THE-P. AND O. STEAM COMPANY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume V, Issue 1517, 5 October 1868, Page 4

THE-P. AND O. STEAM COMPANY.

(From the Dalit) Telegraph) . No persoual share in the fortunes of the magnificent commercial association known to all the world as the "P. and 0„," is needed to give Knglishrhen a deep; interest in its prosperity. Such an organisation as the great ISteam Navigiiition Company is an : integral portion of the greatness and power, of the empire. l Nobody : 'can'calculate the part which it has played in the I civilization of the earth and the growing inter-! est of mankind, by the thousands of voyages I which its ships have made. It is iii itself a] Power —one of the naval powers of the globe ; ! but wholly peaceful, and devoted to the tasks of commerce and traffic, like those other great j lines of steam trade among which it :is one of the 'oldest and, certainly the most' powerful and important.The last survivor of the three bold men who started the enterprise is just dead. He lived, however, to see it'grow from the old days of a few small ships, and one or two tracks of service, to its present imperial dimensions, when it has the finest and swiftest steam !vessels in the world—the Cunardors, perhaps, excepted —and when its chart of service takes up pretty nearly one Hemisphere of the globe. The Peninsular and Oriental Company own now, upon their various seas, no less than fifty ships. The combined burden of these is 88)060 tons, their horse-power 19,420; in addition, they possess ten steam-tugs, and as many transport, store, and coal ships; these last having a carrying capacity of 12,467 tons. Here is a navy in itself, and the directors and shareholders of the company are, as we have styled them, a maritime Power.,of the first-class. They are constantly adding to their list the finest craft which art and science can turn out. Always abreast of History, they have just commissioned the Magdala, of 3000 tons, as well as another of the same size, to be called the Hindostan, and a smaller vessel the Travancore. Theiwear and tear alone of such a fleet is written down yearly at £150,000, and the company is its own underwriter. It sustains, from time to time the loss of costly and beautiful craft ' like the Niphon, which was wrecked last January at Amoy. But as fast as a gap is made, a new ship fills it up, and they have lately contracted afresh with tho Government to deliver a mail every week from Bombay, every : alternato week from Japan, China, and Calcutta, and every fourth week from Australia; dispatching mails to those places in like order. The total distance traversed by the ships of the company, in discharging this prodigious duty, is 1,5<X>,000 miles per annum —about sixty times the circumference of the planet. And the vastness of the service becomes more important and interesting when we reflect that it supplies the flying bridge between the mother country and her Indian dominions; the P. and O. is the principal, though no longer the only tie which binds together the eastern and western portions of the British Empire.

Every Friday the outward mail is swept together here, and carried, either from Marseilles or Gibraltar, towards the' East; and every Monday the homeward mail comes in from the .Oriental or Australian ports. ' Monday has recurred ten times since the new contract was completed, and never once yet has thei London postman failed to start on his early rounds with the exotic letters. If you know the right Monday you may look for your Japan, your, Chinese, your Australian, or Indian correspondence, with as much certainty as if it hadbeen m'erejy posted in town over night. But, to effect such systematic regularity, the managers have to provide an extraordinary combination of voyages and an unrivalled alliance of good seamanship with capable vessels. Thus, to bring the mail of the 18th of May last, seven first class ships had to work together. One came down from Yokohama, a second from Songkong, a third from Sydney, a fourth from Calcutta and Madras —all timed nicely to meet at Point de Galle in Ceylon. Then the vessel from Point de Galle and that from Bombay, joined mails at Suez, and a seventh brought them from Alexandria to Marseilles. Hitherto, this complicated servicc, out and'home, has been exactly performed, and on one occasion the mails were delivered from this amazing network of intercommunications a day before their time. So that, when the telegram announces the " The India, China, and Japan Mails" at Marseilles, the public must do justice to the extraordinary feat thus safely accomplished. To bring all those mail-bags : and boxes together, a score ; of seas have been traversed, from the Yellow Sea and North Pacific through the Malacca Straits, down the Bay of Bengal, across the Southern Ocean, the Sunda Sea, the waters of Sinbad, up through Bab-el-Mandeb and the Red and Mediterranean Seas, the company's keels have ploughed the billows to bring us the letters of business and friendship, of love and hate, of pleasure and 3orrow, of satisfaction, disappointment, and perpetual progress, which pass between the East and the Wast—between this side and'the other of. that "little O, the earth". Strange are the cargoes which come and go, > manycoloured the mariners and workers which carry on this immense reseau of Imperial life. Here yellow-skinned Celestial and' slit-eyed Japanese load the craft with tea and opium ; there diggers bring their gold dust, and squatters their wool; jute and cotton, and shawls arid -rice are " filled in" from Indian " bunders," and bales of precious silk are tumbled by the hundred into the hold. A strange sight it is, to witness, at Suez, by night, the embarkation of the silver for Bombay; the naked Arabs in the torch-light, staggering under the boxes, each of wbich would buy up their whole tribe, singing in barbaric chorus " JTa leita," as they pitch the costly cargo into the tug. A strange sight, too, to see the motley pagan crews of the P. and O. ships paraded on the Sunday morning upon deck— Somali Arab, Madrasse, Calcutta lascar, and Bombay callassi, about six of which are equal to one British A.B. in point of work. ' And a hot business in navigation on the other side of the gate," when the pitch bubbles up in the seams of tho deck, and many a cyclone and monsoonstorm must be expected to interfere with the regular delivery of her Majesty's mails.

We are not of those, therefore, who grudge a fair subsidy and an equitable contract to a company like this. The freight-room of the mails is Dothing very great, .and would not demand any very large allowance; but, when absolute regularity is exacted, it must of course be paid for. If the Peninsular and Oriental vessels might linger a day or two in 'harbour, they would often be able to fill up with valuable cargo and clear the market; but they must start to time. Again, to keep up to contract speed is expensive in coals, often demanding more than a prudent captain, with nothing but commercial purposes in view, would think possible. At the same time the trade between the East and West has fallen off in value, though, so far as these vessels are concerned, not in extent. Cotton does not pay as silk used to do for the carrying; and the bulk of the tea goes home in the China clippers. , Furthermore, the company has a formidable rival in the Messages es Itiiberiales, which now run a double "service to India and China, with the assistance of a very liberal subsidy subsidy from the French Government. Thus it is right and necessary to aid our great line with a state grant; and the dividend cf three per cent, for the half-year just declared proves that the grant is justified. Such an asociation keeping afloat siich a fleet, witti such a "navy-list" of first-rßte comanders, officers, and seamen, is an arm of the empire. It is of national moment to have a peaceful fleet like this maintaining prosperity, serving us both in commerce and war; and when wo look, upon the honors which are heaped upon unimportant lives, it sounds like the irony of facts to hear that all the' commemoration of

the man who mainly founded this' prodigious association—Mr.' Arthur Anderson —has been a resolution at a half-yearly meeting.: