Shipping Routes

SHIPPING ROUTES. Regular shipping routes have existed as long as regular shipping, originally as measures of safety but afterward as part of the intricate organisation of trade. For this reason they are constantly changing with changed trade and politi cal conditions.

Early History.

In the older history of shipping routes sev eral factors must be especially considered. One of these concerns the relatively small size of the vessels used; it often made coast wise routes advisable and it permitted far more river navigation than can be accomplished by the deep-sea ships of to-day. An other factor was the discovery or introduction of the compass, probably in the 13th century. By means of it methodical charting was made possible, supplanting the accident-and-report system of the earliest times. It must be said, however, that such early route-maps as the Periplus marls erythraei, of the 1st century, show an attentive study and systematic record of what had been discovered by the use of the old method.

There were two other factors of the highest importance for the history of sea routes to the Orient. One was the discovery of the Indian ocean trade wind, which occurred, so far as Europe is con cerned, at a time not far distant from the composition of the Periplus. As the story has come down to us, a marine tax collector in the Roman service was carried out into the Indian ocean by a high wind which maintained its direction steadily for many days. At the end of this adventure he was able to drop anchor in a port which proved to be in Ceylon. There he was made to understand that the wind set in alternate directions every six months and that he would be able to return to the Red sea after a certain interval and by the same means that had brought him out. This he did, with the result that the direct overseas route to India was often followed thereafter instead of the coastal one. However, as late as the 14th century, the Persian mariners still used the old route ; they feared the long course because of the frail construction of their vessels.

In still earlier times there existed a navigable channel from the Nile to the Red sea—one which was silted up long before the end of the ancient period. Early shipping routes were thus strikingly

influenced by accident as well as by discovery, and in no other field of endeavour has progress been more uneven.

Although the coastal and island navigation of the remotest times was never discontinued in the Mediterranean, the Roman empire developed several important long routes. A notable one was that followed by the grain ships from Egypt, which, generally setting out from Alexandria, rounded Crete and the southern coast of Greece and thence made a run due westerly to the straits of Mes sina, after which the course was northwesterly to Ostia, where the grain was unloaded for Rome. The most dangerous part of this route, incidentally, seems to have been at the entrance to the harbour of Ostia. Another route was almost due south from Ostia, between Corsica and Sardinia, then north of the Balearic islands and then southwesterly along the Spanish coast to the Strait of Gibraltar.

In the middle ages the main shipping routes substituted Venice and Genoa for Rome as their Italian termini, while Alexandria maintained much of its ancient importance. This was lessened, however, by the use of Constantinople as the gate to Asia Minor and the Far East and by the centralization of the eastern Mediter ranean trade, for a considerable period, in Famagosta, on the island of Cyprus.

As was only natural before the science of navigation was devel oped, the first regular trade routes were coasting, giving some element of safety both from weather and enemy. The Mediter ranean was crossed and recrossed by regular lanes at a very early date, then the Baltic and Atlantic coast of Europe, while they existed from the East African coast, Red sea and Persian gulf to India from time immemorial. The Portuguese found this trade fully organised and flourishing when they entered the Indian Ocean in 1498. Even later than that, the overland route developed by the Italian republics prospered, the sea portion being generally from Constantinople to Western Europe. Antwerp was one of the principal entrepots for this trade.