The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1904-07-11
WATERY WASTE SELDOM
TRAVERSEO BY VESSELS

we'll as on the dry land-vast waters
upon which the eye of man has never
rested and which seldom if ever have
been crossed by the ships of commerce.
The waves on these wastes have never
been parted by the Prov of a sailing
vessel or dashed by the propeller of a
steamer; immense solitudes where the
flap of a sail is never heard nor the
strident cry of siren; veritable
deserts, whose silence is only broken
| by the bowling of the wind and the
roar of the waves, which have been
vainIy pursuing one another since the
! day of creation.
These deserts lie forgotten betwixt
the narrow ocean highways travelled by
vessels. In such waste places of the
sea. a disabled ship, driven out of its
course by a hurricane, may drift for
months, tossed by the ceaseless ground
swell without being able to hail as
sistance. Her only chance of escape is
the possibility that some oceanic cur
rent may drag her into a more fire.
quented region.
1t is generally supposed that by rea-
son of the universal increase of mari
time traffic the sea is everywhere fur
rowed by vessels. This is a mistake
Ocean commerce has grown enormous
ly during the last half century, but
the development is due to the substi-
tuition of steam navigation for the old
fashion of sailing vessels. When the
first steamer began to churn the water
with its paddle wheels the sailing fleets
ceased to increase. With the advent
of the screw propeller they began to
decrease The gradual but constant
disappearance of sailing ships made
the ocean more of a desert than before.
Sailing vessels had their established
routes in accordance with winds. cur
rent and seasons. The gaps between
the routes taken by the outward bound
and inward bound ships were often
considerable. Moreover, the capricious
elements not infrequently played the
mischief with nautical instructions,
and as a result the field of operations
for ocean shipping was vastly ex-
banded.
This is no longer true today. The
liner goes straight ahead, in defiance
of wind and wave, the ports between
commercial centres, whittier come
numberless railways, serving as pro-
longations of the lines of navigation.
Freight cars carry their loads Of mer-
chandise to the lesser ports and the
cities of the interior. The railway
ports have killed coastwise navigation.
The ocean highways are therefore
anything but numerous. The most fire.
quented Of oceans is the Atlantic.
Apart from the polar seas we see in
its northern part there is only one des-
ert zone-a dreary waste of waters
between the routes from Europe to the
United States or Canada and those
from Europe to the Antilles. In the
south, between the routes from South
coast and the routes from South Afri-
ca. extends a desert occasionally ira
versed by the steamers of the lines
from Cape Town and Mozambique,
which, when the coffee season is at its
height in Brazil cross the Atlantic to
Rio Janeiro or Santos.
The Indian ocean is frequented only |
in the north, by liners out Of India |
and Indo-China and a little in the
west by liners from Oceania, which |
call at Colombo and then make straight
for Australia. Two lines, each with
a steamer month, follow a slender
lane from Australia TO Cape Town
The Pacific is the Sahara of the great
seas. Saving only the steamships from
the far east to California and British
a line from sydney to San
Francisco. and a one-horse line with
four or FIVE times a year, be-
tween Tahiti and the United States
save for these mere ribbon-Hhe streaks
the Pacific is a desert. only a few
native canoes ply daringly from island |
to island in archipelagoes grit round |
with coral reefs, veritable ocean grave
yards. the terror of seafaring men.
How many ships of which we have |
received no tidings, and of which not |
so much as a drifting spar has ever
been picked up. have been dragged by |
irresistible winds into those solitudes |
of the South Pacific. no one will ever
know. for the ocean guards its prey
full well.