The outward voyage of the steamers is via Teneriffe, Cape Town, and Hobart; and the homeward trip is made via Cape Horn, calling at Monte Video or Rio de Janeiro and Teneriffe.
The company has played an important part in the development of the frozen meat traffic between England and New Zealand. The machines used are those patented as the “Haslam” and “Bell Coleman,” known as the Patent Dry Air Refrigerators, though in the later steamers the CO2 system is installed. The Shaw, Savill, and Albion Company, Ltd., were the pioneers in this trade. They fitted up the first sailing ship with refrigerating machinery, and successfully inaugurated an industry which has since grown to such vast dimensions.
The company is one of the largest carriers of frozen meat in the world, bringing over to this country in their steamers considerably over 2,800,000 carcases of mutton per annum.
All the company’s present steamers are of steel, and most are twin screw, their tonnage ranging from 5564 in the Karamea to 10,000 in their newest boats, the Pakeha and Rangatira. Its service is maintained in connection with the White Star Line, which supplies four or five steamers of 12,000 tons each.
By few firms has such an extraordinarily rapid progress been shown as by that known as Elder, Dempster and Co., of which the late Sir Alfred Jones was the head. After his death the line was acquired by Lord Pirrie, who transferred it to a new company bearing the name of Elder, Dempster and Co., Ltd. The firm originally consisted of Alexander Elder and John Dempster, who founded the British and African Steam Navigation Co., Ltd., in 1868, and in 1879 Mr. (afterwards Sir) Alfred L. Jones was admitted to partnership. Under his direction the firm became of considerable importance, but it was not until he and Mr. W. J. Davey became partners and sole managers that the firm progressed by leaps and bounds and rapidly became one of the largest and most influential commercial houses in the world. Its energies were tremendous and its successes no less so. The Beaver Line of steamers to Canada from Liverpool was at one time the property of this firm, who sold it to the Canadian Pacific Railway. The shipping companies controlled by Elder, Dempster and Co. included the British and African Steam Navigation Company (1900), Ltd., the African Steamship Company (incorporated under Royal Charter), Elder, Dempster Shipping, Ltd., Cie. Belge Maritime du Congo, Imperial Direct West India Mail Service, and the Compañia de Vapores Correos Interinsulares Canarios.
Only a few years have elapsed since the banana was almost a curiosity here, but thanks to the enterprise of Elder, Dempster and Co., who practically created the tropical fruit trade and built several steamers for the conveyance of tropical fruit to England, the banana has become most popular. The West India Islands, especially Jamaica, have derived immense benefit from this trade, the encouragement of this and other tropical products having brought it no small measure of prosperity. For this work the Imperial Direct West India Mail Service, Ltd., was established in 1901, maintaining at first a fortnightly and then a weekly service from Bristol to Jamaica. In connection with this service there are numerous inter-island services.
The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company in 1905 inaugurated their splendid “A” class of steamers, of which the Aragon, Amazon, Avon, Araguaya, and Asturias are examples. The largest of these is the Asturias of 12,500 tons.
In part directly and in part through its connections the company’s enterprise extends to all parts of the world. It acquired in 1907 an interest in the Shire Line of steamers engaged in a regular service from London to Port Said, Suez, Colombo, Penang, Singapore, Hong-Kong, Shanghai, Nagasaki, Kobe, and Yokohama; and in 1908 it took over the old-established Forwood Line service from London to Gibraltar, Morocco, Las Palmas, Teneriffe, and Madeira.
The repairs effected to ships since they have been built of steel are no less wonderful than the building of the ships themselves. It is by no means uncommon for a ship to be cut in half, the pieces drawn asunder, and the intervening space built up. The repairing of the Suevic by fitting it with a new bow was not the first operation of the kind. The Milwaukee was similarly treated at Wallsend by Armstrong. The destroyer Syren lost her bows by stranding at Berehaven, but the after portion with the machinery was saved and given new bows by the Palmer Company, the two parts being towed to Haulbowline for the purpose. The Norddeutscher Lloyd steamer Hudson had her bows so badly damaged by fire that she had to be provided with new ones. Nor are the repairing feats effected by the steamers’ engineers in mid-ocean, often in circumstances of extreme difficulty, less praiseworthy and remarkable, especially when it is a matter of patching a fractured propeller shaft while the vessel is rolling in the trough of a heavy sea and the work has to be performed in the semi-darkness of the shaft tube.
The steamer Norfolk, in 1906, after her engines broke down in the Indian Ocean, was taken into Fremantle under improvised sail. The sails were made of tarpaulins stitched together and the necessary spars were improvised out of derrick booms.