The Thingvalla Line,
dating from 1879, is a Danish enterprise, with a regular service between Copenhagen and New York, consisting of five ships, the largest of which is the Amerika, of 3,867 tons, formerly the Celtic, purchased from the White Star Line in 1893. This line came into notoriety in 1889 through the foundering of one of their vessels, the Danmark, in mid-ocean. She had on board 735 souls. On April 5th she was sighted by the British steamship Missouri, Captain Hamilton Murrell. On April 6th, though a heavy sea was running, by an act of heroism almost unparalleled, Captain Murrell threw some of his cargo overboard, and in four and a half hours saved every soul by means of boats and lines, landing some at St. Michael’s, Azores, and the rest at Philadelphia. The gallant rescue was suitably acknowledged by public testimonials from Britain and America to the captain, his officers and crew.[26]
CHAPTER V.
STEAM TO INDIA AND THE EAST.
DURING the earlier years of commerce with India, the route from Britain was by the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and the Caspian, through Persia, reaching India at its northern extremity. The sea route, via the Cape of Good Hope, was discovered by the Portuguese in 1497, and continued to be the great highway of commerce to the East until our own times. Although circuitous, the Cape route was infinitely preferable to that of inland seas and deserts infested by hostile tribes, to say nothing of the advantage of reaching destinations without transhipment.
The importance of India as a field of British enterprise began with the incorporation of the East India Company in the year 1600. From a small trading company it gradually became a vast aggressive monopoly, with a large standing army at its back, and a numerous fleet of ships that served the double purpose of carrying merchandise and fighting the French, or any other covetous enemy. In 1811, when the company had reached the zenith of its power, it owned sixty-seven ships, each armed with from 30 to 38 guns; thirty-one ships of from 20 to 28 guns, and fifty-two ships of from 10 to 19 guns. The sea route to Calcutta was over 13,000 miles, and not unfrequently a whole year was occupied in making the round trip. In the days of clipper ships, however, the single voyage was sometimes accomplished inside of one hundred days.
THE CAMEL-POST—“SHIP OF THE DESERT.”
Lieutenant Thomas Waghorn, R. N., an English naval officer, applied to the British Government for assistance in carrying out a project he had conceived of opening communication by steam between Britain and her great East Indian Empire. The result of his labours was the opening up of the overland mail route, as it was called, consisting at first of a steam service from Marseilles to Alexandria, thence by camel and Nile steamer to Cairo, a caravan across the desert to Suez, and steamers via the Red Sea to Bombay and Calcutta. The next improvement was the substitution of a railway for “The Ship of the Desert,” in 1858, and the transmission of the English mails to Brindisi instead of Marseilles, and finally, the construction of the Suez Canal by Ferdinand Lesseps, the French engineer, at a cost of sixty million dollars. The canal is ninety-nine miles long with a width of 327 feet for 77 miles and 196 feet for the remaining 22 miles; the depth was originally twenty-six feet throughout, but the canal is undergoing progressive enlargement and deepening. The British Government in 1875 acquired by purchase shares in the enterprise to the value of £4,000,000 sterling. By a convention signed in 1888, the canal was exempted from blockade, and vessels of all nations, whether armed or not, may pass through it in peace or in war.[27] The North German Lloyd SS. Frederick the Great, of 10,500 tons register, which passed through the canal a few months ago en route for Australia, is the largest vessel that has passed through it. The canal was first opened for traffic in 1869.
By the overland route the distance from London to Bombay has been reduced to 5,221 miles, and to Calcutta, 6,471 miles. The contract time for the transmission of mails is 16½ and 18½ days respectively. Sir Douglas Fox, engineer of the railway from Acre to Damascus, speaking of the proposal to extend that road to the mouth of the Persian Gulf, prophesied that in a few years the journey from Charing Cross to India will be covered in eight days! It will be accomplished in about the same length of time, via Russia, when the great trans-Siberian railway is completed. When that is accomplished, the actual running time of an excursion around the world may possibly be reduced to thirty days or even less.
In preceding pages reference has been almost exclusively made to the development of steam navigation on the North Atlantic; a brief allusion must now be made to the effects produced on the commerce of other parts of the world by the introduction of steam power. The Atlantic steamers were probably the first to bridge the ocean; they are, perhaps, the most numerous to-day; certainly they include some of the largest and most magnificent specimens of marine architecture in existence, but they are only a wing of the world’s fleet of steamships. There are other great lines of ocean steamers performing services of equal importance elsewhere, though with their history and their “records” we are less familiar. An excellent summary of the lines of communication with India, and the East generally, is given in “Whitaker’s Almanacks” for 1896 and 1897, under the caption of “Our Ocean Mail.” Mr. Macdonald, in “Our Ocean Railways,” devotes a couple of chapters to an interesting survey of this branch of our subject.