Los Angeles herald., 1910-11-05
BIC LINERS DRIVE
OUT TRAMP SHIPS
Swift, Regular Passenger Steam
erS Successfully Bid for the
Ocean Freight Business
MoNoPoLIzE BEATEN TRACKS
Fears New Order viii Abridge
Freedom of Sea Said to
Be GroundIeSS

NEW YORK, Nov. 4.-Down in an
old-fashioned office overlooking the
water front, where the official chron-
icler of the dwindling American mer-
chant marine fleet has his headquar-
ters and where retired sea captains
drop in every day to swap yarns about
the good old days before 40,000-ton
boats and fiVe-day trips across the At
lantic were dreamed of, Sthey were
talking the other day about the pass
ing of the good ship Philadelphia. A
three-line dispatch in the morning pa
pers had conveyed to all the world the
announcement that the sailing ship
Philadelphia, of 1880 tons burden,
built in New York in 1S49, had been
| sent to the scrap heap. To most of the
world, passing for moment over TINS
brief obituary the information had
| been meaningless. A few elderly read
ers perhaps recalled some incident In
the earlier career of the old sailing
ship, her record as one of the crack
boats in the Transatlantic trade sixty
years ago, her adventurous voyages
around the Horn or her hairbreadth
| escapes as a blockade runner in the
Civil War. Only the few gray-haired
men in the old-fashioned downtown
office grasped the chief significance of
fact that the breaking up of the Phila-
delphia marked the passing of the last
full-rigged ship of American registry.
She was the last survivor of that great
fleet of Yankee clipper ships that dot
ted the seven seas with it's sails three
quarters of a century ago, and whose
boast it was that they could outsail or
Outright the ships of any other nation
as occasion ~might require.
TRAMP SHIP GOING
The old Captains discussed the mat
ter a little sadly, as though they felt
a personal loss at the passing of an
| order with which many OF them had
| been identified.
"She had to 60" said one, "just as
all the others have. Sail can't stand
afore steam. The liners took the
cream of the business, and the old
steam tramp came along and gobbled
the rest, and now there's only the odds
and ends of the lumber trade to keep
| a few coastwise schooners going"
Eyes, it was the tramp that done
| it," added another, "but the tramp's
| turn is coming, too. With the lin
ers gettin' bigger and faster all the
| time and running to all sorts OF
| places where they never used to go,
| the tramp has got mighty little show
| left. The liners took away the west
Indian trade, and now they've taken
| the South American trade. Pretty
soon they'll take the rest of the trace
| with Australia and the east, and then
the tramp will be where the sailing
| ship is now-on the scrap heap"
Whether this prediction is likely tc
be realized for many years to come
or not may be q question. There are
many tramp vessels-a few sail, bul
mostly steam-plodding the high seas
still There are many out of the way
corners that the liners are not likely
to penetrate soon where the sharp
eyed wanderer can pick up profitable
| cargo. But 1t is true beyond question
that a decided change has taken place
within the past few years In the han
| ding of ocean traf1c.
THE WORLD is GAMER
The business. is expanding, is being
| organized and systematiZed in accord
ance with the methods that prevail in
| other lines of human industry. The
| great maritime companies are send
| ing their fast boats to ports and over
| routes that formerly had to depend
| upon the casual service of the tramp,
and the tramp is being crowded into
| the background, off the main routes
and into the less desirable trade, just
as the sailing ship was crowded out
| q generation ago when the operation
| of tramp steamships was in its prime
| as, a profitable business. Romance
undoubtedly will be the loser by the
| change, but the commercial interests
of the world will be the gamer for ii
| is resulting in the more rapid and
more economical conduct of the great
business of interchanging the world s
products.
The tramp as a distinctive class OF
ocean steamship is of British origin
/ and it's greatest numbers still hail
from the British isles and from the
Scandinavian countries of northern
Europe. The term was originated to
apply to the freighter of the type that
figures frequently in Kiplings stories
Z of the great expansion of steam nav
igation during the latter half of the
nineteenth century. The early ones
were 1.-The cheapest things that could
be made to float" Cheaply built, they
were as cneaply outfitted from the
sales of refuse naval stores and cheap
/ ly manned by sailors who could not
( get a berth from respectable agents.
/ They disregarded the requirements Of
! the Plimsoll marks and every severe
| gale sent numbers of them to the bot
| tom. Hundreds of them are rotting
| now in the depths of the Atlantic, and,
/ as an old navigator phrased 1t, there
I is a ridge of them extending from
! Bilboa, Spain, to Cardiff and swan
sea, where they ran in the coal ana
iron ore trade" Thus in it's origin the
tramp was a true outcast of the sea,
combining the greed of constituencies
| owners and the recklessness of worth
| less mariners. They represented the
get-rich-quick idea in the development
of ocean trade, but. many of them
were so rottenly constructed that they
defeated their builders purpose by
going to the bottom in the course of
their first few voyages.
FLY FOREIGN FLAGS
Later on the name tramp lost it's
sinister significance and came TO be
applied to any steamship that fol-
/ lowed no regular route, but went
wherever cargo was to be had. 1t is in
this form of a cheaply operated but
substantial vessel that the tramp sur
wives today, picking up the crumbs
that the more aristocratic liner is too
busy or in too much of a hurry to
claim.
The United States has had little
share in the development of the tramp
steamer. It's rise TOOK place in the
period following the civil war; when
the American people were too much
occupied with the problems and profits
of internal development to pay much
attention to the comparatively modest
returns from ocean trade. Few of