Page:The Blight of Insubordination.djvu/90

82 all clearly set out in the specification of the vessel which is to be built for purely commercial' purposes, and competes on her own account with all comers as soon as her first cargo is safely under hatches. The shipbuilder and shipmanager may be and very likely are quite as humane as most people, even philanthropic at times; yet to expect them to give up the best commercial parts of a ship to provide more liberal accommodation for her crew does not come within the bounds of possibilities in these competitive times. Most vessels are disappointing in what they can actually carry compared to what they ought to. Somehow these affairs do not always peter out properly, the vessels are never large enough.

This being so, any hope for improvement in the accommodation for crews must necessarily be among the possibilities of the future for the ship designer to consider, together with, perhaps, a modification of the tonnage laws to meet the matter, or encourage it.

Much has happened since the year that gave the Suez Canal to the commercial world as a means of facilitating trade. While under construction—before its completion—there were those among our dearest friends who unctuously predicted that in the great canal Britain's much coveted supremacy as a sea carrier would soon find its grave. Statistics of the usual kind from that period up to the present time only serve to prove the wisdom of what some one has said, that it is not safe to prophesy unless you know, for nearly three out of every four vessels which have passed through the great waterway are British. The red ensign always has been and still remains a very easy first. From that time there has been quite a revolution in the methods of sea carrying, which the screw propeller has made possible, and which our perspicacious and dearest friends did not foresee in its proper relation to a country renowned for its coal and iron works. The transition from sail to steam, from wood to iron, and iron to steel has been most marked during the period under review. Of ships building twenty-five years ago half were sailing vessels. During the last ten years the tonnage of sailing vessels under the British flag has fallen from 2,400,000 tons to 1,600,600 tons. Last year 440 steam ships with a tonnage of nearly 1,400,000 were under construction in the United Kingdom; and only thirty-seven sailing vessels, with a total tonnage under 21,000, marks how small is the proportion of the old kind. Of the whole number built, twenty-two were wood, the others mainly steel.

Last year Lord Dudley, speaking in the House of Lords in his official capacity as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of