The history of steam navigation

by John Kennedy

Chapter IX.

Steamship Routes to India and the East.—Lieut. Johnston.—Enterprize purchased by Indian Government.—Renders important service during Burmese War.—Thomas Waghorn.—Regular steamship service established between Bombay and Suez.—Peninsular Steam Navigation Co. (1834).—Altered to Peninsular and Oriental S. N. Co. (1837).—First P. and O. steamer to India, 1842.—Services extended to Ceylon, Penang, Singapore, and Hong Kong, 1844.—And to Australia, 1852.—P. and O. steamships engaged as troopships during Crimean War.—S.S. Mooltan (1861) and other later steamers fitted with compound engines.—Suez Canal opened, 1869.—Mails transferred to Canal route, 1888.—Calcutta and Burmah S. N. Co. (1855).—Steamers engaged as transports during Indian Mutiny.—Title changed to British India Steam Navigation Co., Ltd. (1862).—Bibby Line.

Soon after steam navigation began to attract attention in Great Britain, a public meeting was held in London (1822), for the purpose of forming a steamship company to trade between England and India. It was the intention of the promoters of the meeting that the packets should proceed to India by way of the Cape of Good Hope, the route by which the bulk of the trade of Europe with the East had been carried since the time of Vasco da Gama. At this meeting it was decided that Lieut. (afterwards Captain) Johnston should proceed to Calcutta, with a view to interesting the East India merchants in the proposed undertaking.

Lieut. Johnston proceeded to India via Egypt, and although he was commissioned to advocate the Cape route, he was convinced on this journey of the greater advantages of the route by Suez, and afterwards became one of its most ardent supporters. Several meetings were held in Calcutta after his arrival there, at one of which, held on the 17th December, 1823, it was announced that the Governor, Lord Amherst, cordially approved of the proposal to establish steamship communication between England and India, and that he was prepared to recommend his Council to grant as a premium[13] “a gift of 20,000 rupees to whoever, whether individuals or a company, being British subjects, should permanently, before the end of 1826, establish a steam communication between England and India, either by the Cape of Good Hope or the Red Sea, and make two voyages out and two voyages home, occupying not more than seventy days on each passage.”

Colombo carrying Xmas gifts to the troops in the Crimea.

An additional 80,000 rupees were raised in India for this object, of which amount the Rajah of Oude subscribed 12,000. On receipt of this gratifying news in London, another meeting of those interested was held, at which sufficient capital was underwritten to justify the promoters in ordering, as an experiment, the Enterprize, the first steamer destined to double the Cape of Good Hope.

Johnston, having accomplished his assigned task, embarked on board the Indiaman Eliza for England. On his arrival in London he found the Enterprize two-thirds completed, and on completion he was appointed captain.

P. & O. Liner. Date about 1850 A.D.

P. & O. Liner. Date 1900 A.D.

The Enterprize was a paddle-steamer, built of wood, by Messrs. Gordon & Co., Deptford, at a cost of £43,000. Her length of keel was 122 feet, beam 27 feet, and she registered 479 tons. She had a copper boiler in one piece, which weighed 32 tons, and cost £7,000. Her engines were 120 horse power, capable of propelling her in calm weather at the rate of 8 knots per hour. She sailed with 17 passengers from London for Calcutta on the 16th August, 1825, and arrived at the latter port on the 7th December following. She occupied 113 days on the passage, partly under steam and partly under sail, and inclusive of ten days stoppages for the purpose of obtaining fresh supplies of fuel. She did not return to England, but was purchased by the Indian Government for £40,000, the East India Company being at that time engaged in the first Burmese War. She was employed carrying despatches between Calcutta and Rangoon, and on the occasion of the Treaty of Malwa, she saved the Government six lacs of rupees by reaching Calcutta in time to prevent the march of troops from the upper provinces.

When the Enterprize arrived at Calcutta from England she was piloted by a young man, a mate in the Bengal Pilot Service, named Thomas Waghorn.

Mr. Waghorn was born at Chatham in 1800, and was, consequently, in his twenty-sixth year when he acted as pilot for the Enterprize. He had served four years in the Royal Navy, and was afterwards for twelve years in the service of the East India Company as pilot, subsequently rejoining the Royal Navy, in which he remained until he obtained his commission as Lieutenant. He was selected in 1827, by the Indian Government (Calcutta Steam Committee), for the purpose of establishing steam navigation between England and India. He visited London, Liverpool, and Manchester, but could not obtain sufficient financial support for a regular service of steamers via the Cape of Good Hope. Hearing that it was the intention of the East India Company to despatch the Enterprize to Suez, he offered his services as Courier to the East to Mr. Lock (Chairman of the East India Company), and to Lord Ellenborough (President of the Board of Control). His offer of service was accepted, and he left London on the 28th October, 1829, taking the overland route, via Trieste, to Alexandria, where he arrived on the 27th November. His instructions were to proceed with his despatches for the Governor of Bombay (Sir John Malcolm), by the steampacket Enterprize from Suez, but owing to a breakdown of her machinery, the steampacket was not at Suez to meet him. There being no steamer to take him on to his destination, Mr. Waghorn embarked on an open native boat, and sailed down the Red Sea, being subsequently picked up by the East India Company’s sloop Thetis, which had been sent to meet him, and which brought him to Bombay. The day previous to the arrival of Mr. Waghorn at Bombay, the East India Company had despatched the steamer Hugh Lindsay to Suez to take up the sailing of the disabled Enterprize. The Hugh Lindsay continued to make one round voyage between Bombay and Suez annually until 1836, during the north-east monsoons, not being sufficiently powerful to make the passage during the south-west monsoons. In 1836 the Court of Directors of the East India Company decided to place on the station two new and more powerful steamers. These were the Atalanta, of 616 tons burthen and 210 horse power, built in 1835 at a cost of £36,652; and the Berenice, of 664 tons and 230 horse power, built the same year at a cost of £40,124.

While a regular steamship service was thus being established between the Isthmus of Suez and Bombay, the British Government had established a service of Admiralty packets between Falmouth and Cadiz, Gibraltar, Malta, and Corfu. From Malta the mails were conveyed to Alexandria by other of H.M. ships. Prior to 1830 the Admiralty packets were all sailing brigs, but on the 5th February of that year the Meteor, the first of the steampackets, sailed from Falmouth to the Mediterranean. She was followed by the steampackets African, Carron, Columbia, Confrance, Echo, Firebrand, Hermes and Messenger.

About 1834 Messrs. Bourne, of Dublin, the principal owners of the Dublin and London Steampacket Company, were induced by the Spanish Minister in London to start a line of steamers between London and the Peninsula. They placed the management of the steamers in the hands of Messrs. Willcox and Anderson, a London firm with whom they had had some previous transactions. Messrs. Willcox and Anderson were well acquainted with the trade to the Peninsula, having been engaged in it, at first with sailing vessels, and afterwards with chartered steamers. The new line was called the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company, and Mr. James Allan, then a clerk in the Dublin Office of the Dublin and London Steampacket Company, was sent to London to assist Messrs. Willcox and Anderson in the management.

The first steamer of the service was probably the Royal Tar, belonging to the Dublin and London Steampacket Company, which had been chartered in 1834 to Don Pedro, and subsequently to the Queen Regent of Spain, Messrs. Willcox and Anderson being the chartering brokers. The “Graphic” Xmas Number for 1901 states the Wm. Fawcett was the first P. & O. steamer, and the “P. & O. Pocket Book” (1900 edition) heads the list of the past and present fleet of the company with the name of the same vessel, built in 1829. It is only necessary to say here that neither the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company nor the P. & O. Steam Navigation Company were in existence at that date. The Wm. Fawcett was certainly built that year by Caleb Smith, and engined by Fawcett and Preston, both Liverpool firms. For some time she was engaged as a ferry boat on the Mersey, and in the early thirties she was employed as a regular trader between London and Dublin. She probably was chartered for a short time to the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company in 1835 or 1836, as she does not appear in the company’s advertised sailing list for 1838.

In the latter year the fleet consisted of the following vessels, from London to Vigo, Lisbon, Cadiz and Gibraltar:—Tagus, 800 tons gross, 300 h. p.; Royal Tar, 650 tons gross, 264 h. p.; Braganza, 650 tons gross, 264 h. p.; Iberia, 690 tons gross, 200 h. p.; Liverpool,[14] 500 tons gross, 160 h. p.; City of Londonderry,[14] 500 tons gross, 160 h. p. Branch steamers, Peninsula, Guadalquiver, Estrella and Sol.

In 1837 the Government advertised for tenders from steamship owners for the conveyance of the mails between Falmouth and the Peninsula, which up to that time were conveyed by sailing brigs which left Falmouth for Lisbon every week, “wind and weather permitting.” In response to this advertisement two companies, the British and Foreign Steam Navigation Company, and the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company, sent in tenders. The former company having failed to show that it had adequate means for the efficient performance of the Postal service, the Government concluded a contract, on the 29th August, 1837, with the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company, by which that company agreed to convey monthly the whole of the Peninsular mails for an annual subsidy of £29,600, afterwards reduced to £20,500. The first steamer to be despatched under this contract was the Iberia, in September, 1837, calling at Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon and Cadiz, on its passage to and from Gibraltar.

The British Government in 1839 entered into an arrangement with the French Government to send letters to and from India through France by way of Marseilles. The mails were conveyed between Marseilles and Malta by an Admiralty packet, and between Malta and Alexandria by another Admiralty packet. This arrangement did not work satisfactorily, and the Government advertised for tenders for a line of steamers, to run direct from England to Alexandria and vice versa, touching only at Gibraltar and Malta. The steamers were to be of sufficient power to perform the voyage in not more than three days beyond the time then occupied in the conveyance of the mails via France, and the cost was not to exceed the amount required for the maintenance of the small and inefficient Admiralty packets then employed.

Four competitors tendered for the contract, but that of the Peninsular Company was accepted, it being the lowest (£34,200), and containing also an offer to convey at a reduced rate all officers travelling on the public service, and bona fide Admiralty packages gratuitously.

At this time much pressure was brought to bear on the Government to induce it to subsidize a proposed line of steamers between Falmouth and Calcutta via the Cape of Good Hope. These steamers, according to the “Times” of the 11th November, 1838, were to make the passage in thirty days.

The Great Liverpool, of 1,540 tons and 464 horse power, built by Sir John Tobin, of Liverpool, and intended for the Liverpool and New York trade; and the Oriental, of 1,600 tons and 450 horse power, were the steamers offered by Messrs. Willcox and Anderson, and approved by the Admiralty, to convey mails between England and Alexandria, calling at Gibraltar, and combining the two mail services of the Peninsular and the Oriental, thus constituting the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. Subsequently, the company was requested to provide two steamers, one to be not less than 250 horse power, and the other to be 140 horse power, for the Malta and Corfu branch of the mail service, which was done at a cost to the country of £10,712 per annum, less than the cost of maintaining the Admiralty packets previously employed.

In September, 1842, the P. & O. Company obtained a contract for carrying the mails between Calcutta and Suez. The contract was granted very reluctantly by the East India Company, and only after much pressure had been brought to bear on it by the Home Government.

On the 24th September, 1842, the P. & O. Company despatched its first steamer to India via the Cape of Good Hope. She was the paddle-steamer Hindostan, of 2,017 tons gross and of 520 horse power. On her arrival at Calcutta she was placed on the service between Calcutta, Madras, Ceylon and Suez. Other steamers were despatched speedily from England, and in 1844 the company was in a position to enter into another contract with the Government for a monthly service from Ceylon, to Penang, Singapore, and Hong Kong. For the premier service (Suez-Calcutta) the company received £115,000 per annum, or at the rate of 20s. per mile, and for the Ceylon-Hongkong service £45,000, or at the rate of about 12s. per mile.

In connection with the Eastern services, coaling stations, docks, store establishments, and in such places as Suez and Aden, even fresh-water supplies had to be, and were, provided and organised.

At this period, and until the completion of the Railway from Alexandria to Suez, the passengers and cargo carried by the P. & O. steamers were conveyed across Egypt in a somewhat primitive manner. The Mahmoudieh Canal enabled the company to transport its passengers and cargo from Alexandria to the Nile, whence they proceeded by steamer to Cairo, and thence through the desert on the backs of camels, a distance of less than 100 miles, to Suez.

As it was notorious that the mail service between Suez and Bombay was conducted by the East India Company at a cost of upwards of 30s. per mile by steamers vastly inferior in speed and accommodation to the P. & O. steamers, which maintained the mail services to India and the principal ports of China at an average rate of about 17s. per mile, the public naturally demanded that the Suez-Bombay service should be taken out of the control of the East India Company, and placed in the hands of those competent to work it more efficiently and with greater economy. The demands of the public, although confirmed by the Parliamentary Committee of 1851, were successfully resisted by the Court of Directors until 1854, and it is questionable if even then, they would have given up the service if (in consequence of the East India Company having no steamer ready for them at Suez) the Bombay mails had not been lost in a native sailing craft into which they had been transferred at Aden.

The P. & O. Company were applied to by the Government, and undertook this service for the sum of £24,700 per annum, or at the rate of 6s. 2d. per mile, resulting in a decreased expenditure of about £80,000 per annum, as compared with the expense incurred by the far less efficient East Indian Navy.

In 1852, the P. & O. Company extended its operations to Australia, by means of a branch line of steamers from Singapore. The following year saw an addition of no less than eleven steamships to the company’s fleet. Amongst these was the celebrated troopship Himalaya, which continued in active service until near the end of the century. At the time of her launch she was the largest steamship afloat, and of extraordinary speed. She cost £132,000 when fully equipped and ready for sea. Her length was 340 feet, beam 44 feet 6 inches; her gross tonnage was 3,438 tons, and her engines indicated 2,050 horse power.

Another famous steamer built for the P. & O. in 1853 was the Colombo (steamship), which was engaged as a Government transport during the Crimean War. Even Santa Claus himself could not have been more eagerly welcomed than was the Colombo when she arrived off Sebastopol on Christmas Eve, 1854, with provisions for the wounded soldiers and sailors. She was originally a vessel of 1,864 tons gross, but in 1859 she was lengthened amidships, and her tonnage increased to 2,127 tons. The Himalaya and the Colombo were two, out of eleven, P. & O. steamships chartered to the Government as transports during the Crimean War, and these vessels conveyed during the continuation of hostilities 1,800 officers, 60,000 men and 15,000 horses.

The first steamer of the P. & O. Company fitted with compound engines was the Mooltan (steamship), of 2,257 tons, built in 1860-1. Several succeeding steamers were fitted with the same type of engines, but although the consumption of fuel was decidedly less, the engines themselves proved so unreliable that they were taken out of all the ships and replaced by the old style of engines. “It was not until 1869” (says Sir Thomas Sutherland, in the “P. & O. Pocket Book,” 1900) “that the company succeeded in building a steamer with high and low pressure machinery which could be considered thoroughly successful.”

On the 17th November, 1869, the Suez Canal, the greatest engineering work of the 19th century, was formally opened by the Empress Eugenie, in the presence of numerous distinguished men from all countries. While the benefits conferred upon the world of commerce by the opening of this canal can hardly be over-estimated, its influence upon the fortunes of the P. & O. Company was at first almost fatal. The whole of the company’s business had to be re-organised, and as speedily as possible a new fleet obtained adapted to the changed requirements of the company’s services. This transitory state continued for a period of five years, from 1870 to 1875, by which date the company’s re-organization was sufficiently accomplished to enable them to transfer their services from the Overland to the Suez Canal route. The accelerated mails sent via Brindisi were still carried by the Egyptian Railway between Alexandria and Suez, and continued to be so carried until 1888, when they also were transferred to the Canal route.

It is interesting to compare the earlier vessels of the company’s fleet with the later. The India, built in 1839, was a vessel of 871 tons, and with engines of 300 horse power. Her namesake, built in 1896, is a steamer of 7,911 tons, with engines of 11,000 horse power. The Persia, built in 1900, has a slightly larger register (8,000 tons), with engines of the same power. In 1901 four twin-screw steamers were added to the fleet, the Syria, Soudan, Somali and Sicilia, each of 6,600 tons gross, with engines of 4,500 horse power, while 1903-4 witnesses the addition to the Company’s list of the Marmora and Macedonia, 10,500 tons and 15,000 horse power, and the Moldavia and Mongolia, 10,000 tons and 14,000 horse power, as well as several cargo steamers of immense tonnage.

During the war in the Transvaal, as at the time of the Crimean War, many of the steamers of the P. & O. Company were engaged by the Government as transports.

The following figures indicate the extensive operations of the company:—In 1899 the mileage traversed by the steamers of the fleet during the year was about 3,000,000 miles. The consumption of coal during that period was 625,000 tons. The dues paid to the Suez Canal Company exceeded £272,000, while the sum expended in wages to officers and crews amounted to £362,000.

In 1855 the Directors of the East India Company advertised for steamers to carry the mails between Calcutta and Burmah, a service inaugurated by the Enterprize (see ante) in 1826, and afterwards conducted by various vessels of the East Indian Navy. Messrs. McKinnon & Co., of Glasgow, tendered in response to this advertisement, and their tender having been accepted, they despatched the two steamers Baltic and Cape of Good Hope to fulfil their contract. These vessels were small and unsuitable for the intended service, and the result would have been a serious financial loss to their owners, had they not, soon after their arrival in India, been engaged for transports on the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny.

The new company traded under the title of the Calcutta and Burmah Steam Navigation Co., its first operations being confined to the ports of Calcutta, Akyab, Rangoon and Moulmein. One of the two pioneer steamers, the Cape of Good Hope, collided with a P. and O. steamer and sunk in the Hooghly. Another, the Calcutta, of 900 tons, was totally lost off the coast of Wicklow, when on her first voyage from the Clyde to Calcutta. A fresh contract was entered into in 1862 with the Indian Government, and in the same year the title of the Company was changed to the British India Steam Navigation Co., Limited. The terms of the new contract included the transport of troops and stores at a mileage rate; a mail service every fortnight between Calcutta, Akyab, Rangoon and Moulmein; also a monthly service via the two latter ports to Singapore; a similar service to Chittagong, and one to the Andaman Islands; as well as one between Madras and Rangoon; a fortnightly service between Bombay and Karachi; and a service, once every six weeks, to various ports in the Persian Gulf. New vessels were built and despatched for these various services, and the traffic of the Company developed with great rapidity.

The career of the Company was, however, not an unchequered one. In addition to the two steamers referred to as lost during the first year of the Company’s existence, must be added the wreck of the Burmah on the Madras coast, the loss of the Bussorah on her voyage to India, and the foundering of the Persia on her voyage from Rangoon to Calcutta, during one of those fearful cyclones which periodically sweep the Indian Ocean.

The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which for a time adversely affected the fortunes of the P. and O. Co., proved beneficial to the British India Steam Navigation Co. The directors of the latter Company at once took advantage of the facilities which it offered, and their steamer India, requiring new boilers, was despatched to England, and was the first steamer to arrive in London with a cargo of Indian produce via the Suez Canal. Since that date the Company has added steamer to steamer until at the present date (1903) its fleet (inclusive of the British India Association steamers) numbers upwards of 120 vessels.

In July, 1891, Messrs. Bibby Brothers, of Liverpool (a firm which was founded in 1807), established a direct service of first-class and swift steamers between the United Kingdom and Burmese ports. For half a century prior to 1901 Messrs. Bibby had maintained steamship communication between Liverpool and all the principal ports of the Mediterranean. Prior to the construction of the Suez Canal, cargo from the East was carried by the P. and O. to Suez, thence by rail to Alexandria, where it was transhipped to the Bibby steamers, which loaded in Alexandria for Liverpool.[15]

Early Bibby Liner Sicilian (1859), the first steamer built by Messrs. Harland & Wolff.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Lindsay’s History of Commerce, page 339.

[14] Chartered Steamers belonging to the City of Dublin Co.

[15] A sketch of the history of this important Firm will be found in Part II. of this Volume.