Page:Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China.djvu/209

Rh more particularly to the trade in the Far East, which more nearly concerns the purpose of this sketch, it will be found that in Hongkong, as elsewhere, there has been a wonderful increase in the volume of trade done. The first Peninsular and Oriental steamer to leave Hongkong was the Lady Mary Wood. She sailed on September 1, 1845. The Company, however, had been established in the Colony previously, for by this date they owned their own docks and wharves, and had private shops for the work of re-fitting their vessels. The Lady Mary Wood was a vessel of about 650 tons burden. Now there is a fortnightly mail service, a fortnightly intermediate service, and altogether about sixty sailings a year of the Company's boats from Hongkong alone. A comparison between the freight rates and passage-money then and now will also show what an immense advance has been made during recent years. In 1857 a first-class passage from Hongkong to Southampton cost six hundred dollars when the dollar was equivalent to 4s. 10d. or 5s.; now it costs about half that sum in sterling.

It is amusing to read, in the records, that tea and articles of bulk, but of small value, could be taken in limited quantities by special agreement when the ships had room at a rate of from £20 to £25 per ton of 40 cubic feet. Now numerous vessels leave the harbour each month with a carrying capacity of between nine and twelve thousand tons. Last year the Peninsular and Oriental Company booked nearly 2,000 passengers at Hongkong, landed about 80,000 tons of cargo, and shipped nearly 150,000 tons more.

In the early days the Company was known in the Colony as the "Tit-Hong," or Iron House. Their headquarters used to be where Jardine's wharf is now situated, and around the offices was a very handsome iron verandah. It is presumed that the name was derived from this ornamental structure, which now adorns a house on the Peak. These offices were sold and pulled down in about 1881, and the Company moved to the site of the present Central Market. In 1887, however, the ground was sold to the Government, and the Company then moved into its palatial premises at No. 22, Des Voeux Road.

The Hon. E. A. Hewett is the manager of the branch, and, as Hongkong is the headquarters of the Company for the Far East, he superintends and controls the whole of their trade from Penang to Yokohama. He has an office staff consisting of eight Europeans and a number of Chinese and Portuguese.

excellent service maintained by the Norddeutscher Lloyd between Europe and all the chief ports east of Suez dates from the contract with the Imperial German Government for the establishment of mail steamship lines to Eastern Asia and to Australia, that was signed in 1885. The Company had already registered a series of triumphs, extending over nearly thirty years, on the trans-Atlantic run, and it was with the utmost confidence that the stockholders increased their capital by 20,000,000 marks in order to make the extensive preparations demanded by the new contract. The chief point to be considered was regularity, and, keeping that point always in view, orders were placed with a German shipbuilding firm for several new steamers with speeds of from 12½ to 14 knots an hour, and for the reconstruction of several existing steamers with a view to their use in the tropics. The service was inaugurated with the steamer Oder in June, 1886, the occasion of her departure being marked by a patriotic demonstration, attended by representatives from the highest Imperial and Bremen governing bodies, the Chinese Minister in Berlin, and numerous members of the Federal Council and the Reichstag. About twelve months later the Australian mail line was opened with the steamer Salier. The Imperial Government subsidised the new lines on two main conditions—the first that mails should be carried regularly, and the second that the vessels should be available when required for the transport of naval reliefs and military forces. The subsequent rapid development of the Company's interests has been due to the care exercised in seeing that passengers lacked no comforts that could possibly be supplied, and were subjected to no restraints other than those absolutely unavoidable. As time went on there was a gradual improvement in the design of the vessels themselves, until, in those of the Prince class, the problem of the best type of steamer for the tropics was finally solved. They were the first passenger steamers to have the entire cabin accommodation above the upper deck. The next advance, so far as the Far Eastern routes were concerned, was made when the Barbarossa type was designed, each vessel of which class can accommodate 250 first saloon, 300 second saloon, and 1,600 steerage passengers. In 1899 the Government subsidy was increased, and fortnightly sailings to Eastern Asia were substituted for the former monthly sailings, the König Albert opening the new service. The steamers sail from Bremen or Hamburg, and touch at Rotterdam, Antwerp, Southampton, Gibraltar, Algiers, Genoa, Naples, Port Said, Suez, Aden, Colombo, Penang, Singapore, Hongkong, Shanghai, Nagasaki, Kobe, and Yokohama.

For the benefit of the tourist the Company issue "all round the world" tickets, which give a wide choice of routes, and enable the traveller to prolong his stay at any place his fancy may dictate. The growing number of applications for these tickets indicates how well the Company has gauged the popular taste, and how carefully the prices have been adjusted to suit the requirements of people of average means.

By their unbounded enterprise the Company have succeeded in diverting to their freight steamers a large proportion of the Eastern coasting trade to such an extent indeed, that the German flag now claims predominance in Singapore and Bangkok. In view of their constant expansion, the Norddeutscher Lloyd have now established a special bureau of inspection in Singapore and Hongkong.

In European waters the Company have two large and most comfortable steamers running between Marseilles and Alexandria, three between Marseilles and the Black Sea ports, and two between Alexandria and Constanza.

The Norddeutscher Lloyd also operate the Austral-Japan Line, which gives sailings between Japan and Sydney, viâ Hongkong and New Guinea, and in connection with which there is an excellent service of small steamers plying among the lovely islands of the South Pacific.

The fleet is made up of 7 express steamers 4—the well-known leviathans, the Kron-prinzessen, Kaiser Wilhelm II., Kronprinz Wilhelm, and Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse—on the Bremen-New York run, and 3 sailing between Naples, Genoa, and New York; 18 imperial mail steamers, which maintain the East Asian and Australian services, and are sometimes employed on the Atlantic run during the summer months; 30 mail steamers running intermediately on the main lines, or engaged in branch services; 9 freight steamers, used on the Australian or South American routes; 3 comfortable steamers running between Australia and Japan, and calling at German New Guinea ports; and 12 vessels on the stocks—a total of 80 ocean-going vessels. Then there are 50 coasting steamers, and nearly as many river vessels, bringing up the aggregate to 177 steamers, with a total horse-power of 469,200, and a gross register tonnage of 640,391, or, including the steamers now building, of 671,670 horse-power and 754,441 registered tonnage. Two training-ships, on which cadets are thoroughly taught the theory and practice of