The Hindu Business Line : Splendid steaming for faster mail delivery

In the age we currently live in, when instantaneous communication is taken as a given, it may be unthinkable that a letter from India to England could take weeks. But that was the situation about a century ago. “For the first time in the history of the British Post Office, the Indian mails have been delivered in London under fourteen days,” reads a 118-year-old news report (January 8, 1890) in The Hindu Archives.

“This marvellous expedition was due to the splendid steaming qualities of the Oceana, the vessel of the Peninsular and Oriental fleet,” the report explains. “She reached Suez under eight days, and covered the whole distance to Brindisi in twelve days fifteen hours, thus maintaining an average speed of nearly 400 knots per day, including stoppages at intermediate ports (Aden and Suez) and detention in the Suez Canal.”

Over the centuries, ships have changed enormously, narrates www.oceansatlas.org . “Wood has given way to steel and sail to engines. Ships are bigger and more complex than ever before. But one thing that has not changed as fast as most is speed.”

The site notes that in 1900 a steam ship operated at about 10 knots (per hour). “Fifty years later speed had increased to about 12 knots and today it has risen to around 15 knots — not much of a change when other forms of transport are taken into account.”

Current delivery durations have, however, shrunk to almost a fifth, aided by air transport. For instance, a package from Chennai to London takes three days to deliver, going by estimates of ‘transit times’ on www.fedex.com .

Salt pinched

An elementary lesson in economics is that price and demand move in opposite directions, unless the demand is inelastic, as in the case of essentials. Which is what the Government declared towards the end of the nineteenth century — saying that the rise in the duty on salt had not resulted in a decrease in the consumption of salt, but that ‘a healthy rise in consumption’ was noticeable. But a news report dated January 30, 1890, refuted such a contention, a nd cited statistics in support.

“In Bengal, for instance, comparing the figures of 1899-90 up to date with those of two years previously, we see that there has been a falling off of more than 500,000 maunds,” the report stated.

Maund, for starters, is a unit of weight used in India, and it ranged from 25 pounds to over 80 pounds across localities, as Wikipedia informs.

“By the definition of the Standard Weights and Measures Act of 1956 (amended 1960, 1964) one maund weighs exactly 37.3242 kilograms.”

Despite an increase of 146,000 maunds in Madras, and 12,000 maunds in Sindh, the total decrease in the whole of India was estimated to be 610,000 maunds, for eight months. “Presuming that this proportion will be maintained, there will be close on a million of maunds less of salt consumed in 1889-90 than in 1887-88,” the correspondent postulated. The Government was said to be gaining in duty to the extent of Rs 1,71,72,000.

“India is the third largest salt producing country in the world (after the US and China) with an average annual production of about 148 lakh tones,” informs www.economywatch.com. It may also be useful to know that “the per-capita consumption of salt in the country is estimated at about 12 kg, which includes edible as well as industrial salt.”

D. MURALI

K. RAJENDRABABU

(Inputs sourced from The Hindu Archives)