The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1900-03-04
OCEAN TRAMPS.
More Than One Half Fly the English
FIng-Germnny Second.

FIn@-Germnny SECOND.
Samuel A. Wood in Ainslee's Magazine.)
For the benefit Of the reader unfamil-
lar with the lingo Of shipping men, it may
be well to define what constitutes a tramp
steamship. Briefly it may be said that a
tramp is a merchant steam vessel that
runs on no regular route, and is ready
for the service of anybody who wants TO
pay her owner a reasonable sum to take
cargo to any port, remote or near, in
the world. The owner of tramp finds 1t
more profitable sometimes to charter her
for a year to a line that needs her pend
ing the building of a new ship. than to
run the chance of getting a series of pay
ing cargoes within that period. Some Of
the old slow, single-screw liners have
eegenerated into tramps and even few
of the transatlantic record holders of
twenty years ago or less have gone car
20 seeking in many ports That might
have been the fate of the old Guion steam
ship Alaska (Which astonished the world
in 1888 by covering the sea space between
Queenstown and New York in six days
and twenty-one hours), II she had not
been a greedy coal consumer, and there
fore too expensive for tramp service
Above all things the tramp must be econ
omical in the use of coal. As the Alas
ka was not fit to he a tramp, and was
too old and comparatively. too slow for
n first-elass liner, all that her owners
could do was to sell her for old junk,
which they did last June. Previous to
that she had been used for some time as
a tenement in an English harbor.
THE tramp tonnage runs into the mil
lions. and over half of 1t is under the ON
nipresent red merchant ensign of Great
Britain. More than three-quarters OF the
tramps are of British build. They fly the
flags of all nations, but the flag does not
always indicate the nationality of the
owners Of the ships. Many tramps over
whose taNrails the Norwegian flag floats
are owned by Americans and some of
the old sea nomads of British registry
are the property of speculative Yankees.
Next in order of number to the British
tramps are the Germans, with the Norwe-
gians close third There are, compare
lively, small number of French. Rus
sian, Italian, Austrian, Swedish, Spanish,
Chinese and Japanese tramps. Nearly all
tramps flying the flags of the last three
nationalities are of British construction.
There are very few American tramp. The
pioneer Yankee craft Of this sort was
launched only year ago. She is the Win
fired and is now doing service as a coast
er for the Morgan line, plying between
New York and New Orleans. She is the
first steamship designed in America espe-
cially for carrying cargo anywhere. There
are other but not many ramps, flying the
Stars and Stripes. They are merely natur-
allied Americans, however. Some acquir-
ed American registry DUNG the Spanish
American war, when they were purchased
by the government for use as transports.
After the war they were sold and their
purchasers. being mostly Americans, put
them under the ensign of Uncle Sam The
Winifred belongs to Miller Bull & Knowl-
ton OF New York, who run line of pas
senger and freight ships between New
York and Porto Rico. She was built by
the Bath Iron Works Company, of Bath,
Me- 1t was ezpec ed that she would do
most of her "tramplng" between ports of
the United Yates and South America. She
Is a steel vessel Of 2,eC0 tons. gross meas
urement and is 3)5 feet long over all.
She is capable of carrying about $500 tons
dead weight, and is ecu pped with triple
expansion engines that were expected 10
give her q speed Of about ten knots an
hour, when loaded She did not develop
this speed by more than two knots, and
her owners have sued her builders for