The volume of foreign trade, as late as a hundred years ago, was really small, even in the case of the most important commercial nations. The imports and exports of the United Kingdom in 1800 amounted to about $360,000,000, which, for a population of approximately 18,000,000, would be about $20 per capita. At that time the trade of the United Kingdom was about one tenth what it is now. At the present time the foreign commerce of the United Kingdom amounts to nearly $100 for each inhabitant of the country.
The thirteen British colonies in America and the original commonwealths of the United States were all maritime States with navigable rivers, and their industries, lumbering, fisheries, production of food products and tobacco, called for the exchange of large quantities of commodities with the manufacturers of the home country, and with the tropical islands of the West Indies. For their time, then, these States were large traders. The statistical information which we possess of their commerce is meagre, but we know that the total trade of the colonies with the mother country in 1770 was about $13,000,000 a year, or something over four dollars per person. There was a trade of considerable proportions with the West Indies, some with the Mediterranean countries and Africa, and, after the colonies became States, with the East Indies and the Orient; but in all probability the foreign trade of the Americans did not reach ten dollars per capita until after 1790. At the present time, in spite of the very rapid growth of population in the United States that has continued throughout the nineteenth century, our foreign trade is equal to twenty-five dollars per person.
It is when the commerce of the eighteenth century is viewed from the standpoint of the transportation agencies by which it was served—the size, speed, and efficiency of the ships—that the contrast with present conditions becomes most striking. Two hundred years ago, the 560 ships owned at London averaged 157 tons. A century ago, a vessel of 300 tons was still considered a large ship, and as late as 1840 vessels of that size traded from the United States to India and China. The Grand Turk, of 564 tons, built in 1791, was probably the largest ship built in America up to that time. During the fourth decade of the nineteenth century numerous vessels of over 1000 tons were constructed, and in 1840 the Great Britain of 3000 tons was ordered. In her day the Great Britain was more of a marvel than is the recently launched Oceanic, of 28,500 tons displacement.
When we consider that these small vessels in use a century ago took from a month to six weeks to cross the Atlantic,—their speed being about one third that of the freight steamers of to-day,—we realize the great difference in the efficiency of the merchant marine of the present as compared with that by which commerce was served in 1800. The efficiency of the ships, however, does not depend alone upon their size and speed. The commercial auxiliaries which enable vessels to enter and clear harbors without delay, and to load and unload cargoes quickly,—lighthouses, beacons, buoys, spacious wharves and docks equipped with mechanical appliances for handling freight,—make it possible for vessels to spend a greater portion of the time at sea. A merchant marine to-day has fully five times the efficiency that one with an equal tonnage had a century ago. We shall better see how this has been brought about, by briefly reviewing the technical revolution which has taken place in ocean navigation during the past seventy years.
II. THE CENTURY’S TECHNICAL REVOLUTION IN COMMERCE.
During the first four decades of this century the wooden sailing vessel was the sole carrier of ocean traffic, and in the construction and operation of such ships the Americans had special advantages and manifested peculiar ingenuity. For forty years the American sailing clipper, whose fine lines made it stanch and speedy, had been “the type and model of excellence in ship-building;” but before the middle of the century the supremacy of the wooden clipper-ship had been destroyed, and the technical superiority of steam and iron had been demonstrated.
A CLIPPER SHIP.
There are six distinct steps in the technical evolution of the ocean liner of the present day,—six changes which mark the epochs in the history of the substitution of steam and steel for sail and wood. The first step in the evolution was taken when the steam engine and the paddle-wheel took the place of wind and sails. Like most epoch-making changes, this one was made slowly; indeed, it was preceded by thirty years of hesitation and conservative experimentation. Robert Fulton, taking advantage of ideas and plans which he had obtained in Europe, produced his Clermont in 1807, and demonstrated the practicability of the steamship for river traffic. Five years later, Henry Bell of Scotland constructed the Comet, the first passenger steamboat built in Europe, a vessel only forty feet long, ten and one half feet in width, and of four horse-power. The Clermont was somewhat larger, having a length of 130 feet, a beam of eighteen feet, and a hold six feet in depth. She succeeded in making five miles an hour against stream. These little vessels attracted great attention, and the problem of constructing ships that could cross the ocean by steam power began to be studied. In 1819, the Savannah was fitted with engines and crossed the Atlantic, using both steam power and sails, but the vessel did not prove a success, and her engines were taken out the following year. Indeed, it was not until 1833 that a vessel steamed all the way across the Atlantic; and this ship, the Royal William, a Canadian craft of four or five hundred tons, was able to make the trip from Quebec to Gravesend on the Thames only by stopping for coal at Picton, Nova Scotia, and Cowes near Portsmouth, England.