FOOTNOTES:
[360] Besides the Bavarian, Messrs. Leyland employ in this trade the Bohemian and Bulgarian, similar in all respects, each of which is 400 feet in length, 37 feet wide, and 28 feet in depth, with engines of 350 nominal horse-power. They have also in the same trade other three sister ships, the Iberian, Illyrian, and Istrian, each 2890 tons gross register and carrying 4400 tons of cargo, dimensions 390 ⨉ 37 ⨉ 29.
[361] The whole steam tonnage of France amounted in 1873 to 185,165 tons net register.
[362] The Greeks, strange to say, considering their shrewdness and keen business habits, stopped the coasting trade of foreigners, thereby doing incalculable injury to their own commerce, not having capital themselves to supply the deficiency or perform adequately the service.
[363] My readers will perceive that this company apparently owns within 10,000 tons of the whole of the steam-shipping of France, but this arises from the gross tonnage being given in the former returns, and only the net registered tons in the latter. Nevertheless, the Messageries Maritimes is now the largest steam-ship company in the world. A list of the steamers of this company, and how employed, will be found in the [Appendix No. 24, p. 641].
[364] The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company for a service of 1,171,092 miles, receives 430,000l., while the Messageries Maritimes is paid at present (June 1875) 399,838l. for a service of 631,514 miles.
[365] An amusing incident occurred at this time to myself not altogether unworthy of notice. When the discussions were going on about the irregularity of the sailing-ship mails, the late Mr. James Wilson, then Secretary to the Treasury, one day asked me how these irregularities could best be remedied. “Oh,” I said, half in joke and half in earnest, “adopt the horse-shoe nail mode of levying your penalties: inflict, as you do now, 20l. for the first day’s delay, but increase it to 40l. for the second, 80l. for the third, 160l. for the fourth, 320l. for the fifth, 640l. for the sixth, and no pay at all for the conveyance of the mails if the ships are seven days beyond the time stipulated in their contract, and you will be no longer troubled with tenders professing to deliver your letters in less time than the passage, under ordinary circumstances, can be accomplished.”
A scheme of penalties, somewhat after this fashion, was immediately afterwards adopted; but I had unwittingly prepared a stick to break my own back. The second contract for the Cape and India mails, to which I have referred in the text, was one of the earliest to which this new principle was applied, and I could not of course object to the stringency of this new fashioned penalty clause, as it was of my own creation. Nor did the Government hesitate to put it in force when my ships were behind time, as also in the case of the unfortunate European and Australian Steam Navigation Company. But though the new principle promptly and effectually put a stop to all tenders of the class of which Mr. Wilson complained, it was much too rigorous to be continued and was abolished.
[366] Mr. Alfred Holt is the third son of my old friend, the late Mr. George Holt of Liverpool. He is an engineer by profession, having served his apprenticeship to Mr. Edward Woods, the engineer of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Afterwards, he became the inspecting engineer of my steamers and of those of others; and when he himself, in time, became the owner of steam-ships, in partnership with his brother, Mr. Philip H. Holt, he showed what knowledge, practically gained, could achieve, and, thoroughly beating his old employers by the production of the vessels to which I refer, he now ranks high, and deservedly high, among the great shipowners of his native town. Though he has no claim to be considered the inventor of the compound engine, for that is almost as old, in one form or another, as the present century; he was the first to apply the principle on long oversea voyages. The ships of the Pacific Company had, it is true, that description of engine in use before him, but only in those of their ships engaged in the coasting trade of the Pacific. Mr. Holt’s steamers were consequently the first to show the advantages to be derived from the compound principle on such voyages as those from England to Mauritius, a distance of 8500 miles without stopping, then a marvellous performance; and it was, only, from the time he thus practically demonstrated the great value of such engines, that they have been generally adopted.
[367] The Achilles left Foochow, July 16th, 1869, and arrived at London round the Cape of Good Hope, September 16th, having been fifty-eight days nine hours under steam—13,552 miles.