Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/382

 goods were not contraband of war. She, however, reserved the right of blockade; a reservation by which I may remind my readers, her Majesty's subjects were, commercially, by far the greatest sufferers.

The extraordinary demands for shipping on the outbreak of war led to their production with still more extraordinary rapidity, and furnished, at the same time, the most convincing proofs that we had within ourselves resources far beyond all other nations for meeting the emergency of war, without the necessity of keeping up a large and expensive standing navy, especially as such a navy must always be in a state of transition. The high rates of freight then offered for transports, ranging from 20s. to 30s. a register-ton per month for sailing vessels, and from 35s. to 65s. per gross register-ton for steamers, produced not merely all the vessels required for our own transport service, but, also, for the wants of France, whose armies without our aid could not have been conveyed to the Crimea. *