The Victorian Era

How Did Victorian Ships Change Trade

Article · Science & Invention · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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Victorian ships changed the world’s trade by reducing the time, the cost, and the risk of moving goods across the oceans. The new steamships, with their iron and steel hulls, their screw propellers, their compound engines, and their vast carrying capacity, displaced the wooden sailing ship from the long-distance trades, shrank the journey times between the continents, and made possible the global trade in raw materials, manufactured goods, and agricultural produce that defined the Victorian Economy and Industrialization. By 1890, steam tonnage in British shipping exceeded sail tonnage for the first time, and the British merchant fleet of 1900, with over 9 million tons of shipping, was larger than that of the rest of the world put together. The story of the Victorian ship is part of the wider history of Transport in the Victorian Era, of Victorian Engineering Marvels, and of the British Empire in the Victorian Era that the new ships bound together.

The Steamship Takes Over

The steamship had been developed in the early nineteenth century, and the first regular transatlantic steamship service was the Cunard Line’s paddle steamer service from Liverpool to New York, with the four-funnel paddler Britannia, which made the westward crossing in 14 days 8 hours in July 1840. The first steamship to cross the Atlantic from Britain was the Sirius, which made the crossing from Cork to New York in 1838, just beating Brunel’s Great Western on the same route. The early steamships were small, inefficient, and expensive to run, and they were used chiefly for the carriage of mail, of passengers, and of high-value goods. The wooden hulls of the early ships were soon replaced by iron, and the side paddle wheels were gradually replaced by the screw propeller, which was more efficient in heavy seas.

Brunel’s Great Western, 212 feet long and 1,340 tons, was the first steamship to cross the Atlantic on a regular schedule, and Brunel’s Great Britain of 1843, the first iron-hulled, screw-propelled ship to cross the Atlantic, set the pattern for the next half-century of steamship design. The Great Britain has been preserved in the dry dock at Bristol since 1970. The 1,710-ton Persia of 1856 was the first iron screw steamer of the Cunard Line, and the Great Eastern of 1858, Brunel’s last ship, was 692 feet long, of 18,915 tons, and was, by tonnage, the largest ship in the world for nearly forty years. The Great Eastern was a commercial failure as a passenger ship, but it was the cable-laying ship that laid the first successful transatlantic telegraph cable in July 1866, and it is one of the great Victorian Engineering Marvels of the period.

The Technology of the Steamship

The Victorian period saw a long series of improvements in the design of the steamship. The compound engine, developed by the Scottish engineers John Elder and Charles Randolph in the 1860s, used the steam twice, once in a high-pressure cylinder and once in a low-pressure cylinder, and it produced a substantial increase in efficiency. The triple-expansion engine, developed in the 1870s and 1880s, used the steam three times, and it was even more efficient. The steel hull, developed in the 1870s, was stronger and lighter than the iron hull, and it allowed the construction of much larger ships. The water-tube boiler, developed in the 1880s, was safer and more efficient than the old fire-tube boiler, and the steam turbine, developed by Charles Parsons in 1884 and first installed in his Turbinia of 1894, would dominate the steamship of the twentieth century.

The transition from sail to steam was gradual. The famous tea clipper Cutty Sark, built by Scott & Linton of Dumbarton in 1869 for the firm of Jock Willis, was the last of the great clippers, designed for the annual race to bring the first crop of the new season’s Chinese tea to the London market. The Cutty Sark made the passage from Sydney to London in 73 days in 1885, but the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 had already begun to render the clippers obsolete on the China route. The Thermopylae, the Ariel, the Leander, the Stornoway, and the Lammermuir were other great clippers of the 1870s and 1880s, and the last tea race was sailed in 1872, when the Cutty Sark and the Thermopylae sailed from Shanghai together. The Cutty Sark has been preserved at Greenwich since 1954, and is one of the great monuments of the age of sail.

The Great Shipping Lines

The Victorian period saw the foundation of the great shipping companies that dominated the world’s trade. The P&O Line, founded in 1837 by Arthur Anderson and Brodie McGhie Willcox, dominated the route to India and the East. The Cunard Line, founded in 1839 by Samuel Cunard, the Nova Scotian businessman, was the first of the great transatlantic lines, and it operated a fleet of wooden paddle steamers on the Liverpool to New York route. The White Star Line, founded in 1845 by Henry Threlfall Wilson, competed with Cunard, and the two lines dominated the North Atlantic trade for the rest of the century. The Inman Line, founded in 1850 by William Inman, was the first to use iron hulls and screw propellers. The Allan Line, founded in 1854 by Hugh Allan, dominated the route to Canada. The Anchor Line, founded in 1856 by Thomas and James Nicol, dominated the route to the Mediterranean. The shipping lines of the Victorian period were the largest businesses in the world. The Cunard Line, the White Star Line, the P&O Line, and the other great lines had assets of millions of pounds, fleets of dozens of ships, and workforces of thousands of men.

The Opening of the Suez Canal

The opening of the Suez Canal in November 1869 was a turning point in the history of the Victorian ship. The Canal, which had been promoted by the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps and was built between 1859 and 1869 by Egyptian forced labour under the khedive Ismail, shortened the sea route from Britain to India by some 3,000 miles, and it transformed the trade routes of the world. The first ship to pass through the Canal was the P&O steamer Delta, and the Canal was soon used by the great shipping lines as a standard part of the route to the East. The opening of the Canal led to a long series of improvements in the design of the steamship, and the new generation of ships of the 1870s and 1880s were designed specifically to use the Canal. The opening of the Canal also had a long series of effects on the trade of the world. The route to India, to China, to Japan, to Australia, and to the East Indies was shortened, and the volume of trade on these routes increased dramatically. The British Empire in the Victorian Era was bound more closely together, and the new ports of the East, from Bombay to Singapore to Hong Kong to Yokohama, became great commercial centres.

The Global Trade

The Victorian ship made possible the global trade in raw materials, in manufactured goods, and in agricultural produce that defined the Victorian Economy and Industrialization. The new ships brought the wheat of the American Midwest, the Canadian prairies, the Australian colonies, and the Russian steppe to the British market. They brought the wool of Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa to the mills of Yorkshire. They brought the cotton of India, Egypt, and the American South to the mills of Lancashire. They brought the rubber of Brazil, the gold of California and Australia, the tea of India and China, the coffee of Brazil, the cocoa of West Africa, the sugar of the West Indies, the meat of Argentina, and the tin of Bolivia.

The global trade of the Victorian period was carried on a vast fleet of British ships. By 1900, the British merchant fleet was the largest in the world, with over 9 million tons of shipping, more than the rest of the world put together. The shipping industry employed hundreds of thousands of British seamen, and the ports of Liverpool, London, Glasgow, Southampton, Hull, Cardiff, and Newcastle were among the great commercial centres of the world. The story of the British merchant fleet is part of the wider history of the Victorian Economy and Industrialization, and it is one of the central facts of the Victorian Era: A Complete Historical Overview.