The following figures indicate the extensive operations of the company:—In 1899 the mileage traversed by the steamers of the fleet during the year was about 3,000,000 miles. The consumption of coal during that period was 625,000 tons. The dues paid to the Suez Canal Company exceeded £272,000, while the sum expended in wages to officers and crews amounted to £362,000.
In 1855 the Directors of the East India Company advertised for steamers to carry the mails between Calcutta and Burmah, a service inaugurated by the Enterprize (see ante) in 1826, and afterwards conducted by various vessels of the East Indian Navy. Messrs. McKinnon & Co., of Glasgow, tendered in response to this advertisement, and their tender having been accepted, they despatched the two steamers Baltic and Cape of Good Hope to fulfil their contract. These vessels were small and unsuitable for the intended service, and the result would have been a serious financial loss to their owners, had they not, soon after their arrival in India, been engaged for transports on the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny.
The new company traded under the title of the Calcutta and Burmah Steam Navigation Co., its first operations being confined to the ports of Calcutta, Akyab, Rangoon and Moulmein. One of the two pioneer steamers, the Cape of Good Hope, collided with a P. and O. steamer and sunk in the Hooghly. Another, the Calcutta, of 900 tons, was totally lost off the coast of Wicklow, when on her first voyage from the Clyde to Calcutta. A fresh contract was entered into in 1862 with the Indian Government, and in the same year the title of the Company was changed to the British India Steam Navigation Co., Limited. The terms of the new contract included the transport of troops and stores at a mileage rate; a mail service every fortnight between Calcutta, Akyab, Rangoon and Moulmein; also a monthly service via the two latter ports to Singapore; a similar service to Chittagong, and one to the Andaman Islands; as well as one between Madras and Rangoon; a fortnightly service between Bombay and Karachi; and a service, once every six weeks, to various ports in the Persian Gulf. New vessels were built and despatched for these various services, and the traffic of the Company developed with great rapidity.
The career of the Company was, however, not an unchequered one. In addition to the two steamers referred to as lost during the first year of the Company’s existence, must be added the wreck of the Burmah on the Madras coast, the loss of the Bussorah on her voyage to India, and the foundering of the Persia on her voyage from Rangoon to Calcutta, during one of those fearful cyclones which periodically sweep the Indian Ocean.
The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which for a time adversely affected the fortunes of the P. and O. Co., proved beneficial to the British India Steam Navigation Co. The directors of the latter Company at once took advantage of the facilities which it offered, and their steamer India, requiring new boilers, was despatched to England, and was the first steamer to arrive in London with a cargo of Indian produce via the Suez Canal. Since that date the Company has added steamer to steamer until at the present date (1903) its fleet (inclusive of the British India Association steamers) numbers upwards of 120 vessels.
In July, 1891, Messrs. Bibby Brothers, of Liverpool (a firm which was founded in 1807), established a direct service of first-class and swift steamers between the United Kingdom and Burmese ports. For half a century prior to 1901 Messrs. Bibby had maintained steamship communication between Liverpool and all the principal ports of the Mediterranean. Prior to the construction of the Suez Canal, cargo from the East was carried by the P. and O. to Suez, thence by rail to Alexandria, where it was transhipped to the Bibby steamers, which loaded in Alexandria for Liverpool.[15]
Early Bibby Liner Sicilian (1859), the first steamer built by Messrs. Harland & Wolff.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] Lindsay’s History of Commerce, page 339.