The Kosmos Line operates a regular service between Puget Sound and Hamburg by way of Mexican, Central and South American ports. In 1903 there were fifteen sailings from Puget Sound by steamships of this line, Tacoma furnishing nearly 70 per cent. of the total cargoes carried from the Sound.

The largest vessels engaged in the coastwise trade from Tacoma are the steamships of the American-Hawaiian line operating from Tacoma to Honolulu and New York, returning by way of San Francisco. The Arizonian, Alaskan and Texan of this line, are vessels of 8,671 tons gross register and 12,000 tons cargo capacity. There were fourteen sailings from Tacoma for Honolulu and New York by this line in 1903.

Two lines of steamships are operated regularly between Tacoma and other Sound ports and San Francisco, and several lines to Alaska. A fleet of colliers also plies constantly between Tacoma and San Francisco, carrying coal from this port. In 1902, 375,183 tons of coal were shipped as cargo from this port, exclusive of fuel for steamships. In 1903, the shipments of coal increased to 488,723 tons.

Tacoma handles the largest share of the staple products of the State of Washington, lumber, wheat, flour and coal. The shipments of lumber and coal have already been stated. Tacoma’s facilities for the handling of wheat are unequalled at any other port in the world. The new wheat warehouses erected in 1900 and 1901 on the city waterway, are the longest in the world, being 2,360 feet in length and 148 feet in width. They doubled the warehouse capacity for grain at this port and afford admirable facilities for receiving the wheat from the cars, cleaning and sacking it and loading it on ocean carriers. There are also two enormous grain elevators and three large flour mills on the waterfront. Tacoma’s facilities for exporting wheat and flour are so extensive that in October, 1902, no less than twenty-five wheat carriers were loaded and dispatched and the exports of the month included upwards of 2,000,000 bushels of wheat and 200,000 barrels of flour.

Tacoma is now the leading wheat and flour shipping port on the Pacific Coast, and the customs district of Puget Sound, of which Tacoma is the leading port, now ranks fourth in the United States in both wheat and flour exports, and fourth also in the combined exports of wheat and wheat flour reduced to wheat measure, each barrel of flour being equivalent to four and one-half bushels of wheat.

Group of Wholesale Houses.