AN AMERICAN INTERMEDIATE LINER
Ships of this type were developed during the World War.
Still, their likenesses, at least superficially, are greater than their differences. There is likely to be a difference in the number of funnels and masts. Derricks are probably more numerous on the smaller ships, for they carry more cargo, strange as that may seem, than the great ships. The intermediate liner has fewer decks, but that would seem at first glance to be because the proportions of the ship are such that numerous decks are impossible. The real reason, however, is that the cabin accommodations are limited. But a passenger on the intermediate liners will probably be very nearly as comfortable as a passenger on the greatest of ships, although he won’t find a Pompeian bath, or a Palm Garden, or any of those super-elegant appurtenances that are common on the greatest ships. But for pleasurable travel these ships—or at least the better of these ships—are often preferred by experienced travellers, for simple surroundings are to many people more pleasant than gorgeous elegance.
“Cargo liners,” again using Captain Bone’s classification, are of a different type. Their sizes are hardly subject to definite restrictions, for, granted that a ship belongs to a shipping line and sails on scheduled dates between two or more ports and carries such freight as may be brought to her, she is a “cargo liner,” whether she be of five hundred or of fifteen thousand tons. In practice, however, these ships range, perhaps, from five to fifteen thousand tons, and as they supplement, to some extent, the freight-carrying passenger ships of the lines to which they belong, their speed is high, for freighters. They make, perhaps, fourteen or fifteen or even sixteen knots an hour, and they are likely to be fine, wholesome-looking ships, handsome in their lines and proud in their appearance. And for this they have some reason, for they are the queens of the cargo fleets, and steam proudly past the dowdy tramps just as the giant liners and the mail liners sweep past the intermediate liners.
But now we come to what seems to me to be a more romantic class—the tramp steamers—for they are of the rank and file—as the farmer and the workman in our factories are of the rank and file. Kings and presidents, members of Parliament and of Congress are for ever in the papers, while the simple folk who give these people the exalted positions they hold seldom see their names in print. And likewise the great liners and, to a lesser degree, the mail and intermediate and cargo liners, are often in the public print, while the tramp steamers, which make possible the conditions that have brought the others into being, are seldom written of. For, from the point of view of the world’s work, these simple ships are mostly vitally important to it, just as the “common people” are of more value to a country than are the holders of high office.
And as one finds great differences among a country’s “common people” so does one find great differences among these “common people” of the sea, upon whose sturdiness and brawn and energy depends that vast web of commerce without which the modern world, as we know it, could not exist.
A CARGO LINER
A cargo liner is a freight ship that sails on scheduled dates and routes, and is different in this from a “tramp” which takes what cargoes it can at any time and to any port.