“KING COAL.”
We see, here, another instance of the vast progress of the last forty years. The ordinary collier of that period, of 230 tons register, or with a capacity of from 16 to 17 keels of coals, required[445] a crew of ten men, and from a month to five weeks for the round voyage to London. In the course of the year she delivered, under the most favourable circumstances, 3500 tons of coals; but the screw-collier of to-day, requiring a complement of only seventeen men, including the engineers and stokers and a steward (a luxury wholly unknown to the collier skipper of byegone days), conveys, annually, on the same round, 50,000 tons; while the deck-houses for the protection of her men in wet and stormy weather are comforts the crew of a sailing-collier never would have dreamt of.
Improvement in care of seamen.
Nor are the seamen less cared for in other respects. The accommodation provided for the collier sailor of to-day is of an order very superior to that afforded him forty years ago. Thus he can make sure of a dry bed and a fire to cook his victuals during the stormiest weather, comforts too frequently unknown to his predecessors; if he may still have causes for complaint, they are incomparably few to those his fathers had before him, and if this service does not now produce the same class of hardy men, who helped to crown the ships of England with laurels of immortal fame in the days of Duncan and Nelson, this arises, in some measure, from the fact that the good living and comforts of modern times tend to render them less willing to endure, or perhaps less disposed for, the prompt and resolute action which, in most achievements, alike of war and peace, insures success.
But, even, if it be true that the seamen of to-day are too much pampered and nursed, they have, unquestionably, in their profession many hardships still to endure, with discomforts and even dangers, which might be avoided. The philanthropist, however, who advocates changes likely to weaken the Inspired maxim that man was born to live by the sweat of his brow, forgets his calling and injures those whose cause he advocates.
Leith and London traders.
In every other branch of our coasting trade, the change has been quite as marked as in that of the coal trade, steamers, on all the important lines, having superseded sailing-vessels. A few of my readers may remember the celebrated Leith smacks which derived their name from trading between that port and the Thames, carrying on, before the invention of railroads, a great portion of the passenger and goods traffic between Edinburgh and London.[446] Although the line of maritime communication, thus opened in 1809, was conducted in these smacks with considerable success, they were, subsequently, in part, replaced by clipper schooners, vessels of great speed, which maintained their position for some years against the steamers of the General Steam Navigation Company; but the London and Edinburgh Shipping Company, to whom they belonged, were obliged, in 1853, to adopt the new mode of propulsion, so that all the most valuable portion of this trade is now conducted by steamers. Indeed, they now encircle the whole of the coasts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and there is hardly a port in the kingdom which has not its steam-ship communication either with the respective capitals or elsewhere.
Dublin and Holyhead Mail Packets.
Although constructed chiefly for the conveyance of goods, most of these lines have excellent accommodation for passengers, especially those I have just specified. This is also the case with the steamers plying between London, Dundee, and Aberdeen, Glasgow and Liverpool, and with many of the lines connecting Ireland with England and Scotland. Among the most celebrated are the Dublin and Holyhead packets, whose work is confined exclusively to the conveyance of the mails and passengers. Before the introduction of steam-vessels, it was no unfrequent occurrence for the sailing-packets, then engaged in this service, to be three or more days in crossing the Irish Channel; and, from a Parliamentary return issued in 1815, we learn that, for the space of nine days in the previous year, only one packet could sail owing to adverse winds. In 1819, the passage of the sailing-cutters then employed averaged twenty hours from Holyhead to Dublin. In the summer of that year, however, the Talbot, of 156 tons, built by Wood of Port Glasgow, with engines of 30 horse-power each, by Napier, was placed on the station; and the Ivanhoe, of somewhat the same size, by Scott of Greenock, with engines also by Napier, followed in the course of the ensuing year.
Their great speed and regularity.