Another well known agency is the Bureau Veritas, now located in Paris. "The American Bureau of Shipping" provides a standard American classifica tion of vessels. It publishes an annual "Record of American and Foreign Shipping." Registration of fices of lesser importance are the "Ufficio Veritas Austro-Ungarico" of Trieste; the "Germanische Lloyd" of Berlin; "Registro Italiano" in Genoa; the "Nederlandsche Vereeniging" in Amsterdam; the "Norske Veritas" in Christiania; and the "Veritas Hellenique" of Athens.
12. Sailing vessel versus steam vessel.—The ques tion is often raised whether the steamship will displace the sailing vessel altogether. In order to answer this we must contrast the relative advantages and dis advantages of the two kinds of vessels.
The steamship costs more to build, is more ex pensive to operate, both because of the fuel consump tion and of the larger crew required, and has a more unfavorable ratio between net and gross tonnage. On the other hand, it is speedier, is independent of the wind and can travel by the most direct routes. A sailing vessel, for example, bound from Northern Europe for New York, must usually follow the air currents down the coast to Africa, cross the ocean with the northern equatorial current and wind drift and then after turning north again somewhere near Florida, follow the ocean and air currents up to New York. That is very roundabout. The steamship goes by the straightest practicable route.
The steamship has speed also in unloading and loading since it always carries motive power with it. The steamer can make more trips, and therefore work at a smaller margin. Taking its greater frequency of trips into consideration, a steamer is estimated to have about four times the freight-carrying capacity of a sailing vessel of the same tonnage.
More than 75 per cent of the world's tonnage is steam, and nine-tenths of all the freight tonnage transported is handled by steamers.
On June 30, 1919, the American merchant marine consisted of the following ships: The Canadian registry on December, 1918, showed: The vessels on the register of the United Kingdom on December 31, 1919, according to an estimate of Lloyd's Register were : Lloyd's Register for shows that the world's total merchant gross tonnage is 50,919,000 tons as compared with a gross tonnage of 49,090,000 in 1914, previous to the beginning of the war. In
the table following is shown the gross tonnage of the leading maritime countries of the world for 1914 and 1919. Attention is called to the phenomenal increase made by the United States which in the five-year period built over three times the tonnage of the United Kingdom.
It will be noted that sail tonnage (net) is playing a diminishing part in the world's shipping, having fallen off over half a million tons during the period covered.
13. Future of sailing vessel.—Sailing vessels are still being built for special trade, some of them fine steel ships of 4,000 and even 6,000 tons. The average size of the sailing vessel has recently shown a tendency to increase in the United States while slightly decreas ing in number. In 1919 the United States had 9,862 sailing vessels with a tonnage of 2,492,000 tons as against 10,053 sailing vessels of 2,453,200 tons for the year previous. The large modern sailing vessels have been mainly built on the continent of Europe and in the United States. The American merchant marine, however, still has a larger proportion of sailing vessels than the marines of most other nations.
The development of the internal combustion en gine may help to turn the tide for the sailing vessel.
Many of them are now being provided with auxiliary power. The internal combustion engine is especially adapted to this work since it requires little space, necessitates small fuel bunkers, is economical, can be quickly started and stopped with no loss of fuel and is so simple in operation that no special engineering crew need be carried. The greater speed with which the sailing ship can now be loaded and unloaded with the help of the auxiliary engine also increases the ship's efficiency.
A recent development in the internal combustion engine bids fair, indeed, to revolutionize ocean trans portation. Many freighters of more than average size are now being equipped with the Diesel engine. One ship covered 40,000 nautical miles at an average speed of nine knots. Another ship, with twin en gines, developed 360 horsepower and a fuel consump tion of about one ton oil a day as against a coal con sumption of eight tons for a vessel of the same size developing the same speed.