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PART I

THE OCEAN

CHAPTER I

THE NATURE OF OCEAN TRANSPORTATION Early history."Navigare necesse"-navigate we must -was a Roman slogan which reveals the early significance of water transportation. But while the use of ships is as old as the ages, its beginnings reaching into prehistoric days, ocean navigation in its proper sense is an achievement of relatively recent times. If we disregard the isolated efforts of a few adventurers, ocean transportation is less than 500 years old. Not until the invention of the compass and the astrolabe helped the early mariner to feel his way through the watery deserts, and not until a more seaworthy type of vessel than the Spanish caravel or Venetian galley had been evolved, could the era of world shipping dawn upon the earth. Before that, shipping had confined itself to the use of streams—the potamic stage—or, if venturing upon the sea, had not dared to go out of sight of the coast-the thalassic stage.

But when the spell was broken, the ocean, instead of being a barrier that "keeps lands apart," that serves nations "in the office of a moat," became a link binding distant peoples together in commercial, intellectual and spiritual intercourse. This was bound to revolutionize the mental attitude as well as the political, social and economic life of mankind.

Economic significance of ocean transportation.-To grasp the economic significance of ocean shipping we must understand the part that transportation in general

plays in our life, and must consider the peculiarities that distinguish water, and, in particular, ocean transportation from land transportation.

To the economist who defines production as "the creation of utilities," transportation is merely a phase of production. The ship, as the railway, is the servant of commerce, and the function of commerce is to use a phrase coined by J. J. Hill-"to bring the goods from where they are to where they ought to be." To do so adds to their value; for the shift of place creates so-called place utilities, and, in most instances, also time utilities.

So far there is no difference between land and water transportation. They serve the same purpose, but differ greatly in the efficiency and cost of the service they render.

Cheapness of water transportation.-Generally speaking, water transportation is cheaper than land transportation. When Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to India around the Cape of Good Hope, he brought downfall and decay to Venice and Genoa, the great mistresses of the Mediterranean Sea, and in their places he enthroned Portugal, Spain, Holland and England. Why? Because the life blood of the Mediterranean trade centres was the commerce with the Orient which travelled over the old caravan routes until it struck the Mediterranean. When opportunity offered to carry the same merchandise by water, though thousands of miles out of the way, the arteries of land transportation were bound to dry up, unable to compete with the cheaper water transportation. To come down to modern times, we reproduce the following figures from Mulhall's Dictionary of Statistics.1. 11899 Edition, p. 301.

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