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.