Tacoma’s ocean commerce may be classified as foreign and coastwise. The latter includes chiefly shipments to and receipts by water from Alaska, Hawaii and California. The foreign trade of Tacoma extends to every continent on the globe and to the islands of the sea. The coastwise receipts are chiefly ores, salmon and furs from Alaska, and fruits, general merchandise and manufactures from California. The coastwise shipments consist chiefly of merchandise sold by Tacoma jobbers to customers in Alaska, provisions, machinery, lumber, feed, etc.; bullion, coal, lumber and flour to California, and coal, lumber and merchandise to Hawaii. The foreign commerce of the port consists of imports of silk, tea, mattings, Manila hemp, and other Oriental products, ores for the Tacoma smelter, grain bags for Washington wheat, cement and fire-bricks for building purposes, iron and steel and other foreign commodities imported into the United States; and exports the most valuable of which are Washington products, wheat, flour, canned and salt salmon, lumber, bottled beer, barley, hay and oats, besides cotton, domestics, bicycles, tobacco and other products and manufactures of Eastern and Southern States. But by far the greater part of Tacoma’s exports are products of the State or of Tacoma mills.

Mistress of the Oriental Trade.

The Oriental trade of the Pacific Coast now centers at Tacoma. In June, 1892, the first steamship for the Orient from Puget Sound was dispatched from Tacoma. In 1903, forty-four regular liners sailed from Tacoma for the Orient, carrying cargoes valued at $8,149,906 from Tacoma, and cargo from Seattle valued at $946,318.

Tacoma is the home port of the Boston Steamship Company, which operates a line of five large steamships of American build and registry between Puget Sound and the Orient. This line was established in July, 1902. During the first two years of its operation, there were thirty-five sailings from Tacoma for the Orient and thirty-two arrivals by vessels of the line. Cargoes of foreign merchandise valued at $6,146,488 were landed at Tacoma, while domestic merchandise for export to the value of $6,444,911 was loaded on vessels of the line at this port. Seattle furnished additional cargo for the line to the value of $2,505,935. Tacoma has handled 83.4 per cent. of the total foreign commerce carried by the Boston Steamship Company since the inauguration of its Puget Sound-Oriental line.

The China Mutual Steamship Company, Ltd., and the Ocean Steamship Company, Ltd., both of which are owned by Alfred Holt & Company, British ship owners, operate a joint service between Tacoma and Liverpool and Glasgow by way of the Orient, Suez Canal and Mediterranean route. Dodwell & Company, the Tacoma agents of the line, shipped from Tacoma in 1903, for the Orient and Europe, by this service and the smaller steamships of the Northern Pacific Steamship Company, cargoes valued at $4,635,325, with additional cargo from Seattle valued at $31,805. The steamships Tacoma, Victoria and Olympia, for many years in the Tacoma-Oriental trade, have recently been sold, the traffic having outgrown their capacity. The cargo capacity of these pioneer steamships in Tacoma’s Oriental trade ranged from 3,000 to 3,800 tons. The new steamships in the service have cargo capacity ranging from 6,739 tons to 18,000 tons. The Shawmut and Tremont of the Boston Steamship Company, and the Ning Chow, the Oanfa and the Keemun of the Holt lines, are the largest carriers in the Trans-Pacific trade.

Tacoma’s Wheat Warehouses.