By contrast with liners, tramps were the maids-of-all-work among steamships. They made up two-thirds of the British merchant fleet - and perhaps of all ocean-going steamships. By the end of the [19th] century, the vast proportion of bulk goods that travelled by sea would have crossed the ocean in tramps. Liners ran to a schedule with fixed ports of call. Tramps went wherever they could find a freight contract. A large proportion of British-owned tramps plied in the 'cross-trades', returning but rarely to Britain. Their freights were usually 'rough cargo' of the kind avoided by liners: coal, rails, grain, rice, metal ores. They had to accept the great fluctuations in freight rates as the price of sailing with a holdful of cargo.
The voyage of the Bengal in 1880-81 was not untypical. It sailed from Cardiff in September 1880 for Port Suez at the head of the Red Sea with a holdful of coal. From there it went on to Jeddah (the captain having wisely obtained a chart of the Red Sea), carrying pilgrims for Mecca. There it took on returning hajis bound for Penang and Singapore, where it stopped to refuel. By February 1881 the Bengal was at Yokohama and then Kobe in Japan for a cargo of tea to New York. Rather than sail home round Cape Horn, the captain looked for additional freight, calling first at Shanghai and then at the emigrant ports of Amoy and Hong Kong. There he found a 'cargo' of 'deck-passengers' heading for Singapore, the great migrant destination in South East Asia. By late March the Bengal was at Aden, whence it sailed for Gibraltar via the Suez Canal, and from there to Halifax and New York to deliver its tea. It finally reached London, loaded with American grain, June 1881.
- John Darwin, Unlocking the World: Port Cities and Globalisation in the Age of Steam 1830-1930, London, 2020, p.148-9.
See also:Blog: And after shipwreck driven upon this shore, 7 October 2015
Blog: Repairing the Kaitaki, 23 June 2013
Blog: The lifeblood of a young colony, 12 June 2009
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