The history of shipping in an earlier chapter will also answer as a history of early international commerce. It began with the Egyptians and Phenicians, and was confined to their parts of the Mediterranean until after the middle ages, when it moved steadily to the western borders of Europe.

How great, rich, and influential were Tyre and its people we have already seen. A thousand years before the Christian era they controlled the commerce of the ancient world by reason of their wisdom as traders and their skill and energy as navigators and seamen. Turn to the twenty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel, and see how the Phenician metropolis was regarded, even in the time of that prophet, six hundred years before Christ. These Syrians had gradually extended their commerce until it took in the whole known world; and by their caravans to and from the interior of Arabia, Persia, India, and the Soudan, by their trains (perhaps of pack-horses) across Europe, by their marine expeditions to the Nile,—which they forced open to trade, for ancient Egypt was much like China in its exclusiveness,—and by their ships to all the Mediterranean ports, and up and down the Atlantic coast, they gathered and exchanged in the bazaars of Tyre and Sidon the products, manufactures, and luxuries of every country that had anything to sell. To the Phenicians, indeed, was ascribed, by the Latin and Greek writers of a few centuries later, the invention of navigation; and even when Phenicia had become of little account as a nation, its conquerors noted with admiration the skill of the men of that coast in seamanship. “They steered by the pole-star, which the Greeks therefore called the Phenician star; and all their vessels, from the common round gaulos to the great Tarshish ships,—the East-Indiamen, so to speak, of the ancient world,—had a speed which the Greeks never rivaled.”

Later, in the days of the Roman supremacy, the trading-ships were as important to the country as its soldiers, for nearly every free man was in the army, and the slaves made poor farmers. A large part of the grain, as well as cattle, to supply the wants of the people, had to be brought from Egypt, which was pretty sure to have “corn,” as the Bible calls it, when the rest of the world was suffering from short crops. Egypt supplied grain to Rome during the second Punic war, thus enabling her to resist the invasion of Carthage, and it is possible that Rome’s later political alliance with Egypt was largely due to her interest in Egyptian crops. Large fleets of grain-ships, convoyed by armed vessels, were continually passing between the African coast and the Tiber, and so many were the risks they ran of wreck or capture, that the arrival of a flotilla with its precious freight of food was always a cause of rejoicing, at any rate, among the poor.

These merchant ships of classical times were broader and heavier than the war-galleys, and although they carried a few oars to help themselves in a difficulty, they ordinarily moved by means of sails, probably lugs. One of the grain-ships plying between Egypt and Italy about 150 A. D., according to Lucian, was one hundred and eighty feet long, slightly more than one fourth as broad, and forty-three and a half feet deep inside,— more like a barge than a “ship.” The largest used in this trade would carry about two hundred and fifty tons. The transports that accompanied one of Justinian’s fleets, A. D. 533, are stated to have carried one hundred and sixty to two hundred tons of supplies each.

These Roman vessels were made of pine, and were coated with a composition of tar and wax, then painted, often with elaborate decorations in bright colors, with pigments mixed with melted wax. Now and then one was built of truly vast proportions, as that one which brought from Egypt to Rome the first of the stolen obelisks.

With that grand awakening of interest in education, industry, and discovery which took place in the fourteenth century, the city of Venice gained the lead in power, and her merchants became the most enterprising and wealthy. It was the expansion of commerce that urged the explorations that marked the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, for by this time Venice had her banks—the first in the world to approach the character of modern banks—and her exchange on the famous Rialto bridge; Genoa was in close rivalry; Spain was gathering immense quantities of gold in South America; and England was coming to the front as a maritime power. The trade with Cathay—as India, China, and the Oriental islands were called collectively—was chiefly by caravans across the Persian deserts, and Spain, England, and Holland had small shares in it, since the only water-route known was through the Mediterranean and Red seas, where, between the perils of the ocean, the extortionate charges and stealings of the Arabs (who carried the cargoes from vessel to vessel across the Isthmus of Suez), and the risk of capture by Algerian pirates, there was little chance left for profit to either merchants or ship-owners.

To western Europe, then, Vasco de Gama’s discovery of the route around the Cape of Good Hope was a long advantage, and England and Holland at least were quick to seize it. The great “East India Companies” of the Dutch and English were formed by a group of powerful merchants in London and in Amsterdam, who were given vast privileges by their governments in respect to trading in the East. The Dutch company was not founded until 1602, two years after the English company, but it soon became the more prominent of the two, and was one of the principal means by which the Netherlands secured the preponderance of the carrying trade of the world, bringing to her ports, by the middle of the seventeenth century, almost all the commerce previously enjoyed by Cadiz, Lisbon, and Antwerp, and making very serious inroads upon that of London and Bristol. The Dutch East India ships, copied from the Genoese carracks, were the biggest merchant vessels then afloat, well able to cope with many of the war-ships; and two hundred of them were at this time engaged in the Asiatic trade alone.

It was in aid of the English rival company not only, but as an attempt to save and revive the commercial position of England generally, that Cromwell’s “navigation laws” were enacted, prohibiting the carriage of goods to or from British shores except in ships owned and manned by Englishmen,— laws that were aimed directly at the Dutch, and led to the long wars of the latter half of the seventeenth century. These were called wars for the supremacy of the sea, but actually they were a prolonged struggle for the biggest share of the world’s trade, which is the only real value of the “supremacy of the sea.” It is a saying that “trade follows the flag,” and so it does; but at the beginning the flag goes were the trade is to be had.

These companies were so mixed up in the politics of their respective governments that it would be a long task, although entertaining, to trace their growth, which is really that of western civilization in the East. They equipped fleets of merchant and war vessels, established forts, carried on small wars along the Oriental coasts, and were really little kingdoms within kingdoms, because of their wide monopoly, enormous wealth, and the national importance of all their enterprises. The final result was that, as Great Britain finally overcame the Dutch and French at home, so her East India Company ousted them from India; but it was not until 1858 that old “John Company,” which had come to be regarded by the natives of India as the government itself, was dissolved, and resigned its territories to the crown and a system of trade open to all the world.

Those were slow and costly times compared with the present, though seeming to us full of a romance impossible now. A voyage around the world occupied three years, and to go from London to Calcutta and back took from New Year’s to Christmas under the most favorable circumstances. Another important change, too, has gradually come about. Formerly, the vessels were owned almost entirely by the merchants themselves, or by a company of them; they paid all a ship’s expenses, and put into her a cargo of their own wares. They would send to China, for instance, cotton goods, household furniture, hatchets, tools, cutlery and other hardware, farming implements, and fancy goods of all sorts. In return the vessels would bring silks, tea, and porcelain, which would go into the owners’ warehouses and be sold in their own shops. Shipper, importer, and merchant were all one.

Now this is changed. The importers and merchants of London, Hamburg, and New York are not often those who own vessels and bring their own goods. Instead of this they have agents, who live permanently in each of the foreign ports, where they buy the merchandise they want and hire a vessel, or the needed space in a vessel, belonging to somebody else to bring them home. By the old way, the nation which had anything to sell carried it to the nation that would buy it, and brought back the best thing it could get in exchange; now the merchants go to various parts of the world, buy their cargoes, and order them sent home, in substantially the same way as you go a-shopping in town.

This has brought out a new department of sea-labor, unknown, as a class, a century ago—the business of carrying goods which the owners of the vessels have no property in. In London, New York, Hamburg, and all other seaboard cities of this and other countries, the great majority of the shipping is owned, not by the merchants of the city, but by “transportation companies,” who agree to carry cargoes at a certain rate.

Merchant vessels may be divided into three classes, of which the first includes steamships and sailing-vessels planned primarily for freight transportation, which run back and forth between certain ports, and so constitute “lines” for freight. Such lines exist along even the remotest coasts, so that goods may be shipped directly, or by a single transfer, from any given seaport to almost any other in the world. Some of these lines, sailing between certain ports, are devoted to particular uses, such as those of oil-steamers and cattle-steamers. The oil-steamers run between America and Europe with American petroleum, and in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean with oil from Russia; the entire holds are divided into vast iron tanks for this liquid, which is poured into and pumped out of them as into and out of a great barrel. The cattle-steamers are specially arranged for the transportation of live stock, but one line, running between America and England, also carries passengers at a cheap rate. The second class of vessels consists of those which make the transportation of passengers their first object, loading their holds with first-class freight, for which high rates are paid in consideration of its swift delivery. The third class includes what are known as “tramp” steamers, which run irregularly, as the old sailing-vessels used to do, picking up cargoes wherever they find them and carrying them to any port. They are often of great size and power, but being under less close supervision are often less careful as to the safety of crews and cargoes, and are sometimes unseaworthy. They are always ready to answer any sudden demand for ships, their owners keeping watch of the chances and telegraphing to their captains where to go for their next cargoes. Without the submarine telegraph these tramp steamers could scarcely compete with the regular lines; but, besides the great transoceanic cables, all the sea-coasts are now festooned with electric cables, which have frequent stations and connect the important ports of America and Europe with those of Africa, Persia, India, the Spice Islands, Australia, and New Zealand, and there is now a plan to run a cable across the Pacific between America and New Zealand, by way of the Sandwich Islands, Samoa, and Fiji.

The passenger-ship is a distinctly modern feature of marine carriage. In former days the few persons who were obliged to cross the seas on business errands, and the fewer who went abroad for health or pleasure or the love of travel, had to accept such rough accommodations as the ordinary merchant ships afforded. But as soon as the East and West Indies were added to the map of the world, and colonies of Europeans began to settle on distant coasts and islands, the amount of travel justified owners of vessels in enlarging cabins and providing comforts likely to induce patronage of their lines. Even two hundred and twenty-five years ago the voyage between India and England around the Cape of Good Hope, though it became somewhat tedious, because it lasted six or seven months, was by no means a miserable experience in a well-found ship. Thus Dr. John Fryer has recorded of such a sea-journey in 1682 that “it passed away merrily with good wine and no bad musick; but the life of all good company, and an honest commander, who fed us with fresh provisions of turkies, geese, ducks, hens, sucking-pigs, sheep, goats, etc.”

A century later, when England had come firmly into possession of India, and thousands of her officers, troops, and traders, with their families, were colonizing her ports, there were demanded the largest and finest ships that could be built, combining accommodations for many passengers with great cargo capacity. Such were the great East Indiamen; and in those leisurely days a trip half-way round the world on one of these roomy old vessels was a continuous pleasure to almost every one that undertook it.

Such a ship, the Atlantic packets, and even men-of-war bound on a long blockading cruise, did not hesitate to stow aboard all the live stock that room could be found for, sometimes by comical devices. In that book of charming reminiscences of ways and means afloat before the days of quick steam transit, “Old Sea Wings,” Mr. Leslie has a chapter which he calls “The Old Ship-Farm,” where one may learn curious particulars of this matter.

There was always regular traffic between America and Europe, especially with Great Britain, and the rapid growth of emigration to the United States and Canada made it profitable, early in this century, to put on fast-sailing packet-ships, making voyages, at intervals of a month, between London and New York. By 1840 a man might find a large, well-ordered ship departing every week or so for the transatlantic passage, which usually required less than a month going east, but might be two weeks longer coming west. Their cabins were as comfortable and perhaps more homelike than any seen now, and quite as pretty, with their white and gold paint, cut-glass door and locker knobs, damask hangings, dimity bed-curtains, and other old-fashioned niceties; and the fare was abundant and varied, as it ought to be in a neat ship with a small dairy aboard, and perhaps a green-salad garden planted in the jolly-boat. None of these packets were more popular than those of the well-remembered Black Ball Line.

The steerage passengers were not so well off then, though they seemed to stand the voyage quite as well as nowadays. The fare was twenty-five dollars, and the passenger found himself “in everything but fire and water.” “Steerage passengers then had to cook their own victuals, weather permitting, at an open galley-fire on the waist-deck; ... but in anything like rough weather, all steerage passengers had either to run the chance of getting constantly wet with salt water or keep below.” The ’tween-decks space allotted to them was almost completely filled by rows of bunks, built in each port by the ship’s carpenter, in three tiers, one above the other, though the ceiling was scarcely seven feet from the floor; and when in a stormy time the hatches were closed the only way the crowd could find room was by most of it stowing itself away in the bunks, while a few tried to sit or lie on the luggage piled in the narrow aisles. The only light was that of a few candle or whale-oil lanterns, and in a very bad storm everybody came near smothering, for then it was impossible to ventilate the steerage properly without flooding it. Considering that all the provisions for the steerage people were kept in this crowded, damp, and fearfully close room, it is marvelous that a pestilence did not break out during every voyage, but, in fact, sickness was rare.

The introduction of steam into oceanic navigation was experimented with as soon as river steamboats were successfully built. The first vessel to go across the ocean by the aid of a steam-engine is said to have been the Savannah. This vessel, built in Savannah, Ga., and having a steam-engine and paddle-wheels, certainly crossed to Liverpool in 1819; but it is asserted that she sailed all the way, using her steam very little, if at all, although making the trip in twenty-two days. In 1825 the English steamer Enterprise went from London to Calcutta; but it was not until some years later that ocean navigation by steam became successful in the beginning of operations by the Cunard Company in 1833.

These first steamers were side-wheelers, and their huge boilers and simple engines consumed so much fuel that the space taken up by the coal, added to that devoted to passengers, left little room for cargo. Moreover, their speed was less, often, than that of the “clippers,” so that for some time the sailing-packets maintained their competition. The adoption of the screw propeller, in place of the costly and cumbersome side-paddles, and the perfection of the compound marine engine, which effected a great saving in fuel, soon established the superiority of steam navigation for passenger service, fast freights, and service in war, yet even these improvements were not fairly brought about until the first half of the present century had gone; and sails are not yet abandoned, not only because they steady a vessel in a gale, and may help her decidedly when the wind is fair, but may save her altogether in case of the disabling of her machinery.

Long after the transatlantic steamships were regularly running, sixteen or seventeen days was considered a good passage between New York and Liverpool. Then the Inman and White Star lines began to see the importance of faster speed, and their rivalry had cut this estimate in two by 1870, and ten years later the Guion Line’s Arizona and other crack boats took a full day off that. Since then there has been a steady improvement in speed, as is shown by the table below; and this seems to have followed proportionately the steady increase in length. The ships of 1850 never reached 300 feet in length, and few were over 2300 tons in burden measurement. By 1880 almost all the first-class “liners” of the world exceeded 450 feet, and some soon approached 600, as the City of Rome (586 feet, 8826 tons), and several of the famous Hamburg liners, White Stars, and Cunarders nearly equaled her in dimensions (Paris and New York, 580 feet each; Teutonic and Majestic, 582 feet); while some of the more recent boats are even longer, as Campania and Lucania, 620 feet, and the gigantic Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, 648 feet. Two other ships, now planned, will considerably exceed this length. The total number of transatlantic passenger-steamships regularly sailing from New York alone is now between 90 and 100, belonging to 14 different lines. The table of speed-records between New York and Queenstown, since the time was reduced to less than six days, is as follows:

This eager rivalry in respect to speed, which insures not only a larger and more influential passenger service, but increased business in fast freight and in the carriage of mail—both highly remunerative—is only one feature of the sharp competition between these ocean carriers as to which shall offer the greatest advantages, and this is of benefit to the public, though it has not greatly cheapened fares.

Men travel far more now than they were wont in the time of “good Queen Bess,” or even of our own grandfathers, and the few travelers for pleasure of those days would scarcely believe their eyes if they could look into the floating palaces—almost cities—in which we brave old ocean now. A ship of one of the better passenger lines is a little world in itself, containing almost all the appliances of the best modern hotels on shore, and reducing the inevitable inconveniences of life on shipboard by clever devices of every sort. In the one matter of ventilation the ingenuity of the builders is particularly taxed. Money is spent lavishly in the finishing and furnishing of these great ships, not to mention the expense of running them, which sometimes amounts in cost of fuel, food, and wages to $5000 a day.

The steamship lines between New York and Great Britain do not steer straight across the Atlantic, but on their way to this country keep well to the northward, so as to get to the west of the Gulf Stream, and into the favorable current flowing south from Baffin’s Bay; then they skirt Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Cape Cod. Going east, however, the steamers—and sailing-vessels too—keep farther south, and work along with the Gulf Stream as far as they can. From Europe to South America, or through the Straits of Magellan on their way to the South Sea islands or Australia (though this route is not often taken), or to the Pacific coast of the Americas, vessels keep close down the African coast, and then steer straight ahead from Guinea to Brazil, and on down the American coast. (Put a map before you and you will understand these courses better.) Sailing-vessels to Europe or the United States from Cape Horn, however, would swing far out into the South Atlantic to avoid heading against the southward coast-current and to get the benefit of the southwest trade-wind and the equatorial currents. Between New York and the Cape of Good Hope the track is nearly straight.

In the Pacific, the steamer-route between San Francisco or Vancouver and China and Japan, instead of being as direct as a parallel of latitude, takes a southerly course when bound west, and a northerly course when bound east, the exact lines varying with the seasons as the prevailing winds and currents change. What these winds and currents are is explained in another chapter; but it is interesting to note that there is a difference of many miles in the ordinary westerly and easterly courses, the latter being much the shorter, although the vessels of the Canadian Pacific Line often sail so far north with the Japan warm current as to sight the Aleutian Islands. Sailing-vessels, moreover, curve so much farther south than steamers in going west from San Francisco, in order to take advantage of the equatorial current and the trade-winds, that the space is a thousand miles north and south between ships outward bound and those coming home. Between California and Honolulu a steamer takes a bee-line, but sailing-vessels find it best to make detours. In summer, when outward bound, this amounts to steering straight northward until under latitude forty degrees, before turning westward, making an angular course that looks very unnecessary to a landsman.

I have said that the finding of a sea-route to the East around the Cape of Good Hope was a great boon to western Europe, and advanced commerce. It remained so until within the last seventy-five years. Lately, the corsairs being out of the way, and safety guaranteed in Egypt, merchants and sailors both began to wish they had a shorter route between England and India. Then, with immense labor and sacrifice, the canal was cut across the Isthmus of Suez, and commerce returned to its ancient channel through the Red Sea, saving thousands of miles of weary distance.

From the end of the Red Sea at Aden, the tracks of steamers both ways are straight courses to Bombay or Ceylon, and thence right up to Calcutta, across to Singapore, or down to Australia. Except East African coast lines, few steamers go around the Cape of Good Hope from England, excepting one line to South Australia, which steers straight eastward all the way from Cape Town to Adelaide, 6125 miles. But the Indian Ocean is so situated under the equator, is so filled with prevailing winds and currents and counter currents, that sailing-vessels must take very roundabout courses there, and can by no means steer the same track at all seasons of the year. These voyages from New York and London to the East are the longest regular sea-roads. A short table of distances between well-known ports along regular steamer-routes will be of interest; and by reversing them, or adding them together, the sailing distance between almost any two ports on the globe may be calculated.