By Ship To India
On the 24th of September 1842, a great ship of unparalleled size and splendor weighed anchor for her maiden voyage to India. Her name was Hindostan, and she weighed over 2000 tons. Her interior design was revolutionary, with the whole width of her stern being a saloon of lush magnificence, lit by both portholes and wide windows. Two long corridors ran the whole length of the ship between her hull and her cabins, which were in the center of the ship. Her 150 passengers, it was planned, would suffer no inconvenience from the motion of the ship and would be isolated from anything so disturbing as the sight and the sound of the sea!
Hindostan was not only the largest ship yet built for the “P & O,” but the first to sail directly to India via the Cape. Her destination was Calcutta, via the Cape Verde Islands, Ascension, Cape Town, Mauritius, and Ceylon. Ahead of her, the coal ships lay waiting at each of these ports, laden with “black diamonds,” essential for each stage of the voyage. Even so, Hindostan’s bunkers were practically empty before she reached Cape Town, though she managed to enter Table Bay in proud steamer-style, smoke belching from her two funnels.
Two funnels! That was something! Onlookers at every port gazed with awe and admiration at Hindostan’s two funnels. She made Calcutta in 91 days, 28 of which were spent in port and coaling. “P&O” had built this revolutionary ship as a brave gamble, which not only paid off but the Hindostan clipped a month off the two-way mail service to Calcutta.
Before the Hindostan, the route was from England to Alexandria, then by the ancient and primitive 48-mile Mahmoudish Canal to the Nile. Here, a transfer to a Nile steamer, a verminous six-horsepower cockleshell, to Cairo. Thereafter, a 24-hour journey by wagon across the desert to Suez on the Red Sea. At Suez, a disease and bug-ridden slum, an East India Company’s steamer was waiting to carry passengers, via Aden, to Bombay.
There was, as yet, no Suez Canal, and this overland route had to be used. It meant that coal had to be carried by camels from Cairo to Suez. One 6000-ton dump of coal at Suez involved 18,000 camel journeys.
P & O ships of the mid-19th century provided meals of staggering proportions. One menu of the Simla in 1862, provided a choice of sixteen main dishes, ranging from suckling-pig, geese, ducks, beef, and mutton to chicken saute. In order to make such succulence possible, the pigs, sheep, cattle, and poultry had to be carried on board—alive. A further attraction was that all alcoholic drinks were free, including champagne.
In 1852, the Chusan dropped anchor at Calcutta and carried mail to Singapore, China, and Australia. The 19th century wore on, and with it, in 1869, the opening of the Suez Canal leading from the Mediterranean to Suez. This, of course, made the journey to India much quicker and far more convenient, but there was a snag. One type of ship had proved suitable for the England—Alexandria run, and another for the Red Sea and tropics. No “all-purpose” ship for the through trip existed.
P & O decided to build new ships for the voyage to India, and in four years they built no fewer than eighteen! In 1887, they built the world’s finest quartet of sister ships. Britannia, Oceana, Victoria, and Arcadia were 6000 tons, the biggest ever.
By the turn of the century, there was a great fleet of ships plying between England to India then on to the Far East. Today, with the closure of the Suez Canal, ships once again have to sail via the Cape, and surface mail takes an average of three months. When the Canal is re-opened, India, with its growing merchant fleet, will have the opportunity to write a new era in ocean travel.