The importance of shipping
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| Relief on the shipping of cedars, Sargon II Palace at Khorsabad, Persia 8th Century BC. Louvre Museum |
During the
historic period dating back to 5,000 BC, sails were already in use, the first
illustrations of sailing ships are from Egypt, and seafarers began to venture
into the sea. Some of them went in search of new lands and different peoples
with whom they could trade. At first they must have kept to the coastline,
moving along it slowly and fearfully, for by then they would have learnt that
the sea was dangerous and capricious and can turn from calm to storm within
a few hours. According to one story, in 609 BC a Phoenician ship left Suez,
intending to keep the coast to starboard, and four years later arrived back
in Egypt, having sailed right round Africa. But eventually curiosity triumphed
over timidity and at some point seafarers set out for the horizon and kept
going until, the familiar coast had disappeared.
Despite the
uncertainties and dangers involved, it soon became apparent that trading by
sea had advantages over trading by land. Land traders had mountains ranges
and deserts to contend with and had to go miles out of their way to avoid
them: ships could go more or less in straight lines. And ships could carry
more goods more cheaply than horses and camels.
Move forward
a few thousand years, and ships and seafarers had made the world grow smaller
and less mysterious. The Polynesians had explored the Pacific, Norsemen had
taken advantage of a change in climate to cross the Atlantic and discover
Greenland and Labrador. Later, the Portuguese rounded the tip of Africa and
found a new route to the Spice Islands of Asia and Christopher Columbus tried
to do the same by going in the opposite direction and found America instead.
Yet the technology
of the ships themselves evolved only slowly. One of Vasco da Gama's mariners
in 1498 would have adapted very quickly to life on a clipper ship in the 1860s.
Columbus and other explorers of the period used square-rigged ships, which
experience showed to be the best arrangement for long ocean voyages. The
large sailing ships built at the end of the 19th century, more than 500 years
later, still used the same rig. The sailing ships still used in the Indian
Ocean and Asia are built to designs established centuries ago and retained
ever since, because they work.
Even the Industrial
Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries took a long time to affect shipping.
By the end of the 19th century, steel was being used instead of wood for some
ships, but the change was gradual. Steam was used at sea for the first time
in the early 19th century, but did not become widespread for several decades.
Coal costs money, while the wind is free. And coal also took up space that
could otherwise be used for cargo.
Other changes
were equally slow. The sun and stars remained the keys to maritime navigation
for thousands of years. The compass was first used in European ships in the
12th century and is still essential to navigation today. Nautical charts
are still based on the projection developed by Gerard Mercator in 1569. It
was not until the invention of radar that the shipping industry discovered
a better way of detecting danger ahead than the human eye: it was a lookout,
in the crow's nest on top of a mast who told Columbus that land was in sight
- and another lookout on a mast who saw, too late, the iceberg that sank the
Titanic.
Although shipping
was slow to change, the changes brought about by shipping were enormous.
By the end of the 19th century vast areas of the North American plains had
been turned into wheat fields: ships could carry cargoes so cheaply that it
was possible to take wheat from Saskatchewan or Nebraska to Europe and sell
it for less than it cost the local farmers to grow it. In Australia and New
Zealand sheep were reared and their meat and wool was shipped north. Phosphates
and nitrates from the deserts of northern Chile found markets in Europe.
Tea was supplied by China and India. South Wales exported coal. The need
for kerosene to light the lamps of city dwellers led to the growth of a new
trade in oil. And the cities of the world, which bought all these goods,
paid for them in manufactured goods, the bulk of which were sent to their
foreign buyers in ships.
Despite the
political upheavals of the 20th century, world trade continued
not only to grow but also to accelerate. By the beginning of the 21st
century, the prosperity of millions of people - entire countries, in fact
- depends on markets that lie thousands of miles away, often on the other
side of the world. Their ability to supply these markets depends primarily
on ships and the sea.
