THE PENINSULAR AND ORIENTAL STEAM COMPANY.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 810, 7 May 1853, Page 4

THE PENINSULAR AND ORIENTAL STEAM COMPANY.

[The following speech made by Mr. Anderson, at the lunch after the launch of the Bengal, give* an interesting account of the rite of this important company.} The Chairman proposed, "Prosperity to the Peninsular and Oriental Company," coupled with the health of Mr. Arthur Anderson, the managing director of the company, and lately M.P. for Orkney and Shetland. Mr. Anderson, in responding to the toast, stated the following facts relative to the origin, progress, and operations of the company. He said, the origin of the company might be dated about the close of the year 1835, when a few private persons hired one or two steam vessels, and ran them occasionally to Lisbon and Gibraltar, in order to test the feasibility of establishing a steam communication with the Peninsula. They at first lost about £500 in each trip they made ; which, however, did not discourage them from persevering ; and they resolved to construct some vessels of an improf ed description for establishing the communication. He would not then dwell on the various difficulties with which the originators of the enterprise bad to struggle, but would merely state the fact that before it became remunerative the parties concerned bad sustained t loss to the amount of something upwards of £30,000. Such was the origin of the company, and he would now come to its present position. It had now in active service and in progress of construction a fleet of 41 steamships, of the aggregate tonnage of 52,0<?0 tons, and of about 16,000 horse power of machinery, and being in value upwards of £2,000,000 sterling. (Hear, bear.) The company was incorporated by Royal charter on the 3 1st of December, 1840, and since that time yielded a dividend of 7 per cent, for the first two or three years, and, since then, of 8 per cent, to its shareholders. The annual distance which its ships navigate in carrying on the various communications in which it is engaged amounts to very nearly 1,000,000 of miles— a distance which be need scarcely tell any schoolboy would be nearly equal to 50 times the circumference of the globe. The ships required for the extended com munication, to commence the ensuing year, would require about 3000 seamen, &c., to navigate them ; and, in addition thereto, it gave employment to 60,000 tons of sailing ships and 3000 seamen in the transport of coals to its various stations at home and abroad. Its annual expenditure for current disbursements and outlay of capital for new ships is now not less than £1,000,000 sterling, and may be estimated to afford subsistence to 100,000 persons employed and their families. (Applause.) Looking to the magnitude and importance of its operations, as shown by these facts, he (Mr. Anderson) thought he was not arrogating too much in claiming lor the company the rank of the first of private maritime enterprises which the world had yet seen. He would now briefly adtert to the means by which it bad attained to its present eminence. Reports had at various times been industriously circulated through the public press that it had been indebted for its employment in the contract postal service to some secret influence or jobbery with the Government or Ministers. To sttch reports be would give, from his personal knowledge, the most unqualified denial ; and the facts be was now about to state would, he felt confident, clearly show that the company bail accomplished the great piblic improvements in that service which it bad been the means ef effecting, not under the favour of, bul in spite of, the various Governments which had been in power since its formation. (Hear, hear.) The first postal service undertaken was that with the Peuiusula. It superseded * most irregulai communication by Admiralty sailing packets, under which the mails were frequently three weeki i on their transit between Lisboa and Falmouth, while the steamers of the Peninsular Company were bringing private letters in four to five days, The originators of the Company went to the then i Government, and represented that tbey were ready to give the public a greatly improved postal communication, as compared with that existing, and at a less expense. They were at first repulsed in a rather cavalier manner, but after some months the dissatisfaction and remonstrances oi the merchants and others concerned rose to that height that the Government were forced to take sotue steps to improve it. The Peninsular Company were then invited to send in a plan and proposals for a steam communication. They did so. The plan was readily adopted as a vast improvement, but the execution of it was put up to public competition. (Hear.) Competitors appeared in the owners of other steam vessels, who tendered against the Peninsular Company, Their terms and means were not so advantageous to the public as those of the Peninsular Company, and, in the usual practice, the contract ought to have been at once assigned to the Peninsular Company. Such, however, was not the case. The unsuccessful party induced the Government to adopt the very unusual course of postponing their decision, and after the terms of the Peninsular Company were, no doubt, known to those competitors and many others, to advertise again for tenders. The parties having been again unable to submit such terms as were satisfactory, the contract was at last assigned to the Peninsular Company, and thus was effected in September, 1837, the existing steam postal communication with the Peninsula, at a cost of £6,000 per annum less, than that of the old inefficient Admiralty sailing packets. Was there any favor, he would ask, shown to the company in this transaction ? (Hear, hear.) The next postal service undertaken by the company was the conveyance of the East Indian mails to and from Alexandria, and wuich commenced in September, 1840. That service was also previously in the haods of the Admiralty, and the arrangements for it bad fallen into a state of great inefficiency and confusion. Oa invitation, the now designated Peninsular and Oriental Company submitted a plan for superseding the then Government arrangements and small Admiralty packets of 140-horse power by a direct conveyance by vessels of 450-horse power, .„, { . mv double tbe speed of the Admir&liy

packets. This was also put up to public com* petitioD, and the company only obtained tbe execution of their own plan against four other competing parties, because their terms were nearly £4000 per annum less than those of either of the other ptrties. In this transaction he (Mr. Anderson) thought he might say the company were not indebted to any favo»r from Government. Tb c . next public service was that of the present postal communication between Suez, the Eastern Presidencies of India, Ceylon, Singapore, and China. This service was not put up to tender, because there was no party existing that had the means of undertaking it : the then Government having, however, entertained the idea of doing it themselves, had a very careful estimate made of the expense to the public of carrying it ou by means of Government packets. The estimate showed that the expense would exceed the sum asked by tbe compfuy by £77,000 per annum. It wts, therefore, Assigned to tbe company. The last transaction of tbe company was tbe extension of the steam postal service, by making it twice amonth inatead of once a-month with India, China, &c, with a branch line via Singapore to Australia, and which will commence with the ensuing year. A plan for extending, economising, and otherwise improving the postal communication with India and China, combined with the stean> postal communication with Australia, was submitted nearly two years since by the company to tbe Government. It was publicly approved by the several members of the Government whose departments were connected with ir, as involving great public advantages. It was, however, destined to meet with much opposition. The company was vituperated through the public press as attempting a monopoly. A committee of the House of Commons was appointed to investigate the whole question of steam communication with India. A rival company under the title of tbe "Eastern Steam Navigation," was formed to compete with the Peninsular and Oriental Company, and, iti order to invite further competition, the Government in advertising for tenders for the new extended service divided it into do less tbao five sections, thereby affording an opportunity to parties with moderate means to compete for any single part of it. The competition was, however, limited to tbe Eastern Steam Company and the Peninsular and Oriental Company, no other parties having tendered, and it was decided in favour of the latter company. And here he (Mr. Anderson) would take leave to advert to a matter personal to himself, in /eference to this contract. During the last election for Orkney and Shetland a story was invented by some electioneering agents, and ultimately promulgated on the hustings at Kirkwall, by ike present member for Orkney and Shetland, to tbe effect, that as a consideration for obtaining this last contract for tbe company, he (Mr. Anderson) bad made a compact with the present Government, to band over to them tbe seat for Orkney and Shetland, which he (Mr. Anderson) had the honour of occupying in the last parliament, but for which he was prevented from competing for the present Parliament by a severe , attack of illness. Now, although tbe story, no doubt, bad its effect in galling tbe less-informed portion of the Orkney elector f f hetbooght it was so silly as scarcely to merit much notice from him. Oo his return, ho were r, lately from a war oa incontinent, he found that, on account o' its havicg been pretty generally circulated by a patt of tbe Scottish press, more credence had been gives to it tbao he could have imagined. He was j therefore desirous of availing himself of the i I present opportunity to give a refutation to if, , and he thought he could not do that better than by reading an extract from a verbatin l report of the speech of the present Chancellor of tbe Exchequer in his place in tbe House cf Commons, staliug the reasous which induced . him to decide the contract ia favour of tbe j Peninsular and Oriental Company. It ran . thus: — The first was tbat of tbe Peninsular and . Oriental Steam Navigation Company for the t whole of the services as they bad beea adrerI tisei for, with the addition of a branch line from | Bombay to Point de Galle, not mentioned in , the conditions of tender, for tbe sum of r £199,600, to be reduced to £179, G00, after the . -completion of the line of railway across Egypt. i The second tender was from the Eastern Steam Navigation Company, for the conveyance of the ! mails once a month between England, and Calcutta and Hong-kong, for the sum of £110,000, [ to be reduced to £100,000 in the event of B Trieste being substituted for Marseilles as the I point of embarcation. The third was from the same Company for the same service, with tbe I addition of a branch between Singapore and , Sydney for £166,000, The House will tberef force at once see that tbe lowest sum demanded I by the Eastern Steam Navigation Company was, . upon their first contract, £100,000, and upon [ thesecoud, £166,000, making a total sum of I £266,000 ; while, on the other band, the sum [ total of the lowest amount of the Peninsular and Oriental Company was £1 79,600, making a dif- , ference in favour of tbe Government, and against tbe Eastern Company of £86,400. Such, I | think, will be found to be precisely the figures . contained in those documents when 1 accepted , office. I must say here that the securities offered by tbfr Peninsular and Oriental Company , for the due fulfilment of the contract were not only equal, but decidedly preferable to those offered by the Eastern Company." Now, be (Mr. Andersou) thought that the saving of £86,400 per annum, or, for the whole term of the contract, of about £800,000 of the public money, was a sufficiently substantial reason for a Chancellor of the Exchequer deciding as be did, without tbe additional inducement of the very uncertain chance of adding the seat io Parliament alluded to to the strength of his party j and further, he (Mr. Anderson) would say, that bad the present Chancellor of the Exchequer decided in favour of the Eastern Company's tender, be would have merited, and would most likely have encountered, an impeachment. (Hear, hear.) He would only further declare, upon bis honour, that he never, directly or indirectly, had the slightest communication with any person whatever relative to the subject alluded to, nor ever desired to render the poiition he held in Parliament subservient to the promotion of bis ptrsonal interests. (Mr. Andersou concluded amid much applause.)