Principles of ocean transportation by Johnson Emory Richard 1864- & Huebner Grover Gerhardt 1884-

Author:Johnson, Emory Richard, 1864- & Huebner, Grover Gerhardt, 1884-
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Transportation, Shipping, Merchant marine -- United States
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton
Published: 1920-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

ORGANIZATION OF OCEAN TRANSPORTATION 365

made possible the rapid expansion of the maritime activities of America. The increasing trade of the people of the United States brought about both a technical improvement in shipping and a higher degree of organization in the service of ocean transportation.

The first result of the growth of the foreign trade of the United States during the latter part of the eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth was to develop the great merchant trader, such as Stephen Girard, of Philadelphia, and Elias Hasket Derby, of Salem, Mass. Girard was active in commerce from 1780 to 1812, and lived until 1831; Derby died in 1799. The manner of carrying on ocean commerce in Derby's time is well described by W. L. Marvin in his book on The American Merchant Marine, in the following passage (p. 198) :

Those old Salem merchants were shipowners, and something more. They did not, as a rule, carry freight for others. When Mr. Derby or Mr. Gray or Mr. Peabody built a ship he calculated to use it in his own mercantile ventures. He would furnish it with an outward freight, and the sale of this procured a homeward cargo, which the merchant would dispose of from his own warehouses. Mr. Derby owned about 'forty vessels, and the largest of them made forty-five voyages for him to India and China. Most of his enterprises were very successful.

The ships operated by Derby and the other merchant traders of his day were small sailing vessels of 300 tons and less. Such vessels could readily be built and fitted out with crew and cargo by an individual with but a small amount of capital, who would have been unable to own and operate a number of vessels and to engage in the carrying service as distinct from the business of a trader. Traders who had insufficient capital to provide themselves with vessels individually, purchased ships cooperatively, and they, too, operated them primarily in connection with their own trading ventures. Sometimes the owner or a "super cargo" would go with the vessel to conduct the trading at the end of the voyage in far-away ports; often, too,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.