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“Globalisation” is a term often applied to our own time but the process was in full swing a century and a half ago. The 19th Century saw a vast increase in seaborne trade and passenger-transportation, as new export markets were opened and as economies expanded at an unprecedented rate, not only in Europe and North America, but in newly-emerging nations such as Australia and New Zealand. Whether by sail, steam or a combination of the two, merchant shipping was a key factor in triggering and sustaining growth as hitherto inaccessible resources and markets were opened for the first time, and mass-migration to new opportunities overseas was facilitated.
Ever more-efficient and powerful steam engines and the introduction of iron, and later steel, construction were major drivers. Though the end was in sight for the wooden commercial sailing vessel, there was to be a long twilight – lasting up to and beyond World War 1 – during which such vessels reached a hitherto undreamed level of efficiency and capacity.
The more one reads about this period, the more that one is struck by the very large numbers of shipping disasters, and the consequent loss of life. Sea travel was hazardous, very hazardous. Marine technology may have advanced very significantly in some areas but the absence of radio – which would not emerge in a practical form until the early 20th Century – meant that once a ship had sailed over the horizon its ability to signal for help in an emergency was restricted to visual range only. Once alone on vast expanses of ocean the chances of securing aid from another vessel were close to zero. A further weakness lay in the absence of loading and operational standards – the “Plimsoll Line” marking on a ship’s side, specifying the maximum draughts to which ships could be laden, was not to become compulsory for British-registered ships until 1876. Foreign ships visiting British ports were not required to comply until 1906. Similar problems related to provision of life boats, and it was only after the Titanic catastrophe in 1912 that this concern was finally addressed comprehensively.
Samuel Plimsoll (1824-1898) is one of the forgotten heroes of the 19th Century and for many years he campaigned inside and outside Parliament for compulsory standards of marine safety. One of the cases which drew attention to this need was provided by the loss of the London in 1866, a disaster which received wide publicity in its time, and which also casts an interesting spotlight on Victorian values and behaviour in extremis.
British MP, Samuel Plimsoll.