WHAT THE OCEAN MEANS TO GREAT BRITAIN 325 



rapidity, while its distribution among the waiting 

 millions at home is only comparable to the melting of 

 snow under a blazing sun. Other ships carry whole 

 herds of cattle, a trade that from being at first fall of 

 cruelty has now by dint of careful planning of ships 

 become far easier for the cattle to bear than long 

 journeys by rail, or driving them along country roads. 

 Of course, there has been a vast difference between the 

 types of ships employed in the various trades. For the 

 mighty floating hotel carrying a couple of thousand 

 passengers and a crew numbering several hundreds, a 

 vast amount of space was necessary for passenger and 

 crew accommodation, for the enormous installation of 

 boilers and machinery necessary to drive a mass 

 between twenty and thirty thousand tons in weight 

 through the waves at a rate of from eighteen to 

 twenty-five miles an hour, and for the two or three 

 thousand tons of coal necessary to energize those 

 engines. Such vessels in themselves represent a 

 capital of from a quarter to three-quarters of a million 

 pounds sterling, without counting the cost of their 

 upkeep ; and when it is remembered that some shipping 

 companies, such as the White Star, the Cunard, the 

 P. & 0., Koyal Mail and Orient Lines, will own and 

 run from half a dozen to twenty or thirty of such 

 vessels, it will easily be understood to what enormous 

 dimensions the shipping trade must have grown. And 

 yet the great passenger lines, of which I have only 

 named a few in the first rank, represent only a very 

 small proportion of the immense number of British 

 ships afloat, and being added to at the rate of a million 

 tons or so each year. 



The cargo-carrying steamer of economically slow 



