The trans-Pacific
trades in the days of sail
(Updated 12 May 2004)
During
the second half of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th,
the Pacific maritime states of the United States and British Columbia
constituted a regional economy quite similar in size, industries and growth to
Australasia* in broad global terms. The population of Australasia
in 1850 was around half a million and the North-East Pacific maritime region**
only about half that but the growth of both regions was greatly stimulated
during the 1850’s and 1860’s by the Californian and Victorian gold rushes. The
populations of the two regions converged around 1920 at about 6.5 million. For
extended periods there was a rough comparability between the size of San
Francisco - during the 19th century the principal port and major
city of the North-East Pacific coast*** - and one or both of
Melbourne and Sydney, the premier ports and cities of Australasia. Since the
1920’s, California
has taken off to become the fifth economy of the world. The population of the
North-East Pacific maritime region has increased almost eightfold since 1920
and is now double that of Australasia. (For
the population details click here.)
* Historically, Australasia consists of the five
Australian mainland colonies, Tasmania and New Zealand; latterly, New Zealand and
the Commonwealth of Australia.
** The North-East Pacific maritime region defined
here corresponds to the Pacific Division of the West Region defined by the US
Bureau of the Census, with the addition of British Columbia.
*** Los Angeles did
not seriously rival the population of greater San Francisco until the early 1900’s or
overtake it until the 1920’s.
There
were significant trade and shipping links between Australasia and Pacific North
America in the days of sail commencing with migration from Australasia to the
Californian gold rush of 1849 and a reverse flow to the Victorian gold rush of
the early 1850’s from which some participants spilled over to the lesser New
Zealand gold rushes of the 1860’s.
The
two regions were never, of course, each other’s primary trade destinations as
their economies were too similar. Each region conducted most of its trade with
the principal world metropolitan centres of the day. The trade in grain from San Francisco from the
1870’s into the early 20th century was one of the great sailing ship
trades of the later 19th century. It employed an average of around
290 ships a year during the 1870’s and 1880’s, peaking at 559*. By comparison,
an average of 95 sailing ships per year, mostly with cargoes of wool, departed
New Zealand for Britain in the decade 1886-1895, tapering off to barely double
digits some ten years later as steamships took over the wool trade (for the New
Zealand transition from sail to steam refer NZ transition). New South Wales records for the
period 1875-1888 show an average of 47 sailing ships arriving from the United States (both coasts) compared with 129
per year from Britain.
However, departures to Britain
averaged only 44 compared with 109 per year to the United States. Figures for the mid
1870’s show that these were mostly to San Francisco and other Pacific coast
ports and other evidence indicates that this was also the case for the 1880’s
as well but I do not yet have NSW figures for the 1890’s and 1900’s.
* The Down
Easters. American Deep-water Sailing Ships 1869-1920, Basil Lubbock, Brown
Son & Ferguson, Glasgow,
1929, pp 3-5.
My
work on the statistics for the other Australian colonies is less complete than
for New South Wales but also indicates
generally stronger links with Britain
than North America. Over 1876 to 1885,
Victorian sailing ship arrivals from Britain
averaged more than 108 and direct departures to Britain averaged 64 (not
considering 1880 figures which were not available at the time of writing).
Victorian sailing ship arrivals from North-East Pacific ports increased from
less than 20 a year in the late 1870’s to 28 in 1882 and 44 in 1885 but
departures to the USA
were considerably fewer. I do not yet
have later Victorian figures or a comprehensive analysis of the other
(economically much smaller) Australian colonies.
Even
though most of the trade of the two regions originated and was directed
elsewhere, there were significant trade, and therefore shipping, linkages between
the two regions.
California
was a major destination for New South
Wales coal exports at least in the 1870’s and 1880’s.
American and other vessels carried a lot of lumber cargoes across the Pacific
to Australia in particular
over an extended period, even though both Australia
and New Zealand
had substantial forest industries of their own. Figures for the 1880’s indicate
San Francisco
as a major, and the largest single, destination for NSW coal at the time
although Asian nations in combination imported substantially more. I currently
lack comparative Californian statistics to indicate whether what was a major export
from Australia
was large in comparison with other Californian imports. It is probable that the
increasing sailing ship arrivals in NSW and Victoria from the North-East
Pacific reflect the developing lumber trade but I am still at an early stage of
documenting the extent of this trade. However, it was clearly substantial. An
academic article deals with interesting aspects of the subject but lacks the
detailed annual comparative shipping and commodity statistics I seek to put the
lumber trade in a more general Pacific trade context (refer Appendix 1
following).
In
addition to the North-East Pacific coal trade, a substantial sailing ship coal
trade also developed from Newcastle to Chile (and to a lesser degree Peru) in the
1880’s and continued into the 1900’s. From South America, sailing ships sought
local nitrate or guano cargoes but sometimes went north in ballast in search of
Californian grain for Europe or re-entered the Pacific loop with North American
timber to Australasia. New South Wales sailing
ship departures to Chile
were measured mostly in single digits in the 1870’s but during the 1880’s they
increased to some 45 ships a year. I am still at an early stage of obtaining
data for later years on the linkages from Australasia to South
America. However, figures for the years 1904-1910 indicate
Australian coal exports to Chile
and Peru
well above the levels of the 1880’s. They also show the development of
significant wheat exports to Chile
and Peru by the early 1900’s
even though Chile
itself was a wheat producer and exporter albeit on a smaller scale. The limited
shipping statistics included in Volume 1 of the Commonwealth
of Australia Yearbook (1908) show 167
shipping clearances to Chile
in 1904, 168 in 1905 and 232 in 1906 but do not differentiate sail and steam.
The clearances to Peru
for the same years were 28, 54 and 69 respectively. There was also a local coal
trade along the Pacific coast to San
Francisco and importation of coal from Atlantic ports.
The
role of New South Wales
coal exports in both Pacific and global terms warrants elaboration. New South Wales did not
begin to rival the scale of the British coal export industry of the 19th
and early 20th centuries – nowhere came close to that – but for a
substantial period NSW exports were significant in both Pacific and North
American terms. The readily available publication of international historical
statistics* is limited by the use of a statistical series that does not
distinguish NSW coal exports within Australia from those beyond it.
However, more detailed NSW trade statistics for the 1880’s indicate that the
colony’s coal exports beyond Australasia exceeded net United States
coal exports at least to around 1890. US net coal exports increased much more
rapidly than the Australian during the 1890’s and 1900’s although the rapid
parallel growth of Canadian coal imports could have absorbed much of the
increased US exports and may very well have done so**. Apart
from one year (1907) Australian coal exports to the United States in the
1904-1910 period were well down on the levels of the 1880’s as one might expect
given the magnitude of US production and the well-developed transcontinental
rail links (coal exports to the USA at this time may possibly consist
substantially or wholly of exports as bunkers, subject to verification).
However, total Australian coal exports continued to expand after 1890 and
remained at a substantial level through to World War I and beyond. Newcastle
remained one of the great sailing ship ports of the world into the early 20th
century but by the 1920’s the day of sail was well done, coal itself was giving
way to petroleum products, and steam ships themselves were giving way to motor
ships.
* International
Historical Statistics. The Americas
and Australasia, B. R. Mitchell, Macmillan
Reference, 1983 pp 522-23. See International Historical Statistics: Europe 1750-1993, B. R. Mitchell, Macmillan
Reference, 1998 for British and European comparisons.
** If so, Australian coal exports beyond Australasia
may have continued to exceed or rival the level of American coal exports beyond
North America for a significantly longer
period.
New Zealand – Pacific North
America links
New
Zealand shipping statistics show that, compared with Australia, direct sailing
ship links with the North-East Pacific coast ports were few apart from a period
of just ten years from shortly before to shortly after World War I. New Zealand was
self sufficient in the agricultural products of that region and itself a net
exporter of softwood, although a significant importer of hardwood. A colleague
has identified 31 sailing ship passages from Auckland to San Francisco and 51
from San Francisco to Auckland in the period 1845-1900 (by deduction, mostly
before 1886) but the details are not currently available to me. The frequency
with which ships arriving in NZ from elsewhere proceeded to Australia for
cargoes to Pacific North America has yet to be reliably determined although
there were undoubtedly some.
New
Zealand shipping statistics show only 13 sailing ships arriving from the
Pacific coast of the United States in the 25 years from 1886 to 1910 inclusive
and a handful from British Columbia (NZ statistics do not differentiate sail
and steam before 1886). In contrast, a total of 186 arrived during the ten
years 1911 to 1920 – 102 of them in the two years 1918 and 1919 - after which
the numbers fell back to small single digits and eventually to zero. Most
carried lumber cargoes but petroleum products and possibly other cargoes were
also involved. Most of the ships were American but other nationalities were
involved. New Zealand
ships accounted for 11 out of a total of 57 in the peak year of 1918.
Barely
half of these 186 ships made the direct return journey for lack of a local
return cargo – many that did return direct, did so in ballast. Most of the
others went on to Australia
or elsewhere in search of cargo.
Some
ships that set out from North America for New Zealand in this period never
arrived, some arrived never to leave and some left again never to reach their
intended destination. The barquentine Lyman
D. Foster came under NZ ownership in 1917 and went missing out of Tonga two years
later. The 4-masted schooner Winslow
was a war casualty at the Kermadec
Islands in 1917*.
Wreckage came ashore near East Cape in 1918, believed to be from the schooner Bertha Dolbeer which had left San
Francisco with a cargo of benzine, gasoline and redwood for NZ**.
The barque Aryan was lost by fire in
December 1918 on a return passage from Wellington
to San Francisco.
The barquentine Retriever* was hulked in Auckland in 1920 after being abandoned in mid-Pacific and
eventually left her remains on an upper harbour mudflat. The five-masted
schooner Columbia River was wrecked
on the Kermadec Islands
in September 1921 on a return passage from Auckland
to Portland, Oregon. The 4-masted schooner Cecilia Sudden with a cargo of coal and
kerosene aboard was lost by fire near Auckland
on the same day that the Columbia River
was wrecked at the Kermadecs, having put into Auckland
for medical assistance on a passage from Newcastle
to Callao. The
4-masted schooner Forest Home came
under NZ ownership after seizure for debt after she arrived in Wellington
in 1922 with lumber from Vancouver.
She served locally under sail and as a hulk and was eventually abandoned on a South Island beach. The 4-masted schooner Columbia brought
a cargo of lumber to Napier in 1926 and never left NZ waters, being hulked in Auckland.
* I have not
definitely established that the Winslow
and the Retriever were actually on
their way to or from New Zealand
or Australia.
** For an account of the evidence concerning the
identification of the Bertha Dolbeer, refer to NAmericanlinks.
For
a comprehensive list of North American ships that came under NZ ownership or
otherwise ended their days in NZ refer to North American
list.
New Zealand was a frequent port of call for American whale ships from the 1830’s to
the 1860’s but whaling industry links are not considered here. In any case, the
whaling ships were predominantly based at New England ports although they may
well have also regularly frequented San Francisco
and Hawaii.
Foreign voyages by American ships in 1900
A unique analysis of the foreign
voyages of American ships in 1900 contained in the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Navigation for 1901* provides
a benchmark for Pacific voyaging by American sailing ships. This analysis
documents the voyages of 902 American sailing ships and 146 steam ships that
made a complete deep-sea foreign passage in 1900 of more than 150 miles. Well
over half the ships were schooners that voyaged mostly in the Atlantic even
though short passages to and from Canada,
Newfoundland, Cuba
and Mexico
were deliberately excluded from the analysis and all coastal voyaging was
excluded.
* published by the Bureau of Navigation, U.S. Treasury Department,
Government Printing Office, Washington, 1901, (pp 331-381).
The
Report’s analysis identifies 86
American sailing ships that collectively made upward of 122 passages between Australia and the Pacific coast of North America and/or Hawaii in 1900. That figure represents an
undercount because the analysis includes only passages completed within 1900 so
passages that commenced in 1899 or finished in 1901 (which would properly be
included in statistics of shipping entrances and clearances) are not counted.
Passages by non-American ships on the same routes would further increase the
numbers. American sailing ships also made a significant number of
inter-colonial passages within Australasia as they were quite likely to deliver
lumber to one colony and then proceed in ballast to Newcastle for a coal cargo. Further analysis
of Australian statistics will indicate more complete figures but in the
meantime the figure of 122 passages in 1900 provides a lower level benchmark.
The
86 sailing ships concerned totalled just under 21,000 tons. They consisted of
49 barques and full-rigged ships (out of a total of 233 still operating under
the American flag from both coasts), 18 barquentines (out of 140) and 19
schooners (an as yet undetermined but possibly significant proportion of those
of three or more masts operating out of Pacific Coast
ports at that time).
A
further nine square-riggers made passages between New York
and Australia or New Zealand in
1900. The Report also identifies
sailing ship passages wholly within the northern Pacific but I am not focusing
on the wholly northern Pacific trades as I have no better access to information
about them than anyone else and worse access than American researchers whom I
hope will document that aspect. Jim Gibbs, Pacific
Square-Riggers, Schiffer Publishing Company, West Chester, Pennsylvania,
1987, 195-206, lists record passage times on several routes many of them across
the northern Pacific.
Appendix 1: An academic article on the Pacific
lumber trade
The
subject of “Technological Change from Sail to Steam: Export Lumber Shipments
from the Pacific Northwest, 1898-1913”, G. R. Henning and Mary Henning, International Journal of Maritime History,
II, No. 2, pp 133-145, is evident from its title. This article is based on
detailed voyage information at the individual ship and passage level from
“various [North American] lumber trade journals” of the period of which the
authors cite the Pacific Lumber Trade
Journal (1896 and 1913), and the West
Coast and Puget Sound Lumberman (1898). The article establishes that the
proportion of cargoes carried by steam rose from three percent in 1898 to 68
percent in 1913. It explores the hypothesis that steam was introduced earlier
on the shorter routes and examines the effects of various factors on the choice
of sail or steam. It does not include detailed local or individual ship level
information given its abstract analytical and academic purpose.
I
am potentially interested in obtaining photocopies of pages in the source journals
(or any others) covering relevant ship movements from this region to Australasia during and beyond this period. Also of
interest are trans-Pacific sailing ship movements not directly related to
lumber cargoes. (An earlier attempt to contact the authors was unsuccessful.)
Further information sought
I’d
like to get access to the additional trade and shipping statistics necessary to
further explore and develop the basic model of trans-Pacific trade in the days
of sail outlined above. I can access the Australian and New Zealand end but particularly need access to
statistical reports concerning shipping arrivals and departures and imports and
exports at the US state
level and for British Columbia
on affordable terms. Even when I can obtain all available Australasian records
it is necessary to aggregate as many as seven separate sets of records, not all
of which are compiled identically, or all differentiate the American and
Canadian east and west coasts or necessarily differentiate sail and steam. Even
with complete Australasian statistics for movements in both directions, North
American benchmarks are necessary to indicate how significant those flows are
in Pacific North American terms and are also of interest in their own right.
This is a long-term project for me but it could take years to establish all
necessary contacts so I’m flagging it now. I’m also interested in documentation
of the relative degrees of integration of British Columbia into the eastern Canadian
and Pacific American economies in the second half of the 19th
century and the early 20th.
I
scarcely know where to start with the relevant historical Chilean and Peruvian
statistics but if you do and can correspond in English, I’d like to hear from
you.
If
anyone is working on sailing ship movements between Pacific North America and China, Japan
and the Philippines
I would be interested in how the scale of these trades compares through time
with the south Pacific trades that I’ve discussed here. (It is not necessarily
essential to commence at the level of individual ship movements as statistics
at the US
state level should indicate this.)
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