History of Shipping

With the evolution of the steamer there came also a change in the organization of the shipping industry itself. In the i 6th and 17th centuries the biggest ships were owned by the great chartered companies, who alone could provide the strong arma ments, oversea factories and quasi-diplomatic service required in the long distance trades. In the i8th century the owners were mostly individuals or small partnerships, who might or might not be merchants, lading as well as owning the ships. At the time when steam was coming in, there were many regular lines of sailing ships, owned by wealthy firms and employed in particular trades ; but a large proportion of the ships were owned on the sixty-fourth principle, by a number of persons each having an interest of so many sixty-fourths, and choosing from among themselves someone with shipping experience to act as managing owner. This system, owing to the greater cost of steamships, gradually gave way to the joint stock company, especially in the liner trades.

Liners and Tramps.

The characteristic of the liner is that she trades regularly between the same ports, running on a sched uled time-table which governs also any intermediate stoppages. In order to maintain the regularity of her sailings, an extensive and costly organization is required, with branches or agencies at all ports of call, to arrange for the collection and shipment, or discharge of cargo, and for booking passengers, if carried. Hence the liner companies have tended more and more to become large concerns, with a big publicly subscribed capital, requiring financial ability as well as technical knowledge in their management.

The "tramp," "seeker" or "general trader" has no fixed itin erary, but can be chartered, either for a definite period or for a single voyage, to carry whatever her charterer requires, usually a whole cargo of some bulky commodity, such as grain, ore or timber, between ports of his choosing. No costly organization is required ; each voyage is a separate venture ; each ship is a self contained competitive unit. She may belong to a big fleet, owned by a big company; she may belong to a single-ship company, a firm, or an individual. Several small companies will often entrust actual management to an experienced managing owner.

In the early days of steam, wild speculation, especially on the sixty-fourth system, led to grave scandals in connection with overloading and the over-insurance of unseaworthy ships. The adoption of a compulsory loadline, as the result of an agitation carried on during the seventies by Samuel Plimsoll, put an end to these evils, and later legislation, together with the immense and most beneficial influence of Lloyd's and Lloyd's Register, has brought about a very high standard of safety afloat. The evils

of speculation in shipping have latterly been most felt by the ship-owners themselves, through the results of a tendency to over-build in times of prosperity, which has led to every boom in shipping being followed by a long-continued slump.

The liner companies, with regular services to maintain high overhead charges, have always been particularly sensitive to rate cutting competition. Their efforts to avoid this took two forms during the last years of the 19th century and the first years of the loth. In the first place there was a strong tendency to amal gamation and to the pooling of financial interests by the exchange of shares between the lines. In the second place the lines in par ticular trades gradually organized themselves in "conferences" for the purpose of stabilizing freights at an agreed level for fixed periods. In many instances they also tied the shippers to them selves by a system of deferred rebates, which were forfeited by the shipper if he loaded goods in any vessel outside the conference lines. It was mainly as a consequence of complaints by shippers that the royal commission on shipping rings was appointed in 1906, but the lines pleaded that they could only guarantee a fast and regular service if they were assured of a steady volume of traffic at remunerative rates, and the system still persists (1929) carefully watched by the imperial shipping committee.

International Competition.

As the years .went on, many of the conferences came to include lines under several flags; for shipping is an international business, and all countries are served by the ships of many nations. During the last decade of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th, British ship-owners found their supremacy assailed by the ships of countries that were be ginning to make up the leeway caused by the earlier industrial development of Great Britain. The Scandinavians, especially the Norwegians, were keen competitors in the general carrying trade. The awakening of Japan was followed by the creation of a modern mercantile marine. Dutch lines were prominent in the Far Eastern. trade. France and Italy built up their fleets by a system of boun ties and subsidies. Above all, German steam shipping increased from 723,000 net tons in 1890 to 3,096,000 in 1914—nearly a quarter of the tonnage on the register of the British empire. The Germans were not very successful in the tramp trade, but there were few routes on which British ship-owners did not feel the competition of the German liner companies, backed as they were by powerful financial interests.