Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/470



Among the witnesses who appeared before the committee, there was no one more intelligent than Sir Richard Hotham, an eminent shipowner, who declared that the existing mode of freighting ships by the Company was absurd, and that their charter-party was one of the most useless for the purpose that could possibly be conceived. Analysing the whole system, and the clumsy and expensive mode in which they conducted their business, he gave the following particulars of what they actually paid for carriage on every ton of produce imported from the East:—

£  s.  d. 80 tons of kentledge, at the fixed rate of 9l. 13s. 4d. per ton             773  6   4 11 tons of China ware, at the chartered rate of 29l. per ton                     319  0   0 393 tons of tea and silk, at the chartered rate of 32l. per ton                  12,576  0   0 15 tons, private trade, at the chartered rate of 32l. per ton                     480  0   0 —-                                         - 499                                          14,148  6   4

Or equal to 32l. 10s. per ton, after the freight on kentledge had been deducted; and he showed how a saving could be effected in the cost of freightage on the vessels employed, from China alone, of upwards of 43,000l. annually. Sir Richard offered to bring goods from any part of the East at twenty guineas per ton, and this offer, combined with other important facts which had been adduced*