THE PARIS
The greatest French Merchant ship, operated by the French Line.
A hundred men may be swinging on scaffolds which are hung over the ship’s side by lines from the deck, and they remind one who is watching from a distance of flies or ants on a wall. A regiment of workmen may disappear beneath the huge bulge of the ship’s underbody in order to scrape or paint or repair. Fathoms of cable may follow an anchor from the hawse pipes to the dock floor as the “ground tackle”—that is, the anchors and cables—is cleaned, painted, and examined. Propellers or sections of propeller shafts may be swung over the yawning dock and lowered into it by great cranes, to take the places of others lost or damaged. Sections of the ship bent or cut by collision may be replaced to the raucous tune of nerve-shattering riveting hammers. Rivets loosened by the “working” of the plates or by galvanic action may be renewed. Plates damaged by any of a hundred causes may be replaced, and great piles of barnacles scraped from the steel skin of a ship that has been overlong between dockings may accumulate on the dock floor. Sea valves are reground, the rudder is examined, propeller-shaft supports are looked over, and, when the work on the ship’s great underbody is completed, the workmen take their tools and depart, great valves are opened in the dry dock walls, the water enters, and once more the great ship floats. The dock gate or the caisson is removed, and carefully the monster of the sea is backed from her gigantic hospital, fit, so far as her underwater parts are concerned, for another round of duty at sea.
But dry docks are not necessary for all the repairs a ship might need to undergo. To replace or repair engines she may go alongside a quay or a pier, and for any of a thousand jobs she need never stop her regular voyages. But repairs or changes are always under way. To the voyager on a handsome liner little of this is apparent, but it is always known to the crew, and rare indeed is the time on a steamship when repairs are neither under way nor contemplated.
This continuous round of repairs does not mean, though, that the steamships of to-day are not properly designed and built. It only means that a great ship is so vastly complicated that some part of it is always just a bit below par. A small town needs repair men to keep its electric-light system properly working. Its water system is similarly under constant supervision. Its gas, its paving, and a dozen other parts of its equipment are always being repaired, renewed, or extended. The same is true on board ship, except that, at least on the giant liners, the ship’s equipment is more complicated than the town’s.
This wandering discussion presents a few of the difficulties that face the designer, the builder, and the operator of ships. Such difficulties are all but infinite in number, and constant vigilance is vital to the efficient operation of the ships of to-day. But so reliable have these great structures grown to be that one of the greatest—the Mauretania—while launched in 1907, was able after fifteen years of constant and efficient service consistently to defeat newer ships of greater size and greater power in her constant voyages to and fro across the Atlantic. Such results as this must be credited to the designer, the builder, and the officers and crews of these complicated structures of the sea.
CHAPTER XIII
SHIPPING LINES
The development of ships has been largely influenced by competition. The ship that can make the quickest voyages can demand the highest freight rates for most things. Furthermore, a fast ship can make more voyages than a slow one, and the owner may make a greater profit because of the greater amount of freight handled. These factors, and others less evident, enter into the operation of ships.
To-day great shipping lines control most of the earth’s merchant ships. As we know these lines they are a growth of hardly more than a hundred years, but thousands of years ago their counterparts existed.
Phœnicia was the greatest trading nation of the ancient world. Ships sent out by the traders of Phœnicia sailed to every corner of the Mediterranean, and even went out into the Atlantic, where they braved the rough waters of the Bay of Biscay and sailed up the English Channel on their adventurous trading voyages. For every ship that sailed to distant parts, however, many remained nearer home, visiting ports but a little distance off, and returning with less romantic but equally important cargoes.