OCEAN STEAM NAVIGATION

AND THE

OCEAN POST.

BY THOMAS RAINEY.

NEW-YORK:

D. APPLETON & CO., 346 & 348 BROADWAY.

TRÜBNER & CO.,

PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.

1858.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by
JOHN GLENN RAINEY,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York.

DEDICATED,

IN TOKEN OF

RESPECT AND ESTEEM,

TO THE

HON. AARON VENABLE BROWN

POST MASTER GENERAL

OF THE

UNITED STATES.

Reprinted 1977
by Eastern Press, Inc.
New Haven, Conn.

Published by
Edward N. Lipson

Distributed by
a Gatherin'
Post Office Box 175
Wynantskill, N.Y. 12198

PREFACE.

In offering to the Government and the public this little volume on Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post, I am conscious of my inability to present any new views on a subject that has engaged the attention of many of the most gifted statesmen and economists of this country and Europe. There is, however, no work, so far as I am informed, in any country, which treats of Marine Steam Navigation in its commercial, political, economic, social, and diplomatic bearings, or discusses so far the theory and practice of navigation as to develop the cost and difficulties attending high speed on the ocean, or the large expense incurred in a rapid, regular, and reliable transport of the foreign mails.

It has been repeatedly suggested to the undersigned by members of Congress, and particularly by some of the members of the committees on the Post Office and Post Roads in the Senate and House of Representatives, that there was no reliable statement, such as that which I have endeavored to furnish, on the general topics connected with trans-marine steam navigation, to which those not specially informed on the subject, could refer for the settlement of the many disputed points brought before Congress and the Departments. It is represented that there are many conflicting statements regarding the capabilities of ocean steam; the cost of running vessels; the consumption of fuel; the extent and costliness of repairs; the depreciation of vessels; the cost of navigating them; the attendant incidental expenses; the influence of ocean mails in promoting trade; the wants of commercial communities; the adaptation of the mail vessels to the war service; the rights of private enterprise; and the ability of ocean steamers generally to support themselves on their own receipts.

While this is true, there is no work on this general subject to which persons can refer for the authoritative settlement of any of these points, either absolutely or proximately; and while a simple statement of facts, acknowledged by all steamship-men, may tend to dispel much misapprehension on this interesting subject, it will also be not unprofitable, I trust, to review some of the prominent arguments on which the mail steamship system is based. That system should stand or fall on its own merits or demerits alone; and to be permanent, it must be based on the necessities of the community, and find its support in the common confidence of all classes. I have long considered a wise, liberal, and extended steam mail system vitally essential to the commerce of the country, and to the continued prosperity and power of the American Union. Yet, I am thoroughly satisfied that this very desirable object can never be attained by private enterprise, or otherwise than through the direct pecuniary agency and support of the General Government. The abandonment of our ocean steam mail system is impossible so long as we are an active, enterprising, and commercial people. And so far from the service becoming self-supporting, it is probable that it will never be materially less expensive than at the present time.

It has been my constant endeavor to give the best class of authorities on all the points of engineering which I have introduced, as that regarding the cost of steam and high mail speed; and to this end I have recently visited England and France, and endeavored to ascertain the practice in those countries, especially in Great Britain.

I desire to return my sincere acknowledgments for many courtesies received from Mr. Charles Atherton, of London, England; Robert Murray, Esq., Southampton; and Hon. Horatio King, of Washington, D. C.

THOMAS RAINEY.

New-York, December 9, 1857.

THE ARGUMENT.

Assumed ([Section I.]) that steam mails upon the ocean control the commerce and diplomacy of the world; that they are essential to our commercial and producing country; that we have not established the ocean mail facilities commensurate with our national ability and the demands of our commerce; and that we to-day are largely dependent on, and tributary to our greatest commercial rival, Great Britain, for the postal facilities, which should be purely national, American, and under our own exclusive control:
Assumed ([Section II.]) that fast ocean mails are exceedingly desirable for our commerce, our defenses, our diplomacy, the management of our squadrons, our national standing, and that they are demanded by our people at large:
Assumed ([Section III.]) that fast steamers alone can furnish rapid transport to the mails; that these steamers can not rely on freights; that sailing vessels will ever carry staple freights at a much lower figure, and sufficiently quickly; that while steam is eminently successful in the coasting trade, it can not possibly be so in the transatlantic freighting business; and that the rapid transit of the mails, and the slower and more deliberate transport of freight is the law of nature:
Assumed ([Section IV.]) that high, adequate mail speed is extremely costly, in the prime construction of vessels, their repairs, and their more numerous employées; that the quantity of fuel consumed is enormous, and ruinous to unaided private enterprise; and that this is clearly proven both by theory and indisputable facts as well as by the concurrent testimony of the ablest writers on ocean steam navigation:
Assumed ([Section V.]) that ocean mail steamers can not live on their own receipts; that neither the latest nor the anticipated improvements in steam shipping promise any change in this fact; that self-support is not likely to be attained by increasing the size of steamers; that the propelling power in fast steamers occupies all of the available space not devoted to passengers and express freight; and that steamers must be fast to do successful mail and profitable passenger service:
Assumed ([Section VI.]) that sailing vessels can not successfully transport the mails; that the propeller can not transport them as rapidly or more cheaply than side-wheel vessels; that with any considerable economy of fuel and other running expenses, it is but little faster than the sailing vessel; that to patronize these slow vessels with the mails, the Government would unjustly discriminate against sailing vessels in the transport of freights; that we can not in any sense depend on the vessels of the Navy for the transport of the mails; that individual enterprise can not support fast steamers; and that not even American private enterprise can under any conditions furnish a sufficiently rapid steam mail and passenger marine: then,
Conceded ([Section VII.]) that it is the duty of the Government to its people to establish and maintain an extensive, well-organized, and rapid steam mail marine, for the benefit of production, commerce, diplomacy, defenses, the public character, and the general interests of all classes; that our people appreciate the importance of commerce, and are willing to pay for liberal postal facilities; that our trade has greatly suffered for the want of ocean mails; that we have been forced to neglect many profitable branches of industry, and many large fields of effort; and that there is positively no means of gaining and maintaining commercial ascendency except through an ocean steam mail system:
Conceded ([Section VIII.]) that the Government can discharge the clear and unquestionable duty of establishing foreign mail facilities, only by paying liberal prices for the transport of the mails for a long term of years, by creating and sustaining an ocean postal system, by legislating upon it systematically, and by abandoning our slavish dependence upon Great Britain:
Conceded ([Section IX.]) that the British ocean mail system attains greater perfection and extent every year; that instead of becoming self-supporting, it costs the treasury more and more every year; that English statesmen regard its benefits as far outweighing the losses to the treasury; that so far from abandoning, they are regularly and systematically increasing it; that it was never regarded by the whole British public with more favor, than at the present time; that it is evidently one of the most enduring institutions of the country; that it necessitates a similar American system; that without it our people are denied the right and privilege of competition; and that we are thus far by no means adequately prepared for that competition, or for our own development.

[Section X.] notices each of the American lines, and presents many facts corroborating the views advanced in the preceding sections.

PAPER A.

[Paper A] (page 192) enumerates all the Steamers of the United States.

PAPER B.

[Paper B] (page 193) gives a list of all the British Ocean Mail Lines.

PAPER C.

[Paper C] (page 198) presents Projét of Franco-American Navigation.

PAPER D.

[Paper D] (page 199) gives the Steam Lines between Europe and America.

PAPER E.

[Paper E] (page 200) gives many extracts from eminent statesmen, corroborating views herein advanced.

PAPER F.

[Paper F] (page 219) gives the Steam Lines of the whole world.

PAPER G.

[Paper G] (page 220) American Mail Lines: Letter of Hon. Horatio King.

PAPER H.

[Paper H] (page 221) List of British, French, and American Navies.

HEADS OF ARGUMENT.

SECTION I.

PRESENT POSITION OF STEAM NAVIGATION.

THE SPLENDID TRIUMPHS OF STEAM: IT IS THE MOST EFFICIENT MEANS OF NATIONAL PROGRESS AND DEVELOPMENT: THE FORERUNNER OF CIVILIZATION: IMPORTANT TO THE UNITED STATES AS AN AGRICULTURAL, MANUFACTURING, AND COMMERCIAL COUNTRY: NATURE OF OUR PEOPLE: MARITIME SPIRIT: VARIOUS COMMERCIAL COUNTRIES: OURS MOST ADVANTAGEOUSLY SITUATED: THE DESTINY OF AMERICAN COMMERCE: OUR COMMERCIAL RIVALS: GREAT BRITAIN: SHE RESISTS US BY STEAM AND DIPLOMACY: OUR POSITION: MOST APPROVED INSTRUMENTS OF COMMERCIAL SUCCESS: PORTUGAL AND HOLLAND: ENGLAND'S WISE STEAM POLICY: LIBERAL VIEWS OF HER STATESMEN: EXTENT OF HER MAIL SERVICE: HER IMMENSE STEAM MARINE, OF 2,161 STEAMERS: OUR CONTRAST: OUR DEPENDENCE ON GREAT BRITAIN: THE UNITED STATES MAIL AND COMMERCIAL STEAM MARINE IN FULL: A MOST UNFAVORABLE COMPARISON.

SECTION II.

NECESSITY OF RAPID STEAM MAILS.

ARE OCEAN STEAM MAILS DESIRABLE AND NECESSARY FOR A COMMERCIAL PEOPLE? THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE DEMANDS THEM: MUTUAL DEPENDENCE OF NATIONS: FAST MAILS NECESSARY TO CONTROL SLOW FREIGHTS: THE FOREIGN POST OF EVERY NATION IS MORE OR LESS SELFISH: IF WE NEGLECT APPROVED METHODS, WE ARE THEREBY SUBORDINATED TO THE SKILL OF OTHERS: THE WANT OF A FOREIGN POST IS A NATIONAL CALAMITY: OTHER NATIONS CAN NOT AFFORD US DUE FACILITIES: WARS AND ACCIDENTS FORBID: THE CRIMEA AND THE INDIES AN EXAMPLE: MANY OF OUR FIELDS OF COMMERCE NEED A POST: BRAZIL, THE WEST-INDIES, AND PACIFIC SOUTH-AMERICA: MAILS TO THE CONTINENT OF EUROPE BY THE NUMEROUS CUNARD VESSELS: CORRESPONDENCE WITH AFRICA, CHINA, THE EAST-INDIES, THE MAURITIUS, AND AUSTRALIA: SLAVISH DEPENDENCE ON GREAT BRITAIN: DESIRABLE FOR OUR DIPLOMATIC AND CONSULAR SERVICE: FOR THE CONTROL OF OUR SQUADRONS: CASES OF SUFFERING: NECESSARY FOR DEFENSE: FOR CULTIVATING FRIENDLY RELATIONS AND OPENING TRADE: THE ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH WILL REQUIRE FASTER AND HEAVIER MAILS: OUR COMMERCE REQUIRES FAST STEAMERS FOR THE RAPID AND EASY TRANSIT OF PASSENGERS: MODES OF BENEFITING COMMERCE.

SECTION III.

THE CAPABILITIES OF OCEAN STEAM.

THE COMMERCIAL CAPABILITIES OF OCEAN STEAM: STEAM MAILS ARRIVE AND DEPART AT ABSOLUTELY FIXED PERIODS: UNCERTAINTY IS HAZARDOUS AND COSTLY: SUBSIDIZED STEAMERS GIVE A NECESSARILY HIGH SPEED TO THE MAILS: MONEY CAN NOT AFFORD TO LIE UPON THE OCEAN FOR WEEKS: COMPARED WITH SAIL: STEAMERS TRANSPORT CERTAIN CLASSES OF FREIGHT: THE HAVRE AND THE CUNARD LINES: THE CUNARD PROPELLERS: STEAMERS CAN AFFORD TO TRANSPORT EXPRESS PACKAGES AND GOODS: GOODS TAKEN ONLY TO FILL UP: WHY PROPELLERS ARE CHEAPER IN SOME CASES: STEAM IN SOME CASES CHEAPER THAN THE WIND: AN ESTIMATE: THE PROPELLER FOR COASTING: STEAM ON ITS OWN RECEIPTS HAS NOT SUCCEEDED ON THE OCEAN: MARINE AND FLUVIAL NAVIGATION COMPARED: MOST FREIGHTS NOT TRANSPORTABLE BY STEAM ON ANY CONDITIONS: AUXILIARY FREIGHTING AND EMIGRANT PROPELLERS: LAWS OF TRANSPORT: RAPID MAILS AND LEISURE TRANSPORT OF FREIGHT THE LAW OF NATURE: THE PRICE OF COALS RAPIDLY INCREASING: ANTICIPATED IMPROVEMENTS AND CHEAPENING IN MARINE PROPULSION NOT REALIZED.

SECTION IV.

COST OF STEAM: OCEAN MAIL SPEED.

MISAPPREHENSION OF THE HIGH COST OF STEAM MARINE PROPULSION: VIEWS OF THE NON-PROFESSIONAL: HIGH SPEED NECESSARY FOR THE DISTANCES IN OUR COUNTRY: WHAT IS THE COST OF HIGH ADEQUATE MAIL SPEED: FAST STEAMERS REQUIRE STRONGER PARTS IN EVERY THING: GREATER OUTLAY IN PRIME COST: MORE FREQUENT AND COSTLY REPAIRS: MORE WATCHFULNESS AND MEN: MORE COSTLY FUEL, ENGINEERS, FIREMEN, AND COAL-PASSERS: GREAT STRENGTH OF HULL REQUIRED: ALSO IN ENGINES, BOILERS, AND PARTS: WHY THE PRIME COST INCREASES: THEORY OF REPAIRS: FRICTION AND BREAKAGES: BOILERS AND FURNACES BURNING OUT: REPAIRS TWELVE TO EIGHTEEN PER CENT: DEPRECIATION: SEVERAL LINES CITED: USES FOR MORE MEN: EXTRA FUEL, AND LESS FREIGHT-ROOM: BRITISH TRADE AND COAL CONSUMPTION.

THE NATURAL LAWS OF RESISTANCE, POWER, AND SPEED, WITH TABLE: THE RESISTANCE VARIES AS IS THE SQUARE OF THE VELOCITY: THE POWER, OR FUEL, VARIES AS THE CUBE OF THE VELOCITY: THE RATIONALE: AUTHORITIES CITED IN PROOF OF THE LAW: EXAMPLES, AND THE FORMULÆ: COAL-TABLE; NO. I.: QUANTITY OF FUEL FOR DIFFERENT SPEEDS AND DISPLACEMENTS: DEDUCTIONS FROM THE TABLE: RATES AT WHICH INCREASED SPEED INCREASES THE CONSUMPTION OF FUEL: CONSUMPTION FOR VESSELS OF 2,500, 3,000, AND 6,000 TONS DISPLACEMENT: COAL-TABLE; NO. II.: FREIGHT-TABLE; NO. III.: AS SPEED AND POWER INCREASE, FREIGHT AND PASSENGER ROOM DECREASE: FREIGHT AND FARE REDUCED: SPEED OF VARIOUS LINES: FREIGHT-COST: COAL AND CARGO; NO. IV.: MR. ATHERTON'S VIEWS OF FREIGHT TRANSPORT.

SECTION V.

OCEAN MAIL STEAMERS CAN NOT LIVE ON THEIR OWN RECEIPTS.

INCREASE OF BRITISH MAIL SERVICE: LAST NEW LINE AT $925,000 PER YEAR: THE SYSTEM NOT BECOMING SELF-SUPPORTING: CONTRACT RENEWALS AT SAME OR HIGHER PRICES: PRICE OF FUEL AND WAGES INCREASED FASTER THAN ENGINE IMPROVEMENTS: LARGE SHIPS RUN PROPORTIONALLY CHEAPER THAN SMALL: AN EXAMPLE, WITH THE FIGURES: THE STEAMER "LEVIATHAN," 27,000 TONS: STEAMERS OF THIS CLASS WILL NOT PAY: SHE CAN NOT TRANSPORT FREIGHT TO AUSTRALIA: REASONS FOR THE SAME: MOTION HER NORMAL CONDITION: MUST NOT BE MADE A DOCK: DELIVERY OF FREIGHTS: MAMMOTH STEAMERS TO BRAZIL: LARGE CLIPPERS LIE IDLE: NOT EVEN THIS LARGE CLASS OF STEAMERS CAN LIVE ON THEIR OWN RECEIPTS: EFFICIENT MAIL STEAMERS CARRY BUT LITTLE EXCEPT PASSENGERS: SOME HEAVY EXTRA EXPENSES IN REGULAR MAIL LINES: PACIFIC MAIL COMPANY'S LARGE EXTRA FLEET, AND ITS EFFECTS: THE IMMENSE ACCOUNT OF ITEMS AND EXTRAS: A PARTIAL LIST: THE HAVRE AND COLLINS DOCKS: GREAT EXPENSE OF FEEDING PASSENGERS: VIEWS OF MURRAY AND ATHERTON ON THE COST OF RUNNING STEAMERS, AND THE NECESSITY OF THE PRESENT MAIL SERVICE.

SECTION VI.

HOW CAN MAIL SPEED BE ATTAINED?

THE TRANSMARINE COMPARED WITH THE INLAND POST: OUR PAST SPASMODIC EFFORTS: NEED SOME SYSTEM: FRANCE AROUSED TO STEAM: THE SAILING-SHIP MAIL: THE NAVAL STEAM MAIL: THE PRIVATE ENTERPRISE MAIL: ALL INADEQUATE AND ABANDONED: GREAT BRITAIN'S EXPERIENCE IN ALL THESE METHODS: NAVAL VESSELS CAN NOT BE ADAPTED TO THE MAIL SERVICE: WILL PROPELLERS MEET THE WANTS OF MAIL TRANSPORT, WITH OR WITHOUT SUBSIDY? POPULAR ERRORS REGARDING THE PROPELLER: ITS ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES: BOURNE'S OPINION: ROBERT MURRAY: PROPELLERS TOO OFTEN ON THE DOCKS: THEY ARE VERY DISAGREEABLE PASSENGER VESSELS: IF PROPELLERS RUN MORE CHEAPLY IT IS BECAUSE THEY ARE SLOWER: COMPARED WITH SAIL: UNPROFITABLE STOCK: CROSKEY'S LINE: PROPELLERS LIVE ON CHANCES AND CHARTERS: IRON IS A MATERIAL: SENDING THE MAILS BY SLOW PROPELLERS WOULD BE AN UNFAIR DISCRIMINATION AGAINST SAILING VESSELS: INDIVIDUAL ENTERPRISE CAN NOT SUPPLY MAIL FACILITIES: THEREFORE IT IS THE DUTY OF THE GOVERNMENT.

SECTION VII.

WHAT IS THE DUTY OF THE GOVERNMENT TO THE PEOPLE?

RESUMÉ OF THE PREVIOUS SECTIONS AND ARGUMENTS: IT IS THE DUTY OF THE GOVERNMENT TO FURNISH RAPID STEAM MAILS: OUR PEOPLE APPRECIATE THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMERCE, AND OF LIBERAL POSTAL FACILITIES: THE GOVERNMENT IS ESTABLISHED FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PEOPLE: IT MUST FOSTER THEIR INTERESTS AND DEVELOP THEIR INDUSTRY: THE WANT OF SUCH MAILS HAS CAUSED THE NEGLECT OF MANY PROFITABLE BRANCHES OF INDUSTRY: AS A CONSEQUENCE WE HAVE LOST IMMENSE TRAFFIC: THE EUROPEAN MANUFACTURING SYSTEM AND OURS: FIELDS OF TRADE NATURALLY PERTAINING TO US: OUR ALMOST SYSTEMATIC NEGLECT OF THEM: WHY IS GREAT BRITAIN'S COMMERCE SO LARGE: CAUSES AND THEIR EFFECTS: HER WEST-INDIA LINE RECEIVES A LARGER SUBSIDY THAN ALL THE FOREIGN LINES OF THE UNITED STATES COMBINED: INDIFFERENCE SHOWN BY CONGRESS TO MANY IMPORTANT FIELDS OF COMMERCE: INSTANCES OF MAIL FACILITIES CREATING LARGE TRADE: THE PENINSULAR AND ORIENTAL COMPANY'S TESTIMONY: THE BRITISH AND BRAZILIAN TRADE: SOME DEDUCTIONS FROM THE FIGURES: CALIFORNIA SHORN OF HALF HER GLORY: THE AMERICAN PEOPLE NOT MISERS: THEY WISH THEIR OWN PUBLIC TREASURE EXPENDED FOR THE BENEFIT OF THEIR INDUSTRY: OUR COMMERCIAL CLASSES COMPLAIN THAT THEY ARE DEPRIVED OF THE PRIVILEGE OF COMPETING WITH OTHER NATIONS.

SECTION VIII.

HOW SHALL THE GOVERNMENT DISCHARGE THIS DUTY?

WE NEED A STEAM MAIL SYSTEM: HOW OUR LINES HAVE BEEN ESTABLISHED: AMERICAN AND BRITISH POLICY CONTRASTED: SPASMODIC AND ENDURING LEGISLATION: MR. POLK'S ADMINISTRATION ENDEAVORED TO INAUGURATE A POLICY: GEN. RUSK ENDEAVORED TO EXTEND IT: THE TERM OF SERVICE TOO SHORT: COMPANIES SHOULD HAVE LONGER PERIODS: A LEGISLATION OF EXPEDIENTS: MUST SUBSIDIZE PRIVATE COMPANIES FOR A LONG TERM OF YEARS: SHOULD WE GIVE TO OUR POSTAL VESSELS THE NAVAL FEATURE: OUR MAIL LINES GAVE AN IMPULSE TO SHIP-BUILDING: LET US HAVE STEAM MAILS ON THEIR MERITS: NO NAVAL FEATURE SUBTERFUGES: THESE VESSELS HIGHLY USEFUL IN WAR: THEY LIBERALLY SUPPLY THE NAVY WITH EXPERIENCED ENGINEERS WHEN NECESSARY: THE BRITISH MAIL PACKETS GENERALLY FIT FOR WAR SERVICE: LORD CANNING'S REPORT: EXPEDIENTS PROPOSED FOR CARRYING THE MAILS: BY FOREIGN INSTEAD OF AMERICAN VESSELS: DEGRADING EXPEDIENCY AND SUBSERVIENCY: WE CAN NOT SECURE MAIL SERVICE BY GIVING THE GROSS RECEIPTS: THE GENERAL TREASURY SHOULD PAY FOR THE TRANSMARINE POST: REQUIREMENTS FOR NEW CONTRACTS: METHOD OF MAKING CONTRACTS: THE LOWEST BIDDER AND THE LAND SERVICE: THE OCEAN SERVICE VERY DIFFERENT: BUT LITTLE UNDERSTOOD: LOWEST-BIDDER SYSTEM FAILURES: SENATOR RUSK'S OPINION: INJURIOUS EFFECTS OF LOWEST BIDDER: INDIVIDUAL EFFORTS AND RIGHTS.

SECTION IX.

THE BRITISH SYSTEM, AND ITS RESULTS.

STEAM MAIL SYSTEM INAUGURATED AS THE PROMOTER OF WEALTH, POWER, AND CIVILIZATION: THE EFFECT OF THE SYSTEM ON COMMERCE: THE LONG PERIOD DESIGNATED FOR THE EXPERIMENT: NEW LINES, WHEN, HOW, AND WHY ESTABLISHED: THE WORKINGS OF THE SYSTEM: FIRST CONTRACT MADE IN 1833, LIVERPOOL AND ISLE OF MAN: WITH ROTTERDAM IN 1834: FALMOUTH AND GIBRALTAR, 1837: ABERDEEN, SHETLAND, AND ORKNEYS, 1840: THE "SAVANNAH," THE FIRST OCEAN STEAMER: THE SIRIUS AND GREAT WESTERN: CUNARD CONTRACT MADE IN 1839: EXTRA PAY "WITHIN CERTAIN LIMITS:" MALTA, ALEXANDRIA, SUEZ, EAST-INDIES, AND CHINA IN 1840: THE PENINSULAR AND ORIENTAL COMPANY: WEST-INDIA SERVICE ESTABLISHED IN 1840: POINTS TOUCHED AT: PROVISIONAL EXTRA PAY: PANAMA AND VALPARAISO LINE ESTABLISHED IN 1845: HOLYHEAD AND KINGSTON IN 1848: ALSO THE CHANNEL ISLANDS: WEST COAST OF AFRICA AND CAPE OF GOOD HOPE IN 1852: CALCUTTA VIA THE CAPE IN 1852, AND ABANDONED: PLYMOUTH, SYDNEY, AND NEW SOUTH WALES ALSO IN 1852, AND ABANDONED: INVESTIGATION OF 1851 AND 1853, AND NEW AUSTRALIAN CONTRACT IN 1856: HALIFAX, NEWFOUNDLAND, BERMUDA, AND ST. THOMAS IN 1850: NEW-YORK AND BERMUDA SOON DISCONTINUED: COMPARISON OF BRITISH AND AMERICAN SUBSIDIES, RATES PER MILE, TOTAL DISTANCES, AND POSTAL INCOME: THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT PAYS HIGHER SUBSIDIES THAN THE AMERICAN: WORKINGS AND INCREASE OF THE BRITISH SERVICE: GEN. RUSK'S VIEWS: SPEECH OF HON T. B. KING: COMMITTEE OF INVESTIGATION, 1849: NEW INVESTIGATION ORDERED IN 1853, AND INSTRUCTIONS: LORD CANNING'S REPORT AND ITS RECOMMENDATIONS: GREAT BRITAIN WILL NOT ABANDON HER MAIL SYSTEM: THE NEW AUSTRALIAN LINE: TESTIMONY OF ATHERTON AND MURRAY: MANY EXTRACTS FROM THE REPORT: STEAM INDISPENSABLE: NOT SELF-SUPPORTING: THE MAIL RECEIPTS WILL NOT PAY FOR IT: RESULT OF THE WHOLE SYSTEM: ANOTHER NEW SERVICE TO INDIA AND CHINA: SHALL WE RUN THE POSTAL AND COMMERCIAL RACE WITH GREAT BRITAIN? CANADA AND THE INDIES.

SECTION X.

THE MAIL LINES OF THE UNITED STATES.

THE MAIL LINES OF THE UNITED STATES: THE HAVRE AND BREMEN, THE PIONEERS: THE BREMEN SERVICE RECENTLY GIVEN TO MR. VANDERBILT: BOTH LINES RUN ON THE GROSS RECEIPTS: THE CALIFORNIA LINES: WONDROUS DEVELOPMENT OF OUR PACIFIC POSSESSIONS: THE PACIFIC MAIL STEAMSHIP COMPANY: ITS HISTORY, SERVICES, LARGE MATERIEL, AND USEFULNESS: THE UNITED STATES MAIL STEAMSHIP COMPANY: ITS RAMIFIED AND LARGE EXTRA SERVICE: EFFECT UPON THE COMMERCE OF THE GULF: ITS HEAVY LOSSES, AND NEW SHIPS: STEAMSHIP STOCKS GENERALLY AVOIDED: CONSTANTLY FAR BELOW PAR: THE COLLINS LINE: A COMPARISON WITH THE CUNARD: ITS SOURCES OF HEAVY OUTLAY, AND ITS ENTERPRISE: THE AMERICAN MARINE DISASTERS COULD NOT HAVE BEEN PREVENTED BY HUMAN FORESIGHT; THE VANDERBILT BREMEN LINE: THE CHARLESTON AND HAVANA LINE.

SECTION I.

PRESENT POSITION OF STEAM NAVIGATION.

The agreeable and responsible duty of developing and regulating the most important discovery of modern times, and the greatest material force known to men, has been committed to the present generation. The progress of Steam, from the days of its first application to lifting purposes, through all of its gradations of application to railway locomotion and steamboat and steamship propulsion down to the present time, has been a series of splendid and highly useful triumphs, alike creditable to the genius of its promoters, and profitable to the nations which have adopted it. However great the progress of the world, or the prosperity of commercial nations prior to its introduction, it can not be doubted that it now constitutes the largest, surest, and most easily available means of progress, prosperity, and power known to civilized nations; or that the development, wealth, and independence of any country will be in the ratio of the application of steam to all of the ordinary purposes of life. It has been canonized among the sacred elements of national power, and commissioned as the great laborer of the age. Every civilized nation has adopted it as the best means of interior development, and as almost the only forerunner of commerce and communication with the outer world. It has thus become an indispensable necessity of every day life, whether by land or by sea, to the producer, the consumer, the merchant, the manufacturer, the artisan, the pleasure-seeker, the statesman, and the state itself, to public liberty, and to the peace of the world.

The existence of an agent of so great power and influence, is necessarily a fact of unusual significance to a nation like the United States, which combines within itself in a high degree, the three most important interests, of large Agricultural and Mineral Productions, extensive and increasing Manufactures, and an immense Foreign Commerce and Domestic Trade. Our country is essentially commercial in its tastes and tendencies; our people are, as a result of our common schools, bold, inquiring, and enterprising; and our constitution and laws are well calculated to produce a nation of restless and vigorous merchants, traders, and travellers. Foreign commerce is a necessity of our large and redundant agricultural production. Our extended sea-coast, and necessarily large coasting-trade between the States, have begotten an unbounded spirit of maritime adventure. The ample material, and other facilities for building vessels, have also contributed to this end. As capable as any people on earth of running vessels and conducting mercantile enterprise, we have found foreign commerce a profitable field for the investment of labor, intelligence, and capital.

There is scarcely any field of trade in the world which we are not naturally better calculated to occupy than any other country. Most of the great commercial nations employ their ships as common carriers for other nations, and limit their exports to manufactures alone. Great Britain is an example of this. She exports no products of the soil, for very obvious reasons. The exports of France partake of the same general character, domestic manufactures, with a small portion of the products of the soil. So, also, with the German States and Holland. The United States, to the contrary, have an immense export trade in the products of the soil. These exports have the advantage of embracing every production of the temperate zone, and some few of the more profitable of those of the torrid. These constitute a large source of wealth, and are daily increasing in quantity, value, and importance. Combined with the manufactured productions of the country, and the yield of the mines, they require a large amount of shipping, which, extending to nearly all nations, opens a diversified and rich field of trade. The exchanges of production between our own and other countries, are, consequently, very large and general, and must continue to increase to an indefinite extent, as the States and Territories of the Union fill up, and as the various new and opening branches of domestic industry develop and mature.

The extent which this trade will reach in a few generations, its aggregate value, and the influence which it will wield over the world if judiciously and energetically promoted, and if wisely protected against encroachment from abroad, and embarrassment at home, no human foresight can predict or adequately imagine. With a larger field of operations, at home and abroad, than any nation ever possessed before, with the pacific commercial policy of the age, and with the aids of science, the telegraph, and steam to urge it on, American Commerce has opened before it a glorious career and an imposing responsibility.

But the conquests of this commerce are not to be the bloodless victories of power unopposed; not the result of bold adventure without check, or of simply American enterprise without the Government's aid. Our foe is a wary, well-scarred, and well-tried old warrior, who has the unequalled wisdom of experience, and the patient courage that has triumphed over many defeats. The field has been in his hands for ten generations, and he knows every byway, every marsh, every foot of defense, and the few inassailable points to be preserved and guarded. Great Britain, particularly, knows how essential is a large general commerce for opening a market for her manufactures. She is dependent on those manufactures, and upon the carrying trade of the world for a living; and she fosters and protects them not alone by the reputed and well-known individual enterprise and energy of her people, but by a wise and forecasting policy of state, a mighty and irresistible naval and military array, a wisely concerted, liberal, well-arranged, and long-pursued steam system, and prompt, unflinching protection of British subjects in their rights throughout the world.

Great Britain is prepared to resist our commercial progress, as she has already done, step by step, by all the means within her power. She has wisely brought steam to her aid, and now has a system of long standing at last well matured. Her diplomacy has ever been conspicuous throughout the world, for ability and zeal, whether in the ministerial or consular service, and for its persistent advocacy of British rights in trade as well as for its machinations against the extension of the commerce or the power of this country. Such action on the part of any wise rival nation is naturally to be expected; and all that we can object to is that, seeing this policy and its inevitable tendency, our country should stand still and suffer her trade to be paralyzed and wrested from her, without an effort to relieve it, or the employment of any of those commercial agencies and facilities which experience shows to be all-efficient in such cases. It is utter folly for us to maintain a simply passive competition; we must either progress or retrograde. It is wrong to be willing to occupy a secondary place, when nature and the common wants of the world so clearly indicate that we should occupy the first; for if, as before assumed, foreign commerce is our destiny, and if we can not accomplish our highest capabilities except by commerce, then if we ever attain our true dignity and station as a nation, it must be by enlarging, liberalizing, strengthening, and encouraging our foreign trade, by all of the proper, efficient, and honorable means within our power. It is the duty of the Government, both to itself and to its citizens. (See [Section VII.])

The history of commercial nations admonishes us that no trading people can long maintain their ascendency without using all of the most approved means of the age for prosecuting trade. Portugal was at one time the most powerful commercial nation of the globe; and at another Holland was the mistress of the seas. But while the latter is now only a fourth-rate commercial power, the former has sunk into obscurity, and is nearly forgotten of men. At that time England and France had but a limited foreign trade and scarcely any commercial reputation. France could more easily maintain her existence without a foreign trade, than could England; and yet her matured manufactures and her products of the soil became so valuable that she sought a foreign market. England, to the contrary, had not territory enough to remain at home, and yet be a great power. She matured an immense manufacturing system, and needed a market, as well as the raw material, and food for her operatives. She began to stretch her arms to the outer world, and had made very considerable strides in foreign commerce side by side with France and the German States, and in the face of the steady young opposition of the American States.

It now became a contest for supremacy. Her large navy had enabled her to conquer important foreign territories, which with the supremacy of the seas would make her the mistress of the world. France was still her equal rival, and the United States were becoming formidable common carriers, although they had but little legitimate commerce of their own, and none that was under their positive control. The commercial men of England finding their statesmen ready to aid them in their efforts for national progress, wealth, and glory, directed their attention to steam as an agent of supremacy and power, both in the Navy and the Commercial Marine. They indicated and proved the necessity of drawing the bonds between them and foreign countries more closely; of shortening the distances between them; of providing the means of rapid, safe, and comfortable transit of English merchants between their homes and foreign lands; of regular, rapid, reliable British steam mails to every point with which Englishmen had business, or could create it; and of government agency as the only means by which this desirable, this essential service could be rendered to commerce and to the country. They readily saw that rapid and reliable passenger facilities, and the rapid and regular transmission of commercial and diplomatic intelligence would give to British merchants and to British statesmen the certain control of commerce, and the conformation of the political destinies of many of the smaller nations of the Eastern and Western hemispheres.

It was not a difficult task to convince the British statesman that it was his duty to encourage the commerce, on which the wealth, power, and glory of his country depended, by all the aids known to the constitution; and to uphold the hands of the merchant by the use of the money which his traffic had brought into the public coffers. There was no contest between North and South, East and West. It was the whole of England which was to be benefited directly or indirectly; and they were willing that it should be any part rather than none. The evident advantages which the United States possessed in her more numerous articles of export, (see [page 16],) as well as the rapid strides which her first clippers were making across the ocean, were reasons urgent enough for the forecasting statesmen of Britain; and they determined to continue or to obtain the profitable dominion of the seas, although it might cost a sum of money far beyond the postal income. They knew that these postal and passenger facilities were needed by every class of community, and that there was no one in the kingdom who would not be in some way benefited by them; and that the sums of money paid for them, although not apparently returned, were yet returned in a thousand indirect channels and by a variety of reflex benefits not calculable as a transaction of exchange.

We, therefore, see to-day, as the fruit of that determination, the proudest and the most profitable postal and mercantile steam marine that floats the seas. Several large companies, authorized to transport the mails to all parts of the world, were immediately organized, and paid liberal allowances for their peculiar duties. Where the practicability of the service was considered doubtful, larger sums were paid, and a greater length of time granted for making the experiment. The contracts were generally made for twelve years; and when their terms expired they were renewed for another term of twelve years, which will expire in 1862. Thus many of the lines have been in operation for the last nineteen years, and have demonstrated the practicability, the cheapness, the utility, and the necessity of such service. The entire foreign mail service is conducted by fifteen companies, having one hundred and twenty-one steamers, with a gross tonnage of 235,488 tons; the net tonnage being 141,293, assuming the engines, boilers, fuel, etc., to be forty per cent of the whole tonnage, which is altogether too low an estimate. The whole number of British sea-going steamers is sixteen hundred and sixty-nine, with an aggregate tonnage of 383,598 tons, exclusive of engines and boilers, and of 639,330 tons gross, including engines and boilers. (See [paper A], page 192.) We must add to this list the new steamer "Great Eastern," whose tonnage is twenty-seven thousand tons, and which will make the entire present mercantile steam tonnage of Great Britain 660,330 tons. The greater portion of these steamers, exclusive of those engaged in the foreign mail service, are employed in the coasting and foreign continental trade; while some few of them run in the American merchant service, and many others in the subsidized mail service of foreign countries, such as the lines from Hamburgh and Antwerp to Brazil, and from those cities to the United States. Some of them are also engaged in the mail service between Canada and England, under the patronage of the Canadian government. (See [paper D], page 199.) If we add to this list the 271 war steamers, the 220 gunboats, and the Great Eastern, we shall find that the British Mail, Mercantile, and War Marine consists of the enormous number of two thousand one hundred and sixty-one steamers, exclusive of the large number now building. Nearly all of these are adapted to the ocean, or to the coasting service, and may be classed as sea-going vessels.

It is interesting to trace this rapid progress of steam since its first application to purposes of mail transport in 1833. An intelligent writer says, "The rise and progress of the ocean steam mail service of Great Britain is second in interest to no chapter in the maritime history of the world;" and while we acknowledge a grateful pride in the triumphs of our transatlantic brethren, we must blush with shame at our dereliction in this great, and civilizing, and enriching service of modern times. The steam marine of the United States, postal, mercantile, and naval, is to-day so insignificant in extent that we do not feel entirely certain that it is a sufficient nucleus for the growth of a respectable maritime power. The few ships that we possess are among the fleetest and the most comfortable that traverse the ocean, and have excited the admiration of the world wherever they have been seen. But their number is so small, their service so limited, their field of operation so contracted, that our large commerce and travel are dependent, in most parts of the world, on British steam mail lines for correspondence and transport, or on the slow, irregular, and uncertain communications of sailing vessels. The question here naturally suggests itself: Have we progressed in ocean steam navigation in a ratio commensurate with the improvements of the age, or of our own improvement in every thing else? And has the Government of the country afforded to the people the facilities of enterprise and commercial competition which are clearly necessary to enable them to enter the contest on equal terms with other commercial countries? (See [Section VII.])

The Ocean Mail Service of the United States, consists of eight lines, and twenty one steamers in commission, with an aggregate tonnage of 48,027 tons. Three of these lines are transatlantic; the Collins, the Havre, and the Bremen. Two connect us with our Pacific possessions, and incidentally with Cuba and New-Granada. They are however indispensable lines of coast navigation. One connects the ports of Charleston, in the United States, and Havana, in Cuba, another connects New-Orleans with Vera Cruz, and another connects Havana and New-Orleans. Beyond these, we have a line of two steamers running between New-York and New-Orleans, touching at Havana, and one steamer touching at the same point between New-York and Mobile. Also four steamers between New-York and Savannah, four between New-York and Charleston, two between New-York and Norfolk, two between Philadelphia and Savannah, two between Boston and Baltimore, four between New-Orleans and Texas, and two between New-Orleans and Key West. All of these are coast steamers of the best quality; and some few of them have a nominal mail pay. We have also several transient steamers which have no routes or mail contracts, and which are consequently employed in irregular and accidental service, or laid up. They are the Ericsson, the Washington and the Hermann, the Star of the West, the Prometheus, the Northern Light, the Daniel Webster, the Southerner, the St. Louis, laid up in New-York; the Uncle Sam, the Orizaba, and the Brother Jonathan, belonging to the Nicaragua Transit Company, and the California, Panamá, Oregon, Northerner, Fremont, and the tow-boat Tobago, belonging to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, all lying in the Pacific. Also the Queen of the West, Mr. Morgan's new steamer, in New-York. These, like all other American steamers when unemployed on mail lines, generally lie in port for want of a remunerative trade. (See [Paper A].)

The aggregate tonnage of these fifty-seven steamers is 94,795 tons. Eighteen of them, with an aggregate tonnage of 24,845 tons, are engaged in no service. Twenty-three of them, with 24,071 tons, are engaged in our coasting trade. Fourteen of them, with 19,813 tons, (Gov. register,) are engaged in the California, Oregon, Central American, Mexican, and Cuban mail service; while eight of them, with 25,178 tons aggregate tonnage, are engaged in the transatlantic mail service proper, between this country and Europe. It is thus seen that we have in all but 57 ocean steamers, of 94,795 aggregate tons; while Great Britain has sixteen hundred and seventy, with 666,330 aggregate tons; that we have twenty-two of these, of 45,001 tons, engaged in the foreign and domestic mail service, while she has one hundred and twenty-one, of 235,488 aggregate tonnage, engaged in the foreign mail service almost exclusively; and that we have thirty-seven steamers engaged in the coasting trade and lying still, while she has fifteen hundred and forty-eight steamers engaged in her coasting trade and merchant service. (See [page 167], for length of British and American mail lines, and the miles run per year.) Comparisons are said to be odious, but it is more odious for such comparisons as these to be possible in these days of enlightened commercial enterprise and thrift; and especially when so greatly to the disadvantage of a country which boldly claims an aggregate civilization, enterprise, and prosperity equalled by those of no other country on the globe. As regards our steam navy, it is too small to afford adequate protection to our commerce and citizens; much less to defend the country in time of war. We have not steamers enough in the navy to place one at each of our important seaports; much less to send them to foreign stations.

SECTION II.

NECESSITY OF RAPID STEAM MAILS.

Having seen that the ocean steam mail service is largely developed in some countries, especially in Great Britain, and that the second and third commercial powers of the world, the United States and France, have not largely employed this important agent in their commerce, the inquiry naturally arises, whether fast ocean steam mails are desirable and necessary to the commercial prosperity of a people. Whether this question be considered in its relative or its natural bearings, the reply is the same. Relatively considered, a large ocean steam mail service is indispensable to a people who are largely commercial, because the most noted commercial rivals of the world employ it, and thus either force them to its use, or the loss of their commerce, and the gradual transference of their shipping and trade into the hands of their rivals. Considered in its natural bearings, in its direct influences and effects per se, it becomes even more evidently necessary, as the means of a ready and reliable knowledge of the condition, wants, and movements of all those with whom a commercial nation necessarily has business, or could or should create it.

The spirit of the age demands a more intimate acquaintance and communication than we have hitherto had with the outer world. Our knowledge of foreign lands has pointed out innumerable wants hitherto unknown, and suggested innumerable channels of their supply. Nations have learned to depend on each other as formerly neighbor depended on his neighbor for any little necessary or luxury of life. The luxurious spirit of the times requires the importation and exportation of an immense list of articles with which foreign countries were formerly unacquainted, but which have now become as indispensable as air, and light, and water. And if it is not necessary that these many articles shall be transported from land to land with the speed of the telegraph or the fleetness of the ocean steamer, it is at any rate necessary that the facts concerning them, their ample or scarce supply, their high or low price, their sale or purchase, their shipment or arrival, their loss, or seizure, or detention, should be made known with all of the combined speed of the telegraph, the lightning train, and the rapid ocean mail steamer. If we possess ourselves these facilities of rapid, regular, and reliable information to an extent that no other nation does, we will be the first to reach the foreign market with our supplies, the first to bring the foreign article into the markets of the world, and the proper recipients of the first and largest profits of the cream of the trade of every land.

If we neglect these precautions, and refuse to establish these facilities, because their cost is apparent in one small sum of expenditure, while their large returns in profits diffused among the whole people are not so palpably apparent to the common eye; if we leave to the genius and enterprise of the people that which private enterprise and human skill unaided can never accomplish; in a word, if we fail to keep up with the world around us, and to progress pari passu with our wise, acute, and experienced commercial rivals, then, as a matter of course, the information which we receive from the foreign world must come through others, and those our rivals, and must be deprived of its value by the advantage which they have already taken of it. It is idle to suppose that any commercial nation on earth will not so arrange her foreign post as to exclude others than her own citizens as much as possible from its benefits. This is a paramount duty of the government to the citizen. It is therefore apparent that our commerce must of necessity greatly suffer when its conduct is at all dependent on foreigners and competitors, and that it is exceedingly desirable, for the avoidance of such a calamity, that we should have independent and ample foreign mail facilities of our own, wherever it is possible for our people to trade and obtain wealth.

It is clearly impossible that other nations should afford these facilities, or that our people should have confidence in them if attempted, or that they could be in any sense reliable in those many cases of exigency, national disputes, war, and accident, which usually afford us our best chances of speculation and profit. A dependence on foreigners for this supply of information, which never reaches us until it is emasculated of its virtues, is extremely hazardous. It fails just at the point where it is most desirable. Foreign nations, especially the commercial European nations, are constantly at war, and are constantly interrupting their packet service. The late Crimean and the present Indian wars are a good illustration. Our country, isolated from the contending nations, and fortified against continual ruptures by a policy of non-intervention, is peculiarly blessed with the privilege and ability to regularly and unintermittingly conduct her commerce and reap her profits, even more securely, while her rivals are temporarily devoting their attention to war. Such being the fact, it is wholly desirable and necessary to the end proposed that our steam post should on all such occasions regularly come and go, even amid the din of battle, and the conflict of our rivals, who for the time are powerless to oppose our peaceful and legitimate commerce, and are generally but too glad to avail its offerings.

There are many instances of the desirableness and the necessity of the transmarine steam post on important lines of foreign communication where we have a large trade, and yet no postal means of conducting it. Our immense trade with Brazil and other portions of South-America, which if properly fostered would increase with magic rapidity, sends its news and its freight by the same vessel, or is compelled to use the necessarily selfishly arranged, and circuitous, and non-connecting lines of Great Britain. A letter destined for Brazil, four thousand miles distant, must needs go by England, Portugal, the Coast of Africa, Madeira, and the Cape de Verdes, a distance of eight thousand miles, in a British packet. One destined for the Pacific Coast of South-America must go to Panama and await the arrival of the English packet, with London letters more recently dated, before it can proceed on to Callao, Lima, or Valparaiso. Letters destined to the West-Indies can go to Havana only, by American steamers; but they must there await the British line which takes them to St. Thomas, and there be distributed and forwarded to the various islands, the Spanish Main, the Guianas, Venezuela, and New-Granada by some one of the ten different British steam packet lines running semi-monthly from that station.

So with half of our letters which go to the Continent of Europe: they must go by the Cunard line to England, and thence by English steamers to the British Channel, the Baltic, the White Sea, the Mediterranean, Egypt, Constantinople, or the Black Sea. Those to places along the coast of Africa and to the Cape of Good Hope are dependent on the same English packet transit. For our communication with China, India, Australia, the East-Indies generally, and the Islands of the Pacific, we are entirely and slavishly dependent, as usual, on Great Britain. Instead of sending our letters and passengers direct from Panamá or San Francisco to Honolulu, Hong Kong, Shanghae, Macáo, Calcutta, Ceylón, Bombáy, Madrás, Sydney, Melbourne, Batavia, the Mauritius, and the Gulf of Mozambique, by a short trunk line of our own steamers, and from its terminus only, by the British lines, they now go first to England, as a slavish matter of course, then across the Continent or through the Mediterranean to Egypt, thence by land to the Red Sea, and thence to China and the East-Indies; or from England by her steam lines around the Cape of Good Hope to Australia and the East-Indies; or by slow and uncertain sailing packets direct from our own country, either around Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope. It is evident to every reflecting man who has given the subject any attention, that all of these lines of communication would be very desirable, and very highly profitable to our people at large; and that the latter and that along the West Coast of South-America could be easily established by two new contracts for that purpose, or in some other way, to the great and lasting advantage of our countrymen.

The transmarine post is very desirable for the better conduct of our foreign diplomacy and the consular service. It is now almost impossible for our ministers and agents abroad to hold any thing like a regular correspondence with the State Department, unless it be those in Southern and Western Europe. I was told last year by our Minister in Rio de Janeiro that his dispatches from the Government at home seldom reached him under four months; and Mr. Gilmer, the Consul of the United States at Bahia, reports, in the "Consular Returns" now about to be published, that his dispatches never come to hand under four months, that they are frequently out six months, and that many are lost altogether. This is the experience and the reïterated complaint of nearly every foreign employée of the Government, who has any zeal in prosecuting his country's business, and may find it necessary to get instructions or advice from home. Many knowing the delays, uncertainty, and irregularity of correspondence, make no attempt whatever to communicate regularly with the Department. We frequently express great surprise that we have no intelligence from our ministers, special ambassadors, and agents; but do not reflect that in the majority of cases dispatches have to be sent by irresponsible and slow-sailing vessels, or by the steamers of Great Britain, which it may be safely asserted are in no particular hurry to deliver them to us. Three several letters sent by me at separate times through the British mail from Rio de Janeiro for New-York never reached their destination.

Nor is it better with our squadrons on foreign stations. They receive their orders in the same slow and irregular way, and find it almost as easy to send a vessel when they wish to communicate with the Navy Department, or await the movements of their dull old storeships, as to attempt any other means of intercourse. It may be safely said that they are not actually under the control of the Department, in many important cases, one time in ten. Whatever the dispute, it is left entirely at the will of the Commodore, or it remains unsettled altogether. Our recent accumulated Paraguayan difficulties is a case in point. American citizens were driven from the country, and their valuable property confiscated. They applied to the Commodore for relief, but could not obtain it. Our surveying vessel, engaged in a permitted scientific exploration, was fired into and had some of her men killed; and redress being demanded by the Captain from the Commodore, it was refused. The Commodore feared transcending his instructions: he could not communicate with the home authorities much under a year; and so the case rested, and yet rests. These wants, papable as they are in times of peace, become doubly pressing in time of war. Let a conflict commence with England, or France, on whom we depend for mails, or with their allies, and they could easily surprise and destroy every squadron which we have upon the high seas months before they would necessarily hear of a declaration of war, or know why they were captured. The very contemplation of such possibilities is intolerable, and should be sufficient of itself, setting aside all considerations of commerce and diplomacy, to arouse our nation to the adoption of the proper means for its safety and defense.

An effective steam postal marine is unquestionably most desirable and necessary for the defense of our country, and for the prosecution of any foreign war. Lord Canning, the British Post-Master General, recently said in a report to the House of Lords, that although all of the steam mail packets might not be able to carry an armament, or be required in the transport service in time of war, yet the mail facilities which they would then afford would be more important and necessary than at any other time. He had no idea that because engaged in a foreign war the postal service would be useless, but to the contrary, more than ever indispensable. Such proved to be the fact in the late contest in the Crimea, and such is to-day the case with regard to the troubles in India and China. Their postal vessels have proven a first necessity in both of these wars, not only for transport of the troops, but for speedy intelligence also. Without them, England could not have entered the Crimean contest, and the French forces would have been compelled to remain at home. Turkey would have been overawed, and Constantinople would have fallen before the Russian fleet. We are to-day, and always must be, liable to a foreign war. We have a great boiling cauldron running over with excitement all along our southern and south-western borders. Central America, Cuba, the West-Indies, and South-America are far more foreign countries to us than Europe or the Mediterranean to England. Cuba will no doubt be at some day our most important naval station and possession. Even the defense of our own coast would require an immense transport service; for Texas is nearly four thousand miles from Maine, and California is seven thousand from the Atlantic seaboard. No better proof can be given of the necessity of a large and extra naval transport service than the late Mexican war. But for our steamers it would have taken us years to concentrate an army on the shores of Mexico. It was a tedious process at the time; for our ocean mail packets were not then in use. We could now land a larger number of men there in one month than we then did in a whole year. But our transport facilities are not yet by any means adequate.

A large postal steam marine is desirable as a means of cultivating the sympathies and respect of foreign nations, by bringing them into closer friendly and commercial connection with us; and for creating among them that respect and consideration which the British statesmen so well know to be an easy means of conducting diplomacy, and an unfailing source of commercial advantages. It is not necessary that we shall impose upon foreign countries in these respects by false pretenses; but it is truly desirable, and it would be profitable to an extent little imagined, to let them know our real importance as a nation, and understand our pacific policy and bona fide intentions. These are important considerations when we wish to carry any point, establish any line of policy, remove any prejudice; and nothing will more readily produce them, and arouse attention to our articles of export, and induce a people to establish a regular business with us, than these ever-present, convenient, and imposing mail steamers. Nations as well as individuals estimate us by our appearances; and while it is not desirable that we shall appear more than we are, it is yet very important that foreign nations with which we have business shall know our real merits, and respect us for what we are intrinsically worth. There is evidently no means of our commercial triumph over other nations without a liberal and widely extended steam mail service; and as this triumph is of paramount importance to us, who have so many resources, so is the ocean steam mail as the only means of securing it. (See views of Gen. Rusk, in [papers appended].)

It has recently been suggested by parties who certainly have not thought very deeply on the subject, that the completion of the Atlantic Telegraph, which every body reasonably expects soon to be completed, will so inaugurate a new era in the transmission of intelligence, that one of its effects will be the supersession of fast ocean mails, and consequently of subsidized steamers. It is a first and palpable view of this question that much of the important intelligence between the two countries requiring speedy transmission will be sent through the telegraph, notwithstanding the necessarily high prices which will be charged for dispatches. These communications will be sententious, summary, and of great variety. The markets, prices, important political and other events, private personal and unelaborated intelligence will come over the wires just as they now come over existing land lines. The line will create extra facilities for operations on both sides, and cause more mutual business to be done. It will thus create the necessity for more correspondence than before, for particulars, elaboration, items, bills of lading, exchanges, duplicates, minute instructions, etc., to which there will be no end. The main transaction of any business being made more quickly, it will be essential for the papers to pass with greater dispatch. If there were twenty telegraphic wires working day and night, which never can be the case from their expensiveness, they could not do in a month the correspondence and business done by one steamer's mail. Beside this, those who got their dispatches first would have a decided advantage over those who would be compelled from the mass of business to wait several days. It is an advantage of the steam mails that all get their letters and papers at the same time; and that no one has thus the advantage of the other. It is hardly possible for one unacquainted with the postal business to conceive how large a mass of mail matter is deposited by each steamer; and it is only necessary to see this to realize that the Atlantic Telegraph will never materially interfere with the steamers except to require of them greater speed and heavier mails.

It is the experience on all of our land routes that the thousands of miles of telegraph, so far from superseding the mails, have made more mails necessary, have caused and required them to be much faster, have necessitated more correspondence, and induced people to live in more mutual dependence, to have more communication with one another, and to make the home or the business of a man less than formerly his closed castle, which none entered, and which no one had any occasion to enter. The American telegraph has now arrived at great perfection, and sends its electric throb to every corner of the Union, save California only. At the same time, the railroads of the country are taxed to their highest capacity. No period ever witnessed so many, so rapid, and so well-filled mails. It is evident that no telegraphic system can properly do detailed business. First, it is and must ever remain too costly. Second, it would require about as many lines as business men, to give them all equal chances, and no one the profitable precedence. Next, there is nothing positively accurate and fully reliable. No signatures can pass over the line. No transaction can be made final by it. No bank will pay, or ought to pay, money on public telegraphic drafts. And, as in the land service, so in the ocean. The telegraph across the ocean will simply create far more business for the mails, and make it desirable and indispensable that they shall be sent and received by the most rapid conveyance known to the times. Thus, it is evident that this new and as yet not fully established agent of international communication, so far from obviating our rapid transmarine service, will but the more effectually necessitate it.

Nor must it be forgotten that our commercial prosperity largely depends on the ready and comfortable transit of passengers. The passenger traffic has increased with astonishing rapidity during the last eighteen years. Our smaller merchants can go abroad when mail steamers are plenty, and make their own purchases and sales, without paying heavy commissions and high prices to middlemen; do their business on less capital; and thus benefit themselves and reduce the prices to our consumers. Compared with sailing vessels, these few mail steamers become the forerunners of trade and commerce, and create an immense service for the sail. They enable us to save large sums of interest or advances on merchandise consigned, and give to us quick returns from the products which we ship abroad. This has long been evident to Great Britain, and she has acted liberally on the suggestion. So desirable is the service for the general prosperity of her people, that she expends annually for her foreign steam mails nearly six millions of dollars, while they do not return to the treasury much above three. She regards the expenditure as she does that for the navy and the army, a necessity for the public preservation and prosperity.

As regards the lines that we now have, they are among the noblest in the world. For aggregate comfort, convenience, safety, speed, and cheapness, they are not equalled by the most famous British lines. More luxurious tables, more neatness, cleanliness, and roominess, more general comforts than have always been characteristic of our Havre, Liverpool, and California lines, can not be found in the world. The only objection to them is, that the service is not sufficient; that the trips are not frequent enough; and that the companies are not enabled to sustain a larger steam marine which would proportionally cheapen the service, and accommodate more persons and a much larger class of interests. Our experiences of the benefits of existing lines, limited as those lines are, present an unanswerable argument for the desirableness and necessity of a liberal steam postal system, and a large and judicious extension of the present service. (See views of Senate Committee, 1852, [Paper E].)

SECTION III.

THE CAPABILITIES OF OCEAN STEAM.

Believing that no further arguments or facts are necessary to show that a rapid steam mail marine is desirable and essential to the successful government of the country, to our foreign commerce, and to the growth of individual interests and a general prosperity of the people, I shall now make some few inquiries concerning the Commercial Capabilities of steam, as the most effective agent for the rapid transit of the ocean, and the most expensive agent for the transport of goods. After this, it will be necessary to examine into the Cost of Steam, as a subject closely allied to its general capabilities.

Whatever may be said of the wind as a cheap agent of locomotion, this much may be safely predicated of steam vessels for the mails; that their time of departure and arrival has an absolute fixity which is attainable by no other means, and which is highly conducive to the best interests of all those for whom commerce is conducted. No reasoning is necessary to show to the man of business, or even to the pleasure-seeker, the importance of approximate certainty as to the time when the mail leaves and when he can receive an answer to his dispatches. He may not be able to give clearly philosophic reasons for it; yet he feels the necessity in his business; and it certainly relieves him of many painful doubts, if nothing more. Uncertainty in commercial operations is always hazardous and costly to the great mass of the people, who as a general thing pay more for whatever they get, on the principle that we seldom take a venture in an uncertain thing unless it holds out inducements of large profit, or unless we get a high price for guarantying it. So in commercial correspondence, which constitutes the great bulk of the ocean mails. Let uncertainty prevail for but three or four days beyond the time when we should have news from abroad, and every body is in doubt, every body speculates, and in the end every body is injured.

Nor is this certainty in the time of arrival and departure of the mails more desirable than their speed. The common sense of the world has settled down upon the necessity of rapid mails; and all of the ingenuity of the age is now taxed to its very highest to secure more speed in the transmission of intelligence. Many interests demand it. Money, which represents labor, is continually lent and borrowed in bills of exchange, acceptances, deposits, and in actual cash sent across the seas. The length of time for passing the bills and correspondence, or the specie itself, thus becomes an exceedingly important item to those who are to use them, and consequently to the ultimate consumer for whom they are conducting the commercial transaction. What community would to-day tolerate the idea of sending three millions of dollars per week, and five millions of credits between England and the United States on a sailing ship of whatever quality, with the probability of keeping it lying unproductive on the ocean for thirty days? Extend this to weekly shipments of the same amounts, and have at one time on the waters between the two countries twelve million dollars in specie and twenty in credits, tossing about the ocean, unproductive and unsafe, and entailing all of the evils incident to the uncertainty as to the time when it will arrive. But if this is not sufficient, extend the inquiry to South-America, and China, and India, and see how enormous and useless a waste of money and interest is incurred in the many millions which by sailing vessels and slow steamers is fruitlessly gilding the ocean for months. Money is too valuable and interest too high to keep so many millions of it locked up from the world. At two and three per cent a month, the nation, or, what is the same thing, its commercial and mercantile classes, as representing the producing, would soon become bankrupt.

The only avoidance of these evident evils is in a rapid transmission of the mails, specie, and passengers. And herein consists the chief value of the rapid ocean steamer. It is an important case which the Telegraph, with all of its benefits, can never reach. It can never transmit specie; neither the evidences of debt nor of property. The voluminous mails, with all of their tedious details, upon which such transactions depend, must go and come on steamers, and on steamers only. They have the certainty, which will satisfy men and prevent speculation, gambling, and imposition; they have the speed, which shortens credit, keeps specie alway in active use, and enables commercial men to know, meet, and supply the wants of the world before they become costly or crushing; and they give a rapid and comfortable transit to passengers, who can thus look after their business, and save much to themselves and to the producer and consumer. Compared with sailing vessels their efficiency is really wondrous. Foreign correspondence was formerly very limited, and the interchange of interests, feelings, and opinions was slow and tedious. Each nation depended solely on itself; and instead of the brotherhood now prevailing, communicated through the costly channels of war, by messages of the cannon, and in powerful, hostile fleets. But the foreign correspondence of the world is really enormous, and rapidly increasing, since the introduction of ocean steamers; and no one will say that they have had a small share in producing that fraternal international spirit which is now so widely manifested in Peace Congresses, Congresses of the Five Powers, explanations, concessions, and amicable adjustments of difficulties. The peaceful influences and the civilization of the times are but another comment on the capabilities of steam.

There are also certain classes of freights which steam is better calculated than sailing vessels to transport; certain rich and costly goods which would either damage or depreciate if not brought speedily into the market. There are many articles also, as gold and silver ware, jewelry, diamonds, bullion, etc., and some articles of vertu as well as use, which are costly, and have to be insured at high values unless sent on steamers; and which consequently can pay a rather better price. As in the case of specie, they are too valuable to be kept long on the ocean; but in the general traffic of the world there is so little of this class of freight that steamers can place no reliance on it as a source of income. These freights have abounded most between France and England and the United States. This is the principal reason why the New-York and Havre line of mail steamers has run on so unprecedentedly small a subsidy; a sum not more than half adequate to the support of a mail line but for that class of freights. The Cunard line has also derived a large sum of its support from the same source. All such articles passing by that line come from England, Ireland, and Scotland, where they are manufactured; and being shipped by British merchants, are given, as a matter of duty, to their own steamers. Another reason for the Cunard line getting most of those more profitable freights is that a steamer leaves every week; every Saturday; and shippers sending packages weekly are not compelled every other week to hunt up a new line, and open a new set of accounts, as would be the case if they attempted to ship by the Collins semi-monthly line.

These freights have hitherto proven a profitable source of income to that line. As there is no manufacturing done in this country for Europe, the Cunarders and the Havre as well as the Collins and Vanderbilt lines, have no freights that pay the handling from the United States to Europe. And not only has the Cunard line, by starting from home, taken all of these profitable freights from the Collins, but it has run a weekly line of propellers from Havre and taken the freight over to Liverpool free of charge for its New-York and Boston steamers, and thereby shared the freights and greatly reduced the income of the Havre line. There being a great superabundance of propeller stock in Great Britain, which can be purchased frequently at less than half its cost, and these vessels running the short distance between Havre and Liverpool very cheaply, (See [pages 108]-[13],) the Cunarders have cut the Havre freights down from forty to fifteen dollars per ton, and sometimes for months together to ten dollars per ton. As a matter of course, this price would not pay the handling and care of these costly articles; but at fifteen dollars it enabled the Cunard line to fill their ships and derive some profit; as most of them, with the exception of the Persia, run slowly, use less coal, and have more freight room. All of these freights are, however, small in quantity, and not much to be relied on from year to year, as will be seen below, in consequence of the action of propellers.

There is another class of business which mail steamers can do at remunerating prices; but which is exceedingly limited anywhere, and not at all known on some lines. This is in Express packages. They pay a high price; but seldom reach more than three or four tons under the most favorable circumstances. In the early stages of the California lines, when there was a rush of travel to the gold regions, and a hurried transit required for a thousand little necessaries of life, the New-York and Aspinwall and the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's lines transported a large express freight outward at every voyage, amounting sometimes to two hundred tons; but the golden days of such cargo have long gone by, and California is now supplied like the rest of the world by the cheaper and more deliberate transport of sailing vessels; and the steamers are left to their legitimate business of mails and passengers. Taking together all of the classes of freights which steamers having mail payment are capable of transporting, they amount at present to but an insignificant part of the income by which these steamers can be run. During the last six years these freights have reduced more than one hundred per cent; and goods which were then profitable to the steamer, are now taken only "to fill up." And the chief reason for this reduction arises not so much from competition between the steam-lines, which well knew that they could not transport these freights when reduced to the present low prices, but from the introduction of a large number of propellers, some of which were originally designed for this species of trade, and many others which were built during the war in the Crimea for the transport of troops. These ships were never prosperous anywhere, and are in nearly all cases at the present found in second hands; the original proprietors having lost a large share of their investment. Thus, purchased cheaply, and running with simply an auxiliary steam power, and making the passages but little shorter than the sailing vessels, and not even so short as their best passages, they have but little more daily expense than the sailing vessels, with all of the deceptive advantages of being called steamers. They thus get these better freights and a large number of immigrants, which with small interest on prime cost enables them to live.

Paradoxical as it may seem, there are yet some cases, even upon the ocean, in which steam can transport freight cheaper than the winds of heaven. And this species of trade constitutes one of the best capabilities of steam power applied to navigation. It is not in the long voyage between Europe and America, or between the East and California, or yet in the far-off trade among the calms and pacific seas of the East-Indies and the Pacific Islands; it is not in the smooth, lake-like seas of the West-Indies, where there is no freight whose transport price will pay for putting it on and taking it off the steamer; nor in the trade of Brazil whence a bag of coffee can be transported five thousand miles to New-York nearly as cheaply as it can from New-York to Baltimore or to Charleston; but it is in the coasting trade of almost every country, where the voyage is short. In the trade between New-York and Baltimore, between Charleston and Savannah, between Boston and Portland, or between New-Orleans and Key West, or New-Orleans and Galveston, the small sailing vessels spend one half of their time in working in and out of the harbors. Sometimes they are two days awaiting winds, to get out of a harbor, two days in sailing, and two days again in making and entering their port of destination; whereas a steamer would make the whole passage in one day to a day and a half. Now, the distance actually to be run, and for which the steamer will be compelled to burn coal is not very great; but the trouble of working the vessel in and out, against adverse winds and currents, and amid storms and calms, is sometimes excessive, while the delay and cost are disheartening. They have also the trouble of warping into and out of the docks, which is not the case with steamers.

Thus, it frequently takes a week for a sailing vessel to do the work that a steamer will readily do in twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Say that it takes the sail four times as long as the steamer to accomplish a given voyage. To do as much business as the steamer would do in the same time, would require four sailing vessels; four times as many men as one sail requires, or probably twice as many hands in the aggregate as the steamer would have; and would incur at least twice the expense of the steamer in feeding them. Now, there is also a much larger aggregate sum invested in these four sail, and the owners pay a much larger sum of interest on their prime investment. Or, in other words, the steamer with but a few more men, but little greater expense in living, a small coal-bill, an engineer and firemen, and a prime outlay of not more than double the capital, will carry four times the freight and passengers, without incurring probably so much as three times the expense of one of the sail. After the prime cost the most important item of expenditure in one of these small steamers is the coal; but the distance run being so short, and getting into and out of the harbor and docks being so easy, the vessel does large execution at little expense. The two most essential benefits, however, of her short voyage are, that she is not compelled to carry much fuel, and consequently occupies nearly all of her space with freight; and that the prices of freight on these short voyages are much larger in proportion than they are on long voyages. Sailing vessels charge very little more for a thousand miles than they do for five hundred; but a steamer may have to charge nearly three times as much; especially if she run fast, consume much fuel, and occupy her cargo-room with coal. There are distances at which steamers, however large, can not carry a pound of freight; but occupy all their available space with the power that drives them. In these long voyages sail becomes much cheaper.

It is by no means essential that these small coasting vessels shall be propellers; for to acquire the same speed they expend the same power and have the disadvantage of being deeper in the water, and not being able to go into all harbors with much freight. They have also the advantage of carrying more sail, and being generally better able to stand coast storms than a side-wheel of light draught of water. They are not quite so expensive in prime construction, but generally require more repairs, and must be on the docks much oftener. They are, however, much better suited than side-wheel vessels to voyages where a medium speed is required, and where the steam can be used at pleasure simply as an auxiliary power. In such cases there is a profitable economy of fuel. But speed has generally been deemed essential in this country, and the side-wheel is everywhere used. But entirely the contrary is the case in Great Britain and France. There the coasting business is conducted by screws almost altogether; and the speed does not transcend the limit of economy and commercial capability. They distinguish between the extremely fast carriage of mails and passengers on the one hand, and freights on the other; and although they wish the speed and certainty of steam, yet it is not the costly speed. When they know that a given quantity of fuel will carry freight eight knots per hour, they would consider it wasteful and foolish to consume twice that quantity of fuel just to carry it ten knots; and more especially so, when, in addition to the extra quantity of fuel, they would lose just its bulk in paying freight room. England is thus employing most of her vast fleet of coasting ocean steamers in her own trade, or in the foreign trade lying within a few hundred miles of her ports. And the voyages being short, her coals being cheap and convenient, frequently not above three dollars per ton to the coasters, and in addition to this, the prime cost of these vessels being smaller than in this country, as both iron and labor are cheaper, she has found them very profitable at home, and is insinuating them into all the short routes wherever she can get a foothold. It was not until she attempted the same species of self-supporting steam navigation with distant countries, that her propeller system failed her and involved her citizens in loss. Meanwhile it is more than probable that within the next fifteen years we shall find five hundred propellers scattered along the coasts of the United States.

Notwithstanding the eminent capabilities of steam when applied to coast navigation, or to the fluvial navigation of the interior, it has failed to make the same triumphs in the carriage of freights and passengers upon the ocean. And it is not alone because the voyage is long and the freights low in price. Steamers carry freights up the Mississippi river two thousand miles from New-Orleans, and find it profitable. Some run even as high as three thousand miles up that river and the Missouri; a voyage nearly as long as to Europe, and make money by it. But the circumstances are very different. They do not leave the dock at New-Orleans with even more than enough fuel on board for the whole trip, as the ocean steamers do. If they did they could carry no freight. But they stop every twelve to eighteen hours and take on wood just as they need it, fifty to a hundred cords at a time; and instead of occupying all of their available room with wood, they have the steamer full of cargo, and have on board only fifty or sixty tons of fuel at a time, and only half that weight on an average. None of the best steamers on those rivers could take enough wood on board for the whole three thousand miles, even though they should not have a ton of freight. And compared with ocean steamers of the same engine power, they do not cost half of the money, I might say generally, not one third of the money. There is no reason, then, why these steamers should not carry large quantities of freight and make large sums of money by it. They have the great elements, fuel, freight capacity, and prime cost in their favor.

There is a large class of freights which are not transportable by steam on long ocean voyages under any conditions. We will grant that under the most favorable circumstances, where rich and costly articles are transported in small bulk, that propellers running at a low rate of speed, or just fast enough to anticipate sailing vessels, will make a living. But change the class of these freights into the great average class of those filling the thousands of sailing vessels, and deprive these screw vessels of an immense emigrant passenger traffic, and they would not pay their running expenses by fifty per cent. This style of freights, sailing vessels in their great competition have reduced to the lowest paying figure. The margin left for profit is so small that our ship-owners constantly complain that unless there are changes they must go into other business; and many of them say this honestly, as is shown by the hundreds of ships which of late years we can always find lying up, awaiting improvement in business. Now, let even the slowest and cheapest running screw vessel attempt to carry the same freights, to say nothing of fast side-wheel mail vessels, and we shall see against what odds the screw or other steamer has to contend. In the first place, her engines, boilers, coal, etc., occupy at least forty per cent of her total registered tonnage. Grant that the additional expense of a steamer over a sail, that is, wages for engineers, firemen, coal passers, etc., and finding the same in food and rooms, costs even no more than the loss of an additional ten per cent of her freight room. In other words, considering her steam machinery, fuel, extra expenses, etc., to be equal to half of her freight room, it is evident that she would carry only half as much freight as a sailing vessel of the same size, and that she would get but half as much money for it.

It is thus clear, I think, that there is a certain class of ocean freights which steam can not transport under any conditions so long as there are sailing vessels on the ocean; and in that class are comprehended all the great standard and staple articles of the world, constituting in sum seventeen twentieths of all the freight passing upon the ocean. This being so, it is utterly idle to suppose that steam in any form can take the place of sail upon the ocean, even though the present prices for the carriage of standard articles should increase three hundred per cent.

There are many considerations which affect this question. The ordinary average passages of the ocean on long voyages are now very rapid; and some of the clippers have attained a speed which no freighting steamer may ever be expected to do on the high seas. They do not maintain this high speed as an average, but it is sufficiently high for all of the ordinary purposes of transport in the standard articles of commerce, and where the business of the clipper is done by a fast mail steamer. There is no positive necessity for the speedy transport that some have attempted to give to articles, whose presence in the markets, as the ordinary supplies of life, to-day, next month, or a month later, is a matter of total indifference to every one except the ship-owner himself. It but little concerns the public whether a cargo of cotton, or beef or pork, or corn is one month or forty-five days between the United States and England, so that it is safe in the end. It is an annual production that must have an annual transit, and however unnecessarily fast we may become, we can not send more than one crop in the year. The world frequently becomes too fast in every thing; and crises, panics, and bankruptcies follow as legitimate consequences. When a fictitious value is given to every thing, and every globule of air which one has breathed comes puffing out, a splendid bubble, a magnificent speculation, and when men have to go so fast that they need a telegraph to ride them through the world lest they get behind the heated times, no wonder that the shipper can not sit quietly down in his office and wait thirty days for a load of corn to reach England, or a load of iron to appear in the harbor in return. And it does not matter to him that it may not be used there in six months. He wishes to finish the "operation," to close up the "transaction" before he goes up town in the evening.

There is a rational distinction between the necessary and the unnecessary which we must learn to make, and a limit which safety assigns to every operation. There are some things which must be done rapidly, and others which may be done at leisure. Between the freight cargo, and the correspondence which controls it there is a great difference. Rapid transport of letters, intelligence, and passengers, and leisure transport of freight, is the law of nature, and to attempt to reverse it is but to attempt that which will never be successfully done, simply because wholly unnecessary in any permanent economic sense. And not only is higher speed than that of clippers unnecessary in ordinary freight transport, but it is clearly impossible in any normal condition of trade. Circumstances may, and doubtless often will exist, which will require some sluggish article to be transported a long distance in a short time, as in the case of the famine in Ireland, and which may insure rates at which steam vessels can take small quantities of such freights; but such occasions will ever be accidental, and the support of vessels depending on them the questionable support of expedients, and capricious in the extreme. It will ever be just as impossible to hurry gross freights across the ocean in a healthy state of commerce as it will to prevent rapid mails, or forego the comforts of quick passenger transit.

To say nothing of a vessel which is half filled with its own power, attempting to compete, in the ordinary freights of the world, with one which fills every square foot with paying cargo, it is equally important that we should look at the question of fuel. The coals of the world are not so plentiful or so cheap that we should consume whole pits in a year in unnecessary and unproductive service. They are already beginning to fail in many parts of the world, or to the same effect, are mined and brought to market at such increasing cost, and applied to so many new purposes day by day, that in a few years the price will place them entirely beyond the reach of commercial purposes upon the ocean. It is contended, however, that the science of engineering is also rapidly advancing, and that we shall soon have some discovery by which we can have heat without fuel, and power without heat. But I have heard of those imaginary engineering hopes so long that I begin to believe them vague, and that we shall yet for a few generations measure the power applied by the number of pounds of coal consumed. From past experiences and present indications we can predicate nothing with more certainty of fuel than that it will indefinitely increase in price. I am satisfied, therefore, that with all of the capabilities of steam it can never be applied to general ocean transportation; first, because undesirable; and second, because impossible even if desirable. But to show more clearly that it is impossible, I will now make some inquiries concerning the cost of ocean steam, which is the cardinal point of interest in marine propulsion.

SECTION IV.

COST OF STEAM: OCEAN MAIL SPEED.

MISAPPREHENSION OF THE HIGH COST OF STEAM MARINE PROPULSION: VIEWS OF THE NON-PROFESSIONAL: HIGH SPEED NECESSARY FOR THE DISTANCES IN OUR COUNTRY: WHAT IS THE COST OF HIGH ADEQUATE MAIL SPEED: FAST STEAMERS REQUIRE STRONGER PARTS IN EVERY THING: GREATER OUTLAY IN PRIME COST: MORE FREQUENT AND COSTLY REPAIRS: MORE WATCHFULNESS AND MEN: MORE COSTLY FUEL, ENGINEERS, FIREMEN, AND COAL-PASSERS: GREAT STRENGTH OF HULL REQUIRED: ALSO IN ENGINES, BOILERS, AND PARTS: WHY THE PRIME COST INCREASES: THEORY OF REPAIRS: FRICTION AND BREAKAGES: BOILERS AND FURNACES BURNING OUT: REPAIRS TWELVE TO EIGHTEEN PER CENT: DEPRECIATION: SEVERAL LINES CITED; USES FOR MORE MEN: EXTRA FUEL, AND LESS FREIGHT-ROOM: BRITISH TRADE AND COAL CONSUMPTION:

THE NATURAL LAWS OF RESISTANCE, POWER, AND SPEED, WITH TABLE: THE RESISTANCE VARIES AS IS THE SQUARE OF THE VELOCITY: THE POWER, OR FUEL, VARIES AS THE CUBE OF THE VELOCITY: THE RATIONALE: AUTHORITIES CITED IN PROOF OF THE LAW: EXAMPLES, AND THE FORMULÆ: COAL-TABLE; NO. I.: QUANTITY OF FUEL FOR DIFFERENT SPEEDS AND DISPLACEMENTS: DEDUCTIONS FROM THE TABLE: RATES AT WHICH INCREASED SPEED INCREASES THE CONSUMPTION OF FUEL: CONSUMPTION FOR VESSELS OF 2,500, 3,000, AND 6,000 TONS DISPLACEMENT: COAL-TABLE; NO. II.: FREIGHT-TABLE; NO. III.: AS SPEED AND POWER INCREASE FREIGHT AND PASSENGER ROOM DECREASE: FREIGHT AND FARE REDUCED: SPEED OF VARIOUS LINES: FREIGHT-COST: COAL AND CARGO; NO. IV.: MR. ATHERTON'S VIEWS OF FREIGHT TRANSPORT.

The foregoing arguments bring us to the conclusion that steam, however desirable, can not be profitably employed in commerce generally as an agent of transport; and that it is best applicable to the rapid conveyance of the mails, passengers, specie, and costly freights only. That this fact may be presented in a clearer light, and that we may see the almost incredibly high cost of rapid steaming, or the attainment of a speed sufficiently high for the carriage of important mails, it will be necessary to make some critical inquiries concerning the working cost of steam power, under any conditions, as applied to marine propulsion. Much misapprehension prevails on this point among nearly all classes of the people, and even among the rulers of the country whose action controls the destiny and uses of this valuable power. It is hardly to be expected, however, that gentlemen engaged actively in the all-engrossing pursuits of business or of public life, with a thousand different sets of ideas to be matured on a thousand different subjects, such as demand the attention of Congress, and the Departments of the Executive Government, should be practically or even theoretically acquainted with a profession which requires years of close application and study, and a wide field of practical, daily observation and experience. It would be as absurd for unprofessional gentlemen of any class, as well from the walks of statesmanship and the Government as from those of quiet private life, to assume an acquaintance with the theory and practice of navigation, and the cost, embarrassments, and difficulties attending steamship enterprise, as it would for any two or three of them to enter an ocean steamer for the first time of their lives, and essay to work the engines and navigate the ship across the seas. The skill and knowledge requisite for such a task would require years of application; and it can not be reasonably supposed that those entirely unacquainted with the theory and parts of an engine, should know much about its capabilities, or the cost attending its use.

But there are approximate conclusions, readily applicable to practice, at which even the unprofessional can arrive with certainty and security on a proper presentation of the prominent facts and theories concerned; and that these may be given to the public in a reliable and intelligible form, for the removal of the doubts and obscurities which have hung around the subject, is the chief object of this publication. This inquiry becomes the more important as the speed of American steamers is proverbially beyond that of any other steam vessels in the world. From the first conception of fluvial and marine steam propulsion by Fitch and Fulton, the public and the inventors themselves regarded the new application of this power with the more favor as it promised to be a means of shortening the long distances between the different parts of our own large country. And the same object has acted as a stimulus ever since to that increase of speed which has placed localities all over this country, hitherto days apart, now, probably, but as many hours. The slow trip through marshes and rivers, over hills and mountains, and by the meandering roads of the country, between New-York and Albany, once required from four to six days; but the attainment of twenty-five miles per hour in our fast river steamers has at length placed that capital within six hours of the Metropolis. And, as in this instance, so has the effort been throughout our whole country, and upon the ocean, until we have attained, both upon the rivers and the high seas, the highest speed yet known, notwithstanding the important fact that steamship building is a new and not fully developed species of enterprise in this country. We have already seen how imperatively the spirit of the age and the genius of our people demand rapid steam mails by both land and sea, and a rapid conveyance of passengers; and it would be unreasonable to suppose that if we required these for the development of our youth, they would be less necessary for the fruitful uses of manhood and maturity. It is abundantly evident that the American people are by nature and habit a progressive and unusually hurrying people; and it is not to be supposed that they will reverse this constitutional law of their nature in their attempts at ocean navigation.

To answer the question, "What is the cost of high, adequate mail speed?" requires something more than an inquiry into the quantity of fuel consumed; although this is the principal element of its cost. We must consider that the attainment and maintenance of high speed depend upon the exertion of a high power; and that,

I. High speed and power require stronger parts in every thing: in the ship's build, the machinery, the boilers, and all of the working arrangements:

II. High speed and power require a larger outlay in prime cost, in material and building, for the adequate resistance required by such power:

III. High speed and power require more frequent and costly repairs:

IV. High speed and power require more watchfulness, a more prompt action, and consequently more persons:

V. High speed and power require more fuel, more engineers, more firemen, and more coal-stokers.

1. These propositions are nearly all self-evident to every class of mind. That a high speed attained through the exertion of a high power will require stronger parts in every thing that exerts a force or resists one, is as manifest as that a force necessary to remove one ton of weight will have to be doubled to remove two tons. In the prime construction of the hull this is as requisite as in any other part. The resistance to a vessel, or the concussion against the water, at a low rate of speed, will not be very sensibly felt; but if that speed is considerably increased and the concussion made quicker without a corresponding increase in the strength of the frame and hull of the ship generally, we shall find the ship creaking, straining, and yielding to the pressure, until finally it works itself to pieces, and also disconcerts the engines, whose stability, bracing, and keeping proper place and working order depend first and essentially on the permanence and stability of the hull. If the resistance to a vessel in passing through the water increases as the square of the velocity, and if in addition to this outward thrust against the vessel it has to support the greater engine power within it, which has increased as the cube of the velocity, then the strength of the vessel must be adequate to resist without injury these two combined forces against which it has to contend.

The same increased strength is necessary also in the engines and boilers. It is admitted by the ablest engineers, and verified by practice, as will be shown in another part of this Section, that to increase the speed of a steamer from eight to ten knots per hour, it is necessary to double the power, and so on in the ratio of the cubes of the velocity. Suppose that we wish to gain these two knots advance on eight. It is evident that, if the boilers have to generate, and the engines to use twice the power, and exert twice the force, they must have also twice the strength. The boiler must be twice as strong and heavy; the various working parts of the engine must be twice as strong: the shafts, the cranks, the piston and other rods, the beams, the cylinders, the frame work, whether of wood or iron, and even the iron wheels themselves, with every thing in any way employed to use the power, overcome the resistance, and gain the speed. There is no working arrangement in any way connected with the propulsion of the ship that does not partake of this increase; every pump, every valve, every bolt connected directly or indirectly with the engine economy of the ship.

2. In the second place, seeing that much greater strength of parts is required to overcome the increased resistance, it is equally evident that this high speed and power thus require a larger outlay in every point of the prime construction of the vessel and engines by which the speed is to be attained. The hull's heavier timbers cost a higher price according to size than the direct proportion of size indicates. Large and choice timbers are difficult to get, and costly. The hull must also be strengthened to a large extra extent by heavy iron strapping and bracing, which, unlike the rest, cost in the ratio of the material used. So with the engines. The shaft, which weighs twice as much, does not cost only twice as much, but frequently three or four or five times as much. This arises not from the weight of the metal, as is evident; but from the difficulty of forging pieces that are so large. The persons engaged in the forging and finishing of the immense shafts, cranks, pistons, etc., used in our first class steamers, frequently consider that the last and largest piece is the chef d'œuvre of the art, and that it will never be transcended, even if equalled again. They have expended all of their skill and ingenuity in the task, and have not succeeded sometimes until they have forged two or three new pieces. When a great work of this kind is done, it may be discovered in the turning, polishing, and fitting up, that it has at last a flaw, and that it will not do for the service intended. As a matter of course, it must be thrown aside and a new piece forged. This was but recently the case with one of the shafts of the "Leviathan," in England. So with the shafts of the new Collins' steamer "Adriatic." They were forged in Reading, Pennsylvania, and in addition to their enormous prime cost had to incur that of shipment from the interior of Pennsylvania to the city of New-York. In all such cases the prime cost increases immensely, and to an extent that would hardly be credited by those not practically familiar with the subject.

3. Again, high or increased power and speed require more frequent and more costly repairs. Friction arises from the pressure of two bodies moving in opposite directions, and pressure results from the exertion of power, and in the ratio of the power applied. The amount of friction, therefore, is in the ratio of the power expended and of the extra weight of parts required for that power. But the effects of friction require a higher ratio when the power is greatly multiplied, as in the case of high speed. An immensely heavy shaft exerting an unusual force is certain to greatly heat the journals and boxes, and thus wear them away far more rapidly. Also a rapid motion of heavy parts of machinery, and the necessarily severe concussions and jarrings can not fail destroying costly working parts in the engine, and necessitating heavy and expensive repairs and substitutions. An ordinary engine working at a slow and easy rate, will not require one tenth the repairs necessary if it were working up to a high power and accomplishing a high speed. With any little derangement the engines can stop and the injury can be repaired before it reaches any magnitude. But with rapid mail packets the engines must run on, and the derangement which at first is small, will amount in the end, when the voyage is completed and the mails are delivered, to a sum probably ten or twenty times as great as in the case of the vessel that stops and makes her repairs as she requires them. The exertion of a high mail power causes many costly parts to burn out from unrelieved pressure and friction, which would not be the case under other conditions. It is also nearly impossible for the best built engines in the world to make fast time without breaking some important part at every trip or two, or so cracking and injuring it from the continued strain, that a wise precaution requires its removal to make the steamer perfectly sea-worthy. Every practical man knows these difficulties, and every steamship owner estimates their importance according to the immense bills they occasion month by month, or the delays and losses which they cause unless he has expended large amounts of capital in providing other ships to take their place on such occasions of derangement.

Nor is the burning out of heavy brass, and composition, and steel pieces, or the breaking of large and troublesome parts in the engine the only source of repairs on a steamship. The boiler department is particularly fruitful in large bills of repairs, especially if it be necessary to attain a good mail speed. It stands to reason that if the whole ship can not be filled with boiler power, which with reasonably high fires, would give enough steam, then the boilers which are used must be exerted to their highest capacity, or the rapid speed can not be attained. Many suppose that the boilers may generate twice the quantity of steam without any appreciable difference in the wear and tear; but this is a decided error. For high speed, and what I mean by high speed is simply that which gives a sufficiently rapid transit to the mails, the fires must be nurtured up to their highest intensity and every pound of coal must be burned in every corner of the furnaces which will generate even an ounce of steam. This continued heat becomes too powerful for the furnaces and the boilers, and they begin to oxidize, and burn, and melt away, as would never be the case under ordinary heat. When the ship comes into port it is found that her furnaces must be "overhauled," her grate bars renewed, her braces restored, her boilers patched, sometimes all over, several of their plates taken out, thousands of rivets removed and supplied, and probably dozens of tubes also removed and replaced with new ones. But this is not all. The best boilers can not long run in this way. After six to seven years at the utmost, they must be removed from the ship altogether, and new ones must be put into their place. This is also a most expensive operation. The boilers constitute a large share of the cost of the engine power. To put a new set of boilers in one of the Collins steamers will cost about one hundred and ten thousand dollars, and this must be done every six years. The boilers of the West-India Royal Mail Steamers, which run very slowly, last on an average, six years.[A]

[A] Statement by Mr. Pitcher, builder, before the Committee of the House of Commons. Murray on the Steam Engine, p. 170, Second Edition.

But this is not all. To restore the boilers, a ship has to be torn literally almost to pieces. All of the decks in that part must be removed and lost; the frame of the ship cut to pieces; large and costly timbers removed, and altogether an expense incurred that is frightful even to the largest companies. To insure perfect safety and to gratify the wish of the public, this is generally done long before it is strictly necessary, and when the boilers are in a perfectly good condition for the working purposes of ordinary speed. But precaution and safety are among the prerequisites of the public service, and must be attained at whatever cost. On slow auxiliary freighting steamers this would be by no means necessary. But the extent and cost of these repairs on steamers far exceed any thing that would be imagined. They are supposed to be twelve per cent. per annum of the prime cost of a vessel of ordinary speed, taking the whole ship's life together at twelve years at the utmost. Atherton in his "Marine Engine Construction and Classification," page 32, says of the repairs of steam vessels doing ordinary service in Great Britain, where all such work is done much cheaper than in this country: "By the Parliamentary evidence of the highest authorities on this point, it appears to have been conclusively established, that the cost of upholding steamship machinery has of late years amounted, on the average, to about £6 per horse power per annum, being about 12 per cent. per annum, on the prime cost of the machinery, which annual outlay is but one of the grand points of current expense in which steamship proprietors are concerned." Now, if these were the repairs of the slow West-India Royal mail steamers, which ran but 200 days in the year, and that at a very moderate speed, and in the machine shops of England, where at that time (previous to 1852) wages were very low, they can not be less in this country, on rapid mail steamers, where wages and materials are very high, and where marine engineering was then in its infancy.

There are some facts on this subject which prove the positions here taken. The Collins steamers have been running but six years, and yet their repairs have amounted in all to more than the prime cost of the ships, or to about eighteen per cent. per annum. They were as well and as strongly built originally as any ships in the world, as appears from the report which Commodore M. C. Perry made to the Department regarding them, and from the fine condition of their hulls at the present time. Their depreciation with all of these repairs has not been probably above six per cent. per annum. They will, however, probably depreciate ten per cent. during the next six years, and at the age of twelve or fourteen years be unfit for service. The steamers Washington and Hermann, which had strong hulls, have been run eight years, and are now nearly worthless. Their depreciation has been at least ten per cent. The steamers Georgia and Ohio, which Commodore Perry and other superintending navy agents pronounced to be well-built and powerful steamers, (See Report Sec. Navy, 1852,) ran only five years, and were laid aside, and said to be worthless. With all of the repairs put upon these ships, which were admitted to be capable of doing first class war service, as intended, they depreciated probably seventeen per cent.; as it is hardly possible that their old iron would sell for more than fifteen per cent. of their prime cost. These steamers paid much smaller repair bills than the Collins, and were not so well constructed, or at so high a cost. American steamers do not, upon the average, last above ten years; but if they reach twelve or fourteen, they will pay a sum nearly equal to twice their cost, for repairs and substitutions. Nor is this all. The life of a steamer ends when her adaptation to profitable service ceases. She may not be rotten, but may be so slow, or of so antiquated construction, or may burn so much more fuel than more modern competitors, that she can not stand the test of competition.

4. We thus see that not only are the requisite repairs most extensive and costly, but of such magnitude as to greatly reduce the earnings of any class of steam vessels. But this is not the last costly consequence of mail speed. It requires more cautious watchfulness of the engines, the boilers, the deck, and of every possible department of the navigation, even including pilotage. It requires also more promptness and dispatch in every movement, and hence a much larger aggregate number of men. More men are necessary to keep up high fires; twice as many men are necessary to pass twice as much coal; twice as many engineers as under other circumstances are necessary for the faithful working of the engines, and any accidents and repairs which are indispensable on the ocean; and a larger number of sailors and officers is necessary to all of the prompt movements required of the mail steamer. The Havre mail steamers, the "Arago" and "Fulton," never carry less than six engineers each, although they could be run across the ocean with three under a hard working system. But this number insures the greater safety of the ship under ordinary circumstances, and is absolutely necessary in any case of accident and danger. It is the same case with the firemen. When, in a heavy storm, the fire department may be imperfectly manned, the ship has taken one of the first chances for rendering the engines inefficient, and being finally lost. And all of these extra and indispensable employées make an extra drain on the income of the ship, and add to the extreme costliness of a high adequate mail speed.

5. It is clear, then, that an adequate mail speed requires more fuel, more engineers, more firemen, more coal-stokers, and more general expense. The question of fuel is, however, alone the most important of all those affecting the attainment of high speed, and the item whose economy has been most desired and sought, both by those attempting to carry freight, and those who carry the mails and passengers. The principal points of interests concerning it are, the enormous quantity which both theory and practice show to be necessary to fast vessels; the large sum to be paid for it, and the steadily increasing price; and the paying freight room which its necessary carriage occupies. In fast steaming, the supply of coal to the furnaces frequently arrives at a point where many additional tons may be burned and yet produce no useful effect or increase of power. The draft through the furnaces and smoke stacks is so rapid and strong as to take off a vast volume of heat; and this, coupled with a large quantity of heat radiated from the various highly heated parts and surfaces, requires a consumption of fuel truly astonishing. If we reflect that at the twelve principal ports of Great Britain in the year of 1855, the tonnage entered was 6,372,301, and departed 6,426,566, equal to 12,798,867 total, and this during the war, that a large part of this was steam tonnage, and that the total imports and exports of Great Britain for 1856 were 1,600,000,000 dollars, we can somewhat appreciate the present and future uses of coal, and its inevitably large increase in price. The two hundred and seventy steamers in the British Navy, with about 50,000 aggregate horse power, consumed in 1856, according to a report made to a Committee of the "British Association for the Advancement of Science," this year, by Rear-Admiral Moorsom, 750,000 tons of coal. The difficulty and cost of mining coal, its distance from the sea-shore, and the multifarious new applications in its use among our rapidly increasing population, as well as its almost universal and increasing demand for marine purposes, all conspire to make it more costly from year to year; while, as a propelling agent, it is already beyond the reach of commercial ocean steam navigation. Coal has gone up by a steady march during the last seven years from two and a half to eight dollars per ton, which may now be regarded as a fair average price along our Atlantic seaboard. And that we may see more clearly how essentially the speed and cost of steam marine navigation depend upon the simple question of fuel alone, to say nothing further of the impeding causes heretofore mentioned, I will now present a few inquiries concerning

THE NATURAL LAWS OF RESISTANCE, POWER, AND SPEED,

WITH TABLES OF THE SAME.

The resistance to bodies moving through the water increases as the square of the velocity; and the power, or coal, necessary to produce speed varies or increases as the cube of the velocity. This is a law founded in nature, and verified by facts and universal experience. Its enunciation is at first startling to those who have not reflected on the subject, and who as a general thing suppose that, if a vessel will run 8 miles per hour on a given quantity of coal, she ought to run 16 miles per hour on double that quantity. I think that it may be safely asserted that in all cases of high speed, and ordinary dynamic or working efficiency in the ship, the resistance increases more rapidly than as the squares. The rationale of the law is this: the power necessary to overcome the resistance of the water at the vessel's bow and the friction increases as the square; again, the power necessary to overcome the natural inertia of the vessel and set it in motion, increases this again as the square of the velocity, and the two together constitute the aggregate resistance which makes it necessary that the power for increasing a vessel's speed shall increase as the cube of the velocity. But whatever the rationale, the law itself is an admitted fact by all theoretical engineers, and is proven in practice by all steamships. In evidence of this, I will give the following opinions.

In his treatise on "The Marine Engine," Mr. Robert Murray, who is a member of the Board of Trade in Southampton, England, says in speaking of the "Natural law regulating the speed of a steamer," page 104: "These results chiefly depend upon the natural law that the power expended in propelling a steamship through the water varies as the cube of the velocity. This law is modified by the retarding effect of the increased resisting surface, consequent upon the weight of the engines and fuel, so that the horse power increases in a somewhat higher ratio than that named." It must be understood that when he speaks of power, horse power, etc., it is simply another form of representing the quantity of coal burned; as the power is in the direct ratio of the quantity of fuel.

Bourne, the great Scotch writer upon the Screw Propeller, in his large volume published by Longmans, London, page 145, says, in concluding a sentence on the expensiveness of vessels: "Since it is known that the resistance of vessels increases more rapidly than the square of the velocity in the case of considerable speeds."

Again, at page 236, on "the resistance of bodies moving through the water," he says: "In the case of very sharp vessels, the resistance appears to increase nearly as the square of the velocity, but in case of vessels of the ordinary amount of sharpness the resistance increases more rapidly than the square of the velocity."

Again, on page 231, in speaking of the folly of a company attempting to run steamers sufficiently rapidly for the mails at the price paid for them, he says: "At the same time an increased rate of speed has to be maintained, which is, of course, tantamount to a further reduction of the payment. In fact, their position upon the Red Sea line is now this, that they would be better without the mails than with them, as the mere expense of the increased quantity of fuel necessary to realize the increased speed which they have undertaken to maintain, will swallow up the whole of the Government subvention. To increase the speed of a vessel from 8 to 10 knots it is necessary that the engine power should be doubled." This work of Mr. Bourne is now the standard of authority on the subject of which he treats, the world over.

Again, Mr. James R. Napier, of London, known as one of the largest and most skilled engine-builders in Great Britain, in the discussion of the dynamic efficiency of steamships in the proceedings of the "British Association" in 1856, page 436, says: "The power in similar vessels, I here take for granted, at present varies as the cube of the velocity." The power simply represents the coal; in fact, it is the coal.

Mr. Charles Atherton, the able and distinguished Chief Engineer of Her Majesty's Royal Dock Yard, at Woolwich, has published a volume, called "Steamship Capability," a smaller volume on "Marine Engine Classification," and several elaborate papers for the British Association, the Society of Arts, London, the Association of Civil Engineers, and the Artisans' Journal, for the purpose of properly exposing the high cost of steam freight transport as based on the law above noticed, and the ruinous expense of running certain classes of vessels of an inferior dynamic efficiency. When but a few weeks since in London, I asked the Editor of the "Artisan," if any engineer in England disputed the laws relative to power, on which Mr. Atherton based his arguments. He replied that he had never heard of one who did. I asked Mr. Atherton myself, if in the case of the newest and most improved steamers, with the best possible models for speed, he had ever found any defect in the law of, the resistance as the squares, and the power as the cubes of the velocity. He replied that he had not; and that he regarded the law as founded in nature, and had everywhere seen it verified in practice in the many experiments which it was his duty to conduct with steam vessels in and out of the Royal Navy. I think, therefore, that with all of these high authorities, the doctrine will be admitted as a law of power and speed, and consequently of the consumption of coal and the high cost of running steamers at mail speeds.

It is not my purpose here to discuss this law, or treat generally or specially of the theory of steam navigation. It will suffice that I point out clearly its existence and the prominent methods of its application only, as these are necessary to the general deduction which I propose making, that rapid steamships can not support themselves on their own receipts. The general reader can pass over these formulæ to [p. 69], and look at their results.

I. TO FIND THE CONSUMPTION OF FUEL NECESSARY TO INCREASE THE SPEED OF A STEAMER.

Suppose that a steamer running eight miles per hour consumes forty tons of coal per day: how much coal will she consume per day at nine miles per hour? The calculation is as follows:

83 : 93 :: 40 : required consumption, which is, 56.95 tons. Here the speed has increased 121/2 per cent., while the quantity of fuel consumed increased 421/2 per cent.

Suppose, again, that we wish to increase the speed from 8 to 10, and from 8 to 16 miles per hour. The formula stands the same, thus:

Miles.		Miles.		Tons Coal.		Tons Coal.
83	:	103	::	40	: x, =	78.1
83	:	163	::	40	: x, =	320.

II. TO FIND THE SPEED CORRESPONDING TO A DIMINISHED CONSUMPTION OF FUEL.

Murray has given some convenient formulæ, which I will here adopt. Suppose a vessel of 500 horse power run 12 knots per hour on 40 tons coal per day: what will be the speed if she burn only 30 tons per day? Thus:

	40	:	30	::	123	:	V3 (or cube of the required velocity,)
Or, reduced,	4	:	3	::	1728	:	V3,
Equation,	3 × 1728 = 5184					=	4V3,
Or, 5184/4						=
3√1296 = 10.902 knots						=	V, required velocity.

Thus, we reduce the quantity of coal one fourth, but the speed is reduced but little above one twelfth.

III. RELATION BETWEEN THE CONSUMPTION OF FUEL, AND THE LENGTH AND VELOCITY OF VOYAGE.

The consumption of fuel on two or more given voyages will vary as the square of the velocity multiplied into the distance travelled. Thus, during a voyage of 1200 miles, average speed 10 knots, the consumption of coal is 150 tons: we wish to know the consumption for 1800 miles at 8 knots. Thus:

150 tons : C required Consumption :: 102 knots × 1200 miles : 82 knots × 1800 miles.

Then,	C × 100 × 1200	=	150 × 64 × 1800,*
Or,	C × 120,000	=	17,280,000
Reduced to	C = 1728/12	=	144 tons consumption.

Suppose, again, that we wish to know the rate of speed for 1800 miles, if the coals used be the same as on another voyage of 1200 miles, with 150 tons coal, and ten knots speed:

We substitute former consumption, 150 tons for C, as in the equation above, marked *, and V2 (square of the required velocity) for 64, and have,

150 × 100 × 1200		=	150 × V2 × 1800,
Or,	120,000	=	1800V2,
Reduced,	1200/18	=	V2,
And	V	=	√66.66 = 8.15 knots.

From the foregoing easily intelligible formulæ we can ascertain with approximate certainty the large quantity of coal necessary to increase speed, the large saving of coal in reducing speed, as well as the means of accommodating the fuel to the voyage, or the voyage to the fuel. It is not necessary here to study very closely the economy of fuel, as this is a question affecting the transport of freight alone. When the mails are to be transported, economy of fuel is not the object desired, but speed; and, consequently, we must submit to extravagance of fuel. This large expenditure of coal is not necessary in the case of freights, as they may be transported slowly, and, consequently, cheaply. But one of the principal reasons for rapid transport of the mails is that they may largely anticipate freights in their time of arrival, and consequently control their movements.

I recently had an excellent opportunity of testing the large quantity of fuel saved on a slight reduction of the speed, and give it as illustrative of the law advanced. We were on the United States Mail steamer "Fulton," Captain Wotton, and running at 13 miles per hour. Some of the tubes became unfit for use in one of the boilers, and the fires were extinguished and the steam and water drawn off from this boiler, leaving the other one, of the same size, to propel the ship. An intelligent gentleman who happened to know that we were using only one boiler, and consequently, but half the power, remarked to me that it was very strange that the ship was still going about eleven miles per hour, without any sail. He said: "It is strange, sir; two boilers of equal size drove us thirteen miles per hour; and here now but one boiler drives us nearly eleven miles, or nearly as fast; when common-sense teaches that the one boiler would drive us only six and a half miles per hour. How is that?" I then explained to him very clearly the natural law relative to power and speed, (See [Rule II.], page 68,) which he at once comprehended and admitted, but with the remark: "Indeed, sir, I would have testified that she ought with one boiler to have gone at only half the speed; or that going at six miles with one boiler, she would go twelve with two."

As it will be interesting to the general reader to examine the details of the increased consumption of fuel at increased rates of speed, I present the following elaborate table recently prepared by Mr. Atherton for his new edition of "Steamship Capability," according to the formula above noticed, and the performance of the best type of vessel in the Royal Navy, the steamer "Rattler." Mr. A. found a higher efficiency in this vessel per horse power than any other in the Navy, and consequently based the consumption of coal in the table on the assumption that the mail and passenger vessels generally should be of as good contractive type as "Rattler." I shall present also another table showing a much larger consumption of fuel by an inferior type of vessel. I use these tables because they are thoroughly correct, and quite as perfect as any that I could construct on the same formula; and because they carry with them the weight of probably the highest authority in Great Britain.

COAL TABLE: No. I.

Displacement,[B] Speed, and Fuel consumed per Day, for Mail, Passenger, and Freight Steamers, whose locomotive performance is equal to that of the best class of ocean steam vessels; assuming the consumption of fuel to be 41/2 lbs. per indicated horse power per hour, equal to 33,000 lbs. raised one foot in one minute. The quantity consumed is expressed in tons per day of 24 hours.

[B] Displacement refers to the number of cubic feet of water displaced by the hull; allowing thirty-five cubic feet to the ton.

SHIP'S DISPLACEMENT.	SPEED PER HOUR.—NAUTICAL MILES.
SHIP'S DISPLACEMENT.	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20
TONS.	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS
100	1.04	1.65	2.47	3.51	4.82	6.41	8.32	10.6	13.2	16.3	19.7	23.7	28.1	33.0	38.5
125	1.20	1.92	2.86	4.07	5.59	7.44	9.66	12.3	15.3	18.9	22.9	27.5	32.6	38.3	44.7
150	1.36	2.16	3.23	4.60	6.31	8.40	10.9	13.9	17.3	21.3	25.9	31.0	36.8	43.3	50.5
175	1.51	2.40	3.58	5.10	7.00	9.31	12.1	15.4	19.2	23.6	28.7	34.4	40.8	48.0	56.0
200	1.65	2.62	3.91	5.57	7.65	10.2	13.2	16.8	21.0	25.8	31.3	37.6	44.6	52.4	61.2

250	1.92	3.04	4.54	6.47	8.87	11.8	15.3	19.5	24.3	29.9	36.3	43.6	51.7	60.9	71.0
300	2.25	3.44	5.13	7.30	10.0	13.3	17.3	22.0	27.5	33.8	41.0	49.2	58.4	68.7	80.1
350	2.40	3.81	5.68	8.09	11.1	14.8	19.2	24.4	30.5	37.5	45.5	54.5	64.7	76.2	88.8
400	2.62	4.16	6.21	8.85	12.1	16.2	21.0	26.7	33.3	41.0	49.7	59.6	70.8	83.3	97.1
450	2.84	4.50	6.72	9.57	13.1	17.5	22.7	28.8	36.0	44.3	53.8	64.5	76.6	90.1	105

500	3.04	4.83	7.21	10.3	14.1	18.7	24.3	30.9	38.6	47.5	57.7	69.2	82.1	96.6	113
600	3.43	5.46	8.14	11.6	15.9	21.2	27.5	34.9	43.6	53.7	65.1	78.1	92.8	109	127
700	3.81	6.05	9.02	12.8	17.6	23.5	30.4	38.7	48.4	59.5	72.2	86.6	103	121	141
800	4.16	6.61	9.87	14.0	19.3	25.6	33.3	42.3	52.9	65.0	78.9	94.6	112	132	154
900	4.50	7.15	10.7	15.2	20.8	27.7	36.0	45.8	57.2	70.4	85.4	102	122	143	167

1000	4.83	7.67	11.4	16.3	22.4	29.8	38.6	49.1	61.3	75.5	91.6	110	130	153	179
1250	5.60	8.90	13.3	18.9	26.0	34.5	44.8	57.0	71.2	87.6	106	127	151	178	208
1500	6.33	10.0	15.0	21.4	29.3	39.0	50.6	64.4	80.4	98.9	120	144	171	201	234
1750	7.01	11.1	16.6	23.7	32.5	43.2	56.1	71.3	89.1	110	133	159	189	223	260
2000	7.66	12.2	18.2	25.9	35.5	47.3	61.3	77.9	97.4	120	145	174	207	243	284

2500	8.89	14.1	21.1	30.0	41.2	54.8	71.2	90.5	113	139	169	202	240	283	329
3000	10.0	16.0	23.8	33.9	46.5	61.9	80.4	102	128	157	191	228	271	319	372
3500	11.1	17.7	26.1	37.6	51.5	68.6	89.0	113	141	174	211	253	301	354	412
4000	12.2	19.3	28.8	41.1	56.3	75.0	97.3	124	155	190	231	277	329	386	451
5000	14.1	22.4	33.5	47.7	65.4	87.0	113	144	179	221	268	321	381	448	523

6000	15.9	25.3	37.8	53.8	73.8	98.3	128	162	203	249	302	363	431	506	591
7000	17.7	28.1	41.9	59.6	81.8	109	141	180	224	276	335	402	477	501	654
8000	19.3	30.7	45.8	65.2	89.4	119	155	196	245	302	366	439	522	613	715
9000	20.9	33.2	49.5	70.5	96.7	129	167	215	265	327	396	475	564	663	774
10000	22.4	35.6	53.1	75.6	104	138	179	228	285	350	425	510	605	712	830

12500	26.0	41.3	61.7	87.8	120	160	208	265	330	406	493	592	702	826	963
15000	29.4	46.6	69.6	99.1	136	181	235	299	373	459	557	668	793	933	1088
20000	35.6	56.5	84.4	120	165	219	285	362	452	556	675	809	961	1130	1318
25000	41.3	65.6	97.9	139	191	254	330	420	525	645	783	939	1115	1311	1529
30000	46.6	74.0	111	157	216	287	373	474	592	728	884	1060	1258	1480	1727

By the inspection of this table we can see in condensed form the coal-cost of any speed as high as twenty miles per hour, and for any size of vessel from one hundred tons to thirty thousand tons. Let us find in the left hand column a vessel of 2,500 tons displacement. Pursuing the line along to the right we find in the second column 8.89 tons of coal, which a steamer of this displacement would burn in 24 hours, if running, as indicated at the head of the column, 6 Nautical miles per hour.

In the next column, under the head of 7 Nautical miles per hour, we find that she would burn in one day 14.1 tons; or one and a half times as much coal to gain one sixth more speed:

Again, at 8 miles per hour she burns 21.1 tons; nearly three times as much as at six miles:

At 9 miles she burns 30 tons: above twice as much as at 7, and nearly four times as much as at 6, although the speed is but half doubled:

At 10 miles per hour she burns 41.2 tons; about twice as much as at 8 miles, although the speed is increased only one fourth. At 10 she burns 34 per cent. more than at 9, although the increase of speed is only eleven per cent. (See [pages 67] and [68]):

At 11 miles per hour she will burn 54.8 or 55 tons; nearly three times as much as at 8 miles per hour, and six times as much as at 6 miles per hour:

At 12 miles per hour she will burn 71.2; about thirty per cent. more than at eleven miles per hour, although gaining but 9 per cent. in speed; nearly twice as much as at ten miles per hour, three and a half times as much as at 8, five times as much as at 7, and above eight times as much as at 6 miles per hour. It is here seen that to double the speed the consumption of fuel has increased eight-fold, which verifies my statements hitherto made on this subject. We have already seen that to gain two miles of speed on any stated speed, it was necessary to double the quantity of fuel used.

At 13 miles per hour she burns 90.5 tons. This is burning two and a fourth times as much coal as if she ran only 10 miles per hour. Now, at this speed, the steamer will reach Southampton or Liverpool in 10 days and 6 hours, which is equivalent to 10 days and 12 hours burning fuel, allowing six hours for heating and starting, and which would make an aggregate consumption of 950 tons of coal for the passage of this steamer of 2,500 displacement or probably 3,000 tons register.

At 14 miles per hour she burns 113 tons. This is nearly three times as much as 10 miles per hour. At this speed the steamer would reach Southampton or Liverpool in 9 days, 12 hours, and 30 minutes, supposing the distance to be 3,200 miles from New-York, or say 9 days 181/2 hours coal-burning time, and would consume an aggregate of 1,1041/2 tons. As this is but little above the distance from New-York to Southampton, and under that from Panamá to California, and about the tonnage of the steamers running, the time being within eleven days generally, it will be seen how large is the cost of running the steamers of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, those on the European routes, and also those between New-York and Aspinwall. As the route of the Havre and Bremen steamers is much longer, they are compelled to run slightly slower, or they would be filled up with their own fuel and power. Taking a Collins steamer of 3,000 tons, which we find in the line below, and we see that in running 14 miles per hour as they have frequently done, the consumption would be 128 tons per day, or 1,252 tons for the passage. And yet, one of those steamers could make 12 miles per hour on 80.4 tons per day, or at 11 miles per hour on 61.9, or less than half that used at 14. But pursuing this table we see that,

At 15 miles per hour she would burn 139 tons, or three and a half times as much as at 10 miles.

At 16 miles per hour she would burn 169 tons, or precisely eight times as much as at 8 miles per hour. Here again doubling the speed is found to be an enormous expense.

At 17 miles per hour she burns 202 tons per day.

At 18 miles per hour the consumption is 240 tons per day.

At 19 miles per hour she burns 283 tons coal per day; and

At 20 miles per hour she burns 329 tons per day. At 20 miles per hour she would run 480 miles per day, a thing as yet wholly unheard of, and would consume on the voyage of 6 days and 16 hours, say 6 days and 22 hours, 2,276 tons of coal. It would be clearly impossible for her to carry her own fuel; as the immense boiler and engine power necessary to secure this speed would of itself fill a ship of this size, to say nothing of the fuel which also would nearly fill it. Then, we may never expect any such ship to attain any such speed as seventeen, eighteen, or twenty miles per hour on so long a voyage without recoaling.

Seeing thus the enormous increase in the consumption of fuel for a moderate increase in the speed, we are enabled the better to appreciate the large expense incurred in running ocean steamers sufficiently rapidly for successful mail and passenger purposes. We will further pursue these inquiries by examining in this table the consumption for vessels of 6,000 tons, which would make the displacement of the ship nearly 5,000 tons, such as the "Adriatic," the "Vanderbilt," and the "Niagara." It appears that at 8 miles per hour they would consume 33 tons per day; at 10 miles, 65 tons; at 12 miles, 113 tons; at 13 miles, 144 tons; at 14 miles, 179 tons; at 15 miles, 221 tons; and at 16 miles, 268 tons per day. This is supposing this speed to be maintained on an average across the ocean, in all kinds of weather, which this size of steamer could not do without more engine and boiler power than any of them have. With such additional power the ships noticed would have scarcely any available room for freight or any thing else. One thing is very clear from this table, that when steamers run at very moderately slow rates of speed, their consumption of fuel is very small; and that when they leave this low freighting speed, for that of the necessarily rapid mails and passengers, the consumption increases to an extent and with a rapidity that would seem almost incredible at first view.

COAL TABLE: No. II.

The following coal table is constructed in all respects as the preceding, but for a lower type of vessels, or those whose coëfficient of Dynamic performance is inferior to that upon which the previous table is estimated. As a consequence, this style of vessel requires more fuel.

SHIP'S DISPLACEMENT.	SPEED PER HOUR.—NAUTICAL MILES.
SHIP'S DISPLACEMENT.	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20
TONS.	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS	TONS
500	3.95	6.28	9.37	13.4	18.3	24.3	31.6	40.1	50.2	61.7	75.0	89.9	106	125	147
600	4.46	7.10	10.6	15.1	20.6	27.5	35.7	45.3	56.6	69.8	84.6	101	120	141	165
700	4.95	7.86	11.7	16.6	22.8	30.5	39.5	50.3	62.9	77.3	93.8	112	134	157	183
800	5.41	8.59	12.8	18.2	25.1	33.3	43.3	55.0	68.7	84.5	102	123	145	171	200
900	5.85	9.29	13.9	19.7	27.0	36.0	46.8	59.5	74.3	91.5	111	132	158	186	217

1000	6.28	9.97	14.8	21.2	29.1	38.7	50.1	63.8	79.7	98.1	119	143	169	199	232
1250	7.28	11.5	17.3	24.5	33.8	44.8	58.2	74.1	92.5	114	137	165	196	231	270
1500	8.23	13.0	19.5	27.8	38.1	50.7	65.7	83.7	104	128	156	187	222	261	304
1750	9.11	14.4	21.5	30.8	42.2	56.1	72.9	92.7	115	143	173	206	245	290	338
2000	9.95	15.8	23.6	33.6	46.1	61.5	79.7	101	126	159	188	226	269	316	369

2500	11.5	18.3	27.4	39.0	53.5	71.2	92.5	117	147	180	219	262	312	368	427
3000	13.0	20.8	30.9	44.0	60.4	80.4	104	132	166	204	248	296	352	414	483
3500	14.4	23.0	34.3	48.8	66.9	89.1	115	147	183	226	274	329	391	460	535
4000	15.8	25.1	37.4	53.4	73.2	97.5	126	161	201	247	300	360	427	501	586
5000	18.3	29.1	43.5	62.0	85.0	113	147	187	232	287	348	417	495	582	679

6000	20.6	32.9	49.1	69.9	95.9	127	166	210	264	323	392	472	560	657	768
10000	29.1	46.2	69.0	98.2	135	179	232	296	370	455	552	663	786	925	1079

FREIGHT TABLE: No. III.

Showing the mutual relation of Displacement, Power, Speed, Consumption of Coal, and capacity for Cargo of vessels of progressively increasing magnitude up to nearly 30,000 tons of Deep-draught Displacement, employed on a passage of 3,250 nautical miles, without recoaling: showing also the prime cost Expenses per ton of Cargo conveyed.

Mean or Mid-passage Displacement.	Speed.	POWER.		Assumed weight of Hull and Engines.	PASSAGE 3,250 N. M. DIRECT.
Mean or Mid-passage Displacement.	Speed.	Nominal H. P.	Indicated h. p.	Assumed weight of Hull and Engines.	Time.	Coal.	Cargo.	Deep Displacement.	Expenses per Ton of Cargo.
Tons.	N. M.	H. P.	h. p.	TONS.	D. H.	TONS.	TONS.	TONS.	£	S.	D.
	8	109	436	1109	16.22	369	1209	2684	2	1	10
2,500	9	155	620	1155	15. 1	466	1112	2733	2	7	8
2,500	10	213	852	1213	13.13	577	999	2788	2	16	11
	11	284	1136	1284	12. 7	699	867	2849	3	11	3
	12	368	1472	1368	11. 7	830	717	2915	4	14	5

	8	172	688	2172	16.22	582	2537	5291	1	16	1
5,000	9	245	980	2245	15. 1	737	2386	5368	1	19	7
5,000	10	336	1344	2336	13.13	882	2223	5441	2	4	1
	11	448	1792	2448	12. 7	1103	2000	5551	2	13	1
	12	581	2324	2581	11. 7	1311	1763	5655	3	5	1

	8	276	1104	4276	16.22	934	5257	10467	1	12	3
	9	388	1552	4388	15. 1	1168	5028	10584	1	13	10
10,000	10	536	2144	4536	13.13	1407	4760	10703	1	16	9
10,000	11	712	2848	4712	12. 7	1753	4411	10876	2	2	1
	12	928	3712	4928	11. 7	2094	4025	11047	2	9	4
	13	1180	4720	5180	10.10	2458	3591	11229	2	19	5
	14	1472	5888	5472	9.16	2848	3104	11424	3	14	3

	8	436	1744	8436	16.22	1476	10826	20738	1	9	0
	9	620	2480	8620	15. 1	1866	10447	20933	1	9	11
20,000	10	852	3408	8852	13.13	2236	10030	21118	1	11	4
20,000	11	1136	4544	9136	12. 7	2797	9466	21398	1	14	9
	12	1472	5888	9472	11. 7	3322	8867	21661	1	19	1
	13	1872	7488	9872	10.10	3900	8178	21950	2	4	11
	14	2340	9360	10340	9.16	4528	7396	22264	2	13	1

Mr. Atherton gives this table, which shows the following facts:

That, as the various sized vessels named, increase in speed from 8 to 12, or from 8 to 14 miles per hour, their horse power, as well consequently as their coal, increases:

That, as the speed increases, so does the weight of the hull and engines:

That, as the speed increases, with the consequent increased coal and engine weight, the cargo decreases: and

That, as the speed increases, with the other necessary conditions noticed, the expense per ton of cargo also increases in a rapid ratio. In the four cross columns ships of different sizes are considered; of 2,500, 5,000, 10,000, and 20,000 tons. There is also given the working or indicated horse power, and the nominal horse-power, or that of 33,000 lbs. raised a foot in a minute, which is the general basis of making contracts. It is a fact, however, that engines generally work up to three or four times their nominal horse power; so that the word horse power has no positive or useful meaning. Vessels called one hundred nominal horse-power have been known to work up to six hundred.

Let us take a ship of 5,000 tons. We find that at 8 miles per hour the horse power is 436; but at 12 miles it is 1,472, nearly four times as great. At 13 miles, it would be nearly 1800 horse, and at 14 it would be above 2100. So, also, with the weight of engines, boilers, etc. At 8 miles per hour they would weigh 1,109 tons; but at 12 they would have to weigh, to be large and strong enough, 1,368 tons. At 14 miles, they would weigh nearly 1,600 tons.

Now, see the columns "cargo" and "coal," and observe how rapidly that of coal increases, while that of cargo decreases in the inverse ratio of the coal, the engine, the boiler, and the hull weight combined. The cargo has come from 1,209 down to 717 tons; and if the speed were increased to 13 or 14 miles per hour, the cargo would be so reduced as to be unworthy of notice.

The next column shows how much greater the quantity of water displaced as the speed increases. This extra displacement requires extra power.

In the last column it is observable how rapidly the speed enhances the cost price of transporting cargo. At 13 miles per hour the cost would be about six pounds sterling per ton, and at 14 knots speed it would be higher than was ever paid a steamer in the most flush periods of even the best qualities of freights. Freights were about £8 per ton on the Cunard line before the establishment of the Collins; but they soon came down, and are not now £3, or $15, on an average. So with passage. The "Great Western" charged £45, the "British Queen" £50; the Cunarders, until the Collins competition, £40, 19s. The Collins steamers put the price down to £35, and have since reduced it to £30 homeward, and £24 outward. This is but little above half the fare of the Great Western, and something over two thirds of that formerly charged by the Cunard line. The Report to the House of Commons "on Steam Communications with India," No. 372 of 1851, second volume, page 395, says, that the average speed of the Cunard line was 10.443 knots, of the Collins line 11 knots, and of the Havre and Bremen lines 9.875 knots per hour. The Collins line had then just started, and has since made the average passages one and a half days quicker than those of the Cunard line. This being the case, it is easy to estimate the gains of a steamer at such rates, when this column shows us that at 12 miles speed per hour and an average trip of 11 days, the actual prime cost of moving the freight is much above that which is received for it. It is therefore taken in small quantities only to assist in paying the running expenses of the steamer.

This table shows another thing very conclusively, that large ships running the same number of miles per hour, run cheaper and transport freight more cheaply than smaller vessels. It presupposes, however, that they go full both ways. The engine power and general outlay do not increase as rapidly as the tonnage of the vessel and her capacity for carrying. While a ship 2,500 tons at 12 miles per hour on a passage of 3,250 miles would make the cost per ton for the transportation of freight $22.75, one of 20,000 tons, under the same conditions would reduce it to $9 per ton. Yet it is hardly probable that we shall ever profitably employ steamers of over 10,000 tons tonnage in the passenger, mail, and freight business.

Again, a ship of 2,500 at 12 miles, running 6,500 miles could not transport cargo at less than $115; one of 5,000 tons would transport it at $52; one of 10,000 tons would transport it at $33 per ton; and one of 20,000 tons burthen, as for instance the "Leviathan," would transport it at $24 per ton. And while none of the three first named sizes of vessels would transport it 12,500 miles, the one of 20,000 tons, running 12 miles per hour, would transport it at $80 per ton; and running 14 miles per hours, at $430 per ton. Two things must, however, not be forgotten in this; that the ship to do this must always run entirely full and have no waste room; and that these prices are comparisons between different steamers, and not with sailing vessels, which, running much more slowly and with but little expense, transport the freight far more cheaply.

The following table will set forth very clearly in a summary view, the Time, Horse-power, Coal, and Cargo for a steamer of good average quality running on passages of 1,000 miles, 2,000 miles, and 3,000 miles, and at a speed varying from 6 to 18 miles per hour. It will be observed that a steamer of 3,000 tons can not take power and coal enough to run on a 2,000 miles passage above 17 knots per hour, and that one of 3,000 tons also can not run on a 3,000 miles passage at a speed above 16 knots per hour. Observe the small quantity of cargo and the large quantity of coal for a steamer of 3,000 tons on a 3,000 miles passage at 16 miles per hour.

COAL AND CARGO TABLE: No. IV.

Calculated for the mean Displacement of 3,000 Tons.

SPEED—per hour.	Horse-power.	Weight of Hull and Engines.	PASSAGE 1,000 Nautical Miles.			PASSAGE 2,000 Nautical Miles.			PASSAGE 3,000 Nautical Miles.
SPEED—per hour.	Horse-power.	Weight of Hull and Engines.	Time.	Coal.	Cargo.	Time.	Coal.	Cargo.	Time.	Coal.	Cargo.
N. M.	H. P.	TONS.	D. H.	TONS	TONS	D. H.	TONS	TONS	D. H.	TONS	TONS
6	52	1252	6.23	72	1711	13.21	144	1675	20.20	216	1639
7	83	1283	5.23	98	1667	11.22	197	1617	17.21	296	1568
8	123	1323	5. 5	128	1612	10.10	256	1548	15.15	384	1484

9	175	1375	4.15	162	1543	9. 6	324	1462	13.21	486	1381
10	241	1441	4. 4	200	1458	8. 8	401	1358	12.12	602	1257
11	320	1520	3.19	242	1358	7.14	484	1237	11. 9	727	1116

12	416	1616	3.11	288	1239	6.23	577	1095	10.10	866	950
13	529	1729	3. 5	339	1100	6.10	678	931	9.15	1017	761
14	661	1861	2.23	393	942	5.23	786	745	8.22	1180	548

15	813	2013	2.19	451	761	5.13	903	535	8. 8	1355	309
16	987	2187	2.14	514	555	5. 5	1028	298	7.19	1542	41
17	1183	2383	2.11	580	327	4.22	1160	37

18	1405	2605	2. 8	650	69
19	1652	2852
20	1927	3127

I will close this long chapter, in which I have endeavored to give a clear, comprehensible, and faithful idea of the cost of running ocean mail, freight, and passenger steamers, by an extract from that very able and faithful work, "Steamship Capability." As a summing up of the various laws and facts concerning the consumption of fuel, weight and power of engines, speed of ships, and their capacity to do business, Mr. Atherton says, page 55: "Now suppose, for example, that the passage be 1,000 miles, and that, for brevity, we confine our remarks to the engine department only; which, indeed, will be the department of expense, chiefly affected by variations in the rate of speed. It appears that the vessel of 5,000 tons' mean displacement, if fitted to run at the speed of EIGHT NAUTICAL MILES per hour, will require 172 H.P., and a cargo of 2,738 tons will be conveyed 1,000 miles in five days five hours; being equivalent to one day's employment of 33/100 H.P. per ton of goods.

"If fitted to run at TEN NAUTICAL MILES an hour, the vessel will require 336 H.P., the cargo will be reduced to 2,524 tons, and the time to four days four hours; being equivalent to one day's employment of 55/100 H.P. per ton of goods nearly.

"If fitted to run at TWELVE NAUTICAL MILES an hour, the vessel will require 581 H.P., the cargo will be reduced to 2,217 tons, and the time to three days eleven hours; being equivalent to one day's employment of 91/100 H.P. per ton of goods.

"If fitted to run at FOURTEEN MILES an hour, the vessel will require 923 H.P., the cargo will be reduced to 1,802 tons, and the time to two days twenty-three hours; being equivalent to one day's employment of 152/100 H.P. per ton of goods.

"If fitted to run at SIXTEEN MILES per hour, the vessel will require 1,377 H.P., the cargo will be reduced to 1,264 tons, and the time to two days fourteen hours; being equivalent to one day's employment of 286/100 H.P. per ton of goods.

"If fitted to run at EIGHTEEN MILES per hour, the vessel will require 1,961 H.P., the cargo will be reduced to 585 tons, and the time to two days eight hours; being equivalent to one day's employment of 775/100 H.P., per ton of goods.

"And if fitted to run at TWENTY MILES per hour, there will be no displacement available for mercantile cargo.

"Assuming, now, that the COST per ton of goods will be in proportion to the amount of power and tonnage employed to do the work, it appears that the cost per ton of goods of performing this passage of 1,000 miles, at the respective speeds of 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18 miles, will be proportional to the numbers—33/100, 55/100, 91/100, 152/100, 286/100, and 775/100, which are proportional to the numbers 33, 55, 91, 152, 286, and 775, or nearly as 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, and 23.

"Hence it appears, that in the case of the ONE THOUSAND MILES passage above referred to, the cost of freight per ton of goods at TEN MILES per hour, will require to be nearly the double of the rate at EIGHT MILES per hour.

"The cost per ton at TWELVE MILES per hour will require to be three times the rate at EIGHT MILES.

"The cost per ton at FOURTEEN MILES per hour will require to be five times the rate at EIGHT MILES.

"The cost per ton at SIXTEEN MILES per hour will require to be nine times the rate at EIGHT MILES.

"The cost per ton at EIGHTEEN MILES per hour will require to be twenty-three times the rate at EIGHT MILES.

"And at TWENTY MILES per hour there will be no displacement available for mercantile cargo.

"By applying the same process of calculation to a ship of 5,000 tons' mean displacement, making a passage of THREE THOUSAND MILES, we shall find that, at TEN MILES an hour, the cost of freight per ton will require to be double the rate of freight at EIGHT MILES.

"The cost per ton at TWELVE MILES will require to be three times the rate at EIGHT MILES.

"The cost per ton at FOURTEEN MILES will require to be six times the rate at EIGHT MILES.

"The cost per ton at SIXTEEN MILES will require to be twenty times the rate at EIGHT MILES.

"And at EIGHTEEN MILES per hour there will be no displacement available for mercantile cargo.

"Finally, by applying the same process of calculation to a ship of 5,000 tons' mean displacement on a passage of 6,000 miles, it will be found that the cost of freight per ton at TEN MILES per hour will require to be double the rate at EIGHT MILES.

"The cost per ton at TWELVE MILES per hour will require to be about five times the rate at EIGHT MILES.

"The cost per ton at FOURTEEN MILES per hour will be about sixteen times the rate at EIGHT MILES.

"And at SIXTEEN MILES per hour there will be no displacement available for mercantile cargo.

"Hence, it appears, that for voyages of 1,000 miles and upwards, without re-coaling, the speed of ten nautical miles per hour would involve about double the cost per ton of eight miles, and may, therefore, be regarded as the extreme limit that can be generally entertained for the mercantile purpose of goods' conveyance; and that the attainment on long passages of a higher rate of speed than ten miles (though admissibly practicable) would involve obligations altogether of an exceptional character, such as the special service of dispatches, mails, passengers, specie, and the most valuable description of goods can only meet."

SECTION V.

OCEAN MAIL STEAMERS CAN NOT LIVE ON THEIR OWN RECEIPTS.

From the foregoing Section it is evident that the cost of running ocean steamers is enormous, and that in the chief element of expenditure it increases as the cube of the velocity. This, although true, is certainly a startling ratio of increase, and calculated to arouse attention to the difficulties of postal marine navigation. Seeing that ocean speed is attainable at so high a cost, we naturally conclude that fast mail steamers can not live on their own receipts upon the ocean.

Since Great Britain established her first ocean steam mail in 1833, she has gone on rapidly increasing the same facilities, until her noble lines of communication now extend to every land and compass every sea. The last great contract which she conceded was last year, to the "European and Australian Company," for carrying the mails on a second line from Southampton via Suez to Sydney, in Australia, at £185,000, or $925,000 per year. And although her expenditures for this service have gradually gone up to above five millions of dollars per annum, she continues the service as a necessity to her commerce, and a branch of facilities and accommodations with which the people of the Kingdom will not dispense. The British Government set out with the determination to have the advantages of the system, whether it would pay or not. They believed that the system would eventually become self-supporting, by reason of the many important improvements then proposed in the steam-engine, and they have ever since professed to believe the same thing. But their experience points quite the other way; and while the service is daily becoming more important to them in every sense, it is also becoming year by year more expensive.

Contracts which the Admiralty made with several large and prominent companies in 1838 they renewed at the same or increased subsidies, after twelve years' operations, in 1850, for another term of twelve years. And so far from those companies with their many ships on hand being able to undertake the service for less, they demanded more in almost every case, and received it from the government. The improvements which they anticipated in the marine engine were more than counterbalanced by the rise in the price of fuel and wages all over the kingdom and the world. In fact, those improvements have been very few and very small. It still takes nearly as much coal to evaporate a pound of water as it then did; and the improvements which have been made were generally patents, and costly in the prime cost of construction to a degree almost preclusive of increased benefits to the general service. At any rate, the latest steam adaptations and improvements have proven unequal to the end proposed, and the cost of the ocean service is now far heavier than it ever has been before, simply because of the greater speed required by the public for the mails and passage.

It had long been hoped that this difficulty of increasing cost in running ocean steamers might finally be overcome by another means; and the whole available engineering and ship-building talent of Great Britain and the United States has been directed not entirely to the engine department, but to the hulls and to the production of a large class of ships, which are admissibly cheaper in proportion to size and expense of running when compared with smaller vessels, if they are always employed and have full freights and passage. It is well established that large steamers run proportionally cheaper than small ones. (See [Table III.], page 76.) This arises from the important fact that the length increases far more rapidly than the breadth and depth. Consequently the tonnage of the vessel increases much faster than the resistance. In passing through the water the vessel cuts out a canal as large as the largest part of its body, which is at the middle of the ship. If the vessel be here cut in two, the width and depth, or the beam and hold being multiplied together will give the square contents of the midship section. Now, when a vessel is doubled in all of its dimensions, this midship section and consequently the size of the canal which it cuts in the water, does not increase as rapidly as the solid contents of the whole ship, and consequently, as the tonnage. Hence, the resistance to the vessel in passing through the water does not increase so rapidly as the tonnage which the vessel will carry.

To make this clearer, let us suppose a vessel of good proportion, whose length is seven times the beam, or 280 ft. long, 40 ft. wide, and 30 feet deep. The midship section will be 40 × 30 = 1,200 square feet: the solid contents will be 40 × 30 × 280 = 336,000 solid feet. Again, let us double these dimensions, and the ship will be 80 ft. wide, 60 ft. deep, and 560 feet long. The midship section will be 80 × 60 = 4,800 square feet: the solid contents will be 80 × 60 × 560 = 2,688,000 solid feet. Now, comparing the midship sections, and also the said contents in each case we have,

Midship Section,	4,800	= 4 to 1. Increase as the squares:
Midship Section,	1,200	= 4 to 1. Increase as the squares:
Solid Contents,	2,688,000	= 8 to 1. Increase as the cubes.
Solid Contents,	336,000	= 8 to 1. Increase as the cubes.

Thus, the midship resistance has increased as four to one, or as the square, while the solid contents, representing the tonnage, have increased as eight to one, or as the cube. It is evident that the ship has but four times the mid-section resistance, while she has eight times the carrying capacity. Therefore the engine power, and the coal and weight necessary to propel a ship of twice the lineal dimensions, or eight times the capacity, would have to be only four times that of the smaller vessel, speaking in general terms; and as a consequence, the price of freight, considering the vessels to run at equal speed, would be but half as much in the larger as in the smaller vessel.

The attempt has been made to seize the evident advantages thus offered by increasing the size of the hull, until our clippers now reach an enormous size, and our steamers are stopping but little short of 30,000 tons. The splendid steamer "Leviathan" was built on this idea, and must prove a splendid triumph in comparative cheapness if she can only get business so as to run full, and keep herself constantly employed in her legitimate business, running. But it is hardly possible that she should be always filled with either freight or passengers. Some of our large clipper ships have experienced this difficulty. The time necessary to load and unload is too great for short routes, although they are well calculated for long passages. If one of these large steamers fail to get plenty of business the losses become exceedingly severe. The prime cost is immense; the interest on the capital and the insurance are very large; and the current expenses are even beyond those necessary for the government of some cities. These hazards all taken together more than neutralize the benefits which arise from extra size and extra proportional cheapness; so that notwithstanding all of the hopes which some have entertained for the cheapening of transport in this way, they are probably doomed to disappointment in the end; and ocean steaming continues as expensive as ever, and is growing even more expensive than it has ever been known since its first introduction. (See Coal Tables, [pp. 71] and [75].)

It is clear that, notwithstanding all of the advantages to be gained from increased size, steamers can not support themselves upon the ocean. Let us examine further the case of such a ship as the "Leviathan." I can not see that there is any normal trade in which she can run successfully. She may transport 6,000 tons of measurement goods to Australia; but it will be at the expense of fourteen to sixteen thousand tons of coals if the passage is made in fair time. If not, sailing vessels will subserve all purposes except travel quite as well. And certainly there is no class of freight for Australia or any other portion of the world, which will pay such an enormous coal-bill, and so many other expenses, and the interest and insurance on three and a half to four millions of dollars, just to save a few days in so long a voyage. And if the steamer is to do a freighting as well as passenger business, then a long voyage is essential to her.

Running is the legitimate business of a steamer. Her costly engines are put in her for locomotion. Her large corps of engineers, firemen, and coal-passers, are employed for running her, and are of no use when she is lying still, although necessarily on full pay. Her condition is abnormal and unnatural every day that she is lying at the docks, and taking or discharging freight; and hence, every day that she is thus employed she is not performing her proper functions. A sailing ship can better afford to lie still for weeks and await a freight, or slowly receive or discharge cargo; as she must pay only the interest on her investment, her dockage, the captain, and watchmen, and perhaps her depreciation. The prime investment is much less. She has no costly engines and boilers. So are her current expenses. She has none of the costly employées that I have named, and who can never leave a steamer for a day. But eternal motion, flush freights, flush business, good prices, and constant employment, are everywhere essential to the steamer.

Suppose the "Leviathan" steamer running between Liverpool and New-York. She would be occupied ten days at least in receiving her freight, ten days in running and making port or docks, and ten days in discharging. Then, she would be employed only one third of her time in the business for which she was constructed, running; while during two thirds of it she would be acting simply as a pier or dock, over which freight would be handled. Now, with her costly engines, and costly and necessarily idle employées, she can not afford to be a dock; neither can she afford to lie still so long. Nor can she on such conditions get the freight necessary to her support. The community on neither side of the water would wish fifteen thousand tons of any class of freights which she could transport dumped down upon the docks at one time. They wish it to arrive a little and a little every day, as it is wanted, just enough to supply the market; and will not lie out of the money which they pay for it, and have it nearly a month in market before they need it, just to have it come on the "Leviathan." It must come along in small lots, just as they need it, and it must be shipped the day that it is bought, and delivered as soon as the ship is in, without being the last lot of fifteen thousand tons, and without keeping the owners so long out of their money. Suppose that A. puts the first lot of freight in at London: he will be the last to receive, it in New-York. A smaller steamer taking another lot two days after, will deliver it before the large ship gets half way over. Or, again, the small steamer may leave London with it when the large steamer has nearly arrived at New-York, and deliver the lot here to the owner in advance. Beside not wishing so large a lot at once, they do not wish it all in one place. The double advantage of a great number of small vessels is, that they bring cargo along as it is wanted, and at the same time distribute it at all of the hundreds of large and small ports, without first delivering it at some great mammoth terminus, and then reshipping and distributing it to its final destination.

A gentleman, who is a prominent statesman, recently seriously advised me not to think of establishing a line of mail steamers between the United States and Brazil, for the accommodation of the hundreds of sailing vessels engaged in that trade, but to get up a mammoth company and run five or six thirty thousand ton steamers, like the Leviathan, between Norfolk and Rio de Janeiro. He said that the increased size of the steamer would enable me to carry freight cheaper than sailing vessels. The reasoning was neither very clear nor convincing to me on behalf of the mysterious capacities which he attributed to large steamers. I suggested that, in the first place, there was no cargo passing either way between the United States and Brazil which could afford to pay steam transportation under any circumstances; that so large a cargo could never be obtained at once in Rio de Janeiro or elsewhere; that the merchants of this country did not wish it all landed at one place; that it would cost as much to remove it from Norfolk to the place of consumption, as it would from Rio de Janeiro to its final destination; that they did not wish it delivered all at once, but in small lots at a time, and distributed where it was needed; and that, even if it were at all practicable, which no business man could for a moment believe, the people would not be willing to have a fruitful field of industry in shipping occupied by some great overgrown company, with a great coffee monopoly, which would surely follow. Too much has been expected of large ships. The clipper "Great Republic" is not freighted half of her time. The "Leviathan" can not pay in freighting unless she runs to Australia and the East-Indies, and runs slowly, on very little coal. She may do very well with a voluntary cargo, which will load and unload itself in a hurry, such as a cargo of emigrants, and not steaming at too a high a speed. But it would require a dozen steamers as tenders to bring these emigrants from Ireland, Bremen, Havre, Hamburgh, Amsterdam, and other European cities, to her central dépôt in England. She would, however, become a most useful if not indispensable transport vessel for the British Government.

If the large class of steamers can not live on their own receipts, much less can the small. An adequate speed for the mails leaves no available space for cargo. The ship may carry two or three hundred tons of freight; but it pays perhaps but little more than the handling and the extra coal necessary to transport its extra weight. As a general thing, it may be safely said that when a vessel is well adapted to the mails and passengers she is filled with her own power, that is, with heavy engines, large boilers, and a large quantity of fuel, as also with her provisions and baggage. We have already seen how the size and weight of engines and boilers must increase, as well as the bulk and cost of the fuel, to gain a little speed. But it is not generally known how large a quantity of consumable stores and baggage go in a well-supported mail packet. The greater the postal efficiency of a steamer the less is it able to carry freight; and the time will doubtless soon come when the fast mail packets will take nothing except a few express packages. The Persia now takes scarcely any freight, and the Vanderbilt can not think of doing it when she makes fast trips. It is very probable that the whole system of the ocean will be materially changed; and that while clippers and slow propellers carry the fine freights, fast vessels filled with their own power will carry the mails and passengers. And in doing this, they can not, of course, support themselves; neither will they conflict with private enterprise in freight transport. It is now the case to a large extent on most of our American lines.

While the ocean mail steamer must be fast and costly, for the better acceleration of correspondence and the accommodation of passengers, she must also go at the appointed hour, whether she is repaired or not, and wholly irrespective of her freight and passenger list. There must be no delays for a lot of freight, or for a company of fifty passengers who have been delayed by the train. She has the mails, and must go at the hour appointed, whatever it may cost the company, and however large a lot of costly stores may have to be thrown away. This punctuality, while it is the means of securing small lots of freight, prevents also the accommodation of the ship's day of sailing to arrangements which might otherwise be profitable. This punctuality in sailing always necessitates large extra expense in repairs. It frequently happens that companies of men work through the nights and on Sundays; getting much increased prices for such untimely labor, and being far less efficient in the night than in the day. If the steamer has had a long passage from whatever causes, she discharges whatever she has and takes in her coal in a hurried and costly way, frequently at fifty per cent. advance on the cost necessary for it if she had ample time. The only means of avoiding these exigencies is by having spare ships, which cost as much as any others, but which add nothing whatsoever to the company's income. It may be safe to say that in every mail company it is necessary to have one spare, and consequently unproductive, ship for every three engaged in active service. This thirty-three per cent. additional outlay would not be necessary except on a mail line, where punctuality was positively demanded. Yet, it is one of the heavy items of expense to be incurred by every company carrying the mails, and with which they can not in any wise dispense, however well their ships may be built. The "Pacific Mail Steamship Company" in running their semi-monthly line from Panama to California and Oregon, keep constantly at their docks eight unemployed steamers and one tow-boat, ready for all exigencies and accidents, and could keep their mails going if nearly their whole moving fleet should be sunk at once. No wonder that they have never missed a single trip, or lost a single passenger by marine accident since they first started in 1850. But there is another class of costs in running ocean steamers, which amount to large sums in the aggregate, and of which the people are generally wholly ignorant. I allude to the items, and what may be called "odds and ends." It is easily imaginable that a company has to pay only the bills for wages, for fuel, and for provisions, and that then the cash-drawer may be locked for the voyage. Indeed, it is difficult for those accustomed to the marine steam service to sit down and enumerate by memory in one day the thousand little treasury leaks, the many wastages, the formidable bill of extras, and the items which are necessary to keep every thing in its place, and to pay every body for what he does. The oil-bill of a large steamer would be astonishing to a novice, until he saw the urns and oil-cans which cling to every journal, and jet a constant lubricating stream. The tools employed about a steamer are legion in number, and cost cash. We hear a couple of cannon fired two or three times as we enter and leave port, or pass a steamer upon the ocean, and consider it all very fine and inspiring; but we do not reflect that the guns cost money, and that pound after pound of powder is not given to the company by the Government or the public. The steamer carries many fine flags and signals, which cost cash. An anchor with the chain is lost; another costs cash. Heavy weather may be on, and it takes some hours to get into the dock. The extra coal and the tow-boat cost cash. The wheel-house is torn to pieces against the corner of the pier, and the bulwarks are carried away by heavy seas; but no one will repair the damage for any thing short of cash. A large number of lights are by law required to be kept burning on the wheel-houses and in the rigging all night; but no one reflects that it took money first to purchase them, and a constant outlay to keep them trimmed and burning. People suppose that the captain, or steward, or some body else can take a match and set the lamp off, and have it burn very nicely; but there are only a few who know that it takes one man all of his time to clean, fill, adjust, light, and keep these lamps going, as well as have them extinguished at the proper time.

I saw to-day a case in point as regards accidental expenses. The splendid steamship Adriatic sailed at 12. The wind was very high from the south, and almost blowing a gale. She was lying on the southern side of the dock, while the Atlantic was lying with her stern at the end of the dock, near where the Adriatic had to pass in going out. At the moment of starting, three strong tow-boats were attached to her bow, and endeavored as she went out to draw her head against the wind, down stream. But they proved insufficient to the task. The vessel crushed down the corner of the dock, ran into the Atlantic, and carried away her stern bulwarks, crushed one of her own large and costly iron life-boats, and damaged one of her wheel-houses. Now, who of the two hundred thousand spectators that lined the docks, would pay the two thousand dollars for the life-boat, a thousand for repairing the dock and vessels, and the bill for the three tug-boats for two hours each?

Moreover, we see a pilot get on the steamer at New-York, another at Southampton, and a third at Havre; but we seldom reflect that the steamer has to pay a large price to each one of them, both going and coming. Take the coasting steamers, running between New-York and Savannah, or Charleston. It appears singular that the New-York pilot goes all the way to Savannah, that the Savannah pilot comes all the way to New-York, and that the steamer pays for both of these men all the time, and feeds them on board all of the time. Yet it is so. Such is the law; and it amounts to a good many thousands during the year. And all this, the company must pay, as a part of those items which take cash, but for which the company never gets any credit from the public or the Government. Whenever a little accident occurs to the steamer, it must be towed a few miles at a high price by a tug-boat. Whenever the Government or friends and visitors come on board, they expect to be liberally entertained; yet the company must pay for it, or be considered mean and unworthy of the Government's patronage. Each ship must have an experienced surgeon, whose wages must be paid like those of other persons employed, and an apothecary's room and outfit. The ship must be painted and varnished, and overhauled at every trip; the upholstering and furnishing must be often renewed; stolen articles must be replaced; and the breakages of table-wares constantly renewed. All of this costs cash.

The steamer also has to pay light dues and port charges wherever she goes. Many of these are exorbitant and unreasonable. In Havre the "Fulton" and "Arago" must pay nearly twenty-four hundred dollars each on every departure, or they will not be permitted to leave the docks. This is no small item for each steamer on every passage that she makes. At New-York she pays wharfage again. It is not so high, but it is a large item, and requires the cash. Again, there is the great shore establishment which every steam company must maintain. Large docks, and warehouses, and coaling arrangements, staging, watchmen, porters, and messengers, and a shore-captain equal to those on board, must all be maintained. The Havre Company pays to the city $4,000 per year for its dock, $1,200 for its annual repairs, and also for sheds, fixtures, etc., extra. They keep also two watchmen at $40 each per month, and other persons in the dock service. The Collins Company have a necessarily very costly dock both in New-York and Liverpool. That in New-York would rent for $15,000 per annum. The one in Liverpool is far more costly. On each they keep a large number of men, with watchmen, gatekeepers, runners, porters, and clerks, and always keep an office open. Beside this, is the whole paraphernalia of the office of the company. There must be offices, clerks, bookkeepers, porters, runners, etc.; a president, treasurer, and secretary; an attorney, agents, and agencies; and newspaper advertising, and a hundred little things which no man can mention. I do not pretend to be able to give an adequate conception of the innumerable items which so swell the large actual working expenses of regularly running steamers. Even the charities of a decently managed company are large. Firemen and engineers become disabled and must be supported; or they are killed in the service of the ship, leaving families which no decent company can disregard. The amount which the West-India Royal Mail Company pays in this way, and which our noble American lines advance to the deserving, are beyond all conception of the mere theorist.

There is another source of loss which prevents, mail packets especially, from paying their expenses on their freight and passenger earnings. The table on all of our steamships has become exceedingly expensive, as it has in our hotels. Perhaps there is more necessity for it on steamers than in the hotels, as passengers are generally sea-sick, and need every delicacy of life to keep them up. The supplies which our fine mail packets carry for this purpose are of almost incredible extent and costliness. No vegetable, fruit, game, or other rarity that can be kept fifteen days in large masses of ice, is neglected; so that the table of every steamer is necessarily both luxurious and expensive. Indeed, it has become so much so, and the price of passage fare has been reduced so low on all of the prominent lines, that as a general rule the steamers are not now making much clear money on their passengers. The expense of keeping passengers was not half so great six years ago, as it is now; and there appears to be no safe means of permanent retrenchment. Nothing has been said of Insurance. This is a most costly item. The Havre Company pay on their two ships, which are worth about $900,000, nine and a half per cent. per annum; and Mr. Collins pays on his three ships, which are worth about $2,200,000, nine per cent. per annum. On the Havre steamers this amounts to $85,500 per year, which is nearly as much as the mail pay; and on the Collins, to $198,000 per annum. And these are among what we call the items of mail steamship expenditure. I do not know the sums paid by the United States Mail, or by the Pacific Mail Companies.

I will here give the views of Messrs. Murray and Atherton on the cost of steam, as they replied to letters of inquiry, which I addressed them Sept. 14, 1857. Mr. Murray says in answer to

Query 2. "It is certainly my impression that ocean steamers of sufficient speed to carry the mails with any thing like regularity, will not pay upon any route with which I am acquainted, without assistance from Government."

Query 5: Can Parliament do better in economy than in her present mail contracts, all things considered? Mr. Murray replies:

"I do not see how Parliament can avoid paying the large subsidies she does for the mail contracts under present circumstances."

Query 4: Is the steamship stock of Great Britain, subsidized or unsubsidized, paying stock, and is there much disposition among capitalists to invest, even in the stock of subsidized companies? He replies:

"I do not think the steamship stock of Great Britain to be in a very nourishing condition: in fact, I know of only one company (the Peninsular and Oriental) in which I should like to invest money."

Mr. Atherton replies to a query regarding the cost of running steamers as follows:

"As to whether the effective performance of high speed mail service is compatible with ordinary mercantile service without government subsidy, I am of opinion that the mutual relation of Speed and Cost in connection with long sea-voyages has never yet been duly appreciated by owners, managers, or agents in charge of steam shipping affairs. An acceleration of steaming speed involves an increase of cost expenses, and a decrease of mercantile earnings, as dependent on freight per ton weight far beyond what is generally supposed."

He further says in reply to Query 9, which is as follows:

Do you know of any disposition in the Government to cut down the ocean mail service, as an unproductive expenditure? He says:

"It is impossible to estimate the national value of an effective mail service throughout the whole globe; the breaking of one link, though apparently of trivial consequence, impairs the whole system. I can not imagine that there is any disposition to impair the completeness of the mail system."

From the foregoing considerations it is palpable that fast ocean steamers can not live on their own receipts. And the same will in most cases hold true of freighting and other steamers of all classes, which depend entirely on steam as their agent of locomotion. Propellers will hardly form an exception to this rule. If the power and the passengers fill the hull, if the coal bill and other expenses increase as rapidly as indicated for mail packets, if engineering improvements do not advance as rapidly as the price of coals, if larger and more cheaply running ships can not get an adequate support in business, if there are the many leakages and expenses indicated, and if all of the expenses of running steamers are continually increasing from year to year rather than diminishing, then we may never expect to see the mail and passenger steamers of the ocean become self-supporting, or less dependent than now, on the fostering care of the Government and the national treasury.[C]

[C] Since this was written, Mr. Drayton has shown me the receipt for this year's taxes on the Havre Company, which are $7,782, the two ships being valued at $500,000 only.

OCEAN STEAM NAVIGATION

AND THE

OCEAN POST.

BY THOMAS RAINEY.

NEW-YORK:

D. APPLETON & CO., 346 & 348 BROADWAY.

TRÜBNER & CO.,

PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.

1858.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, byJOHN GLENN RAINEY,In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York.

DEDICATED,

IN TOKEN OF

RESPECT AND ESTEEM,

TO THE

HON. AARON VENABLE BROWN

POST MASTER GENERAL

OF THE

UNITED STATES.

Reprinted 1977by Eastern Press, Inc.New Haven, Conn.

Published byEdward N. Lipson

Distributed bya Gatherin'Post Office Box 175Wynantskill, N.Y. 12198

PREFACE.

THE ARGUMENT.

PAPER A.

PAPER B.

PAPER C.

PAPER D.

PAPER E.

PAPER F.

PAPER G.

PAPER H.

HEADS OF ARGUMENT.

SECTION I.

PRESENT POSITION OF STEAM NAVIGATION.

SECTION II.

NECESSITY OF RAPID STEAM MAILS.

SECTION III.

THE CAPABILITIES OF OCEAN STEAM.

SECTION IV.

COST OF STEAM: OCEAN MAIL SPEED.

SECTION V.

OCEAN MAIL STEAMERS CAN NOT LIVE ON THEIR OWN RECEIPTS.

SECTION VI.

HOW CAN MAIL SPEED BE ATTAINED?

SECTION VII.

WHAT IS THE DUTY OF THE GOVERNMENT TO THE PEOPLE?

SECTION VIII.

HOW SHALL THE GOVERNMENT DISCHARGE THIS DUTY?

SECTION IX.

THE BRITISH SYSTEM, AND ITS RESULTS.

SECTION X.

THE MAIL LINES OF THE UNITED STATES.

SECTION I.

PRESENT POSITION OF STEAM NAVIGATION.

SECTION II.

NECESSITY OF RAPID STEAM MAILS.

SECTION III.

THE CAPABILITIES OF OCEAN STEAM.

SECTION IV.

COST OF STEAM: OCEAN MAIL SPEED.

THE NATURAL LAWS OF RESISTANCE, POWER, AND SPEED,

WITH TABLES OF THE SAME.

I. TO FIND THE CONSUMPTION OF FUEL NECESSARY TO INCREASE THE SPEED OF A STEAMER.

II. TO FIND THE SPEED CORRESPONDING TO A DIMINISHED CONSUMPTION OF FUEL.

III. RELATION BETWEEN THE CONSUMPTION OF FUEL, AND THE LENGTH AND VELOCITY OF VOYAGE.

COAL TABLE: No. I.

COAL TABLE: No. II.

FREIGHT TABLE: No. III.

COAL AND CARGO TABLE: No. IV.

SECTION V.

OCEAN MAIL STEAMERS CAN NOT LIVE ON THEIR OWN RECEIPTS.

SECTION VI.

HOW CAN MAIL SPEED BE ATTAINED?

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by
JOHN GLENN RAINEY,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York.

Reprinted 1977
by Eastern Press, Inc.
New Haven, Conn.

Published by
Edward N. Lipson

Distributed by
a Gatherin'
Post Office Box 175
Wynantskill, N.Y. 12198