Conditions of Supremacy

British-owned shipping dominated the ports and sea lanes of the world in the years immediately prior to the First World War, the supremacy being based on four factors:

(a) Colonies

First and foremost was the British colonial trading policy. The Empire constituted a trading area from which Britain drew imports of raw materials and food and to which she supplied manufactured goods and emigrants. This provided the opportunities for the employment of a shipping fleet, opportunities which, in the days before cables and radio, were more easily grasped by British than by foreign shipowners. The Navigation Acts, which from the close of the sixteenth century to 1849 kept the intra-imperial trade in the hands of British ships and trades from foreign countries in the hands of either British ships or ships of the country of origin of the goods concerned, led to “the early diversion of British shipping to the ocean trades” which “was an important contributory cause to its great expansion after the Napoleonic wars.” Colonial development also affected Britain's ability to build marine steam engines, the original engine builders being largely the companies which had gained their know-how in producing machinery for crushing sugarcane in the West Indies.

(b) Industrialization

Second, the course of industrialization in Britain provided the developments and knowledge in engineering and metal using which enabled Britain to build iron steamships. During the earlier part of the nineteenth century, the American merchant fleet, built cheaply from soft woods, was rising in importance. It threatened to eclipse the British fleet built chiefly of hard woods, the indigenous supplies of which were approaching exhaustion. The limitations imposed on the size of ships by the relatively low strength of wood gave an advantage to iron and later steel ships and to the country which could produce those metals. Further, the economic superiority of steamships on an increasing number of trade routes as marine engines were developed enabled Britain to consolidate her lead in world shipbuilding and, as the bulk of the world trade was British trade, in world shipowning also. Industrialization in Britain had led to the extensive development of coalfields, and coal provided a high-quality, indigenous fuel for British steamships and an outward bulk cargo for ships dispatched to bring home food and raw materials.