Peculiar conditions of contracts.
To insure speed and, if possible, regularity, the Post Office authorities stipulated that from the amount to be paid to each ship thus employed, there should be deducted a penalty of 20l. for every day’s delay in the delivery of the letters beyond the time specified in the tender. Instead of leaving the sum, as had hitherto been and now is the invariable practice, to be named by the person who tendered, Government fixed it at 1000l. for the passage, accepting the offer which contained the fewest number of days for the performance of the service. Thus, a shipowner who could reckon with tolerable certainty, that his vessel would make the voyage to Australia in 100 days, which most first-class ships could do, might safely tender to do it in, say, seventy-seven days, because after the deduction of the 20l. per day for the twenty-three days in excess, he would have a balance of 540l. to receive (besides other advantages which “mail-packets” derived), and as that sum would further cover an additional excess of twenty-seven days, or say altogether fifty days beyond the time contracted for, the speculation was an exceedingly safe one to a sailing-ship, even if the tender were made for the shortest time in which the fastest steamer had been known to accomplish the voyage. Hence this system of tender proved altogether illusory as regarded the securing a rapid communication. The very first ship, the Stratford, despatched under the new arrangement, occupied on her outward passage a period of thirty-seven days in excess of the time stipulated!
Failure of the service.
Stringent penalties.
If the colonists had been loud in their previous complaints they were still more so now; but the Treasury and Post Office authorities, considering that they had done their best to secure speed, were, for a time, immovable and indisposed to make any further experiments. Steamers and sailing-vessels on so distant a voyage having alike failed, Government thought there was now a good answer to all complaints, and, consequently, treated them with indifference. They argued, referring to the then recent failure of the Australian Royal Mail Packet Company, that, as the steam-vessels between England and Sydney had varied from seventy-six to 120 days, while the length of passage by fast sailing-ships between England and Port Phillip was from eighty-two to 110 days, the difference was not really of any serious disadvantage. Nevertheless, while Government refused increased grants for the conveyance of the mails, it adopted and enforced much more rigorous penalties[365] against owners of sailing-ships to ensure a more speedy performance of the mail services. This fresh experiment, however, from its extreme rigour also failed, and some time elapsed before the colonists obtained what they had long demanded, a direct and independent line of steam-vessels by way of Suez and Ceylon; and that, as we have seen, proved in the hands of the European and Australian Steam Navigation Company the most signal failure of all the experiments which had been made.
Australian steam services.
Among the instances where anything like success has attended steam voyages direct to Australia, may be mentioned the services performed by Messrs. Gibbs, Bright, and Company, in their steamship Great Britain from Liverpool, and in the steamers belonging to Messrs. Money Wigram and Sons, of London, which now trade to these colonies. Occasionally other steamers are despatched to Australia and also to New Zealand, and recently a company was formed—the Australian Direct Steam Navigation Company—with the intention of maintaining a regular monthly line from London to Melbourne, calling at Falmouth, the projectors anticipating the performances of the passage in “under forty-five days.” But though this undertaking failed at the outset, and experience can alone test the realization of the sanguine expectations of its promoters, it may be said in favour of their views, that the difficulties previous pioneers of steam-vessels on long oversea voyages have had to encounter are being rapidly surmounted by the new compound engines, where the consumption of coals required to attain a given speed is not one-half of what it was twenty years ago.
Mr. Alfred Holt’s line of steamers to China.
So far as regards the trade with India and China by way of the Cape of Good Hope, the steam-line started by Mr. Alfred Holt of Liverpool in 1865 is the only one within my recollection, which has hitherto proved successful. Though the steamers of this line now proceed to China by the Suez Canal, their performances were remarkable when engaged in the former route. Starting from Liverpool they never stopped till they reached Mauritius, a distance of 8500 miles, being under steam the whole way, a feat hitherto considered impossible; thence they proceeded to Penang, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, and, though unaided by any government grants, performed these distant voyages with extraordinary regularity.
In forwarding the particulars of his first three vessels, Mr. Holt[366] remarks: “Since the Suez Canal was opened I have found that the square sails of the Agamemnon, Ajax, and Achilles[367] were of little use, and, therefore, I have converted these three ships into what the Americans call ‘barquentine rig’ (i.e. no square yards on mainmast), and have constructed all my new ships with pole-masts only.”