One great thing which makes travel desirable is the opportunity of meeting with interesting and famous people. During one of his trips in the South Seas Mr. Brown met and travelled with Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife and daughter. And what could be more interesting than to meet and talk with “R. L. S., of Scotland and Samoa,” and visit him in his own island home under the hill, where the dust of the great writer now reposes on the summit?
Incidentally, I might add, “R. L. S.” made special reference to Mr. Brown, as appears in one of his books, saying characteristically, “I am the general provider for my household (wife and daughter). I have just supplied them on deck with the company of the Canadian Pacific Railway agent, and so left them in good hands.”
Mr. Brown, as mentioned above, remained fourteen years in the Orient with headquarters in Hong-Kong, but after having had three serious illnesses there he was ordered by doctors to leave that climate. So he returned to Vancouver, where the Company gave him the position of General Superintendent of Trans-Pacific Steamships, a position he retained till his retirement on pension in 1906.
Mr. Allan Cameron, who has had very wide experience in several departments of railway service in different parts of the world, is now in charge of the Oriental end of the Canadian Pacific Steamship Service, with headquarters at Hong-Kong, and is making special study of inter-trade relations between Canada and the Far East. At the Vancouver end of the business no one of the old-timers is better known and better liked than the highly competent ships-husband, Mr. James A. Fullerton. He is now retired, but still haunts the waterfront and takes great interest in the fleet that he has seen grow from very small beginnings. Captain Beetham, a practical sea-faring man himself, is in control of the Pacific shipping, with headquarters at Vancouver, while Captain Troup, who knows the coast-wise and inland lake and river business like a book, is in general charge of that important department. With efficient help in the offices and special agents at home and abroad, the business in a generation has kept constantly expanding, as the next paragraph specially notes.
In the meanwhile, as the years passed from the arrival at Port Moody of the first “tea clipper” from Japan, the Company’s trans-Pacific business had grown by leaps and bounds. Following the “tea clippers” from the Orient to Port Moody, the Company in 1887 chartered three steamships, the Batavia, Parthia and Abyssinia, from Glasgow ship-builders, to go on a regular trans-Pacific run from Vancouver; and the latter’s first outbound cargo was only forty tons of freight. In 1890 the British Government contracted to give the Company a subsidy annually, on condition that three twin-screw steamers were put on the route between Vancouver, Japan and China. It was to fulfil this contract that the famous Empresses first made their appearance from the Glasgow shipyards, specially built for the Canadian Pacific, namely the Empress of India, the Empress of China, the Empress of Japan, and they began their work in 1891.
It was not until 1903, under direction of Lord Shaughnessy, that the Canadian Pacific went into the shipping business on the Atlantic. The business on the Atlantic did not have to be created by the C. P. R. in the same sense as the Pacific trade, and I dwell less upon it for that reason. The Company purchased fifteen ships from a going concern, the Elder Dempster Line. This was a good beginning, but more ships soon became necessary, and the Empress of Britain and the Empress of Ireland were added in 1906, when the Monteagle joined the Pacific fleet. Then, in 1914, the Metagama and Missanabie were added on the Atlantic, the latter being later torpedoed in war time. The Melita and Minnedosa came on in 1917 and 1918. More recently the largest ship of all in the Canadian Pacific service, the Empress of Scotland, has been added on the Atlantic, and the Empress of Canada and the Empress of Australia began the run on the Pacific. These last-named three are, literally and without exaggeration, floating palaces. There are single, double and family rooms, suites and special rooms with every possible convenience, reception rooms, gymnasium, nursery, swimming pool, concert and motion picture halls, and practically everything necessary to the comfort of travel. At the date of this writing the Empress of Canada, the Empress of Scotland and the Empress of Britain are just returning from trips around the world with special parties who have been six months visiting the chief places of interest under special guidance. The Empress of Australia, built in Germany and coming to the Canadian Pacific as a result of the War, is most ornately and beautifully finished and furnished throughout. The directions on the taps and such like appear in German and English, representing the before and the after period of the War. This superb vessel, under command of Captain S. Robinson and a gallant crew, in 1923 was just casting off from the wharf at Yokohama when the terrific earthquake upheaved that city and overwhelmed it with tidal waves and fire. The Australia became voluntarily a refugee vessel, saved many hundreds of lives and, cancelling her trip to Vancouver, took the refugees to Kobe, besides giving practically all her stores of food and clothing to the destitute. For this gallant act, which involved the Company in very heavy financial loss, I heard the Captain and crew specially thanked by President Beatty and other officials of the organization. In so doing these officials showed not only their pride in their men, but their desire to magnify the human side of business. More recently Captain Robinson has been decorated by His Majesty King George V with the Order of the Commandership of the British Empire, and has been lionized and decorated at many points on the world tour of the Empress of Canada, to which he was transferred. The Captain has said little to the public about the fearful incident of the earthquake and the sea blazing with burning oil around his vessel. But he had to make his official report to the Department of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and despite his efforts to minimize the greatness of the exploit of himself and his gallant crew, the incident is fully abreast of the noblest traditions of British seamanship.
In order to indicate in a brief way the wide ramifications of the Canadian Pacific Steamship service, we add that a few years ago this Company took over the old-established Allan Line, out of Montreal, and thus added eighteen more ships to her fleet. There is a score of vessels exclusively for freight on the high seas in all parts of the world, and there are many vessels, some of them palatial, doing business on the coasts and inland lakes of Canada, in some cases as links to the rail services, in others as extensions or feeders of the same. On the Great Lakes of Canada are five splendid steamships; on the coasts of British Columbia, and from Seattle to Alaska, there are twenty-five more staunch vessels, while on the lakes and rivers of British Columbia there is nearly another score. There is steamship service also between St. John, New Brunswick, and Digby, Nova Scotia, while the Canadian-Australasian Line, one result of Mr. Brown’s pioneer efforts, operates between Vancouver, Victoria and the Antipodes.
All this sounds like a formal list of facts, but it is an amazing record of achievement in the course of less than two score years. From the tea-laden clipper of eight hundred tons that tied up to the wharf at Port Moody in 1886, the tonnage has rolled up to the vast total of considerably over half-a-million. The Railway Company which in 1886 chartered three tramp steamers for the Pacific Ocean trade, now has an immense fleet of its own on the great oceans, on the Mediterranean, Carribbean, Adriatic and South China Seas, as well as upon the wide coasts and inland waters of this broad Dominion of Canada. From the small beginning the Canadian Pacific has become the world’s greatest transportation system under one management by sea as well as by land.
Back of all that material and visible result is the astonishing story of the thought and action of strong men which is difficult to put down on paper. There have been master minds as well as courageous hearts and willing hands at work during all these years, thinking, planning and executing daring things for the expansion and extension of this vast enterprise. It has been my privilege to know many of these men in almost all branches of the service. My judgment is that, on the whole, these men were singularly free from any desire for personal gain. They had the far mightier stimulus of being engaged in a world business for the development of hitherto unrealized natural resources in many lands, and, subconsciously perhaps, they felt that the main object of their endeavours was the ultimate advantage of all mankind. In that frame of mind giants toiled in the early days, and there is no reason to think that their type is not reproduced in the men of to-day.