The reader's guide to the Encyclopaedia Britannica : A handbook containing…

FOR MARINE TRANSPORTATION MEN [Sidenote: Problems of the Near Future] The immediate future of marine commerce cannot fail to be very greatly affected by changed conditions. No one believes that England, Germany, France, Russia, Austria, Japan and China will be able, before the middle of the century, to establish a stable adjustment of the international difficulties which surround them. No one knows what changes the Panama Canal may make in the movement of freights within the first ten years of its operation. No one knows to what industry the United States may next apply the methods by which the country has created the age of steel. Coal and the steam engine may both, within a few years, be displaced as factors in marine transportation. Sweeping tariff changes in the United States, in Great Britain and in Germany may vitally affect the movement of freights. Transatlantic passenger traffic, not only a huge business in itself, but also important, so long as it is sea-borne, in its effects upon transatlantic freights, may become aerial instead of marine. [Sidenote: Technical Subjects] Confronted by the approach of a period so full of changes, the uttermost alertness of outlook is merely elementary prudence on the part of everyone engaged in the business of marine transportation; and the new Britannica reviews all the many fields of knowledge which are of importance in this connection. It supplies technical information regarding the construction of ships, the management of shipping lines, marine engines of every kind, shipboard and waterside appliances for the handling of cargo, the development of harbours and the dredging and embankment of rivers, the building of docks, warehouses and dry docks, ship canals and canal locks, navigation, lighthouses, lightships, buoys, lanes of traffic, marine insurance, cold transport—every conceivable subject with which shipping men are concerned. Articles by contributors in twenty different countries, deal with all the world’s ports, industries, exports, imports and shipping. The financial and legal aspects of the business are exhaustively covered. Tariffs, legislation affecting marine transportation, and such questions of international policy as the command of the sea, the right of search, and the position of neutrals in wartime are discussed by the highest authorities. In addition to all this, the Britannica articles on these and similar subjects contain historical sections which, in conjunction with the articles on the history of all countries, _show how past changes, as sweeping as these which are now anticipated, have affected commerce_. Whether your present position—or the position you are endeavouring to make for yourself—in relation to shipping is such that this coming period of transition promises to affect you favourably or unfavourably, you need to be forewarned and forearmed, prepared to keep what you have or get what you want. [Sidenote: An Outline of Sea Trade] A course of reading should always begin with the study of general principles, in order that in your subsequent and more detailed examination of the field, the relative importance of each fact that you master may be appreciated. The Britannica provides, in the article COMMERCE (Vol. 6, p. 766), a bird’s-eye view of the whole subject of marine transportation. The article would not fill more than 16 pages of this Guide; you can read it (and digest it as you read it, so clear is it) in an hour, and yet it will give you such a grasp of the whole science—for it is a science—of international trade that you will spend another hour in assorting and classifying, in your own mind, a mass of impressions you had received before, at school or in the course of casual reading, impressions which have not been so useful to you as they should have been because they had not been systematically arranged. There is no text book in existence which outlines the subject so fully and clearly as does this one brief article—about one five-thousandth part of the total contents of the Britannica. This article will arouse your interest in the direct relation between commerce, past, present and future, and the progress of civilization. You will realize that the man who has any part in the vast shifting of cargoes from one part of the world to another is distributing ideas and ideals and ambitions as well as commodities, and in the article CIVILIZATION (Vol. 6, p. 403), by Dr. Henry Smith Williams, editor of _The Historians’ History of the World_, you will see how harbours receive and send on to the inlands the influences as well as the manufactures of the more advanced communities. From these articles you should turn to the three great articles which deal with the methods by which these wonderful results are accomplished. These three are SHIP, SHIPBUILDING and SHIPPING, all in volume 24, and equivalent to about 420 or 425 pages of this Guide. These three articles contain hundreds of illustrations, more than forty being full page plates. They are by the most eminent authorities. Sir Philip Watts, director of naval construction for the British Navy, designer of the Dreadnoughts and the Super-Dreadnoughts of the British Navy, as well as of the “Mauretania” and the “Lusitania,” chairman of the Federation of Shipbuilders, and naval architect and director of the warshipbuilding department of Armstrong, Whitworth & Co., Ltd., wrote the articles SHIPBUILDING and SHIP (except the history of ships before the invention of steamships, which is by Edmund Warre, provost of Eton, well-known as a writer on nautical history). The article SHIPPING is by Douglas Owen, lecturer at the Royal Naval War College and author of _Ports and Docks_. In brief, these three articles in length, contents,—both text and illustrations,—and authorship, make up a remarkable book on the subject, valuable either as a text-book or a work of reference for the ship builder, the marine engineer or the student of shipping. [Sidenote: Story of the Ship] Taking the articles separately, the article SHIP begins with a section of nearly 10,000 words on the early development of ships. It suggests that shells floating on the water or the nautilus may first have suggested the use of a hollowed tree-trunk for transportation—the first boat or “ship” (the word comes from the same root as “scoop”) as distinct from a raft. The evolution of boat building is traced,—from dug-out to bark- or skin-covered frame, built like modern racing-shells sometimes ribs first and then skin laid on and sometimes shell first and then ribs inserted. In spite of the great length of the period during which such boats were used—of course they are still used by more primitive peoples,—it is interesting to notice that there were local variations which never became general, such as the outrigger and weather platform, used in the South Pacific and not found elsewhere. Egyptian vessels we may study in the excellent early tomb-paintings still preserved, and one of these shows a ship, not a canoe or large boat, such as was in use from 3000–1000 B. C., fitted with oars and a mast in two pieces which could be lowered and laid along a high spardeck. The Phoenicians did more than the Egyptians to develop ship and navigation, and a Phoenician galley of the 8th century B. C. is shown in an Assyrian wall painting. The Phoenicians probably sailed out of the Mediterranean, to Britain for tin, or even around Africa. Greek ships and shipbuilding we know from a full and varied national literature, from the figures on coins and vases, and from the discovery in 1834 at the Peiraeus, the port of Athens, of records of Athenian dockyard superintendents for several years between 373 and 324 B.C. We have besides descriptions, partly technical, showing the point of view of the engineer or architect, written by Roman authors. The article gives a critical account of the Greek types of vessels. The growth of Roman shipping seems to have been due primarily to political reasons and to have advanced slowly but surely,—practical devices being introduced to solve special difficulties in a field and on an element where the Romans were far from being at home. A five-tiered Carthaginian galley which had drifted ashore served the Romans as a model for their first war-ship, and with crews taught to row in a framework set up on dry land they manned a fleet which was launched in sixty days from the time that the trees were felled. [Sidenote: Mast and Sail] Passing quickly over the remainder of the earlier period, which the reader will find treated in full in the article SHIP, he should notice that the sailing vessel came into use gradually for merchant use, but that galleys (propelled by oars) were long the only type for warships. There were some galleys even in the Spanish Armada of 1588. In the meantime the invention of gunpowder and the development of artillery brought about changes in size and in form, with a notable tendency to more masts and a greater spread of sail. The discoveries of the 15th and 16th centuries and especially the consequent expansion of trade in the 17th century, all tended to increase the size and efficiency of sailing ships. The end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century marked the highest point in the development of American sailing ships. “The Americans with their fast-sailing ‘clippers’ taught the English builders a lesson, showing that increased length in proportion to beam gave greater speed, while permitting the use of lighter rigging in proportion to tonnage, and the employment of smaller crews. The English shipyards were for a long time unequal to the task of producing vessels capable of competing with those of their American rivals, and their trade suffered accordingly. But after the repeal of the Navigation Laws in 1850, things improved and we find clippers from Aberdeen and the Clyde beginning to hold their own on the long voyages to China and elsewhere.” The revolution in marine transportation by the introduction of steam is summed up by Sir Philip Watts as follows: Before steam was applied to the propulsion of ships, the voyage from Great Britain to America lasted for some weeks; at the beginning of the 20th century the time had been reduced to about six days, and in 1910 the fastest vessels could do it in four and a half days. Similarly, the voyage to Australia, which took about thirteen weeks, had been reduced to thirty days or less. The fastest of the sailing tea-clippers required about three months to bring the early teas from China to Great Britain; in 1910 they were brought to London by the ordinary P. & O. service in five weeks. Atlantic liners now run between England and America which maintain speeds of 25 and 26 knots over the whole course, as compared with about 12 knots before the