THE MAIL LINES OF THE UNITED STATES.
THE MAIL LINES OF THE UNITED STATES: THE HAVRE AND BREMEN, THE
PIONEERS: THE BREMEN SERVICE RECENTLY GIVEN TO MR. VANDERBILT:
BOTH LINES RUN ON THE GROSS RECEIPTS: THE CALIFORNIA LINES:
WONDROUS DEVELOPMENT OF OUR PACIFIC POSSESSIONS: THE PACIFIC MAIL
STEAMSHIP COMPANY: ITS HISTORY, SERVICES, LARGE MATERIEL, AND
USEFULNESS: THE UNITED STATES MAIL STEAMSHIP COMPANY: ITS RAMIFIED
AND LARGE EXTRA SERVICE: EFFECT UPON THE COMMERCE OF THE GULF: ITS
HEAVY LOSSES, AND NEW SHIPS: STEAMSHIP STOCKS GENERALLY AVOIDED:
CONSTANTLY FAR BELOW PAR: THE COLLINS LINE: A COMPARISON WITH THE
CUNARD: ITS SOURCES OF HEAVY OUTLAY, AND ITS ENTERPRISE: THE
AMERICAN MARINE DISASTERS COULD NOT HAVE BEEN PREVENTED BY HUMAN
FORESIGHT; THE VANDERBILT BREMEN LINE: THE CHARLESTON AND HAVANA
LINE.
SECTION I.
PRESENT POSITION OF STEAM NAVIGATION.
THE SPLENDID TRIUMPHS OF STEAM: IT IS THE MOST EFFICIENT MEANS OF
NATIONAL PROGRESS AND DEVELOPMENT: THE FORERUNNER OF CIVILIZATION:
IMPORTANT TO THE UNITED STATES AS AN AGRICULTURAL, MANUFACTURING,
AND COMMERCIAL COUNTRY: NATURE OF OUR PEOPLE: MARITIME SPIRIT:
VARIOUS COMMERCIAL COUNTRIES: OURS MOST ADVANTAGEOUSLY SITUATED:
THE DESTINY OF AMERICAN COMMERCE: OUR COMMERCIAL RIVALS: GREAT
BRITAIN: SHE RESISTS US BY STEAM AND DIPLOMACY: OUR POSITION: MOST
APPROVED INSTRUMENTS OF COMMERCIAL SUCCESS: PORTUGAL AND HOLLAND:
ENGLAND'S WISE STEAM POLICY: LIBERAL VIEWS OF HER STATESMEN:
EXTENT OF HER MAIL SERVICE: HER IMMENSE STEAM MARINE, OF 2,161
STEAMERS: OUR CONTRAST: OUR DEPENDENCE ON GREAT BRITAIN: THE
UNITED STATES MAIL AND COMMERCIAL STEAM MARINE IN FULL: A MOST
UNFAVORABLE COMPARISON.
The agreeable and responsible duty of developing and regulating the
most important discovery of modern times, and the greatest material
force known to men, has been committed to the present generation. The
progress of Steam, from the days of its first application to lifting
purposes, through all of its gradations of application to railway
locomotion and steamboat and steamship propulsion down to the present
time, has been a series of splendid and highly useful triumphs, alike
creditable to the genius of its promoters, and profitable to the
nations which have adopted it. However great the progress of the
world, or the prosperity of commercial nations prior to its
introduction, it can not be doubted that it now constitutes the
largest, surest, and most easily available means of progress,
prosperity, and power known to civilized nations; or that the
development, wealth, and independence of any country will be in the
ratio of the application of steam to all of the ordinary purposes of
life. It has been canonized among the sacred elements of national
power, and commissioned as the great laborer of the age. Every
civilized nation has adopted it as the best means of interior
development, and as almost the only forerunner of commerce and
communication with the outer world. It has thus become an
indispensable necessity of every day life, whether by land or by sea,
to the producer, the consumer, the merchant, the manufacturer, the
artisan, the pleasure-seeker, the statesman, and the state itself, to
public liberty, and to the peace of the world.
The existence of an agent of so great power and influence, is
necessarily a fact of unusual significance to a nation like the United
States, which combines within itself in a high degree, the three most
important interests, of large Agricultural and Mineral Productions,
extensive and increasing Manufactures, and an immense Foreign Commerce
and Domestic Trade. Our country is essentially commercial in its
tastes and tendencies; our people are, as a result of our common
schools, bold, inquiring, and enterprising; and our constitution and
laws are well calculated to produce a nation of restless and vigorous
merchants, traders, and travellers. Foreign commerce is a necessity
of our large and redundant agricultural production. Our extended
sea-coast, and necessarily large coasting-trade between the States,
have begotten an unbounded spirit of maritime adventure. The ample
material, and other facilities for building vessels, have also
contributed to this end. As capable as any people on earth of running
vessels and conducting mercantile enterprise, we have found foreign
commerce a profitable field for the investment of labor, intelligence,
and capital.
There is scarcely any field of trade in the world which we are not
naturally better calculated to occupy than any other country. Most of
the great commercial nations employ their ships as common carriers for
other nations, and limit their exports to manufactures alone. Great
Britain is an example of this. She exports no products of the soil,
for very obvious reasons. The exports of France partake of the same
general character, domestic manufactures, with a small portion of the
products of the soil. So, also, with the German States and Holland.
The United States, to the contrary, have an immense export trade in
the products of the soil. These exports have the advantage of
embracing every production of the temperate zone, and some few of the
more profitable of those of the torrid. These constitute a large
source of wealth, and are daily increasing in quantity, value, and
importance. Combined with the manufactured productions of the country,
and the yield of the mines, they require a large amount of shipping,
which, extending to nearly all nations, opens a diversified and rich
field of trade. The exchanges of production between our own and other
countries, are, consequently, very large and general, and must
continue to increase to an indefinite extent, as the States and
Territories of the Union fill up, and as the various new and opening
branches of domestic industry develop and mature.
The extent which this trade will reach in a few generations, its
aggregate value, and the influence which it will wield over the world
if judiciously and energetically promoted, and if wisely protected
against encroachment from abroad, and embarrassment at home, no human
foresight can predict or adequately imagine. With a larger field of
operations, at home and abroad, than any nation ever possessed before,
with the pacific commercial policy of the age, and with the aids of
science, the telegraph, and steam to urge it on, American Commerce has
opened before it a glorious career and an imposing responsibility.
But the conquests of this commerce are not to be the bloodless
victories of power unopposed; not the result of bold adventure without
check, or of simply American enterprise without the Government's aid.
Our foe is a wary, well-scarred, and well-tried old warrior, who has
the unequalled wisdom of experience, and the patient courage that has
triumphed over many defeats. The field has been in his hands for ten
generations, and he knows every byway, every marsh, every foot of
defense, and the few inassailable points to be preserved and guarded.
Great Britain, particularly, knows how essential is a large general
commerce for opening a market for her manufactures. She is dependent
on those manufactures, and upon the carrying trade of the world for a
living; and she fosters and protects them not alone by the reputed and
well-known individual enterprise and energy of her people, but by a
wise and forecasting policy of state, a mighty and irresistible naval
and military array, a wisely concerted, liberal, well-arranged, and
long-pursued steam system, and prompt, unflinching protection of
British subjects in their rights throughout the world.
Great Britain is prepared to resist our commercial progress, as she
has already done, step by step, by all the means within her power. She
has wisely brought steam to her aid, and now has a system of long
standing at last well matured. Her diplomacy has ever been conspicuous
throughout the world, for ability and zeal, whether in the ministerial
or consular service, and for its persistent advocacy of British rights
in trade as well as for its machinations against the extension of the
commerce or the power of this country. Such action on the part of any
wise rival nation is naturally to be expected; and all that we can
object to is that, seeing this policy and its inevitable tendency, our
country should stand still and suffer her trade to be paralyzed and
wrested from her, without an effort to relieve it, or the employment
of any of those commercial agencies and facilities which experience
shows to be all-efficient in such cases. It is utter folly for us to
maintain a simply passive competition; we must either progress or
retrograde. It is wrong to be willing to occupy a secondary place,
when nature and the common wants of the world so clearly indicate that
we should occupy the first; for if, as before assumed, foreign
commerce is our destiny, and if we can not accomplish our highest
capabilities except by commerce, then if we ever attain our true
dignity and station as a nation, it must be by enlarging,
liberalizing, strengthening, and encouraging our foreign trade, by all
of the proper, efficient, and honorable means within our power. It is
the duty of the Government, both to itself and to its citizens. (_See
Section VII._)
The history of commercial nations admonishes us that no trading people
can long maintain their ascendency without using all of the most
approved means of the age for prosecuting trade. Portugal was at one
time the most powerful commercial nation of the globe; and at another
Holland was the mistress of the seas. But while the latter is now only
a fourth-rate commercial power, the former has sunk into obscurity,
and is nearly forgotten of men. At that time England and France had
but a limited foreign trade and scarcely any commercial reputation.
France could more easily maintain her existence without a foreign
trade, than could England; and yet her matured manufactures and her
products of the soil became so valuable that she sought a foreign
market. England, to the contrary, had not territory enough to remain
at home, and yet be a great power. She matured an immense
manufacturing system, and needed a market, as well as the raw
material, and food for her operatives. She began to stretch her arms
to the outer world, and had made very considerable strides in foreign
commerce side by side with France and the German States, and in the
face of the steady young opposition of the American States.
It now became a contest for supremacy. Her large navy had enabled her
to conquer important foreign territories, which with the supremacy of
the seas would make her the mistress of the world. France was still
her equal rival, and the United States were becoming formidable common
carriers, although they had but little legitimate commerce of their
own, and none that was under their positive control. The commercial
men of England finding their statesmen ready to aid them in their
efforts for national progress, wealth, and glory, directed their
attention to steam as an agent of supremacy and power, both in the
Navy and the Commercial Marine. They indicated and proved the
necessity of drawing the bonds between them and foreign countries more
closely; of shortening the distances between them; of providing the
means of rapid, safe, and comfortable transit of English merchants
between their homes and foreign lands; of regular, rapid, reliable
British steam mails to every point with which Englishmen had business,
or could create it; and of government agency as the only means by
which this desirable, this essential service could be rendered to
commerce and to the country. They readily saw that rapid and reliable
passenger facilities, and the rapid and regular transmission of
commercial and diplomatic intelligence would give to British merchants
and to British statesmen the certain control of commerce, and the
conformation of the political destinies of many of the smaller nations
of the Eastern and Western hemispheres.
It was not a difficult task to convince the British statesman that it
was his duty to encourage the commerce, on which the wealth, power,
and glory of his country depended, by all the aids known to the
constitution; and to uphold the hands of the merchant by the use of
the money which his traffic had brought into the public coffers. There
was no contest between North and South, East and West. It was the
whole of England which was to be benefited directly or indirectly; and
they were willing that it should be any part rather than none. The
evident advantages which the United States possessed in her more
numerous articles of export, (_see page 16_,) as well as the rapid
strides which her first clippers were making across the ocean, were
reasons urgent enough for the forecasting statesmen of Britain; and
they determined to continue or to obtain the profitable dominion of
the seas, although it might cost a sum of money far beyond the postal
income. They knew that these postal and passenger facilities were
needed by every class of community, and that there was no one in the
kingdom who would not be in some way benefited by them; and that the
sums of money paid for them, although not apparently returned, were
yet returned in a thousand indirect channels and by a variety of
reflex benefits not calculable as a transaction of exchange.
We, therefore, see to-day, as the fruit of that determination, the
proudest and the most profitable postal and mercantile steam marine
that floats the seas. Several large companies, authorized to transport
the mails to all parts of the world, were immediately organized, and
paid liberal allowances for their peculiar duties. Where the
practicability of the service was considered doubtful, larger sums
were paid, and a greater length of time granted for making the
experiment. The contracts were generally made for twelve years; and
when their terms expired they were renewed for another term of twelve
years, which will expire in 1862. Thus many of the lines have been in
operation for the last nineteen years, and have demonstrated the
practicability, the cheapness, the utility, and the necessity of such
service. The entire foreign mail service is conducted by fifteen
companies, having one hundred and twenty-one steamers, with a gross
tonnage of 235,488 tons; the net tonnage being 141,293, assuming the
engines, boilers, fuel, etc., to be forty per cent of the whole
tonnage, which is altogether too low an estimate. The whole number of
British sea-going steamers is sixteen hundred and sixty-nine, with an
aggregate tonnage of 383,598 tons, exclusive of engines and boilers,
and of 639,330 tons gross, including engines and boilers. (_See paper
A, page 192._) We must add to this list the new steamer "Great
Eastern," whose tonnage is twenty-seven thousand tons, and which will
make the entire present mercantile steam tonnage of Great Britain
660,330 tons. The greater portion of these steamers, exclusive of
those engaged in the foreign mail service, are employed in the
coasting and foreign continental trade; while some few of them run in
the American merchant service, and many others in the subsidized mail
service of foreign countries, such as the lines from Hamburgh and
Antwerp to Brazil, and from those cities to the United States. Some of
them are also engaged in the mail service between Canada and England,
under the patronage of the Canadian government. (_See paper D, page
199._) If we add to this list the 271 war steamers, the 220 gunboats,
and the Great Eastern, we shall find that the British Mail,
Mercantile, and War Marine consists of the enormous number of two
thousand one hundred and sixty-one steamers, exclusive of the large
number now building. Nearly all of these are adapted to the ocean, or
to the coasting service, and may be classed as sea-going vessels.
It is interesting to trace this rapid progress of steam since its
first application to purposes of mail transport in 1833. An
intelligent writer says, "The rise and progress of the ocean steam
mail service of Great Britain is second in interest to no chapter in
the maritime history of the world;" and while we acknowledge a
grateful pride in the triumphs of our transatlantic brethren, we must
blush with shame at our dereliction in this great, and civilizing, and
enriching service of modern times. The steam marine of the United
States, postal, mercantile, and naval, is to-day so insignificant in
extent that we do not feel entirely certain that it is a sufficient
nucleus for the growth of a respectable maritime power. The few ships
that we possess are among the fleetest and the most comfortable that
traverse the ocean, and have excited the admiration of the world
wherever they have been seen. But their number is so small, their
service so limited, their field of operation so contracted, that our
large commerce and travel are dependent, in most parts of the world,
on British steam mail lines for correspondence and transport, or on
the slow, irregular, and uncertain communications of sailing vessels.
The question here naturally suggests itself: Have we progressed in
ocean steam navigation in a ratio commensurate with the improvements
of the age, or of our own improvement in every thing else? And has the
Government of the country afforded to the people the facilities of
enterprise and commercial competition which are clearly necessary to
enable them to enter the contest on equal terms with other commercial
countries? (_See Section VII._)
The Ocean Mail Service of the United States, consists of eight lines,
and twenty one steamers in commission, with an aggregate tonnage of
48,027 tons. Three of these lines are transatlantic; the Collins, the
Havre, and the Bremen. Two connect us with our Pacific possessions,
and incidentally with Cuba and New-Granada. They are however
indispensable lines of coast navigation. One connects the ports of
Charleston, in the United States, and Havana, in Cuba, another
connects New-Orleans with Vera Cruz, and another connects Havana and
New-Orleans. Beyond these, we have a line of two steamers running
between New-York and New-Orleans, touching at Havana, and one steamer
touching at the same point between New-York and Mobile. Also four
steamers between New-York and Savannah, four between New-York and
Charleston, two between New-York and Norfolk, two between Philadelphia
and Savannah, two between Boston and Baltimore, four between
New-Orleans and Texas, and two between New-Orleans and Key West. All
of these are coast steamers of the best quality; and some few of them
have a nominal mail pay. We have also several transient steamers which
have no routes or mail contracts, and which are consequently employed
in irregular and accidental service, or laid up. They are the
Ericsson, the Washington and the Hermann, the Star of the West, the
Prometheus, the Northern Light, the Daniel Webster, the Southerner,
the St. Louis, laid up in New-York; the Uncle Sam, the Orizaba, and
the Brother Jonathan, belonging to the Nicaragua Transit Company, and
the California, Panama, Oregon, Northerner, Fremont, and the tow-boat
Tobago, belonging to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, all lying in
the Pacific. Also the Queen of the West, Mr. Morgan's new steamer, in
New-York. These, like all other American steamers when unemployed on
mail lines, generally lie in port for want of a remunerative trade.
(_See Paper A._)
The aggregate tonnage of these fifty-seven steamers is 94,795 tons.
Eighteen of them, with an aggregate tonnage of 24,845 tons, are
engaged in no service. Twenty-three of them, with 24,071 tons, are
engaged in our coasting trade. Fourteen of them, with 19,813 tons,
(Gov. register,) are engaged in the California, Oregon, Central
American, Mexican, and Cuban mail service; while eight of them, with
25,178 tons aggregate tonnage, are engaged in the transatlantic mail
service proper, between this country and Europe. It is thus seen that
we have in all but 57 ocean steamers, of 94,795 aggregate tons; while
Great Britain has sixteen hundred and seventy, with 666,330 aggregate
tons; that we have twenty-two of these, of 45,001 tons, engaged in the
foreign and domestic mail service, while she has one hundred and
twenty-one, of 235,488 aggregate tonnage, engaged in the foreign mail
service almost exclusively; and that we have thirty-seven steamers
engaged in the coasting trade and lying still, while she has fifteen
hundred and forty-eight steamers engaged in her coasting trade and
merchant service. (_See page 167_, for length of British and American
mail lines, and the miles run per year.) Comparisons are said to be
odious, but it is more odious for such comparisons as these to be
possible in these days of enlightened commercial enterprise and
thrift; and especially when so greatly to the disadvantage of a
country which boldly claims an aggregate civilization, enterprise, and
prosperity equalled by those of no other country on the globe. As
regards our steam navy, it is too small to afford adequate protection
to our commerce and citizens; much less to defend the country in time
of war. We have not steamers enough in the navy to place one at each
of our important seaports; much less to send them to foreign stations.
SECTION II.
NECESSITY OF RAPID STEAM MAILS.
ARE OCEAN STEAM MAILS DESIRABLE AND NECESSARY FOR A COMMERCIAL
PEOPLE? THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE DEMANDS THEM: MUTUAL DEPENDENCE OF
NATIONS: FAST MAILS NECESSARY TO CONTROL SLOW FREIGHTS: THE
FOREIGN POST OF EVERY NATION IS MORE OR LESS SELFISH: IF WE
NEGLECT APPROVED METHODS, WE ARE THEREBY SUBORDINATED TO THE SKILL
OF OTHERS: THE WANT OF A FOREIGN POST IS A NATIONAL CALAMITY:
OTHER NATIONS CAN NOT AFFORD US DUE FACILITIES: WARS AND ACCIDENTS
FORBID: THE CRIMEA AND THE INDIES AN EXAMPLE: MANY OF OUR FIELDS
OF COMMERCE NEED A POST: BRAZIL, THE WEST-INDIES, AND PACIFIC
SOUTH-AMERICA: MAILS TO THE CONTINENT OF EUROPE BY THE NUMEROUS
CUNARD VESSELS: CORRESPONDENCE WITH AFRICA, CHINA, THE
EAST-INDIES, THE MAURITIUS, AND AUSTRALIA: SLAVISH DEPENDENCE ON
GREAT BRITAIN: DESIRABLE FOR OUR DIPLOMATIC AND CONSULAR SERVICE:
FOR THE CONTROL OF OUR SQUADRONS: CASES OF SUFFERING: NECESSARY
FOR DEFENSE: FOR CULTIVATING FRIENDLY RELATIONS AND OPENING TRADE:
THE ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH WILL REQUIRE FASTER AND HEAVIER MAILS: OUR
COMMERCE REQUIRES FAST STEAMERS FOR THE RAPID AND EASY TRANSIT OF
PASSENGERS: MODES OF BENEFITING COMMERCE.
Having seen that the ocean steam mail service is largely developed in
some countries, especially in Great Britain, and that the second and
third commercial powers of the world, the United States and France,
have not largely employed this important agent in their commerce, the
inquiry naturally arises, whether fast ocean steam mails are desirable
and necessary to the commercial prosperity of a people. Whether this
question be considered in its relative or its natural bearings, the
reply is the same. Relatively considered, a large ocean steam mail
service is indispensable to a people who are largely commercial,
because the most noted commercial rivals of the world employ it, and
thus either force them to its use, or the loss of their commerce, and
the gradual transference of their shipping and trade into the hands of
their rivals. Considered in its natural bearings, in its direct
influences and effects _per se_, it becomes even more evidently
necessary, as the means of a ready and reliable knowledge of the
condition, wants, and movements of all those with whom a commercial
nation necessarily has business, or could or should create it.
The spirit of the age demands a more intimate acquaintance and
communication than we have hitherto had with the outer world. Our
knowledge of foreign lands has pointed out innumerable wants hitherto
unknown, and suggested innumerable channels of their supply. Nations
have learned to depend on each other as formerly neighbor depended on
his neighbor for any little necessary or luxury of life. The luxurious
spirit of the times requires the importation and exportation of an
immense list of articles with which foreign countries were formerly
unacquainted, but which have now become as indispensable as air, and
light, and water. And if it is not necessary that these many articles
shall be transported from land to land with the speed of the telegraph
or the fleetness of the ocean steamer, it is at any rate necessary
that the facts concerning them, their ample or scarce supply, their
high or low price, their sale or purchase, their shipment or arrival,
their loss, or seizure, or detention, should be made known with all of
the combined speed of the telegraph, the lightning train, and the
rapid ocean mail steamer. If we possess ourselves these facilities of
rapid, regular, and reliable information to an extent that no other
nation does, we will be the first to reach the foreign market with our
supplies, the first to bring the foreign article into the markets of
the world, and the proper recipients of the first and largest profits
of the cream of the trade of every land.
If we neglect these precautions, and refuse to establish these
facilities, because their cost is apparent in one small sum of
expenditure, while their large returns in profits diffused among the
whole people are not so palpably apparent to the common eye; if we
leave to the genius and enterprise of the people that which private
enterprise and human skill unaided can never accomplish; in a word, if
we fail to keep up with the world around us, and to progress _pari
passu_ with our wise, acute, and experienced commercial rivals, then,
as a matter of course, the information which we receive from the
foreign world must come through others, and those our rivals, and must
be deprived of its value by the advantage which they have already
taken of it. It is idle to suppose that any commercial nation on earth
will not so arrange her foreign post as to exclude others than her own
citizens as much as possible from its benefits. This is a paramount
duty of the government to the citizen. It is therefore apparent that
our commerce must of necessity greatly suffer when its conduct is at
all dependent on foreigners and competitors, and that it is
exceedingly desirable, for the avoidance of such a calamity, that we
should have independent and ample foreign mail facilities of our own,
wherever it is possible for our people to trade and obtain wealth.
It is clearly impossible that other nations should afford these
facilities, or that our people should have confidence in them if
attempted, or that they could be in any sense reliable in those many
cases of exigency, national disputes, war, and accident, which usually
afford us our best chances of speculation and profit. A dependence on
foreigners for this supply of information, which never reaches us
until it is emasculated of its virtues, is extremely hazardous. It
fails just at the point where it is most desirable. Foreign nations,
especially the commercial European nations, are constantly at war, and
are constantly interrupting their packet service. The late Crimean and
the present Indian wars are a good illustration. Our country, isolated
from the contending nations, and fortified against continual ruptures
by a policy of non-intervention, is peculiarly blessed with the
privilege and ability to regularly and unintermittingly conduct her
commerce and reap her profits, even more securely, while her rivals
are temporarily devoting their attention to war. Such being the fact,
it is wholly desirable and necessary to the end proposed that our
steam post should on all such occasions regularly come and go, even
amid the din of battle, and the conflict of our rivals, who for the
time are powerless to oppose our peaceful and legitimate commerce, and
are generally but too glad to avail its offerings.
There are many instances of the desirableness and the necessity of the
transmarine steam post on important lines of foreign communication
where we have a large trade, and yet no postal means of conducting it.
Our immense trade with Brazil and other portions of South-America,
which if properly fostered would increase with magic rapidity, sends
its news and its freight by the same vessel, or is compelled to use
the necessarily selfishly arranged, and circuitous, and non-connecting
lines of Great Britain. A letter destined for Brazil, four thousand
miles distant, must needs go by England, Portugal, the Coast of
Africa, Madeira, and the Cape de Verdes, a distance of eight thousand
miles, in a British packet. One destined for the Pacific Coast of
South-America must go to Panama and await the arrival of the English
packet, with London letters more recently dated, before it can proceed
on to Callao, Lima, or Valparaiso. Letters destined to the West-Indies
can go to Havana only, by American steamers; but they must there await
the British line which takes them to St. Thomas, and there be
distributed and forwarded to the various islands, the Spanish Main,
the Guianas, Venezuela, and New-Granada by some one of the ten
different British steam packet lines running semi-monthly from that
station.
So with half of our letters which go to the Continent of Europe: they
must go by the Cunard line to England, and thence by English steamers
to the British Channel, the Baltic, the White Sea, the Mediterranean,
Egypt, Constantinople, or the Black Sea. Those to places along the
coast of Africa and to the Cape of Good Hope are dependent on the same
English packet transit. For our communication with China, India,
Australia, the East-Indies generally, and the Islands of the Pacific,
we are entirely and slavishly dependent, as usual, on Great Britain.
Instead of sending our letters and passengers direct from Panama or
San Francisco to Honolulu, Hong Kong, Shanghae, Macao, Calcutta,
Ceylon, Bombay, Madras, Sydney, Melbourne, Batavia, the Mauritius, and
the Gulf of Mozambique, by a short trunk line of our own steamers, and
from its terminus only, by the British lines, they now go first to
England, as a slavish matter of course, then across the Continent or
through the Mediterranean to Egypt, thence by land to the Red Sea, and
thence to China and the East-Indies; or from England by her steam
lines around the Cape of Good Hope to Australia and the East-Indies;
or by slow and uncertain sailing packets direct from our own country,
either around Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope. It is evident to
every reflecting man who has given the subject any attention, that all
of these lines of communication would be very desirable, and very
highly profitable to our people at large; and that the latter and that
along the West Coast of South-America could be easily established by
two new contracts for that purpose, or in some other way, to the great
and lasting advantage of our countrymen.
The transmarine post is very desirable for the better conduct of our
foreign diplomacy and the consular service. It is now almost
impossible for our ministers and agents abroad to hold any thing like
a regular correspondence with the State Department, unless it be those
in Southern and Western Europe. I was told last year by our Minister
in Rio de Janeiro that his dispatches from the Government at home
seldom reached him under four months; and Mr. Gilmer, the Consul of
the United States at Bahia, reports, in the "Consular Returns" now
about to be published, that his dispatches never come to hand under
four months, that they are frequently out six months, and that many
are lost altogether. This is the experience and the reiterated
complaint of nearly every foreign _employee_ of the Government, who
has any zeal in prosecuting his country's business, and may find it
necessary to get instructions or advice from home. Many knowing the
delays, uncertainty, and irregularity of correspondence, make no
attempt whatever to communicate regularly with the Department. We
frequently express great surprise that we have no intelligence from
our ministers, special ambassadors, and agents; but do not reflect
that in the majority of cases dispatches have to be sent by
irresponsible and slow-sailing vessels, or by the steamers of Great
Britain, which it may be safely asserted are in no particular hurry to
deliver them to us. Three several letters sent by me at separate times
through the British mail from Rio de Janeiro for New-York never
reached their destination.
Nor is it better with our squadrons on foreign stations. They receive
their orders in the same slow and irregular way, and find it almost as
easy to send a vessel when they wish to communicate with the Navy
Department, or await the movements of their dull old storeships, as to
attempt any other means of intercourse. It may be safely said that
they are not actually under the control of the Department, in many
important cases, one time in ten. Whatever the dispute, it is left
entirely at the will of the Commodore, or it remains unsettled
altogether. Our recent accumulated Paraguayan difficulties is a case
in point. American citizens were driven from the country, and their
valuable property confiscated. They applied to the Commodore for
relief, but could not obtain it. Our surveying vessel, engaged in a
permitted scientific exploration, was fired into and had some of her
men killed; and redress being demanded by the Captain from the
Commodore, it was refused. The Commodore feared transcending his
instructions: he could not communicate with the home authorities much
under a year; and so the case rested, and yet rests. These wants,
papable as they are in times of peace, become doubly pressing in time
of war. Let a conflict commence with England, or France, on whom we
depend for mails, or with their allies, and they could easily surprise
and destroy every squadron which we have upon the high seas months
before they would necessarily hear of a declaration of war, or know
why they were captured. The very contemplation of such possibilities
is intolerable, and should be sufficient of itself, setting aside all
considerations of commerce and diplomacy, to arouse our nation to the
adoption of the proper means for its safety and defense.
An effective steam postal marine is unquestionably most desirable and
necessary for the defense of our country, and for the prosecution of
any foreign war. Lord Canning, the British Post-Master General,
recently said in a report to the House of Lords, that although all of
the steam mail packets might not be able to carry an armament, or be
required in the transport service in time of war, yet the mail
facilities which they would then afford would be more important and
necessary than at any other time. He had no idea that because engaged
in a foreign war the postal service would be useless, but to the
contrary, more than ever indispensable. Such proved to be the fact in
the late contest in the Crimea, and such is to-day the case with
regard to the troubles in India and China. Their postal vessels have
proven a first necessity in both of these wars, not only for transport
of the troops, but for speedy intelligence also. Without them, England
could not have entered the Crimean contest, and the French forces
would have been compelled to remain at home. Turkey would have been
overawed, and Constantinople would have fallen before the Russian
fleet. We are to-day, and always must be, liable to a foreign war. We
have a great boiling cauldron running over with excitement all along
our southern and south-western borders. Central America, Cuba, the
West-Indies, and South-America are far more foreign countries to us
than Europe or the Mediterranean to England. Cuba will no doubt be at
some day our most important naval station and possession. Even the
defense of our own coast would require an immense transport service;
for Texas is nearly four thousand miles from Maine, and California is
seven thousand from the Atlantic seaboard. No better proof can be
given of the necessity of a large and extra naval transport service
than the late Mexican war. But for our steamers it would have taken us
years to concentrate an army on the shores of Mexico. It was a tedious
process at the time; for our ocean mail packets were not then in use.
We could now land a larger number of men there in one month than we
then did in a whole year. But our transport facilities are not yet by
any means adequate.
A large postal steam marine is desirable as a means of cultivating the
sympathies and respect of foreign nations, by bringing them into
closer friendly and commercial connection with us; and for creating
among them that respect and consideration which the British statesmen
so well know to be an easy means of conducting diplomacy, and an
unfailing source of commercial advantages. It is not necessary that we
shall impose upon foreign countries in these respects by false
pretenses; but it is truly desirable, and it would be profitable to an
extent little imagined, to let them know our real importance as a
nation, and understand our pacific policy and _bona fide_ intentions.
These are important considerations when we wish to carry any point,
establish any line of policy, remove any prejudice; and nothing will
more readily produce them, and arouse attention to our articles of
export, and induce a people to establish a regular business with us,
than these ever-present, convenient, and imposing mail steamers.
Nations as well as individuals estimate us by our appearances; and
while it is not desirable that we shall appear more than we are, it is
yet very important that foreign nations with which we have business
shall know our real merits, and respect us for what we are
intrinsically worth. There is evidently no means of our commercial
triumph over other nations without a liberal and widely extended steam
mail service; and as this triumph is of paramount importance to us,
who have so many resources, so is the ocean steam mail as the only
means of securing it. (_See views of Gen. Rusk, in papers appended._)
It has recently been suggested by parties who certainly have not
thought very deeply on the subject, that the completion of the
Atlantic Telegraph, which every body reasonably expects soon to be
completed, will so inaugurate a new era in the transmission of
intelligence, that one of its effects will be the supersession of fast
ocean mails, and consequently of subsidized steamers. It is a first
and palpable view of this question that much of the important
intelligence between the two countries requiring speedy transmission
will be sent through the telegraph, notwithstanding the necessarily
high prices which will be charged for dispatches. These communications
will be sententious, summary, and of great variety. The markets,
prices, important political and other events, private personal and
unelaborated intelligence will come over the wires just as they now
come over existing land lines. The line will create extra facilities
for operations on both sides, and cause more mutual business to be
done. It will thus create the necessity for more correspondence than
before, for particulars, elaboration, items, bills of lading,
exchanges, duplicates, minute instructions, etc., to which there will
be no end. The main transaction of any business being made more
quickly, it will be essential for the papers to pass with greater
dispatch. If there were twenty telegraphic wires working day and
night, which never can be the case from their expensiveness, they
could not do in a month the correspondence and business done by one
steamer's mail. Beside this, those who got their dispatches first
would have a decided advantage over those who would be compelled from
the mass of business to wait several days. It is an advantage of the
steam mails that all get their letters and papers at the same time;
and that no one has thus the advantage of the other. It is hardly
possible for one unacquainted with the postal business to conceive how
large a mass of mail matter is deposited by each steamer; and it is
only necessary to see this to realize that the Atlantic Telegraph will
never materially interfere with the steamers except to require of them
greater speed and heavier mails.
It is the experience on all of our land routes that the thousands of
miles of telegraph, so far from superseding the mails, have made more
mails necessary, have caused and required them to be much faster, have
necessitated more correspondence, and induced people to live in more
mutual dependence, to have more communication with one another, and to
make the home or the business of a man less than formerly his closed
castle, which none entered, and which no one had any occasion to
enter. The American telegraph has now arrived at great perfection, and
sends its electric throb to every corner of the Union, save California
only. At the same time, the railroads of the country are taxed to
their highest capacity. No period ever witnessed so many, so rapid,
and so well-filled mails. It is evident that no telegraphic system can
properly do detailed business. First, it is and must ever remain too
costly. Second, it would require about as many lines as business men,
to give them all equal chances, and no one the profitable precedence.
Next, there is nothing positively accurate and fully reliable. No
signatures can pass over the line. No transaction can be made final by
it. No bank will pay, or ought to pay, money on public telegraphic
drafts. And, as in the land service, so in the ocean. The telegraph
across the ocean will simply create far more business for the mails,
and make it desirable and indispensable that they shall be sent and
received by the most rapid conveyance known to the times. Thus, it is
evident that this new and as yet not fully established agent of
international communication, so far from obviating our rapid
transmarine service, will but the more effectually necessitate it.
Nor must it be forgotten that our commercial prosperity largely
depends on the ready and comfortable transit of passengers. The
passenger traffic has increased with astonishing rapidity during the
last eighteen years. Our smaller merchants can go abroad when mail
steamers are plenty, and make their own purchases and sales, without
paying heavy commissions and high prices to middlemen; do their
business on less capital; and thus benefit themselves and reduce the
prices to our consumers. Compared with sailing vessels, these few mail
steamers become the forerunners of trade and commerce, and create an
immense service for the sail. They enable us to save large sums of
interest or advances on merchandise consigned, and give to us quick
returns from the products which we ship abroad. This has long been
evident to Great Britain, and she has acted liberally on the
suggestion. So desirable is the service for the general prosperity of
her people, that she expends annually for her foreign steam mails
nearly six millions of dollars, while they do not return to the
treasury much above three. She regards the expenditure as she does
that for the navy and the army, a necessity for the public
preservation and prosperity.
As regards the lines that we now have, they are among the noblest in
the world. For aggregate comfort, convenience, safety, speed, and
cheapness, they are not equalled by the most famous British lines.
More luxurious tables, more neatness, cleanliness, and roominess, more
general comforts than have always been characteristic of our Havre,
Liverpool, and California lines, can not be found in the world. The
only objection to them is, that the service is not sufficient; that
the trips are not frequent enough; and that the companies are not
enabled to sustain a larger steam marine which would proportionally
cheapen the service, and accommodate more persons and a much larger
class of interests. Our experiences of the benefits of existing lines,
limited as those lines are, present an unanswerable argument for the
desirableness and necessity of a liberal steam postal system, and a
large and judicious extension of the present service. (_See views of
Senate Committee, 1852, Paper E._)
SECTION III.
THE CAPABILITIES OF OCEAN STEAM.
THE COMMERCIAL CAPABILITIES OF OCEAN STEAM: STEAM MAILS ARRIVE AND
DEPART AT ABSOLUTELY FIXED PERIODS: UNCERTAINTY IS HAZARDOUS AND
COSTLY: SUBSIDIZED STEAMERS GIVE A NECESSARILY HIGH SPEED TO THE
MAILS: MONEY CAN NOT AFFORD TO LIE UPON THE OCEAN FOR WEEKS:
COMPARED WITH SAIL: STEAMERS TRANSPORT CERTAIN CLASSES OF FREIGHT:
THE HAVRE AND THE CUNARD LINES: THE CUNARD PROPELLERS: STEAMERS
CAN AFFORD TO TRANSPORT EXPRESS PACKAGES AND GOODS: GOODS TAKEN
ONLY TO FILL UP: WHY PROPELLERS ARE CHEAPER IN SOME CASES: STEAM
IN SOME CASES CHEAPER THAN THE WIND: AN ESTIMATE: THE PROPELLER
FOR COASTING: STEAM ON ITS OWN RECEIPTS HAS NOT SUCCEEDED ON THE
OCEAN: MARINE AND FLUVIAL NAVIGATION COMPARED: MOST FREIGHTS NOT
TRANSPORTABLE BY STEAM ON ANY CONDITIONS: AUXILIARY FREIGHTING AND
EMIGRANT PROPELLERS: LAWS OF TRANSPORT: RAPID MAILS AND LEISURE
TRANSPORT OF FREIGHT THE LAW OF NATURE: THE PRICE OF COALS RAPIDLY
INCREASING: ANTICIPATED IMPROVEMENTS AND CHEAPENING IN MARINE
PROPULSION NOT REALIZED.
Believing that no further arguments or facts are necessary to show
that a rapid steam mail marine is desirable and essential to the
successful government of the country, to our foreign commerce, and to
the growth of individual interests and a general prosperity of the
people, I shall now make some few inquiries concerning the Commercial
Capabilities of steam, as the most effective agent for the rapid
transit of the ocean, and the most expensive agent for the transport
of goods. After this, it will be necessary to examine into the Cost
of Steam, as a subject closely allied to its general capabilities.
Whatever may be said of the wind as a cheap agent of locomotion, this
much may be safely predicated of steam vessels for the mails; that
their time of departure and arrival has an absolute fixity which is
attainable by no other means, and which is highly conducive to the
best interests of all those for whom commerce is conducted. No
reasoning is necessary to show to the man of business, or even to the
pleasure-seeker, the importance of approximate certainty as to the
time when the mail leaves and when he can receive an answer to his
dispatches. He may not be able to give clearly philosophic reasons for
it; yet he feels the necessity in his business; and it certainly
relieves him of many painful doubts, if nothing more. Uncertainty in
commercial operations is always hazardous and costly to the great mass
of the people, who as a general thing pay more for whatever they get,
on the principle that we seldom take a venture in an uncertain thing
unless it holds out inducements of large profit, or unless we get a
high price for guarantying it. So in commercial correspondence, which
constitutes the great bulk of the ocean mails. Let uncertainty prevail
for but three or four days beyond the time when we should have news
from abroad, and every body is in doubt, every body speculates, and in
the end every body is injured.
Nor is this certainty in the time of arrival and departure of the
mails more desirable than their speed. The common sense of the world
has settled down upon the necessity of rapid mails; and all of the
ingenuity of the age is now taxed to its very highest to secure more
speed in the transmission of intelligence. Many interests demand it.
Money, which represents labor, is continually lent and borrowed in
bills of exchange, acceptances, deposits, and in actual cash sent
across the seas. The length of time for passing the bills and
correspondence, or the specie itself, thus becomes an exceedingly
important item to those who are to use them, and consequently to the
ultimate consumer for whom they are conducting the commercial
transaction. What community would to-day tolerate the idea of sending
three millions of dollars per week, and five millions of credits
between England and the United States on a sailing ship of whatever
quality, with the probability of keeping it lying unproductive on the
ocean for thirty days? Extend this to weekly shipments of the same
amounts, and have at one time on the waters between the two countries
twelve million dollars in specie and twenty in credits, tossing about
the ocean, unproductive and unsafe, and entailing all of the evils
incident to the uncertainty as to the time when it will arrive. But if
this is not sufficient, extend the inquiry to South-America, and
China, and India, and see how enormous and useless a waste of money
and interest is incurred in the many millions which by sailing vessels
and slow steamers is fruitlessly gilding the ocean for months. Money
is too valuable and interest too high to keep so many millions of it
locked up from the world. At two and three per cent a month, the
nation, or, what is the same thing, its commercial and mercantile
classes, as representing the producing, would soon become bankrupt.
The only avoidance of these evident evils is in a rapid transmission
of the mails, specie, and passengers. And herein consists the chief
value of the rapid ocean steamer. It is an important case which the
Telegraph, with all of its benefits, can never reach. It can never
transmit specie; neither the evidences of debt nor of property. The
voluminous mails, with all of their tedious details, upon which such
transactions depend, must go and come on steamers, and on steamers
only. They have the certainty, which will satisfy men and prevent
speculation, gambling, and imposition; they have the speed, which
shortens credit, keeps specie alway in active use, and enables
commercial men to know, meet, and supply the wants of the world before
they become costly or crushing; and they give a rapid and comfortable
transit to passengers, who can thus look after their business, and
save much to themselves and to the producer and consumer. Compared
with sailing vessels their efficiency is really wondrous. Foreign
correspondence was formerly very limited, and the interchange of
interests, feelings, and opinions was slow and tedious. Each nation
depended solely on itself; and instead of the brotherhood now
prevailing, communicated through the costly channels of war, by
messages of the cannon, and in powerful, hostile fleets. But the
foreign correspondence of the world is really enormous, and rapidly
increasing, since the introduction of ocean steamers; and no one will
say that they have had a small share in producing that fraternal
international spirit which is now so widely manifested in Peace
Congresses, Congresses of the Five Powers, explanations, concessions,
and amicable adjustments of difficulties. The peaceful influences and
the civilization of the times are but another comment on the
capabilities of steam.
There are also certain classes of freights which steam is better
calculated than sailing vessels to transport; certain rich and costly
goods which would either damage or depreciate if not brought speedily
into the market. There are many articles also, as gold and silver
ware, jewelry, diamonds, bullion, etc., and some articles of _vertu_
as well as use, which are costly, and have to be insured at high
values unless sent on steamers; and which consequently can pay a
rather better price. As in the case of specie, they are too valuable
to be kept long on the ocean; but in the general traffic of the world
there is so little of this class of freight that steamers can place no
reliance on it as a source of income. These freights have abounded
most between France and England and the United States. This is the
principal reason why the New-York and Havre line of mail steamers has
run on so unprecedentedly small a subsidy; a sum not more than half
adequate to the support of a mail line but for that class of freights.
The Cunard line has also derived a large sum of its support from the
same source. All such articles passing by that line come from England,
Ireland, and Scotland, where they are manufactured; and being shipped
by British merchants, are given, as a matter of duty, to their own
steamers. Another reason for the Cunard line getting most of those
more profitable freights is that a steamer leaves every week; every
Saturday; and shippers sending packages weekly are not compelled every
other week to hunt up a new line, and open a new set of accounts, as
would be the case if they attempted to ship by the Collins
semi-monthly line.
These freights have hitherto proven a profitable source of income to
that line. As there is no manufacturing done in this country for
Europe, the Cunarders and the Havre as well as the Collins and
Vanderbilt lines, have no freights that pay the handling from the
United States to Europe. And not only has the Cunard line, by starting
from home, taken all of these profitable freights from the Collins,
but it has run a weekly line of propellers from Havre and taken the
freight over to Liverpool free of charge for its New-York and Boston
steamers, and thereby shared the freights and greatly reduced the
income of the Havre line. There being a great superabundance of
propeller stock in Great Britain, which can be purchased frequently at
less than half its cost, and these vessels running the short distance
between Havre and Liverpool very cheaply, (_See pages 108-13_,) the
Cunarders have cut the Havre freights down from forty to fifteen
dollars per ton, and sometimes for months together to ten dollars per
ton. As a matter of course, this price would not pay the handling and
care of these costly articles; but at fifteen dollars it enabled the
Cunard line to fill their ships and derive some profit; as most of
them, with the exception of the _Persia_, run slowly, use less coal,
and have more freight room. All of these freights are, however, small
in quantity, and not much to be relied on from year to year, as will
be seen below, in consequence of the action of propellers.
There is another class of business which mail steamers can do at
remunerating prices; but which is exceedingly limited anywhere, and
not at all known on some lines. This is in Express packages. They pay
a high price; but seldom reach more than three or four tons under the
most favorable circumstances. In the early stages of the California
lines, when there was a rush of travel to the gold regions, and a
hurried transit required for a thousand little necessaries of life,
the New-York and Aspinwall and the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's
lines transported a large express freight outward at every voyage,
amounting sometimes to two hundred tons; but the golden days of such
cargo have long gone by, and California is now supplied like the rest
of the world by the cheaper and more deliberate transport of sailing
vessels; and the steamers are left to their legitimate business of
mails and passengers. Taking together all of the classes of freights
which steamers having mail payment are capable of transporting, they
amount at present to but an insignificant part of the income by which
these steamers can be run. During the last six years these freights
have reduced more than one hundred per cent; and goods which were then
profitable to the steamer, are now taken only "to fill up." And the
chief reason for this reduction arises not so much from competition
between the steam-lines, which well knew that they could not transport
these freights when reduced to the present low prices, but from the
introduction of a large number of propellers, some of which were
originally designed for this species of trade, and many others which
were built during the war in the Crimea for the transport of troops.
These ships were never prosperous anywhere, and are in nearly all
cases at the present found in second hands; the original proprietors
having lost a large share of their investment. Thus, purchased
cheaply, and running with simply an auxiliary steam power, and making
the passages but little shorter than the sailing vessels, and not even
so short as their best passages, they have but little more daily
expense than the sailing vessels, with all of the deceptive advantages
of being called steamers. They thus get these better freights and a
large number of immigrants, which with small interest on prime cost
enables them to live.
Paradoxical as it may seem, there are yet some cases, even upon the
ocean, in which steam can transport freight cheaper than the winds of
heaven. And this species of trade constitutes one of the best
capabilities of steam power applied to navigation. It is not in the
long voyage between Europe and America, or between the East and
California, or yet in the far-off trade among the calms and pacific
seas of the East-Indies and the Pacific Islands; it is not in the
smooth, lake-like seas of the West-Indies, where there is no freight
whose transport price will pay for putting it on and taking it off the
steamer; nor in the trade of Brazil whence a bag of coffee can be
transported five thousand miles to New-York nearly as cheaply as it
can from New-York to Baltimore or to Charleston; but it is in the
coasting trade of almost every country, where the voyage is short. In
the trade between New-York and Baltimore, between Charleston and
Savannah, between Boston and Portland, or between New-Orleans and Key
West, or New-Orleans and Galveston, the small sailing vessels spend
one half of their time in working in and out of the harbors. Sometimes
they are two days awaiting winds, to get out of a harbor, two days in
sailing, and two days again in making and entering their port of
destination; whereas a steamer would make the whole passage in one day
to a day and a half. Now, the distance actually to be run, and for
which the steamer will be compelled to burn coal is not very great;
but the trouble of working the vessel in and out, against adverse
winds and currents, and amid storms and calms, is sometimes excessive,
while the delay and cost are disheartening. They have also the trouble
of warping into and out of the docks, which is not the case with
steamers.
Thus, it frequently takes a week for a sailing vessel to do the work
that a steamer will readily do in twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Say
that it takes the sail four times as long as the steamer to accomplish
a given voyage. To do as much business as the steamer would do in the
same time, would require four sailing vessels; four times as many men
as one sail requires, or probably twice as many hands in the aggregate
as the steamer would have; and would incur at least twice the expense
of the steamer in feeding them. Now, there is also a much larger
aggregate sum invested in these four sail, and the owners pay a much
larger sum of interest on their prime investment. Or, in other words,
the steamer with but a few more men, but little greater expense in
living, a small coal-bill, an engineer and firemen, and a prime outlay
of not more than double the capital, will carry four times the freight
and passengers, without incurring probably so much as three times the
expense of one of the sail. After the prime cost the most important
item of expenditure in one of these small steamers is the coal; but
the distance run being so short, and getting into and out of the
harbor and docks being so easy, the vessel does large execution at
little expense. The two most essential benefits, however, of her short
voyage are, that she is not compelled to carry much fuel, and
consequently occupies nearly all of her space with freight; and that
the prices of freight on these short voyages are much larger in
proportion than they are on long voyages. Sailing vessels charge very
little more for a thousand miles than they do for five hundred; but a
steamer may have to charge nearly three times as much; especially if
she run fast, consume much fuel, and occupy her cargo-room with coal.
There are distances at which steamers, however large, can not carry a
pound of freight; but occupy all their available space with the power
that drives them. In these long voyages sail becomes much cheaper.
It is by no means essential that these small coasting vessels shall be
propellers; for to acquire the same speed they expend the same power
and have the disadvantage of being deeper in the water, and not being
able to go into all harbors with much freight. They have also the
advantage of carrying more sail, and being generally better able to
stand coast storms than a side-wheel of light draught of water. They
are not quite so expensive in prime construction, but generally
require more repairs, and must be on the docks much oftener. They are,
however, much better suited than side-wheel vessels to voyages where a
medium speed is required, and where the steam can be used at pleasure
simply as an auxiliary power. In such cases there is a profitable
economy of fuel. But speed has generally been deemed essential in this
country, and the side-wheel is everywhere used. But entirely the
contrary is the case in Great Britain and France. There the coasting
business is conducted by screws almost altogether; and the speed does
not transcend the limit of economy and commercial capability. They
distinguish between the extremely fast carriage of mails and
passengers on the one hand, and freights on the other; and although
they wish the speed and certainty of steam, yet it is not the costly
speed. When they know that a given quantity of fuel will carry freight
eight knots per hour, they would consider it wasteful and foolish to
consume twice that quantity of fuel just to carry it ten knots; and
more especially so, when, in addition to the extra quantity of fuel,
they would lose just its bulk in paying freight room. England is thus
employing most of her vast fleet of coasting ocean steamers in her own
trade, or in the foreign trade lying within a few hundred miles of her
ports. And the voyages being short, her coals being cheap and
convenient, frequently not above three dollars per ton to the
coasters, and in addition to this, the prime cost of these vessels
being smaller than in this country, as both iron and labor are
cheaper, she has found them very profitable at home, and is
insinuating them into all the short routes wherever she can get a
foothold. It was not until she attempted the same species of
self-supporting steam navigation with distant countries, that her
propeller system failed her and involved her citizens in loss.
Meanwhile it is more than probable that within the next fifteen years
we shall find five hundred propellers scattered along the coasts of
the United States.
Notwithstanding the eminent capabilities of steam when applied to
coast navigation, or to the fluvial navigation of the interior, it has
failed to make the same triumphs in the carriage of freights and
passengers upon the ocean. And it is not alone because the voyage is
long and the freights low in price. Steamers carry freights up the
Mississippi river two thousand miles from New-Orleans, and find it
profitable. Some run even as high as three thousand miles up that
river and the Missouri; a voyage nearly as long as to Europe, and make
money by it. But the circumstances are very different. They do not
leave the dock at New-Orleans with even more than enough fuel on board
for the whole trip, as the ocean steamers do. If they did they could
carry no freight. But they stop every twelve to eighteen hours and
take on wood just as they need it, fifty to a hundred cords at a time;
and instead of occupying all of their available room with wood, they
have the steamer full of cargo, and have on board only fifty or sixty
tons of fuel at a time, and only half that weight on an average. None
of the best steamers on those rivers could take enough wood on board
for the whole three thousand miles, even though they should not have a
ton of freight. And compared with ocean steamers of the same engine
power, they do not cost half of the money, I might say generally, not
one third of the money. There is no reason, then, why these steamers
should not carry large quantities of freight and make large sums of
money by it. They have the great elements, fuel, freight capacity, and
prime cost in their favor.
There is a large class of freights which are not transportable by
steam on long ocean voyages under any conditions. We will grant that
under the most favorable circumstances, where rich and costly articles
are transported in small bulk, that propellers running at a low rate
of speed, or just fast enough to anticipate sailing vessels, will make
a living. But change the class of these freights into the great
average class of those filling the thousands of sailing vessels, and
deprive these screw vessels of an immense emigrant passenger traffic,
and they would not pay their running expenses by fifty per cent. This
style of freights, sailing vessels in their great competition have
reduced to the lowest paying figure. The margin left for profit is so
small that our ship-owners constantly complain that unless there are
changes they must go into other business; and many of them say this
honestly, as is shown by the hundreds of ships which of late years we
can always find lying up, awaiting improvement in business. Now, let
even the slowest and cheapest running screw vessel attempt to carry
the same freights, to say nothing of fast side-wheel mail vessels, and
we shall see against what odds the screw or other steamer has to
contend. In the first place, her engines, boilers, coal, etc., occupy
at least forty per cent of her total registered tonnage. Grant that
the additional expense of a steamer over a sail, that is, wages for
engineers, firemen, coal passers, etc., and finding the same in food
and rooms, costs even no more than the loss of an additional ten per
cent of her freight room. In other words, considering her steam
machinery, fuel, extra expenses, etc., to be equal to half of her
freight room, it is evident that she would carry only half as much
freight as a sailing vessel of the same size, and that she would get
but half as much money for it.
It is thus clear, I think, that there is a certain class of ocean
freights which steam can not transport under any conditions so long as
there are sailing vessels on the ocean; and in that class are
comprehended all the great standard and staple articles of the world,
constituting in sum seventeen twentieths of all the freight passing
upon the ocean. This being so, it is utterly idle to suppose that
steam in any form can take the place of sail upon the ocean, even
though the present prices for the carriage of standard articles should
increase three hundred per cent.
There are many considerations which affect this question. The ordinary
average passages of the ocean on long voyages are now very rapid; and
some of the clippers have attained a speed which no freighting steamer
may ever be expected to do on the high seas. They do not maintain this
high speed as an average, but it is sufficiently high for all of the
ordinary purposes of transport in the standard articles of commerce,
and where the business of the clipper is done by a fast mail steamer.
There is no positive necessity for the speedy transport that some have
attempted to give to articles, whose presence in the markets, as the
ordinary supplies of life, to-day, next month, or a month later, is a
matter of total indifference to every one except the ship-owner
himself. It but little concerns the public whether a cargo of cotton,
or beef or pork, or corn is one month or forty-five days between the
United States and England, so that it is safe in the end. It is an
annual production that must have an annual transit, and however
unnecessarily fast we may become, we can not send more than one crop
in the year. The world frequently becomes too fast in every thing; and
crises, panics, and bankruptcies follow as legitimate consequences.
When a fictitious value is given to every thing, and every globule of
air which one has breathed comes puffing out, a splendid bubble, a
magnificent speculation, and when men have to go so fast that they
need a telegraph to ride them through the world lest they get behind
the heated times, no wonder that the shipper can not sit quietly down
in his office and wait thirty days for a load of corn to reach
England, or a load of iron to appear in the harbor in return. And it
does not matter to him that it may not be used there in six months. He
wishes to finish the "operation," to close up the "transaction" before
he goes up town in the evening.
There is a rational distinction between the necessary and the
unnecessary which we must learn to make, and a limit which safety
assigns to every operation. There are some things which must be done
rapidly, and others which may be done at leisure. Between the freight
cargo, and the correspondence which controls it there is a great
difference. Rapid transport of letters, intelligence, and passengers,
and leisure transport of freight, is the law of nature, and to attempt
to reverse it is but to attempt that which will never be successfully
done, simply because wholly unnecessary in any permanent economic
sense. And not only is higher speed than that of clippers unnecessary
in ordinary freight transport, but it is clearly impossible in any
normal condition of trade. Circumstances may, and doubtless often will
exist, which will require some sluggish article to be transported a
long distance in a short time, as in the case of the famine in
Ireland, and which may insure rates at which steam vessels can take
small quantities of such freights; but such occasions will ever be
accidental, and the support of vessels depending on them the
questionable support of expedients, and capricious in the extreme. It
will ever be just as impossible to hurry gross freights across the
ocean in a healthy state of commerce as it will to prevent rapid
mails, or forego the comforts of quick passenger transit.
To say nothing of a vessel which is half filled with its own power,
attempting to compete, in the ordinary freights of the world, with one
which fills every square foot with paying cargo, it is equally
important that we should look at the question of fuel. The coals of
the world are not so plentiful or so cheap that we should consume
whole pits in a year in unnecessary and unproductive service. They are
already beginning to fail in many parts of the world, or to the same
effect, are mined and brought to market at such increasing cost, and
applied to so many new purposes day by day, that in a few years the
price will place them entirely beyond the reach of commercial purposes
upon the ocean. It is contended, however, that the science of
engineering is also rapidly advancing, and that we shall soon have
some discovery by which we can have heat without fuel, and power
without heat. But I have heard of those imaginary engineering hopes so
long that I begin to believe them vague, and that we shall yet for a
few generations measure the power applied by the number of pounds of
coal consumed. From past experiences and present indications we can
predicate nothing with more certainty of fuel than that it will
indefinitely increase in price. I am satisfied, therefore, that with
all of the capabilities of steam it can never be applied to general
ocean transportation; first, because undesirable; and second, because
impossible even if desirable. But to show more clearly that it is
impossible, I will now make some inquiries concerning the cost of
ocean steam, which is the cardinal point of interest in marine
propulsion.
SECTION IV.
COST OF STEAM: OCEAN MAIL SPEED.
MISAPPREHENSION OF THE HIGH COST OF STEAM MARINE PROPULSION: VIEWS
OF THE NON-PROFESSIONAL: HIGH SPEED NECESSARY FOR THE DISTANCES IN
OUR COUNTRY: WHAT IS THE COST OF HIGH ADEQUATE MAIL SPEED: FAST
STEAMERS REQUIRE STRONGER PARTS IN EVERY THING: GREATER OUTLAY IN
PRIME COST: MORE FREQUENT AND COSTLY REPAIRS: MORE WATCHFULNESS
AND MEN: MORE COSTLY FUEL, ENGINEERS, FIREMEN, AND COAL-PASSERS:
GREAT STRENGTH OF HULL REQUIRED: ALSO IN ENGINES, BOILERS, AND
PARTS: WHY THE PRIME COST INCREASES: THEORY OF REPAIRS: FRICTION
AND BREAKAGES: BOILERS AND FURNACES BURNING OUT: REPAIRS TWELVE TO
EIGHTEEN PER CENT: DEPRECIATION: SEVERAL LINES CITED; USES FOR
MORE MEN: EXTRA FUEL, AND LESS FREIGHT-ROOM: BRITISH TRADE AND
COAL CONSUMPTION:
THE NATURAL LAWS OF RESISTANCE, POWER, AND SPEED, WITH TABLE: THE
RESISTANCE VARIES AS IS THE SQUARE OF THE VELOCITY: THE POWER, OR
FUEL, VARIES AS THE CUBE OF THE VELOCITY: THE RATIONALE:
AUTHORITIES CITED IN PROOF OF THE LAW: EXAMPLES, AND THE FORMULAE:
COAL-TABLE; NO. I.: QUANTITY OF FUEL FOR DIFFERENT SPEEDS AND
DISPLACEMENTS: DEDUCTIONS FROM THE TABLE: RATES AT WHICH INCREASED
SPEED INCREASES THE CONSUMPTION OF FUEL: CONSUMPTION FOR VESSELS
OF 2,500, 3,000, AND 6,000 TONS DISPLACEMENT: COAL-TABLE; NO. II.:
FREIGHT-TABLE; NO. III.: AS SPEED AND POWER INCREASE FREIGHT AND
PASSENGER ROOM DECREASE: FREIGHT AND FARE REDUCED: SPEED OF
VARIOUS LINES: FREIGHT-COST: COAL AND CARGO; NO. IV.: MR.
ATHERTON'S VIEWS OF FREIGHT TRANSPORT.
The foregoing arguments bring us to the conclusion that steam,
however desirable, can not be profitably employed in commerce
generally as an agent of transport; and that it is best applicable to
the rapid conveyance of the mails, passengers, specie, and costly
freights only. That this fact may be presented in a clearer light, and
that we may see the almost incredibly high cost of rapid steaming, or
the attainment of a speed sufficiently high for the carriage of
important mails, it will be necessary to make some critical inquiries
concerning the working cost of steam power, under any conditions, as
applied to marine propulsion. Much misapprehension prevails on this
point among nearly all classes of the people, and even among the
rulers of the country whose action controls the destiny and uses of
this valuable power. It is hardly to be expected, however, that
gentlemen engaged actively in the all-engrossing pursuits of business
or of public life, with a thousand different sets of ideas to be
matured on a thousand different subjects, such as demand the attention
of Congress, and the Departments of the Executive Government, should
be practically or even theoretically acquainted with a profession
which requires years of close application and study, and a wide field
of practical, daily observation and experience. It would be as absurd
for unprofessional gentlemen of any class, as well from the walks of
statesmanship and the Government as from those of quiet private life,
to assume an acquaintance with the theory and practice of navigation,
and the cost, embarrassments, and difficulties attending steamship
enterprise, as it would for any two or three of them to enter an ocean
steamer for the first time of their lives, and essay to work the
engines and navigate the ship across the seas. The skill and knowledge
requisite for such a task would require years of application; and it
can not be reasonably supposed that those entirely unacquainted with
the theory and parts of an engine, should know much about its
capabilities, or the cost attending its use.
But there are approximate conclusions, readily applicable to
practice, at which even the unprofessional can arrive with certainty
and security on a proper presentation of the prominent facts and
theories concerned; and that these may be given to the public in a
reliable and intelligible form, for the removal of the doubts and
obscurities which have hung around the subject, is the chief object of
this publication. This inquiry becomes the more important as the speed
of American steamers is proverbially beyond that of any other steam
vessels in the world. From the first conception of fluvial and marine
steam propulsion by Fitch and Fulton, the public and the inventors
themselves regarded the new application of this power with the more
favor as it promised to be a means of shortening the long distances
between the different parts of our own large country. And the same
object has acted as a stimulus ever since to that increase of speed
which has placed localities all over this country, hitherto days
apart, now, probably, but as many hours. The slow trip through marshes
and rivers, over hills and mountains, and by the meandering roads of
the country, between New-York and Albany, once required from four to
six days; but the attainment of twenty-five miles per hour in our fast
river steamers has at length placed that capital within six hours of
the Metropolis. And, as in this instance, so has the effort been
throughout our whole country, and upon the ocean, until we have
attained, both upon the rivers and the high seas, the highest speed
yet known, notwithstanding the important fact that steamship building
is a new and not fully developed species of enterprise in this
country. We have already seen how imperatively the spirit of the age
and the genius of our people demand rapid steam mails by both land and
sea, and a rapid conveyance of passengers; and it would be
unreasonable to suppose that if we required these for the development
of our youth, they would be less necessary for the fruitful uses of
manhood and maturity. It is abundantly evident that the American
people are by nature and habit a progressive and unusually hurrying
people; and it is not to be supposed that they will reverse this
constitutional law of their nature in their attempts at ocean
navigation.
To answer the question, "What is the cost of high, adequate mail
speed?" requires something more than an inquiry into the quantity of
fuel consumed; although this is the principal element of its cost. We
must consider that the attainment and maintenance of high speed depend
upon the exertion of a high power; and that,
I. High speed and power require stronger parts in every thing: in the
ship's build, the machinery, the boilers, and all of the working
arrangements:
II. High speed and power require a larger outlay in prime cost, in
material and building, for the adequate resistance required by such
power:
III. High speed and power require more frequent and costly repairs:
IV. High speed and power require more watchfulness, a more prompt
action, and consequently more persons:
V. High speed and power require more fuel, more engineers, more
firemen, and more coal-stokers.
1. These propositions are nearly all self-evident to every class of
mind. That a high speed attained through the exertion of a high power
will require stronger parts in every thing that exerts a force or
resists one, is as manifest as that a force necessary to remove one
ton of weight will have to be doubled to remove two tons. In the prime
construction of the hull this is as requisite as in any other part.
The resistance to a vessel, or the concussion against the water, at a
low rate of speed, will not be very sensibly felt; but if that speed
is considerably increased and the concussion made quicker without a
corresponding increase in the strength of the frame and hull of the
ship generally, we shall find the ship creaking, straining, and
yielding to the pressure, until finally it works itself to pieces, and
also disconcerts the engines, whose stability, bracing, and keeping
proper place and working order depend first and essentially on the
permanence and stability of the hull. If the resistance to a vessel in
passing through the water increases as the square of the velocity, and
if in addition to this outward thrust against the vessel it has to
support the greater engine power within it, which has increased as the
cube of the velocity, then the strength of the vessel must be adequate
to resist without injury these two combined forces against which it
has to contend.
The same increased strength is necessary also in the engines and
boilers. It is admitted by the ablest engineers, and verified by
practice, as will be shown in another part of this Section, that to
increase the speed of a steamer from eight to ten knots per hour, it
is necessary to double the power, and so on in the ratio of the cubes
of the velocity. Suppose that we wish to gain these two knots advance
on eight. It is evident that, if the boilers have to generate, and the
engines to use twice the power, and exert twice the force, they must
have also twice the strength. The boiler must be twice as strong and
heavy; the various working parts of the engine must be twice as
strong: the shafts, the cranks, the piston and other rods, the beams,
the cylinders, the frame work, whether of wood or iron, and even the
iron wheels themselves, with every thing in any way employed to use
the power, overcome the resistance, and gain the speed. There is no
working arrangement in any way connected with the propulsion of the
ship that does not partake of this increase; every pump, every valve,
every bolt connected directly or indirectly with the engine economy of
the ship.
2. In the second place, seeing that much greater strength of parts is
required to overcome the increased resistance, it is equally evident
that this high speed and power thus require a larger outlay in every
point of the prime construction of the vessel and engines by which the
speed is to be attained. The hull's heavier timbers cost a higher
price according to size than the direct proportion of size indicates.
Large and choice timbers are difficult to get, and costly. The hull
must also be strengthened to a large extra extent by heavy iron
strapping and bracing, which, unlike the rest, cost in the ratio of
the material used. So with the engines. The shaft, which weighs twice
as much, does not cost only twice as much, but frequently three or
four or five times as much. This arises not from the weight of the
metal, as is evident; but from the difficulty of forging pieces that
are so large. The persons engaged in the forging and finishing of the
immense shafts, cranks, pistons, etc., used in our first class
steamers, frequently consider that the last and largest piece is the
_chef d'oeuvre_ of the art, and that it will never be transcended,
even if equalled again. They have expended all of their skill and
ingenuity in the task, and have not succeeded sometimes until they
have forged two or three new pieces. When a great work of this kind is
done, it may be discovered in the turning, polishing, and fitting up,
that it has at last a flaw, and that it will not do for the service
intended. As a matter of course, it must be thrown aside and a new
piece forged. This was but recently the case with one of the shafts of
the "Leviathan," in England. So with the shafts of the new Collins'
steamer "Adriatic." They were forged in Reading, Pennsylvania, and in
addition to their enormous prime cost had to incur that of shipment
from the interior of Pennsylvania to the city of New-York. In all such
cases the prime cost increases immensely, and to an extent that would
hardly be credited by those not practically familiar with the subject.
3. Again, high or increased power and speed require more frequent and
more costly repairs. Friction arises from the pressure of two bodies
moving in opposite directions, and pressure results from the exertion
of power, and in the ratio of the power applied. The amount of
friction, therefore, is in the ratio of the power expended and of the
extra weight of parts required for that power. But the effects of
friction require a higher ratio when the power is greatly multiplied,
as in the case of high speed. An immensely heavy shaft exerting an
unusual force is certain to greatly heat the journals and boxes, and
thus wear them away far more rapidly. Also a rapid motion of heavy
parts of machinery, and the necessarily severe concussions and
jarrings can not fail destroying costly working parts in the engine,
and necessitating heavy and expensive repairs and substitutions. An
ordinary engine working at a slow and easy rate, will not require one
tenth the repairs necessary if it were working up to a high power and
accomplishing a high speed. With any little derangement the engines
can stop and the injury can be repaired before it reaches any
magnitude. But with rapid mail packets the engines must run on, and
the derangement which at first is small, will amount in the end, when
the voyage is completed and the mails are delivered, to a sum probably
ten or twenty times as great as in the case of the vessel that stops
and makes her repairs as she requires them. The exertion of a high
mail power causes many costly parts to burn out from unrelieved
pressure and friction, which would not be the case under other
conditions. It is also nearly impossible for the best built engines in
the world to make fast time without breaking some important part at
every trip or two, or so cracking and injuring it from the continued
strain, that a wise precaution requires its removal to make the
steamer perfectly sea-worthy. Every practical man knows these
difficulties, and every steamship owner estimates their importance
according to the immense bills they occasion month by month, or the
delays and losses which they cause unless he has expended large
amounts of capital in providing other ships to take their place on
such occasions of derangement.
Nor is the burning out of heavy brass, and composition, and steel
pieces, or the breaking of large and troublesome parts in the engine
the only source of repairs on a steamship. The boiler department is
particularly fruitful in large bills of repairs, especially if it be
necessary to attain a good mail speed. It stands to reason that if the
whole ship can not be filled with boiler power, which with reasonably
high fires, would give enough steam, then the boilers which are used
must be exerted to their highest capacity, or the rapid speed can not
be attained. Many suppose that the boilers may generate twice the
quantity of steam without any appreciable difference in the wear and
tear; but this is a decided error. For high speed, and what I mean by
high speed is simply that which gives a sufficiently rapid transit to
the mails, the fires must be nurtured up to their highest intensity
and every pound of coal must be burned in every corner of the furnaces
which will generate even an ounce of steam. This continued heat
becomes too powerful for the furnaces and the boilers, and they begin
to oxidize, and burn, and melt away, as would never be the case under
ordinary heat. When the ship comes into port it is found that her
furnaces must be "overhauled," her grate bars renewed, her braces
restored, her boilers patched, sometimes all over, several of their
plates taken out, thousands of rivets removed and supplied, and
probably dozens of tubes also removed and replaced with new ones. But
this is not all. The best boilers can not long run in this way. After
six to seven years at the utmost, they must be removed from the ship
altogether, and new ones must be put into their place. This is also a
most expensive operation. The boilers constitute a large share of the
cost of the engine power. To put a new set of boilers in one of the
Collins steamers will cost about one hundred and ten thousand dollars,
and this must be done every six years. The boilers of the West-India
Royal Mail Steamers, which run very slowly, last on an average, six
years.[A]
[A] Statement by Mr. Pitcher, builder, before the Committee of the
House of Commons. Murray on the _Steam Engine_, p. 170, Second
Edition.
But this is not all. To restore the boilers, a ship has to be torn
literally almost to pieces. All of the decks in that part must be
removed and lost; the frame of the ship cut to pieces; large and
costly timbers removed, and altogether an expense incurred that is
frightful even to the largest companies. To insure perfect safety and
to gratify the wish of the public, this is generally done long before
it is strictly necessary, and when the boilers are in a perfectly good
condition for the working purposes of ordinary speed. But precaution
and safety are among the prerequisites of the public service, and must
be attained at whatever cost. On slow auxiliary freighting steamers
this would be by no means necessary. But the extent and cost of these
repairs on steamers far exceed any thing that would be imagined. They
are supposed to be twelve per cent. per annum of the prime cost of a
vessel of ordinary speed, taking the whole ship's life together at
twelve years at the utmost. Atherton in his "Marine Engine
Construction and Classification," page 32, says of the repairs of
steam vessels doing ordinary service in Great Britain, where all such
work is done much cheaper than in this country: "By the Parliamentary
evidence of the highest authorities on this point, it appears to have
been conclusively established, that the cost of upholding steamship
machinery has of late years amounted, on the average, to about L6 per
horse power per annum, being about 12 per cent. per annum, on the
prime cost of the machinery, which annual outlay is but one of the
grand points of current expense in which steamship proprietors are
concerned." Now, if these were the repairs of the slow West-India
Royal mail steamers, which ran but 200 days in the year, and that at a
very moderate speed, and in the machine shops of England, where at
that time (previous to 1852) wages were very low, they can not be less
in this country, on rapid mail steamers, where wages and materials are
very high, and where marine engineering was then in its infancy.
There are some facts on this subject which prove the positions here
taken. The Collins steamers have been running but six years, and yet
their repairs have amounted in all to more than the prime cost of the
ships, or to about eighteen per cent. per annum. They were as well and
as strongly built originally as any ships in the world, as appears
from the report which Commodore M. C. Perry made to the Department
regarding them, and from the fine condition of their hulls at the
present time. Their depreciation with all of these repairs has not
been probably above six per cent. per annum. They will, however,
probably depreciate ten per cent. during the next six years, and at
the age of twelve or fourteen years be unfit for service. The steamers
Washington and Hermann, which had strong hulls, have been run eight
years, and are now nearly worthless. Their depreciation has been at
least ten per cent. The steamers Georgia and Ohio, which Commodore
Perry and other superintending navy agents pronounced to be well-built
and powerful steamers, (_See Report Sec. Navy_, 1852,) ran only five
years, and were laid aside, and said to be worthless. With all of the
repairs put upon these ships, which were admitted to be capable of
doing first class war service, as intended, they depreciated probably
seventeen per cent.; as it is hardly possible that their old iron
would sell for more than fifteen per cent. of their prime cost. These
steamers paid much smaller repair bills than the Collins, and were not
so well constructed, or at so high a cost. American steamers do not,
upon the average, last above ten years; but if they reach twelve or
fourteen, they will pay a sum nearly equal to twice their cost, for
repairs and substitutions. Nor is this all. The life of a steamer ends
when her adaptation to profitable service ceases. She may not be
rotten, but may be so slow, or of so antiquated construction, or may
burn so much more fuel than more modern competitors, that she can not
stand the test of competition.
4. We thus see that not only are the requisite repairs most extensive
and costly, but of such magnitude as to greatly reduce the earnings of
any class of steam vessels. But this is not the last costly
consequence of mail speed. It requires more cautious watchfulness of
the engines, the boilers, the deck, and of every possible department
of the navigation, even including pilotage. It requires also more
promptness and dispatch in every movement, and hence a much larger
aggregate number of men. More men are necessary to keep up high fires;
twice as many men are necessary to pass twice as much coal; twice as
many engineers as under other circumstances are necessary for the
faithful working of the engines, and any accidents and repairs which
are indispensable on the ocean; and a larger number of sailors and
officers is necessary to all of the prompt movements required of the
mail steamer. The Havre mail steamers, the "Arago" and "Fulton," never
carry less than six engineers each, although they could be run across
the ocean with three under a hard working system. But this number
insures the greater safety of the ship under ordinary circumstances,
and is absolutely necessary in any case of accident and danger. It is
the same case with the firemen. When, in a heavy storm, the fire
department may be imperfectly manned, the ship has taken one of the
first chances for rendering the engines inefficient, and being finally
lost. And all of these extra and indispensable _employees_ make an
extra drain on the income of the ship, and add to the extreme
costliness of a high adequate mail speed.
5. It is clear, then, that an adequate mail speed requires more fuel,
more engineers, more firemen, more coal-stokers, and more general
expense. The question of fuel is, however, alone the most important of
all those affecting the attainment of high speed, and the item whose
economy has been most desired and sought, both by those attempting to
carry freight, and those who carry the mails and passengers. The
principal points of interests concerning it are, the enormous quantity
which both theory and practice show to be necessary to fast vessels;
the large sum to be paid for it, and the steadily increasing price;
and the paying freight room which its necessary carriage occupies. In
fast steaming, the supply of coal to the furnaces frequently arrives
at a point where many additional tons may be burned and yet produce no
useful effect or increase of power. The draft through the furnaces and
smoke stacks is so rapid and strong as to take off a vast volume of
heat; and this, coupled with a large quantity of heat radiated from
the various highly heated parts and surfaces, requires a consumption
of fuel truly astonishing. If we reflect that at the twelve principal
ports of Great Britain in the year of 1855, the tonnage entered was
6,372,301, and departed 6,426,566, equal to 12,798,867 total, and this
during the war, that a large part of this was steam tonnage, and that
the total imports and exports of Great Britain for 1856 were
1,600,000,000 dollars, we can somewhat appreciate the present and
future uses of coal, and its inevitably large increase in price. The
two hundred and seventy steamers in the British Navy, with about
50,000 aggregate horse power, consumed in 1856, according to a report
made to a Committee of the "British Association for the Advancement of
Science," this year, by Rear-Admiral Moorsom, 750,000 tons of coal.
The difficulty and cost of mining coal, its distance from the
sea-shore, and the multifarious new applications in its use among our
rapidly increasing population, as well as its almost universal and
increasing demand for marine purposes, all conspire to make it more
costly from year to year; while, as a propelling agent, it is already
beyond the reach of commercial ocean steam navigation. Coal has gone
up by a steady march during the last seven years from two and a half
to eight dollars per ton, which may now be regarded as a fair average
price along our Atlantic seaboard. And that we may see more clearly
how essentially the speed and cost of steam marine navigation depend
upon the simple question of fuel alone, to say nothing further of the
impeding causes heretofore mentioned, I will now present a few
inquiries concerning
THE NATURAL LAWS OF RESISTANCE, POWER, AND SPEED,
WITH TABLES OF THE SAME.
The resistance to bodies moving through the water increases as the
square of the velocity; and the power, or coal, necessary to produce
speed varies or increases as the cube of the velocity. This is a law
founded in nature, and verified by facts and universal experience. Its
enunciation is at first startling to those who have not reflected on
the subject, and who as a general thing suppose that, if a vessel will
run 8 miles per hour on a given quantity of coal, she ought to run 16
miles per hour on double that quantity. I think that it may be safely
asserted that in all cases of high speed, and ordinary dynamic or
working efficiency in the ship, the resistance increases more rapidly
than as the squares. The _rationale_ of the law is this: the power
necessary to overcome the resistance of the water at the vessel's bow
and the friction increases as the square; again, the power necessary
to overcome the natural inertia of the vessel and set it in motion,
increases this again as the square of the velocity, and the two
together constitute the aggregate resistance which makes it necessary
that the power for increasing a vessel's speed shall increase as the
cube of the velocity. But whatever the _rationale_, the law itself is
an admitted fact by all theoretical engineers, and is proven in
practice by all steamships. In evidence of this, I will give the
following opinions.
In his treatise on "The Marine Engine," Mr. Robert Murray, who is a
member of the Board of Trade in Southampton, England, says in speaking
of the "Natural law regulating the speed of a steamer," page 104:
"These results chiefly depend upon the natural law that _the power
expended in propelling a steamship through the water varies as the
cube of the velocity_. This law is modified by the retarding effect of
the _increased resisting surface_, consequent upon the weight of the
engines and fuel, so that the horse power increases in a somewhat
higher ratio than that named." It must be understood that when he
speaks of power, horse power, etc., it is simply another form of
representing the quantity of coal burned; as the power is in the
direct ratio of the quantity of fuel.
Bourne, the great Scotch writer upon the Screw Propeller, in his large
volume published by Longmans, London, page 145, says, in concluding a
sentence on the expensiveness of vessels: "Since it is known that the
resistance of vessels increases more rapidly than the square of the
velocity in the case of considerable speeds."
Again, at page 236, on "the resistance of bodies moving through the
water," he says: "In the case of very sharp vessels, the resistance
appears to increase nearly as the square of the velocity, but in case
of vessels of the ordinary amount of sharpness the resistance
increases more rapidly than the square of the velocity."
Again, on page 231, in speaking of the folly of a company attempting
to run steamers sufficiently rapidly for the mails at the price paid
for them, he says: "At the same time an increased rate of speed has to
be maintained, which is, of course, tantamount to a further reduction
of the payment. In fact, their position upon the Red Sea line is now
this, that they would be better without the mails than with them, as
the mere expense of the increased quantity of fuel necessary to
realize the increased speed which they have undertaken to maintain,
will swallow up the whole of the Government subvention. _To increase
the speed of a vessel from 8 to 10 knots it is necessary that the
engine power should be doubled._" This work of Mr. Bourne is now the
standard of authority on the subject of which he treats, the world
over.
Again, Mr. James R. Napier, of London, known as one of the largest and
most skilled engine-builders in Great Britain, in the discussion of
the dynamic efficiency of steamships in the proceedings of the
"British Association" in 1856, page 436, says: "_The power in similar
vessels, I here take for granted, at present varies as the cube of the
velocity._" The power simply represents the coal; in fact, it is the
coal.
Mr. Charles Atherton, the able and distinguished Chief Engineer of Her
Majesty's Royal Dock Yard, at Woolwich, has published a volume, called
"Steamship Capability," a smaller volume on "Marine Engine
Classification," and several elaborate papers for the British
Association, the Society of Arts, London, the Association of Civil
Engineers, and the Artisans' Journal, for the purpose of properly
exposing the high cost of steam freight transport as based on the law
above noticed, and the ruinous expense of running certain classes of
vessels of an inferior dynamic efficiency. When but a few weeks since
in London, I asked the Editor of the "Artisan," if any engineer in
England disputed the laws relative to power, on which Mr. Atherton
based his arguments. He replied that he had never heard of one who
did. I asked Mr. Atherton myself, if in the case of the newest and
most improved steamers, with the best possible models for speed, he
had ever found any defect in the law of, the resistance as the
squares, and the power as the cubes of the velocity. He replied that
he had not; and that he regarded the law as founded in nature, and had
everywhere seen it verified in practice in the many experiments which
it was his duty to conduct with steam vessels in and out of the Royal
Navy. I think, therefore, that with all of these high authorities, the
doctrine will be admitted as a law of power and speed, and
consequently of the consumption of coal and the high cost of running
steamers at mail speeds.
It is not my purpose here to discuss this law, or treat generally or
specially of the theory of steam navigation. It will suffice that I
point out clearly its existence and the prominent methods of its
application only, as these are necessary to the general deduction
which I propose making, that rapid steamships can not support
themselves on their own receipts. The general reader can pass over
these formulae to p. 69, and look at their results.
I. TO FIND THE CONSUMPTION OF FUEL NECESSARY TO INCREASE THE SPEED OF
A STEAMER.
Suppose that a steamer running eight miles per hour consumes forty
tons of coal per day: how much coal will she consume per day at nine
miles per hour? The calculation is as follows:
8^3 : 9^3 :: 40 : required consumption, which is, 56.95 tons. Here the
speed has increased 12-1/2 per cent., while the quantity of fuel
consumed increased 42-1/2 per cent.
Suppose, again, that we wish to increase the speed from 8 to 10, and
from 8 to 16 miles per hour. The formula stands the same, thus:
Miles. Miles. Tons Coal. Tons Coal.
8^3 : 10^3 :: 40 : _x_, = 78.1
8^3 : 16^3 :: 40 : _x_, = 320.
II. TO FIND THE SPEED CORRESPONDING TO A DIMINISHED CONSUMPTION OF
FUEL.
Murray has given some convenient formulae, which I will here adopt.
Suppose a vessel of 500 horse power run 12 knots per hour on 40 tons
coal per day: what will be the speed if she burn only 30 tons per day?
Thus:
40 : 30 :: 12^3 : V^3 (or cube of the required velocity,)
Or, reduced, 4 : 3 :: 1728 : V^3,
Equation, 3 x 1728 = 5184 = 4V^3,
Or, 5184/4 =
Cube root of 1296 = 10.902 knots = V, required velocity.
Thus, we reduce the quantity of coal one fourth, but the speed is
reduced but little above one twelfth.
III. RELATION BETWEEN THE CONSUMPTION OF FUEL, AND THE LENGTH AND
VELOCITY OF VOYAGE.
The consumption of fuel on two or more given voyages will vary as the
square of the velocity multiplied into the distance travelled. Thus,
during a voyage of 1200 miles, average speed 10 knots, the consumption
of coal is 150 tons: we wish to know the consumption for 1800 miles at
8 knots. Thus:
150 tons : C required Consumption :: 10^2 knots x 1200 miles : 8^2,
Knots x 1800 miles.
Then, C x 100 x 1200 = 150 x 64 x 1800,*
Or, C x 120,000 = 17,280,000
Reduced to C = 1728/12 = 144 tons consumption.
Suppose, again, that we wish to know the rate of speed for 1800 miles,
if the coals used be the same as on another voyage of 1200 miles, with
150 tons coal, and ten knots speed:
We substitute former consumption, 150 tons for C, as in the equation
above, marked *, and V^2 (square of the required velocity) for 64, and
have,
150 x 100 x 1200 = 150 x V^2 x 1800,
Or, 120,000 = 1800V^2,
Reduced, 1200/18 = V^2,
And V = square root of 66.66 = 8.15 knots.
From the foregoing easily intelligible formulae we can ascertain with
approximate certainty the large quantity of coal necessary to increase
speed, the large saving of coal in reducing speed, as well as the
means of accommodating the fuel to the voyage, or the voyage to the
fuel. It is not necessary here to study very closely the economy of
fuel, as this is a question affecting the transport of freight alone.
When the mails are to be transported, economy of fuel is not the
object desired, but speed; and, consequently, we must submit to
extravagance of fuel. This large expenditure of coal is not necessary
in the case of freights, as they may be transported slowly, and,
consequently, cheaply. But one of the principal reasons for rapid
transport of the mails is that they may largely anticipate freights in
their time of arrival, and consequently control their movements.
I recently had an excellent opportunity of testing the large quantity
of fuel saved on a slight reduction of the speed, and give it as
illustrative of the law advanced. We were on the United States Mail
steamer "Fulton," Captain Wotton, and running at 13 miles per hour.
Some of the tubes became unfit for use in one of the boilers, and the
fires were extinguished and the steam and water drawn off from this
boiler, leaving the other one, of the same size, to propel the ship.
An intelligent gentleman who happened to know that we were using only
one boiler, and consequently, but half the power, remarked to me that
it was very strange that the ship was still going about eleven miles
per hour, without any sail. He said: "It is strange, sir; two boilers
of equal size drove us thirteen miles per hour; and here now but one
boiler drives us nearly eleven miles, or nearly as fast; when
common-sense teaches that the one boiler would drive us only six and a
half miles per hour. How is that?" I then explained to him very
clearly the natural law relative to power and speed, (_See Rule II.,
page 68_,) which he at once comprehended and admitted, but with the
remark: "Indeed, sir, I would have testified that she ought with one
boiler to have gone at only half the speed; or that going at six miles
with one boiler, she would go twelve with two."
As it will be interesting to the general reader to examine the details
of the increased consumption of fuel at increased rates of speed, I
present the following elaborate table recently prepared by Mr.
Atherton for his new edition of "Steamship Capability," according to
the formula above noticed, and the performance of the best type of
vessel in the Royal Navy, the steamer "Rattler." Mr. A. found a higher
efficiency in this vessel per horse power than any other in the Navy,
and consequently based the consumption of coal in the table on the
assumption that the mail and passenger vessels generally should be of
as good contractive type as "Rattler." I shall present also another
table showing a much larger consumption of fuel by an inferior type of
vessel. I use these tables because they are thoroughly correct, and
quite as perfect as any that I could construct on the same formula;
and because they carry with them the weight of probably the highest
authority in Great Britain.
COAL TABLE: No. I.
_Displacement,[B] Speed, and Fuel consumed per Day, for Mail,
Passenger, and Freight Steamers, whose locomotive performance is equal
to that of the best class of ocean steam vessels; assuming the
consumption of fuel to be 4-1/2 lbs. per indicated horse power per
hour, equal to 33,000 lbs. raised one foot in one minute. The quantity
consumed is expressed in tons per day of 24 hours._
[B] Displacement refers to the number of cubic feet of water displaced
by the hull; allowing thirty-five cubic feet to the ton.
KEY:
A: SHIP'S DISPLACEMENT.
-----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
| SPEED PER HOUR.--NAUTICAL MILES.
A +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20
-----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
TONS.|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS
-----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
100|1.04|1.65|2.47|3.51|4.82|6.41|8.32|10.6|13.2|16.3|19.7|23.7|28.1|33.0|38.5
125|1.20|1.92|2.86|4.07|5.59|7.44|9.66|12.3|15.3|18.9|22.9|27.5|32.6|38.3|44.7
150|1.36|2.16|3.23|4.60|6.31|8.40|10.9|13.9|17.3|21.3|25.9|31.0|36.8|43.3|50.5
175|1.51|2.40|3.58|5.10|7.00|9.31|12.1|15.4|19.2|23.6|28.7|34.4|40.8|48.0|56.0
200|1.65|2.62|3.91|5.57|7.65|10.2|13.2|16.8|21.0|25.8|31.3|37.6|44.6|52.4|61.2
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
250|1.92|3.04|4.54|6.47|8.87|11.8|15.3|19.5|24.3|29.9|36.3|43.6|51.7|60.9|71.0
300|2.25|3.44|5.13|7.30|10.0|13.3|17.3|22.0|27.5|33.8|41.0|49.2|58.4|68.7|80.1
350|2.40|3.81|5.68|8.09|11.1|14.8|19.2|24.4|30.5|37.5|45.5|54.5|64.7|76.2|88.8
400|2.62|4.16|6.21|8.85|12.1|16.2|21.0|26.7|33.3|41.0|49.7|59.6|70.8|83.3|97.1
450|2.84|4.50|6.72|9.57|13.1|17.5|22.7|28.8|36.0|44.3|53.8|64.5|76.6|90.1|105
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
500|3.04|4.83|7.21|10.3|14.1|18.7|24.3|30.9|38.6|47.5|57.7|69.2|82.1|96.6|113
600|3.43|5.46|8.14|11.6|15.9|21.2|27.5|34.9|43.6|53.7|65.1|78.1|92.8|109 |127
700|3.81|6.05|9.02|12.8|17.6|23.5|30.4|38.7|48.4|59.5|72.2|86.6|103 |121 |141
800|4.16|6.61|9.87|14.0|19.3|25.6|33.3|42.3|52.9|65.0|78.9|94.6|112 |132 |154
900|4.50|7.15|10.7|15.2|20.8|27.7|36.0|45.8|57.2|70.4|85.4|102 |122 |143 |167
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
1000|4.83|7.67|11.4|16.3|22.4|29.8|38.6|49.1|61.3|75.5|91.6|110 |130 |153 |179
1250|5.60|8.90|13.3|18.9|26.0|34.5|44.8|57.0|71.2|87.6|106 |127 |151 |178 |208
1500|6.33|10.0|15.0|21.4|29.3|39.0|50.6|64.4|80.4|98.9|120 |144 |171 |201 |234
1750|7.01|11.1|16.6|23.7|32.5|43.2|56.1|71.3|89.1|110 |133 |159 |189 |223 |260
2000|7.66|12.2|18.2|25.9|35.5|47.3|61.3|77.9|97.4|120 |145 |174 |207 |243 |284
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
2500|8.89|14.1|21.1|30.0|41.2|54.8|71.2|90.5|113 |139 |169 |202 |240 |283 |329
3000|10.0|16.0|23.8|33.9|46.5|61.9|80.4|102 |128 |157 |191 |228 |271 |319 |372
3500|11.1|17.7|26.1|37.6|51.5|68.6|89.0|113 |141 |174 |211 |253 |301 |354 |412
4000|12.2|19.3|28.8|41.1|56.3|75.0|97.3|124 |155 |190 |231 |277 |329 |386 |451
5000|14.1|22.4|33.5|47.7|65.4|87.0|113 |144 |179 |221 |268 |321 |381 |448 |523
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
6000|15.9|25.3|37.8|53.8|73.8|98.3|128 |162 |203 |249 |302 |363 |431 |506 |591
7000|17.7|28.1|41.9|59.6|81.8|109 |141 |180 |224 |276 |335 |402 |477 |501 |654
8000|19.3|30.7|45.8|65.2|89.4|119 |155 |196 |245 |302 |366 |439 |522 |613 |715
9000|20.9|33.2|49.5|70.5|96.7|129 |167 |215 |265 |327 |396 |475 |564 |663 |774
10000|22.4|35.6|53.1|75.6|104 |138 |179 |228 |285 |350 |425 |510 |605 |712 |830
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
12500|26.0|41.3|61.7|87.8|120 |160 |208 |265 |330 |406 |493 |592 |702 |826 |963
15000|29.4|46.6|69.6|99.1|136 |181 |235 |299 |373 |459 |557 |668 |793 |933 |1088
20000|35.6|56.5|84.4|120 |165 |219 |285 |362 |452 |556 |675 |809 |961 |1130|1318
25000|41.3|65.6|97.9|139 |191 |254 |330 |420 |525 |645 |783 |939 |1115|1311|1529
30000|46.6|74.0|111 |157 |216 |287 |373 |474 |592 |728 |884 |1060|1258|1480|1727
-----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
By the inspection of this table we can see in condensed form the
coal-cost of any speed as high as twenty miles per hour, and for any
size of vessel from one hundred tons to thirty thousand tons. Let us
find in the left hand column a vessel of 2,500 tons displacement.
Pursuing the line along to the right we find in the second column 8.89
tons of coal, which a steamer of this displacement would burn in 24
hours, if running, as indicated at the head of the column, 6 Nautical
miles per hour.
In the next column, under the head of 7 Nautical miles per hour, we
find that she would burn in one day 14.1 tons; or one and a half times
as much coal to gain one sixth more speed:
Again, at 8 miles per hour she burns 21.1 tons; nearly three times as
much as at six miles:
At 9 miles she burns 30 tons: above twice as much as at 7, and nearly
four times as much as at 6, although the speed is but half doubled:
At 10 miles per hour she burns 41.2 tons; about twice as much as at 8
miles, although the speed is increased only one fourth. At 10 she
burns 34 per cent. more than at 9, although the increase of speed is
only eleven per cent. (_See pages 67 and 68_):
At 11 miles per hour she will burn 54.8 or 55 tons; nearly three times
as much as at 8 miles per hour, and six times as much as at 6 miles
per hour:
At 12 miles per hour she will burn 71.2; about thirty per cent. more
than at eleven miles per hour, although gaining but 9 per cent. in
speed; nearly twice as much as at ten miles per hour, three and a half
times as much as at 8, five times as much as at 7, and above eight
times as much as at 6 miles per hour. It is here seen that to double
the speed the consumption of fuel has increased eight-fold, which
verifies my statements hitherto made on this subject. We have already
seen that to gain two miles of speed on any stated speed, it was
necessary to double the quantity of fuel used.
At 13 miles per hour she burns 90.5 tons. This is burning two and a
fourth times as much coal as if she ran only 10 miles per hour. Now,
at this speed, the steamer will reach Southampton or Liverpool in 10
days and 6 hours, which is equivalent to 10 days and 12 hours burning
fuel, allowing six hours for heating and starting, and which would
make an aggregate consumption of 950 tons of coal for the passage of
this steamer of 2,500 displacement or probably 3,000 tons register.
At 14 miles per hour she burns 113 tons. This is nearly three times as
much as 10 miles per hour. At this speed the steamer would reach
Southampton or Liverpool in 9 days, 12 hours, and 30 minutes,
supposing the distance to be 3,200 miles from New-York, or say 9 days
18-1/2 hours coal-burning time, and would consume an aggregate of
1,104-1/2 tons. As this is but little above the distance from New-York
to Southampton, and under that from Panama to California, and about
the tonnage of the steamers running, the time being within eleven days
generally, it will be seen how large is the cost of running the
steamers of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, those on the European
routes, and also those between New-York and Aspinwall. As the route of
the Havre and Bremen steamers is much longer, they are compelled to
run slightly slower, or they would be filled up with their own fuel
and power. Taking a Collins steamer of 3,000 tons, which we find in
the line below, and we see that in running 14 miles per hour as they
have frequently done, the consumption would be 128 tons per day, or
1,252 tons for the passage. And yet, one of those steamers could make
12 miles per hour on 80.4 tons per day, or at 11 miles per hour on
61.9, or less than half that used at 14. But pursuing this table we
see that,
At 15 miles per hour she would burn 139 tons, or three and a half
times as much as at 10 miles.
At 16 miles per hour she would burn 169 tons, or precisely eight
times as much as at 8 miles per hour. Here again doubling the speed is
found to be an enormous expense.
At 17 miles per hour she burns 202 tons per day.
At 18 miles per hour the consumption is 240 tons per day.
At 19 miles per hour she burns 283 tons coal per day; and
At 20 miles per hour she burns 329 tons per day. At 20 miles per hour
she would run 480 miles per day, a thing as yet wholly unheard of, and
would consume on the voyage of 6 days and 16 hours, say 6 days and 22
hours, 2,276 tons of coal. It would be clearly impossible for her to
carry her own fuel; as the immense boiler and engine power necessary
to secure this speed would of itself fill a ship of this size, to say
nothing of the fuel which also would nearly fill it. Then, we may
never expect any such ship to attain any such speed as seventeen,
eighteen, or twenty miles per hour on so long a voyage without
recoaling.
Seeing thus the enormous increase in the consumption of fuel for a
moderate increase in the speed, we are enabled the better to
appreciate the large expense incurred in running ocean steamers
sufficiently rapidly for successful mail and passenger purposes. We
will further pursue these inquiries by examining in this table the
consumption for vessels of 6,000 tons, which would make the
displacement of the ship nearly 5,000 tons, such as the "Adriatic,"
the "Vanderbilt," and the "Niagara." It appears that at 8 miles per
hour they would consume 33 tons per day; at 10 miles, 65 tons; at 12
miles, 113 tons; at 13 miles, 144 tons; at 14 miles, 179 tons; at 15
miles, 221 tons; and at 16 miles, 268 tons per day. This is supposing
this speed to be maintained on an average across the ocean, in all
kinds of weather, which this size of steamer could not do without
more engine and boiler power than any of them have. With such
additional power the ships noticed would have scarcely any available
room for freight or any thing else. One thing is very clear from this
table, that when steamers run at very moderately slow rates of speed,
their consumption of fuel is very small; and that when they leave this
low freighting speed, for that of the necessarily rapid mails and
passengers, the consumption increases to an extent and with a rapidity
that would seem almost incredible at first view.
COAL TABLE: No. II.
_The following coal table is constructed in all respects as the
preceding, but for a lower type of vessels, or those whose coefficient
of Dynamic performance is inferior to that upon which the previous
table is estimated. As a consequence, this style of vessel requires
more fuel._
KEY:
A: SHIP'S DISPLACEMENT.
-----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
| SPEED PER HOUR.--NAUTICAL MILES.
A +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20
-----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
TONS.|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS|TONS
-----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
500|3.95|6.28|9.37|13.4|18.3|24.3|31.6|40.1|50.2|61.7|75.0|89.9|106 |125 |147
600|4.46|7.10|10.6|15.1|20.6|27.5|35.7|45.3|56.6|69.8|84.6|101 |120 |141 |165
700|4.95|7.86|11.7|16.6|22.8|30.5|39.5|50.3|62.9|77.3|93.8|112 |134 |157 |183
800|5.41|8.59|12.8|18.2|25.1|33.3|43.3|55.0|68.7|84.5|102 |123 |145 |171 |200
900|5.85|9.29|13.9|19.7|27.0|36.0|46.8|59.5|74.3|91.5|111 |132 |158 |186 |217
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
1000|6.28|9.97|14.8|21.2|29.1|38.7|50.1|63.8|79.7|98.1|119 |143 |169 |199 |232
1250|7.28|11.5|17.3|24.5|33.8|44.8|58.2|74.1|92.5|114 |137 |165 |196 |231 |270
1500|8.23|13.0|19.5|27.8|38.1|50.7|65.7|83.7|104 |128 |156 |187 |222 |261 |304
1750|9.11|14.4|21.5|30.8|42.2|56.1|72.9|92.7|115 |143 |173 |206 |245 |290 |338
2000|9.95|15.8|23.6|33.6|46.1|61.5|79.7|101 |126 |159 |188 |226 |269 |316 |369
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
2500|11.5|18.3|27.4|39.0|53.5|71.2|92.5|117 |147 |180 |219 |262 |312 |368 |427
3000|13.0|20.8|30.9|44.0|60.4|80.4|104 |132 |166 |204 |248 |296 |352 |414 |483
3500|14.4|23.0|34.3|48.8|66.9|89.1|115 |147 |183 |226 |274 |329 |391 |460 |535
4000|15.8|25.1|37.4|53.4|73.2|97.5|126 |161 |201 |247 |300 |360 |427 |501 |586
5000|18.3|29.1|43.5|62.0|85.0|113 |147 |187 |232 |287 |348 |417 |495 |582 |679
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
6000|20.6|32.9|49.1|69.9|95.9|127 |166 |210 |264 |323 |392 |472 |560 |657 |768
10000|29.1|46.2|69.0|98.2|135 |179 |232 |296 |370 |455 |552 |663 |786 |925 |1079
-----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----
FREIGHT TABLE: No. III.
_Showing the mutual relation of Displacement, Power, Speed,
Consumption of Coal, and capacity for Cargo of vessels of
progressively increasing magnitude up to nearly 30,000 tons of
Deep-draught Displacement, employed on a passage of 3,250 nautical
miles, without recoaling: showing also the prime cost Expenses per ton
of Cargo conveyed._
KEY:
A: Mean or Mid-passage Displacement.
B: Speed.
C: POWER. Nominal H. P.
D: POWER. Indicated h. p.
E: Assumed weight of Hull and Engines.
F: PASSAGE 3,250 N. M. DIRECT. Time.
G: PASSAGE 3,250 N. M. DIRECT. Coal.
H: PASSAGE 3,250 N. M. DIRECT. Cargo.
I: PASSAGE 3,250 N. M. DIRECT. Deep Displacement.
J: PASSAGE 3,250 N. M. DIRECT. Expenses per Ton of Cargo.
--------+-----+-----+-----+------+------+-----+------+------+----------
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J
Tons. |N. M.|H. P.|h. p.| TONS.| D. H.|TONS.| TONS.| TONS.| L S. D.
--------+-----+-----+-----+------+------+-----+------+------+----------
{| 8| 109| 436| 1109| 16.22| 369| 1209| 2684| 2 1 10
{| 9| 155| 620| 1155| 15. 1| 466| 1112| 2733| 2 7 8
2,500 {| 10| 213| 852| 1213| 13.13| 577| 999| 2788| 2 16 11
{| 11| 284| 1136| 1284| 12. 7| 699| 867| 2849| 3 11 3
{| 12| 368| 1472| 1368| 11. 7| 830| 717| 2915| 4 14 5
| | | | | | | | |
{| 8| 172| 688| 2172| 16.22| 582| 2537| 5291| 1 16 1
{| 9| 245| 980| 2245| 15. 1| 737| 2386| 5368| 1 19 7
5,000 {| 10| 336| 1344| 2336| 13.13| 882| 2223| 5441| 2 4 1
{| 11| 448| 1792| 2448| 12. 7| 1103| 2000| 5551| 2 13 1
{| 12| 581| 2324| 2581| 11. 7| 1311| 1763| 5655| 3 5 1
| | | | | | | | |
{| 8| 276| 1104| 4276| 16.22| 934| 5257| 10467| 1 12 3
{| 9| 388| 1552| 4388| 15. 1| 1168| 5028| 10584| 1 13 10
{| 10| 536| 2144| 4536| 13.13| 1407| 4760| 10703| 1 16 9
10,000 {| 11| 712| 2848| 4712| 12. 7| 1753| 4411| 10876| 2 2 1
{| 12| 928| 3712| 4928| 11. 7| 2094| 4025| 11047| 2 9 4
{| 13| 1180| 4720| 5180| 10.10| 2458| 3591| 11229| 2 19 5
{| 14| 1472| 5888| 5472| 9.16| 2848| 3104| 11424| 3 14 3
| | | | | | | | |
{| 8| 436| 1744| 8436| 16.22| 1476| 10826| 20738| 1 9 0
{| 9| 620| 2480| 8620| 15. 1| 1866| 10447| 20933| 1 9 11
{| 10| 852| 3408| 8852| 13.13| 2236| 10030| 21118| 1 11 4
20,000 {| 11| 1136| 4544| 9136| 12. 7| 2797| 9466| 21398| 1 14 9
{| 12| 1472| 5888| 9472| 11. 7| 3322| 8867| 21661| 1 19 1
{| 13| 1872| 7488| 9872| 10.10| 3900| 8178| 21950| 2 4 11
{| 14| 2340| 9360| 10340| 9.16| 4528| 7396| 22264| 2 13 1
--------+-----+-----+-----+------+------+-----+------+------+----------
Mr. Atherton gives this table, which shows the following facts:
That, as the various sized vessels named, increase in speed from 8 to
12, or from 8 to 14 miles per hour, their horse power, as well
consequently as their coal, increases:
That, as the speed increases, so does the weight of the hull and
engines:
That, as the speed increases, with the consequent increased coal and
engine weight, the cargo decreases: and
That, as the speed increases, with the other necessary conditions
noticed, the expense per ton of cargo also increases in a rapid ratio.
In the four cross columns ships of different sizes are considered; of
2,500, 5,000, 10,000, and 20,000 tons. There is also given the working
or indicated horse power, and the nominal horse-power, or that of
33,000 lbs. raised a foot in a minute, which is the general basis of
making contracts. It is a fact, however, that engines generally work
up to three or four times their nominal horse power; so that the word
horse power has no positive or useful meaning. Vessels called one
hundred nominal horse-power have been known to work up to six hundred.
Let us take a ship of 5,000 tons. We find that at 8 miles per hour the
horse power is 436; but at 12 miles it is 1,472, nearly four times as
great. At 13 miles, it would be nearly 1800 horse, and at 14 it would
be above 2100. So, also, with the weight of engines, boilers, etc. At
8 miles per hour they would weigh 1,109 tons; but at 12 they would
have to weigh, to be large and strong enough, 1,368 tons. At 14 miles,
they would weigh nearly 1,600 tons.
Now, see the columns "cargo" and "coal," and observe how rapidly that
of coal increases, while that of cargo decreases in the inverse ratio
of the coal, the engine, the boiler, and the hull weight combined. The
cargo has come from 1,209 down to 717 tons; and if the speed were
increased to 13 or 14 miles per hour, the cargo would be so reduced as
to be unworthy of notice.
The next column shows how much greater the quantity of water displaced
as the speed increases. This extra displacement requires extra power.
In the last column it is observable how rapidly the speed enhances
the cost price of transporting cargo. At 13 miles per hour the cost
would be about six pounds sterling per ton, and at 14 knots speed it
would be higher than was ever paid a steamer in the most flush periods
of even the best qualities of freights. Freights were about L8 per ton
on the Cunard line before the establishment of the Collins; but they
soon came down, and are not now L3, or $15, on an average. So with
passage. The "Great Western" charged L45, the "British Queen" L50; the
Cunarders, until the Collins competition, L40, 19_s._ The Collins
steamers put the price down to L35, and have since reduced it to L30
homeward, and L24 outward. This is but little above half the fare of
the Great Western, and something over two thirds of that formerly
charged by the Cunard line. The Report to the House of Commons "on
Steam Communications with India," No. 372 of 1851, second volume, page
395, says, that the average speed of the Cunard line was 10.443 knots,
of the Collins line 11 knots, and of the Havre and Bremen lines 9.875
knots per hour. The Collins line had then just started, and has since
made the average passages one and a half days quicker than those of
the Cunard line. This being the case, it is easy to estimate the gains
of a steamer at such rates, when this column shows us that at 12 miles
speed per hour and an average trip of 11 days, the actual prime cost
of moving the freight is much above that which is received for it. It
is therefore taken in small quantities only to assist in paying the
running expenses of the steamer.
This table shows another thing very conclusively, that large ships
running the same number of miles per hour, run cheaper and transport
freight more cheaply than smaller vessels. It presupposes, however,
that they go full both ways. The engine power and general outlay do
not increase as rapidly as the tonnage of the vessel and her capacity
for carrying. While a ship 2,500 tons at 12 miles per hour on a
passage of 3,250 miles would make the cost per ton for the
transportation of freight $22.75, one of 20,000 tons, under the same
conditions would reduce it to $9 per ton. Yet it is hardly probable
that we shall ever profitably employ steamers of over 10,000 tons
tonnage in the passenger, mail, and freight business.