The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [157]
These early steamers were not the efficient behemoths of the late nineteenth century. They were small, dirty, inefficient and expensive. Many of them still used sail when the winds were favourable, relying on steam only in cases of necessity. In 1867 Captain Sulivan was in the Royal Navy sloop Daphne. The ship struck a gale as it entered the Indian Ocean past the Cape of Good Hope. An officer fell overboard, but the ship was unable to go back to pick him up, as even though 'the fires were lighted with the view of using steam if possible, but it could not be up for nearly two hours.'37
The early steamers with single combustion engines required vast amounts of coal. They carried as much as they could, but this meant that they were limited to carrying only mail and passengers, there being no room for freight. In 1856 Ida Pfeiffer went from the Cape to Mauritius in a new steamer, of 150 horse power. It cost a massive £500 a month to run, not counting the cost of coal, which was very considerable. The ship gobbled up more than a ton every hour, yet coal cost £2/10s a ton at the Cape.38 This steamer was relatively efficient, for some of the early steamers used up to 50 tons of coal a day. The consequence was frequent stops at places on the way – Cape Town, Aden, Galle – to pick up coal. In the 1850s Galle imported 50,000 tons of coal a year, most of it coming from far-away Cardiff. In these early days much of the coal was taken to these depots strung around the Indian Ocean in sailing ships, thereby demonstrating that this was still an age where steam and sail were reciprocal and indeed needed each other. In 1857 only one-third of all the ships which called at Sri Lanka were steam driven, and these carried only mail and passengers.39
Nevertheless, even at this time steam did offer predicability and faster and cheaper passages. Even in the 1850s one could travel from England to Mumbai, going overland through Egypt to reach Suez, for as little as £105, while the Cape route cost £1,000, and the Egypt route with sailing ships £350.40 Two factors acted to ensure the triumph of steam: government assistance, and further technological innovation. We will look at the matter of subsidies first.
Why did an ostensibly laissez-faire English government provide subsidies? Sir Charles Wood, the Secretary of State for India in 1866, put it in a nutshell: 'Increased postal communications with India implies increased relations with that country, increased commerce, increased investment of English capital, increased settlement of energetic middle-class Englishmen; and from all these sources, the wealth and prosperity of England... are greatly increased.'41
Britain already had naval dominance in the Indian Ocean after 1815. As the empire expanded over the century, it was essential to have means of regular communications between its different parts, so that trade could flourish, security be enhanced, and troops and war material be moved as needed. The device used to ensure this was mail contracts. British steamship lines, pre-eminently P&O, were given large subsidies to carry mail from one British colonial port to another. This in turn ensured the existence of a large merchant marine. The ramifications are obvious. A large merchant marine meant a reserve army of trained seamen who could be used in naval ships in time of war. Indeed, the merchant ships themselves could act as troop carriers. Troops from one part of the empire could be moved to conquer another area. The British shipbuilding industry was in effect subsidised at one remove.
The actual subsidies were paid by the Admiralty, and later the Post Office. The first was to the EIC in 1835 to provide a mail service between Suez and India. The P&O line was formed in 1840, and immediately got a contract to take mail to Egypt. Later it got subsidies for the longest blue water routes in the Indian Ocean. The subsidies even continued after steamships became more efficient and able to carry cargo at a profit. Later in the century they were still there, now being used