (who carried the
cargoes from vessel to vessel across the Isthmus of Suez), and the risk
of capture by Algerian pirates, there was little chance left for profit
to either merchants or ship-owners.
To western Europe, then, Vasco de Gama’s discovery of the route around
the Cape of Good Hope was a long advantage, and England and Holland
at least were quick to seize it. The great “East India Companies” of
the Dutch and English were formed by a group of powerful merchants
in London and in Amsterdam, who were given vast privileges by their
governments in respect to trading in the East. The Dutch company was
not founded until 1602, two years after the English company, but it
soon became the more prominent of the two, and was one of the principal
means by which the Netherlands secured the preponderance of the
carrying trade of the world, bringing to her ports, by the middle of
the seventeenth century, almost all the commerce previously enjoyed by
Cadiz, Lisbon, and Antwerp, and making very serious inroads upon that
of London and Bristol. The Dutch East India ships, copied from the
Genoese carracks, were the biggest merchant vessels then afloat, well
able to cope with many of the war-ships; and two hundred of them were
at this time engaged in the Asiatic trade alone.
[Illustration: A CLIPPER ESCAPING FROM THE “ALABAMA.”]
It was in aid of the English rival company not only, but as an attempt
to save and revive the commercial position of England generally, that
Cromwell’s “navigation laws” were enacted, prohibiting the carriage
of goods to or from British shores except in ships owned and manned
by Englishmen,— laws that were aimed directly at the Dutch, and led
to the long wars of the latter half of the seventeenth century. These
were called wars for the supremacy of the sea, but actually they were a
prolonged struggle for the biggest share of the world’s trade, which is
the only real value of the “supremacy of the sea.” It is a saying that
“trade follows the flag,” and so it does; but at the beginning the flag
goes were the trade is to be had.
These companies were so mixed up in the politics of their respective
governments that it would be a long task, although entertaining, to
trace their growth, which is really that of western civilization in the
East. They equipped fleets of merchant and war vessels, established
forts, carried on small wars along the Oriental coasts, and were really
little kingdoms within kingdoms, because of their wide monopoly,
enormous wealth, and the national importance of all their enterprises.
The final result was that, as Great Britain finally overcame the Dutch
and French at home, so her East India Company ousted them from India;
but it was not until 1858 that old “John Company,” which had come to
be regarded by the natives of India as the government itself, was
dissolved, and resigned its territories to the crown and a system of
trade open to all the world.
Those were slow and costly times compared with the present, though
seeming to us full of a romance impossible now. A voyage around the
world occupied three years, and to go from London to Calcutta and
back took from New Year’s to Christmas under the most favorable
circumstances. Another important change, too, has gradually come about.
Formerly, the vessels were owned almost entirely by the merchants
themselves, or by a company of them; they paid all a ship’s expenses,
and put into her a cargo of their own wares. They would send to China,
for instance, cotton goods, household furniture, hatchets, tools,
cutlery and other hardware, farming implements, and fancy goods of all
sorts. In return the vessels would bring silks, tea, and porcelain,
which would go into the owners’ warehouses and be sold in their own
shops. Shipper, importer, and merchant were all one.
Now this is changed. The importers and merchants of London, Hamburg,
and New York are not often those who own vessels and bring their own
goods. Instead of this they have agents, who live permanently in each
of the foreign ports, where they buy the merchandise they want and hire
a vessel, or the needed space in a vessel, belonging to somebody else
to bring them home. By the old way, the nation which had anything to
sell carried it to the nation that would buy it, and brought back the
best thing it could get in exchange; now the merchants go to various
parts of the world, buy their cargoes, and order them sent home, in
substantially the same way as you go a-shopping in town.
This has brought out a new department of sea-labor, unknown, as a
class, a century ago—the business of carrying goods which the owners of
the vessels have no property in. In London, New York, Hamburg, and all
other seaboard cities of this and other countries, the great majority
of the shipping is owned, not by the merchants of the city, but by
“transportation companies,” who agree to carry cargoes at a certain
rate.
[Illustration: THE SALOON OF A SAILING PACKET-SHIP, ABOUT 1840.]
Merchant vessels may be divided into three classes, of which the first
includes steamships and sailing-vessels planned primarily for freight
transportation, which run back and forth between certain ports, and
so constitute “lines” for freight. Such lines exist along even the
remotest coasts, so that goods may be shipped directly, or by a single
transfer, from any given seaport to almost any other in the world.
Some of these lines, sailing between certain ports, are devoted to
particular uses, such as those of oil-steamers and cattle-steamers. The
oil-steamers run between America and Europe with American petroleum,
and in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean with oil from Russia; the
entire holds are divided into vast iron tanks for this liquid, which is
poured into and pumped out of them as into and out of a great barrel.
The cattle-steamers are specially arranged for the transportation
of live stock, but one line, running between America and England,
also carries passengers at a cheap rate. The second class of vessels
consists of those which make the transportation of passengers their
first object, loading their holds with first-class freight, for which
high rates are paid in consideration of its swift delivery. The
third class includes what are known as “tramp” steamers, which run
irregularly, as the old sailing-vessels used to do, picking up cargoes
wherever they find them and carrying them to any port. They are often
of great size and power, but being under less close supervision are
often less careful as to the safety of crews and cargoes, and are
sometimes unseaworthy. They are always ready to answer any sudden
demand for ships, their owners keeping watch of the chances and
telegraphing to their captains where to go for their next cargoes.
Without the submarine telegraph these tramp steamers could scarcely
compete with the regular lines; but, besides the great transoceanic
cables, all the sea-coasts are now festooned with electric cables,
which have frequent stations and connect the important ports of America
and Europe with those of Africa, Persia, India, the Spice Islands,
Australia, and New Zealand, and there is now a plan to run a cable
across the Pacific between America and New Zealand, by way of the
Sandwich Islands, Samoa, and Fiji.
[Illustration: A CORNER IN THE SALOON OF A MODERN STEAMSHIP.]
The passenger-ship is a distinctly modern feature of marine carriage.
In former days the few persons who were obliged to cross the seas on
business errands, and the fewer who went abroad for health or pleasure
or the love of travel, had to accept such rough accommodations as the
ordinary merchant ships afforded. But as soon as the East and West
Indies were added to the map of the world, and colonies of Europeans
began to settle on distant coasts and islands, the amount of travel
justified owners of vessels in enlarging cabins and providing comforts
likely to induce patronage of their lines. Even two hundred and
twenty-five years ago the voyage between India and England around
the Cape of Good Hope, though it became somewhat tedious, because it
lasted six or seven months, was by no means a miserable experience in a
well-found ship. Thus Dr. John Fryer has recorded of such a sea-journey
in 1682 that “it passed away merrily with good wine and no bad musick;
but the life of all good company, and an honest commander, who fed us
with fresh provisions of turkies, geese, ducks, hens, sucking-pigs,
sheep, goats, etc.”
A century later, when England had come firmly into possession of
India, and thousands of her officers, troops, and traders, with their
families, were colonizing her ports, there were demanded the largest
and finest ships that could be built, combining accommodations for
many passengers with great cargo capacity. Such were the great East
Indiamen; and in those leisurely days a trip half-way round the world
on one of these roomy old vessels was a continuous pleasure to almost
every one that undertook it.
The ship was a bit of Old England afloat, where the passenger rented
for so many months a well-lighted, roomy, unfurnished apartment,
which, according to his taste and means, he fitted up for the voyage
with numberless comforts and sea stores that none but a yachtsman
would think of cumbering himself with at sea to-day; and, reading
narratives of the old long sea-voyages, one is constantly coming
across expressions of regret by passengers when they “took leave of
the good ship that for so many months had been their floating home.”
These fine old passenger sailing-ships were, like a man-of-war,
entirely dismantled at the end of each homeward voyage, and underwent
a complete overhaul and refit before starting out again on an outward
one. Passengers usually sold their state-room furniture by auction on
board the ship on her arrival in port.
Such a ship, the Atlantic packets, and even men-of-war bound on a long
blockading cruise, did not hesitate to stow aboard all the live stock
that room could be found for, sometimes by comical devices. In that
book of charming reminiscences of ways and means afloat before the days
of quick steam transit, “Old Sea Wings,” Mr. Leslie has a chapter which
he calls “The Old Ship-Farm,” where one may learn curious particulars
of this matter.
The man in charge of this part of the stores was the ship’s butcher,
and he had as “mate,” or assistant, a youth of all work known to all
sailors as “Jemmy Ducks.” Their barn, or storehouse, was especially
the great long-boat, which often looked more like a model of Noah’s
ark than a craft serviceable in case of shipwreck.
Always securely stowed amidships, well lashed down and housed
over, the boat, as she lay upon the ship’s deck, was full of live
provender, being divided, as to her lower hold, into pens for sheep
and pigs, while upon the first floor, or main deck, quacked ducks
and geese, and above them (literally in the cock-loft) were coops
for another kind of poultry. This great central depôt was closely
surrounded by other small farm-buildings, the most important being
the cow-house, where, after a short run ashore on the marshes at the
end of each voyage, a well-seasoned animal of the snug Alderney breed
chewed the cud in sweet content. In fact, when, in the old days, a
passenger-ship began her voyage, the hull of her clumsy long-boat was
nearly hidden by the number of temporary pens and sheds required to
house the live stock for the supply of her cabin table; and with its
many farm-yard and homelike sounds a ship was, even then, more like a
small bit of the world afloat than it is now.
There was always regular traffic between America and Europe, especially
with Great Britain, and the rapid growth of emigration to the United
States and Canada made it profitable, early in this century, to put
on fast-sailing packet-ships, making voyages, at intervals of a
month, between London and New York. By 1840 a man might find a large,
well-ordered ship departing every week or so for the transatlantic
passage, which usually required less than a month going east, but might
be two weeks longer coming west. Their cabins were as comfortable and
perhaps more homelike than any seen now, and quite as pretty, with
their white and gold paint, cut-glass door and locker knobs, damask
hangings, dimity bed-curtains, and other old-fashioned niceties; and
the fare was abundant and varied, as it ought to be in a neat ship with
a small dairy aboard, and perhaps a green-salad garden planted in the
jolly-boat. None of these packets were more popular than those of the
well-remembered Black Ball Line.
[Illustration: FAIR WEATHER ON THE DECK OF A CLIPPER-SHIP CARRYING
GOLD-SEEKERS TO CALIFORNIA IN 1849.]
The steerage passengers were not so well off then, though they seemed
to stand the voyage quite as well as nowadays. The fare was twenty-five
dollars, and the passenger found himself “in everything but fire and
water.” “Steerage passengers then had to cook their own victuals,
weather permitting, at an open galley-fire on the waist-deck; ... but
in anything like rough weather, all steerage passengers had either
to run the chance of getting constantly wet with salt water or keep
below.” The ’tween-decks space allotted to them was almost completely
filled by rows of bunks, built in each port by the ship’s carpenter,
in three tiers, one above the other, though the ceiling was scarcely
seven feet from the floor; and when in a stormy time the hatches were
closed the only way the crowd could find room was by most of it stowing
itself away in the bunks, while a few tried to sit or lie on the
luggage piled in the narrow aisles. The only light was that of a few
candle or whale-oil lanterns, and in a very bad storm everybody came
near smothering, for then it was impossible to ventilate the steerage
properly without flooding it. Considering that all the provisions for
the steerage people were kept in this crowded, damp, and fearfully
close room, it is marvelous that a pestilence did not break out during
every voyage, but, in fact, sickness was rare.
The introduction of steam into oceanic navigation was experimented with
as soon as river steamboats were successfully built. The first vessel
to go across the ocean by the aid of a steam-engine is said to have
been the _Savannah_. This vessel, built in Savannah, Ga., and having a
steam-engine and paddle-wheels, certainly crossed to Liverpool in 1819;
but it is asserted that she sailed all the way, using her steam very
little, if at all, although making the trip in twenty-two days. In 1825
the English steamer _Enterprise_ went from London to Calcutta; but it
was not until some years later that ocean navigation by steam became
successful in the beginning of operations by the Cunard Company in 1833.
These first steamers were side-wheelers, and their huge boilers and
simple engines consumed so much fuel that the space taken up by the
coal, added to that devoted to passengers, left little room for cargo.
Moreover, their speed was less, often, than that of the “clippers,” so
that for some time the sailing-packets maintained their competition.
The adoption of the screw propeller, in place of the costly and
cumbersome side-paddles, and the perfection of the compound marine
engine, which effected a great saving in fuel, soon established the
superiority of steam navigation for passenger service, fast freights,
and service in war, yet even these improvements were not fairly brought
about until the first half of the present century had gone; and sails
are not yet abandoned, not only because they steady a vessel in a gale,
and may help her decidedly when the wind is fair, but may save her
altogether in case of the disabling of her machinery.
Great modifications and improvements on old models have grown out of
the employment of steam and the screw, and human invention has been
taxed to the uttermost to combine economy of space and expense with
the various needs of different climes, or special cargoes, or the
demands of a traveling public that is growing more fastidious every
day. The most obvious changes in naval construction have been in the
greatly elongated hull, the enormous dimensions aimed at, and the all
but universal employment of iron. When the first steamship crossed
the ocean the proportions of ships averaged three to five beams in
length.... But it was discovered that with a given power and depth
and beam the length could be increased without materially affecting
the speed, thus adding to the carrying capacity of steam. Great
length to beam, however, does not necessarily imply great speed; the
speed of beamy vessels has too often been demonstrated. Fineness of
lines is equally essential, together with the proper distribution
of weights, and the like. The great average speed exhibited by the
modern steamship is due in large part to the momentum of such a vast
weight, which, once started, has a tremendous force.
Long after the transatlantic steamships were regularly running, sixteen
or seventeen days was considered a good passage between New York
and Liverpool. Then the Inman and White Star lines began to see the
importance of faster speed, and their rivalry had cut this estimate
in two by 1870, and ten years later the Guion Line’s _Arizona_ and
other crack boats took a full day off that. Since then there has been a
steady improvement in speed, as is shown by the table below; and this
seems to have followed proportionately the steady increase in length.
The ships of 1850 never reached 300 feet in length, and few were over
2300 tons in burden measurement. By 1880 almost all the first-class
“liners” of the world exceeded 450 feet, and some soon approached
600, as the _City of Rome_ (586 feet, 8826 tons), and several of the
famous Hamburg liners, White Stars, and Cunarders nearly equaled her
in dimensions (_Paris_ and _New York_, 580 feet each; _Teutonic_ and
_Majestic_, 582 feet); while some of the more recent boats are even
longer, as _Campania_ and _Lucania_, 620 feet, and the gigantic _Kaiser
Wilhelm der Grosse_, 648 feet. Two other ships, now planned, will
considerably exceed this length. The total number of transatlantic
passenger-steamships regularly sailing from New York alone is now
between 90 and 100, belonging to 14 different lines. The table of
speed-records between New York and Queenstown, since the time was
reduced to less than six days, is as follows:
Time.
Year. Steamer. Line. Direction. Date. Days. Hours. Min.
1882 _Alaska_ Guion Eastward May 30 6 2 0
to
June 6
1891 _Majestic_ White Star 5 18 8
1891 _Teutonic_ White Star Westward Aug. 13-19 5 16 31
1892 _Paris_ American Westward Aug. 14-19 5 14 24
1893 _Campania_ Cunard 5 12 7
1894 _Lucania_ Cunard Westward Sept. 8-14 5 8 38
1894 _Lucania_ Cunard Eastward Oct. 21-26 5 7 23
The approximate distance between Sandy Hook (light-ship), New York,
and Queenstown (Roche’s Point) is 2800 miles. The fastest day’s run
on record, however, was made by the _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_,
of the Nord Deutscher Lloyds Line, averaging 22.35 knots (or
nautical miles, of 6080 feet each) per hour, equal to about 25½ land
miles. From Sandy Hook to Queenstown deduct 4 hours 22 minutes for
difference in time. Queenstown to Sandy Hook add 4 hours 22 minutes
for difference in time.
This eager rivalry in respect to speed, which insures not only a larger
and more influential passenger service, but increased business in fast
freight and in the carriage of mail—both highly remunerative—is only
one feature of the sharp competition between these ocean carriers as to
which shall offer the greatest advantages, and this is of benefit to
the public, though it has not greatly cheapened fares.
[Illustration: EMIGRANT PASSENGERS EMBARKING UPON A TRANSATLANTIC
“LINER.”]
Men travel far more now than they were wont in the time of “good Queen
Bess,” or even of our own grandfathers, and the few travelers for
pleasure of those days would scarcely believe their eyes if they could
look into the floating palaces—almost cities—in which we brave old
ocean now. A ship of one of the better passenger lines is a little
world in itself, containing almost all the appliances of the best
modern hotels on shore, and reducing the inevitable inconveniences of
life on shipboard by clever devices of every sort. In the one matter of
ventilation the ingenuity of the builders is particularly taxed. Money
is spent lavishly in the finishing and furnishing of these great ships,
not to mention the expense of running them, which sometimes amounts in
cost of fuel, food, and wages to $5000 a day.
The steamship lines between New York and Great Britain do not steer
straight across the Atlantic, but on their way to this country keep
well to the northward, so as to get to the west of the Gulf Stream, and
into the favorable current flowing south from Baffin’s Bay; then they
skirt Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Cape Cod. Going east, however,
the steamers—and sailing-vessels too—keep farther south, and work
along with the Gulf Stream as far as they can. From Europe to South
America, or through the Straits of Magellan on their way to the South
Sea islands or Australia (though this route is not often taken), or to
the Pacific coast of the Americas, vessels keep close down the African
coast, and then steer straight ahead from Guinea to Brazil, and on
down the American coast. (Put a map before you and you will understand
these courses better.) Sailing-vessels to Europe or the United States
from Cape Horn, however, would swing far out into the South Atlantic
to avoid heading against the southward coast-current and to get the
benefit of the southwest trade-wind and the equatorial currents.
Between New York and the Cape of Good Hope the track is nearly straight.
In the Pacific, the steamer-route between San Francisco or Vancouver
and China and Japan, instead of being as direct as a parallel of
latitude, takes a southerly course when bound west, and a northerly
course when bound east, the exact lines varying with the seasons as the
prevailing winds and currents change. What these winds and currents
are is explained in another chapter; but it is interesting to note
that there is a difference of many miles in the ordinary westerly and
easterly courses, the latter being much the shorter, although the
vessels of the Canadian Pacific Line often sail so far north with the
Japan warm current as to sight the Aleutian Islands. Sailing-vessels,
moreover, curve so much farther south than steamers in going west from
San Francisco, in order to take advantage of the equatorial current and
the trade-winds, that the space is a thousand miles north and south
between ships outward bound and those coming home. Between California
and Honolulu a steamer takes a bee-line, but sailing-vessels find it
best to make detours. In summer, when outward bound, this amounts to
steering straight northward until under latitude forty degrees, before
turning westward, making an angular course that looks very unnecessary
to a landsman.
[Illustration: A “WHALEBACK” FREIGHT STEAMER, ALSO ADAPTED TO PASSENGER
SERVICE.]
I have said that the finding of a sea-route to the East around the Cape
of Good Hope was a great boon to western Europe, and advanced commerce.
It remained so until within the last seventy-five years. Lately,
the corsairs being out of the way, and safety guaranteed in Egypt,
merchants and sailors both began to wish they had a shorter route
between England and India. Then, with immense labor and sacrifice, the
canal was cut across the Isthmus of Suez, and commerce returned to its
ancient channel through the Red Sea, saving thousands of miles of weary
distance.
From the end of the Red Sea at Aden, the tracks of steamers both
ways are straight courses to Bombay or Ceylon, and thence right up
to Calcutta, across to Singapore, or down to Australia. Except East
African coast lines, few steamers go around the Cape of Good Hope
from England, excepting one line to South Australia, which steers
straight eastward all the way from Cape Town to Adelaide, 6125 miles.
But the Indian Ocean is so situated under the equator, is so filled
with prevailing winds and currents and counter currents, that
sailing-vessels must take very roundabout courses there, and can by no
means steer the same track at all seasons of the year. These voyages
from New York and London to the East are the longest regular sea-roads.
A short table of distances between well-known ports along regular
steamer-routes will be of interest; and by reversing them, or adding
them together, the sailing distance between almost any two ports on the
globe may be calculated.
MILES.
Acapulco to San Francisco 1,850
Aden to Bombay 1,635
Aden to Colombo (Ceylon) 2,100
Aden to Zanzibar 1,770
Auckland to Honolulu 3,915
Auckland to Suva (Fiji) 1,140
Cadiz to Teneriffe (Canaries) 698
Cape Horn to Rio de Janeiro 2,350
Cape Town to Plymouth (Eng.) 6,016
Cork to St. John’s (N. F.) 1,730
Ceylon to West Australia 3,305
Glasgow to New York 2,790
Havre to Martinique 3,560
Havre to New York 3,160
Hobart (Tas.) to Invercargill (N. Z.) 930
Hong Kong to Manila 650
Hong Kong to Shanghai 800
Hong Kong to Yokohama 1,620
Leith (Scot.) to Iceland 1,050
Lisbon via Dakar (W. Af.) to Pernambuco 3,297
Lisbon to Cape Verd Islands 1,537
Liverpool to Barbadoes 3,646
Lisbon to Para 4,000
Liverpool to Lisbon 983
Liverpool to Madeira 1,430
Liverpool to New Orleans 4,767
Liverpool to New York 3,057
Liverpool to Para 4,010
Liverpool to Quebec 2,634
Marseilles to Algiers 410
Montevideo to Magellan Strait 1,070
New Orleans to Havana 570
New York to Colon 1,980
New York to San Francisco, about 17,000
New York, via St. Thomas, to Para 3,130
Panama to San Francisco 3,260
Porto Rico (San Juan) to Havana 1,030
Rio de Janeiro to Plymouth 4,941
San Francisco to Honolulu 2,080
San Francisco to Yokohama 5,280
Shanghai to Yokohama 1,033
Singapore to Hong Kong 1,430
Suez to Aden (length of Red Sea) 1,308
Suva to Honolulu 2,783
Sydney to Auckland 1,281
Sydney to Vancouver (B. C.) 6,780
Teneriffe to Porto Rico 2,790
Trieste to Bombay 4,317
Yokohama to Honolulu 3,445
Yokohama to San Francisco 4,750
Yokohama to Victoria 4,320
Zanzibar to Bombay 2,400
[Illustration: Chapter end decoration showing ships]