Messrs. Rathbone Brothers.
As a specimen of the ordinary first-class merchant steamers now trading between Liverpool and Calcutta, I may instance one of the vessels belonging to Messrs. Rathbone Brothers, of that place. She is of 2610 tons gross and 1682 tons net register, and has capacity for 2200 tons of cargo, besides 450 tons of coal.[372] She is rigged merely with poles (a mode of rig now becoming very general in all steam-vessels), on which, with the exception of one fore-square sail, a few fore and aft sails alone can be set. The owners remark the “best passages of our ships as yet are as follows:—Liverpool to Calcutta (viâ Gibraltar) to Saugar (near Calcutta), thirty-one days, including all stoppages; Calcutta to London (viâ Galle and of course Suez Canal) to Nore light-ship, thirty-four days thirteen hours, steaming time on the whole voyage (exclusive of Suez Canal and stoppages) sixty-one days twelve hours. The best homeward passage hitherto made by any of our ships, landing cargo at Colombo and Port Said, occupied thirty-three days seventeen hours, inclusive of all stoppages.”
From these and previous figures, my readers will more fully understand the progress that has been made in our ordinary trading communications with India and China, since the days of the East India Company, and ascertain what has been gained, since then in the speed, capacity, and current expenses of our merchant-ships.
Messrs. George Smith and Sons.
In further illustration of the progress made in our own time I cannot do better than furnish my readers with a letter I received (January 1875) from Mr. George Smith, of Glasgow.
Indeed, this letter contains in itself a history of the rise of the merchant-vessels of Great Britain during the period to which Mr. Smith refers, and marks the different stages of progress and the means whereby we have been enabled not merely to maintain, but to surpass, in maritime supremacy, all nations. It, likewise, illustrates how individuals (for the case of Messrs. George Smith and Sons is no exception to the general rule, though their operations may be on a more extensive scale than those of most other shipowners) have, since they have been relieved from the trammels of protection and been left to exercise as they deem best their own genius and industry, more than kept pace with other branches of commerce by the improvement and increase of their ships.
“Our first purchase,” Mr. Smith states in his letter, “was a small colonial barque in 1840, which was followed shortly thereafter by the purchase of a barque of 346 tons, in course of construction, and a ship of 500 tons then nearly in frame, both being of the ten years class.
“The first ship which we contracted for and had built to our own specification was the Majestic, launched in 1846. Our second, the City of Glasgow, was built at Kelvinhaugh, and launched in 1848. While she was on the stocks, the bounds of the municipality of Glasgow as a city had been extended to the junction of the Kelvin and Clyde westwards, and thus embraced the shipyard in which she was built. Our late Mr. R. Smith was then a magistrate of the city of Glasgow, and this being the first ship built in the extended royalty, we reckoned no name could be more appropriate, and, as other ships came into existence, we still kept the City,[373] and merely added a name in future designations.
“When we commenced the trade, we employed the regular brokers for loading outwards, and had every reason to be satisfied with the attention paid to our interests by the gentleman who did our business, but the practice, which then obtained here, of laying a ship on the berth and allowing her to lie till nearly loaded before naming the sailing date, and that date, when named, frequently not adhered to, we felt very annoying, not only as keeping back shipments but as sending goods to Liverpool which should have gone from this direct. Our rule was to have our dates of sailing definitely fixed. Only one firm, however, in the trade held the same view with ourselves, and feeling the annoyance, they and we resolved on starting a monthly line to Calcutta. Together we had not so many vessels as were required to keep up the monthly conveyance, but we resolved to add to our tonnage and make up for the then deficiency by chartering so far as necessary. We had made a special stipulation that our broker should still act for our ships, and also for those that it might fall to our lot to charter. When this proposal was submitted to him we were surprised to find that he declined very decidedly to have anything to do with the arrangement—that his lengthened experience in the trade satisfied him that it would prove a failure—and he was therefore not prepared to allow his name to be associated with it; but he lived long enough to find he had been mistaken.
Messrs. Smiths’ ships, and their voyages to and from India.