As a sad contrast, however, to all this splendour, I may here add, that the annual loss of property in British shipping wrecked or foundered at sea may be assumed as amounting to nearly three million pounds sterling per annum. The annual loss of life occasioned by the wreck or foundering of British vessels may be fairly estimated at not less than one thousand souls in each year; so that it would appear, that the annual loss by shipwreck amongst the vessels belonging to the United Kingdom is, on an average, 1 ship in every 42; and the annual loss of property engaged therein 1l. in every 42l.; while the average number of sailors drowned amounts to 1 in every 203 persons engaged in navigation.
I now come to speak of the means by which the vast amount of wealth thus brought to our shores is distributed throughout the country. I have already said that there are three different modes of internal communication:—1, to convey the several articles coastwise from one port to another; 2, to carry them inland from town to town; and 3, to remove them from and to the different parts of the same town. I shall deal first with the communication along the coast.
In 1849, the coasting vessels employed in the intercourse between Great Britain and Ireland made upwards of 26,000 voyages, and the gross burden of the vessels thus engaged amounted to more than 3,500,000 tons. The “coasters” engaged in the carrying trade between the different ports of Great Britain in 1849, made no less than 255,000 voyages, and possessed collectively a capacity for carrying upwards of 20,000,000 tons of goods. Of the steam-vessels employed coastwise in the United Kingdom, the number that entered inwards, including their repeated voyages, was 17,800, having an aggregate burden of upwards of 4,000,000 tons, while 14,500 and odd steam-vessels, of not quite the same amount of tonnage, were cleared outwards. This expresses the entire amount of the coasting trade in connexion with the several ports of Great Britain. London, as I have before shown, has four times the number of sailing vessels, and ten times the amount of tonnage, over and above any port in the kingdom, whilst of steam-impelled coasting vessels it has but little more than one-third, compared with Liverpool.
Turnpike-Roads and Stage-Coaches.
The next branch of my subject that presents itself in due order is the means by which the goods thus brought to the several ports of the kingdom are carried to the interior of the country. There are two means of effecting this; that is to say, either by land or water-carriage. Land-carriage consists of transit by rail and transit by turnpike-roads; the water-carriage of transit by canals and navigable rivers. I shall begin with the first-mentioned of these, viz. turnpike-roads, and then proceed in due order to the others.
The turnpike-roads of England present a perfect network of communication, connecting town with town, and hamlet with hamlet. It was only within the present century, however, that these important means of increasing commerce and civilization were constructed according to scientific data. Before that, portions of what were known as the great coaching roads were repaired with more than usual care: but until Mr. M‘Adam’s system was generally adopted, about forty years back, all were more or less defective. It would be wearisome were I to add to the number of familiar instances of the difficulties and dilatoriness of travelling in the old days, and to tell how the ancient “heavy coaches” were merged in the “fast light coaches,” which, in their turn, yielded to the greater speed of the railways.
In 1818, according to the Government Report on the turnpike-roads and the railways of England and Wales, there existed—
| Miles. | |
| In England and Wales, paved streets and turnpike-roads to the extent of | 19,725 |
| Other public highways | 95,104 |
| Total | 114,829 |
Other parliamentary returns show, that in 1829 the length of only the turnpike-roads in England and Wales was 20,875 miles, or upwards of 1000 miles more than they (together with the paved streets) extended to 10 years before. In 1839, the length of the turnpike-roads and paved streets throughout England and Wales amounted to 22,534 miles, while all other highways were 96,993 miles long; making in all, 119,527 miles of road. By this it appears, that in the course of 20 years upwards of 4500 miles of highway had been added to the resources of the country. As these are the latest returns on the subject, and it is probable that, owing to the establishment of railways, there has been no great addition since that period to the aggregate extent of mileage above given, it may be as well to set forth the manner in which these facilities for intercommunication were distributed among the different parts of the country at that time. The counties containing the greatest length of turnpike-road, according to their size, were Derby, Worcester, Flint, Gloucester, Somerset, Monmouth, Stafford, Hereford, Southampton, &c., which severally contained one mile of turnpike-road to about each thousand statute acres, the average for the entire country being nearly double that amount of acres to each mile of road. Those counties, on the other hand, which contained the shortest length of turnpike-roads in relation to their size, were Anglesey (in which there were only five miles of road to 173,000 statute acres, being in the proportion of one mile to 34,688 acres); then Westmoreland, Suffolk, Essex, Norfolk, Pembroke, and Cumberland. The counties containing the greatest length of paved streets at the above period were, first, Middlesex, where there was one mile of street to every 774 acres; second, Suffolk; third, Lancaster; fourth, Warwick; fifth, Surrey; and sixth, Chester. The average number of acres to each mile of paved street was 12,734, and in the districts above specified the number of acres to the mile ranged from 3600 to 6900. Those counties, on the contrary, which contained the shortest length of streets, were Radnor and Anglesey, in which there were no paved streets whatever; Brecon, which has only one mile, and Carnarvon which has only two; whereas Middlesex, the county of the capital, has as many as 232 miles of streets extending through it. The cost of the repairs of the roads and streets in the different counties is equally curious. In Merioneth, the rate of the expenditure is 12s. 11¾d. per mile; in Montgomery, 1l. 14s. 2½d.; in Radnor, 1l. 18s. 1d.; in Brecon, 2l. 6s. 6½d.; in Carnarvon, 2l. 10s. 1¾d.; in Anglesey, 3l. 8s.; in Cardigan, 3l. 3s. 0½d.; whereas in Middlesex the cost amounts to no less than 87l. 1s. 6½d. per mile; in Lancashire, the next most expensive county, it is 32l. 2s. 6d.; in the West Riding of Yorkshire it comes to 23l. 4s. 3d.; and in Surrey, the other metropolitan county, to 19l. 1s. 1½d.; the average for the whole country being 10l. 12s. 1½d. per mile, or, 1,267,848l. for the maintenance of 119,527 miles of public highways throughout England and Wales.
These roads were used for a threefold purpose,—the conveyance of passengers, letters, and goods. The passengers, letters, and parcels, were conveyed chiefly by the mail and stage-coaches, the goods by waggons and vans. Of the number of passengers who travelled by the mail and stage-coaches no return was ever made. I am indebted, however, to Mr. Porter, for the following calculation as to the number of stage-coach travellers before their vehicles (to adopt their own mode of expression) were run off the roads by the steam-engine:—