Abstract
The British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Co., having survived the first threat of serious competition and having widened the scope of its operations through its associated company by opening up trade with the Mediterranean, now turned to the problem of increasing returns from the North Atlantic trade. It was a fact well understood by most Liverpool shipowners that the evolution of the steamship could not have taken place without the increase in demand for cargo and passenger accommodation. It was a prime reason why, in 1860, the Cunard partners decided to enter the steerage business. By that date it had become obvious that the profits accruing from the Government Contract to carry mail and that from high-class cabin traffic and freight, could not sustain expansion; that in fact, despite the hazards of competition, a more lucrative form of enterprise would henceforth lie in the carriage of emigrant traffic across the Atlantic.
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Notes
J. Maginnis, Atlantic Ferry (1900)
E. Hyde, Liverpool and the Mersey (1971)
Charlotte Erickson, ‘The Impact of Push and Pull’, Nordic Emigration, Uppsala University Research Conference 1969, 34–6.
F. E. Hyde, op. cit., Chapter 6, Section I, pp. 95 et seq.
U.S. Treasury Dept., Arrivals of Alien Passengers and Immigrants into the United States from1820 to1893 (1893). The complexity of U.S. immigration statistics is fully analysed in
et seq. The various fluctuations in the level of emigration to the United States given in the chapter are linked to the earning capacity of the various Liverpool shipping companies and do not, therefore, always coincide with the more exact determination of fluctuations derived by Brinley Thomas from his analysis. For a further analysis of the American economy see
W. McCormick and C. M. Franks, ‘A Self-Generating Model of Long-Swings for the American Economy 1860–1940’, The Journal of Economic History, XXXI, No. 2, June 1971, 295–343.
E. Hyde, op. cit., pp. 112–3
L. Hansen, The Atlantic Migration (1961), p. 291.
immigration statistics, Treasury Dept., op. cit., to 1895; Reports of Bureau of Immigration from 1895.
Bastin, op. cit., p. 8, quoting from O. MacDonagh, A Pattern of Government Growth1800 to 1860 (1961), p. 28.
Though this statement refers to emigration through the port of Liverpool, the relative pattern is observable in the figures quoted by Brinley Thomas, op. cit., p. 60.
Brinley Thomas, op. cit., p. 59.
M. L. Hansen, op. cit., p. 292.
Olaf Thorn, op. cit., pp. 8–9.
Ibid.
R. Bastin, op. cit., p. 11, quoting Report on Emigration and Immigration (Foreigners) PP. (1889) X.
Brinley Thomas, op. cit., p. 157.
CP, Reports of directors to be submitted to AGM, 22 March 1894 and 29 March 1895.
A. Jones, American Immigration (1960), p. 187.
Ibid.
Ibid.
CP, Shipping advertisements giving details of voyages, fares and accommodation, 1860–80.
CP, Moorhouse Diary, 1884–6.
CP, Shipping advertisements of voyages, fares and accommodation 1890–1900; BM, No. 2, 1886–93, passim.
R. Bastin, op. cit., p. 25.
Minutes of Evidence taken before the S. C. on Mail Contracts1868; evidence by William Inman Q.1688 et seq., 20 March 1869.
Ibid.; 686.
Ibid.
See Chapter 5, Section I.
VR, OGM, 27 April 1881; ibid., 10 April 1884.
Ibid., 10 April 1884; ibid., 10 April 1885; CP, Moorhouse Diary 1884–5.
VR, OGM, 27 March 1889; ibid., 11 April 1901.
G. Albion, The Rise of New York Port (1815–1860) (1970), p. 327.
Ibid., p. 328.
Bastin, op. cit., p. 57, quoting PP (1882) LXII (135), 2–37.
Ibid.
Liverpool Record Office, Inman Line Official Guide 1878, p. 19.
W. Burgess, Reminiscences of an American Scholar (1934), pp. 86–8.
e.g. Teutonic (1889) twin-screw, steel, 9860 gross tons, 17,500 I.H.P., could carry 586 first and 566 steerage passengers; Campania (1893) twin-screw, steel, 12,950 gross tons, 26,000 I.H.P., could carry 526 first, zoo second and 300 steerage passengers. Teutonic had a speed of 20.35 knots, Campania 21 knots.
Philadelphia Record, 9 August 1903, quoted by R. Bastin, op. cit., p. 60.
J. Maginnis, op. cit., p. 81.
According to J. Kennedy, A History of Steam Navigation (1903), p. 107, the steerage carryings to New York were Guion 27,054 and Cunard 16,871.
Brinley Thomas, op. cit., pp. 117–8.
R. Bastin, op. cit., p. 63.
CP, Directors’ report and accounts for 1890–1911.
CP, Correspondence between Vernon Brown and D. Jardine, 1890–1900 with reference to the operation of specific ships.
Brinley Thomas, op. cit., pp. 93, 160.
Ibid., pp. 156–7.
Ibid., 24–5.
Ibid., 24–30; evidence given by Samuel Cunard.
Ibid., 31.
This was implied in John Burns’s evidence before the Select Committee on Mail Contracts, 20 March 1869 and confirmed in subsequent annual accounts of the Company.
Figures compiled from W. S. Lindsay, A History of Merchant Shipping (1876) IV, 257 and
Kennedy, op. cit., p. 107.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
CP, Moorhouse Diary, ships’ returns 1884–6.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., as shown in the above tables.
Ibid., as shown in the above tables.
Ibid., as shown in the above tables.
See Chapter 4 for rates quoted in the 1890s.
Brinley Thomas, op. cit., p. 380.
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Hyde, F.E. (1975). Cunard and the Emigrant Trade 1860–1900. In: Cunard and the North Atlantic 1840–1973. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-02390-5_3
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