The Dandy-horse.
CHAPTER VIII.
STEAMERS AND SAILING-SHIPS.
Early Shipping—Mediterranean Trade—Rise of the P. and O. and other Lines—Transatlantic Lines—India and the East—Early Steamships—First Steamer to cross the Atlantic—Rise of Atlantic Shipping Lines—The Great Eastern and the New Cunarders Campania and Lucania compared—Sailing-ships.
THE CARRYING-TRADE OF THE WORLD.
f all the industries of the world, that which is concerned with the interchange of the products of nations is suffused with the most interest for the largest number of people. Not only is the number of those who go down into the sea in ships, and who do business on the great waters, legion, but three-fourths of the population of the globe are more or less dependent on their enterprise. The ocean-carrying trade we are accustomed to date from the time of the Phœnicians; and certainly the Phœnicians were daring mariners, if not exactly scientific navigators, and their ships were pretty well acquainted with the waters of Europe and the coasts of Africa. But the Phœnicians were rather merchant-adventurers on their own account than ocean-carriers, as, for instance, the Arabians were on the other side of Africa, acting as the intermediaries of the trade between Egypt and East Africa and India. In the early days, too, there is reason to believe that the Chinese were extensive ocean-carriers, sending their junks both to the Arabian Gulf and to the ports of Hindustan, long before Alexander the Great invaded India. But there is nothing more remarkable in the history of maritime commerce than the manner in which it has changed hands.