with a turbine engine, and ten years later the turbine or rotary engine began to replace the reciprocating engine, but this is by no means the last word. For progress is now being made with the internal combustion engine, which turns the steamship into a motor ship. Such engines are being installed rapidly on cargo and passenger ships now building. That steam would be raised by any agent other than wood or coal was not contemplated in 1900, but as an American writer of 1921 observes: The merchant shipping of the world is rapidly turning to fuel oil as a source of power. The advantages to be derived from liquid oil in place of coal are so outstanding in facilitating bunkering, increasing rates of steaming, and conserving labour in firing that this trend will undoubtedly increase.' 1 In 1921, out of approximately 55 m. tons gross of merchant shipping in the world, 9 were oil-driven, 8 using fuel for raising steam and I the internal combustion engine. The oil consumption in the latter is very much less than when oil is used as liquid fuel, and therefore every further improvement in such engines will increase the superiority of oil over coal; but limitation of supply stands in the way of total conversion to oil. During the last fifty years the changes in internal equipment have been as great as those in construction and engineering. The first boat of the White Star-the Oceanic of 1869-constructed by Harland and Wolff at Belfast, was in outline and equipment the first of the modern liners, the saloon being placed amidships and steam being applied to all the operations of the ship, and thereafter the Cunard and the White Star strove neck to neck in the race of improvement. In cargo boats there has been development in the direction of special purpose boats, such as oil tankers and vessels fitted with refrigerating plant for the conveyance of perishable meatstuffs and fruits; and the mast has degenerated into a derrick. Thus lacking masts as well as sails (and if a motor ship lacking funnels also), furnished like an hotel or cold storage plant, and safeguarded by wireless apparatus, the modern steamship has but one contact with the sailing vessel of the past—her dependence on the men who serve her. Wind, fog and ice make seafaring still a free man's job, hard indeed and monotonous, but calling on occasion for those qualities which are the ultimate wealth of a maritime nation. Section 7. Insurance and Registration It is not enough that ships should be built and sailed. They and their cargoes must be insured. The passenger takes his 1 J E. Pogue, The Economics of Petroleum, p. 153. chance with the lifebelt, but commerce puts to sea with an insurance policy. The history of Lloyd's illustrates well the part which informal group enterprise has played in economic development. Lloyd's is an international service with headquarters in London; like the Stock Exchange and Money Market, it just grew. Having no corporate name it called itself Lloyd's, after Edward Lloyd, the keeper of a coffee-house at which merchants desiring and offering marine insurance were accustomed to forgather in the latter part of the 17th century. The members of Lloyd's did their business as individuals. However these men had common interests: an interest in obtaining information, an interest in exposing fraud and resisting fraudulent claims. There was a subscription: there was a small " trust fund"; the exclusive use of the "coffee house" was obtained. The Verein grew and grew.'1 In 1774 they settled at the Royal Exchange; in 1779 they agreed upon a general form of insurance policy; in 1811 they reorganised with trustees. Finally in 1871 they were incorporated for the threefold purpose of marine insurance, protection of members' interests, and the collection and diffusion of shipping intelligence. But the business of insurance remains individual: the broker desiring insurance takes round his list and the underwriter writes under it his name and the share of the risk which he is willing to assume. About 1696 Edward Lloyd started a Shipping and Commercial Chronicle, called Lloyd's News, which was revived in 1726 as Lloyd's Shipping List and is now published as Lloyd's List and Shipping Gazette. It records the movements of all vessels afloat and gives in complete and authoritative form the information which a paper such as the Liverpool Journal of Commerce supplies, in so far as it affects Liverpool, in addition to its other commercial news. Some time later the members of Lloyd's started a Shipping Register to aid them in their insurance business. Down to 1834 two rival Registers existed—' The Green Book' compiled by the underwriters, and 'The Red Book' compiled by the shipowners. They were then united, and the management was entrusted to a committee of merchant shipowners and underwriters. In 1822 the first steamship was registered in 1837 the first iron ship. In 1867 steel was accepted as a building material and in 1874 engineering experts were added to the staff of surveyors. In 1913 Lloyd's Register had ten thousand vessels on its list and its 1 F. W. Maitland, Trust and Corporation, Collected Papers, III. 372. For the evolution of the Stock Exchange, see Royal Commission on Stock Exchange (XIV. of 1878): report and evidence passim. surveying staff of 3 in 1800 was now 300. The repute which its classification carries- A 1' is a figure of our daily speech— caused it to exercise a silent but all-powerful control over the quality and seaworthiness of merchant vessels. Lloyd's Register of British and Foreign Shipping is, however, a voluntary society only; and it has rivals, such as the Bureau Veritas established at Paris in 1828, and the more recent British Corporation for the Survey and Register of Shipping. In 1850 the Marine Department of the Board of Trade was established. Though resented at first by shipowners they came to accept it as an ally, and in any event there were public interests which had to be safeguarded by the State. The seaworthiness of the great majority of cargo ships was already ensured by the classification societies, but the Board of Trade exercises powers which would be improper to a voluntary body. In addition to supervising design, testing appliances, and approving the assignments of the classification societies, it stops unseaworthy vessels from putting to sea, investigates wrecks, issues certificates of seamanship, and makes regulations for the safety of passengers and the treatment of the crew at sea and on land. But for the Marine Department of the Board of Trade the work of the classification societies would have lacked cohesion and authority: but for the classification societies the Marine Department would have had difficulty in enforcing the various Merchant Shipping Acts. The most famous of these, that of 1876, is associated with the name of Samuel Plimsoll. By making a rumpus in Parliament he secured the load-line which is marked on the outside of every British ship. He was suspended for his language, but he gained his line. Although marine insurance is a very ancient practice, the marine policy of to-day is the opposite of the old-time 'bottomry bond.' Just as the early investors in life insurance paid down a lump sum in return for an annuity, so early investors in marine insurance invested a lump sum on a chance. If the vessel arrived safely, the borrower repaid the loan taken out against the ship's bottom and with it a premium. If it was lost, he paid neither. Until quite recent times the bottomry contract was used by captains in emergencies at foreign ports, but the cable transfer by putting the head office of the shipping company in immediate financial contact with its boats, wherever they may be, has removed the need for this survival of it. sea. If a ship cannot be insured her owners will not let her put to When war broke out in August 1914 the British Government agreed to underwrite the war risks of the Mercantile Marine; and in the first days of uncertainty the information most greatly sought by Canadian bankers and business men was the exact terms on which the Government insurance could be obtained. In the last analysis marine insurance determines whether a trade route shall be used. It is useless to rail wheat to the Hudson Bay if no one will insure the ships that are to take it away. CHAPTER IX ROADS AND CANALS Section 1. Communication by Land and Water. Section 2. Turnpike Trusts and the Road Builders. Section 3. The Building of Canals and their Economic Influence. Section 4. Causes of Decline. Section 1. Communication by Land and Water TRANSPORT and industry are interdependent: communications are established to handle traffic, and by their establishment new traffic is created. It is not possible to exploit the agricultural resources of new continents until adequate railroads have been built across them. The time lag between the building and the harvest of traffic is so serious in most new countries that the Government gives land or money to the builders or operates them itself. Though the Canadian Pacific Railway, built with the aid of valuable land grants, was completed on November 7, 1885, the Canadian West did not boom till 1900. But in an old country with an island seaboard production for a central market may be far advanced before the building of adequate inland communications. For the sea serves as a trunk line of commerce, and thus despite a poorly developed interior the traffic of 17th-century England attained to imperial dimensions. As England was a small country, her navigable rivers were few and she had no chain of navigable lakes. Moreover, none of her important rivers were navigable for any length without improvements; and in addition to this the merchants who used them for traffic had to contest the right of navigation against landlords who sought privacy and against industrial users who set up fish traps and water mills (the mediaeval equivalent of hydro-electric power). Seventeenth-century England, lacking civil peace and an industrial hinterland, had no good trunk roads of inland commerce. The sea gave her such commercial unity as she had. The main rivers, the Thames, Severn, Mersey, Yorkshire Ouse, Trent and Greater Ouse, served to the open sea as retail to wholesale. London obtained its coal from Newcastle, Dublin from Whitehaven (Cumberland), Bristol from South Wales. The navigable reaches of river were channels of retail distribution to places along their banks. Even when London lived on homegrown wheat, a considerable part of its supply came coastwise, especially the part that was raised in East Anglia; and similarly the re-exports from London included many coastal shipments of produce brought in bulk on larger ships from overseas. Mrs. John Dashwood in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, 1797, sends her furniture round by water' from Sussex to Exeter. It would go to-day by motor truck. In 1832 Sir Walter Scott returned from the Continent a dying man. On June 13, 1832, he arrived in London, and on 7th July took ship for Leith.' 1 Today an invalid might go by either motor or train, but certainly not by steamer. By the end of the 17th century the provinces were alive to the value of making their rivers more navigable, and in the early 18th substantial improvements were effected in the navigations of the Mersey, the Don and the Trent. The navigation of the Mersey streams (the Irwell, Mersey and Weaver) was essential to the growth of Liverpool as a port, and the improvements were made about the time that Liverpool was building its first dock. But investment capital was still very scarce, and when it became more abundant later on, there was a more lucrative outlet for it in the construction of artificial canals which were independent of rivers, though sometimes making junction with them. Thereafter river navigation was auxiliary to transportation by canal. At law the king's highway is no more than a right of way from A to B. The Roman roads, straight and well fashioned, were by 1600 a memory, overlaid with centuries of feudal encroachment and civil war. But after 1660 the provinces felt a growing need for commercial contact with London, the financial heart of the country, and the nobility sought speedier and more comfortable travel to their country estates. Moreover for Londoners there were things from which to escape, the Great Plague in 1665 and the Great Fire in 1666. In 1665 the Court and Parliament made a pusillanimous retreat to Oxford: in 1669 the Oxford Flier, the nation's first stage coach, began to run. Therefore at this period the London-Oxford road was heavily travelled and kept in good repair. A century later a foreign professor, who had to make the journey from Cambridge to Oxford, found that the only route was by London. The undergraduate of to-day agrees with the professor. In 1739 two travellers journeyed from Glasgow to London. 1 John Buchan, Sir Walter Scott, p. 210. Cf. S. and B. Webb, English Local Government, the Story of the King's Highway, p. 66. |