OCEAN TRANSIT—ITS FAILURES AND PROSPECTS. An illustration of the wants
to be supplied by the Leviathan steam-ship has been afforded by some recent circumstances which will give poignancy to the interest felt by the shareholders in that vessel. Within the fortnight several new schemes have either been announced or have been placed upon a more definite footing ; and we learn the actual stoppage of an important line, the prospective stoppage of others. The American shipowner Collins, who started as a rival to the British North American shipowner Cunard, has been compelled to discontinue his enterprise, after, it is calculated, he had spent 800,0001. in the business. He had been successful in all respects but one. He built five new ships ; he obtained a subsidy from his own Government ; on the average he had beaten Cunard in point of speed, and had succeeded in maintaining a se- cond weekly communication between Great Britain and the United States : the point in which he failed was, that the line did not " pay." Every trip to England and back cost 10,0001. ; within six years the cost of repairs exceeded the first outlay ; and the enterprise "never paid simple interest to the stockholders." When the American Government withdrew its subsidy, the Collins line was compelled to wind-up. For the same reason, the line started by Mr. Sands had already stopped, and another line to Southamp- ton is expected to stop. Mr. Viinderbilt's ships still run, but they take a part of the postage upon letters in repayment. There is indeed ground for supposing that at present the intercourse be- tween North America and Europe is not more than sufficient to provide business for the Cunard line. The great Nova Scotia shipowner therefore had the merit of incompatible that a work which be the.scientific Lardner declared to ncompatible with commercial profits might be carried on at a profit; and experience has confirm- ed him. It has generally been found that when one such improve- ment has been effected, especially in the matter of intercourse, it has given an impulse to locomotion, and has thus created a new field for extended enterprise : it has not proved so with regard to Transatlantic steam navigation. The first line between England and North America, it would appear, is and has been the only line that was wanted.
Yet at the very day when Collins and his countrymen are abandoning the field, other persons are entering it. Three new lines are to be established between France and different parts of the American coast,—one from Havre to New York, one from Nantes to the West Indies, Panama, and Mexico, and one from Bordeaux and Marseilles to Brazil and La Plata ; while a fourth line is contemplated between France and Virginia. The three that have been provisionally arranged are to receive subsidies, and it is expected that they will succeed because they are not to aim at high rates of speed. We are told, in a paper which looks authentic, that it is the speed which has killed Transatlantic steam navigation, and that if steamers will be content to go at a less high pressure they will save that enormous outlay of coal which is needed for excessive speeds. Collins's line expended
128 tons of coal daily to go fourteen miles an hour, while 61 tons would be sufficient to drive a ship eleven miles an hour. The French steamers are only to go eleven miles an hour. According to this account, slowness is to " pay" : but we have no great faith in that calculation, still less in the capacity of France to maintain, whether by subsidies or otherwise, those lines of steam navigation which have been closed with England for their Eu- ropean starting-place.
But other schemes yet are in contemplation. Collins thinks of entering the field between Europe and America direct, setting England aside. Our own Government has undertaken to send regular mails to Liberia. Great efforts have already been made, and it would appear continue to be made, to maintain lines of steam communication between this country and Australia ; and no doubt there may be political reasons why Governments should expend money in keeping up the communications. Political com- merce has its tactics as well as military politics, and in both the maintenance of communication between the main body and the outposts is the very key to the strength of the position.
It becomes a question, then, how far ocean communications should be placed upon the basis of government subsidies, which would be a very intelligible foundation for them, or made to rest upon the self-paying proceeds of commerce. From recent expe- riences we might infer that, as at present advised, society is not prepared to demand more oceanic communication than has already been supplied to it; and if so, the Collinses and Vanderbilts, Eu- ropean as well as American, should be content to carry their capital into other branches of speculation. But what is to be- come of the Leviathan, which is to sail from this country somewhere ? and what is to become of the scheme for connecting Chesapeake Bay and Milford Haven ? The latter project, indeed, appears to have been converted into the scheme for connecting Virginia with Europe vii France, by means of the Orleans Rail- way Company of France. If so, the Southern States are forced to begin their business without Northern patronage, and they will have to accommodate themselves to the chances and obscure pro- spects of French railway property. It would appear that a great deal of waste is now incurred by a want of right understanding in these lines of oceanic railway traffic, where competition and cross-purposes have been even worse than they have in terrestrial railway traffic. But another disturbing influence no doubt has been kept up by the natural repugnance of landsmen to go to sea. It is sea-sickness which keeps down the movement of sea- going traffic. Conquer sea-sickness, and we may expect the travelling that now crowds the railways of the Continent to distri- bute itself over the more peaceful and novel routes Westward. Here is the reason why the creation of new transit-ways has not created new classes of locomotion, and it is here that the Levia- than experiment becomes interesting. Will the ship effectually override sea-sickness ?
There is a further question : will it be possible to muster such a vast number as ten thousand—a whole army—for every voyage of a single ship ? Yet further, would it be possible to construct such means of oceanic communication as should combine the sea residence with the facilities of travelling ? The floating island, which some have regarded as gradually passing from the regions Of fiction to those of reality, would supply this desideratum. People live afloat on the Chinese rivers ; and how many would be content to change a sea-side residence for a residence which should begin off Liverpool and terminate off New York, if there were no sea-sickness, no possibility of shipwreck, with all the appliances of civilization—taverns, circulating libraries, theatres, and billiard-tables, for week-days, to fill up the time, and of course church for dundays
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