190

Modern Business Geography

railroad, so different kinds of steamships cross the ocean. One is
known as the ocean “liner” because she keeps to the same line,
or route, and plies on a regular schedule. Another is called the
*“ tramp ” steamer, or cargo boat, because she wanders from port to
port wherever a cargo can be found.
We read about the liner in the newspapers because she carries the
mails, advertises freely, and often brings well-known passengers.
She makes a great impression when she arrives in a harbor, so huge,
so stately, and so beautifully decorated ; but the modest tramps carry
a large part of the world’s cargoes.
Some of the tramps are as large as small liners, although they do
not look so because they lack the lofty decks amidships that accommodate
 passengers. Forward and aft the sides are high to meet the oncoming
 or pursuing waves. When heavily loaded, the tramps look
dangerously low amidships ; but they are completely * decked over ”
to prevent swamping in heavy seas. The deck is an almost continuous
 series of hatches, or trapdoors, leading to the hold. The great
number of hatches and the low sides make it easy to load and unload
quickly. "Nine tenths of the interior of the latest type of tramp is
cargo space.
A year’s voyage on a tramp. How interesting it would be to live
for a year on a tramp steamer! Suppose that we start from New York
with wheat for Hamburg. At Hamburg our tramp takes on a halfmillion
 dollar cargo of beet sugar for Philadelphia. There it contracts
to take railroad equipment to Yokohama via the Panama Canal.
At Yokohama it stacks its hold full of bags of peanuts for Marseilles.
In that port it secures a cargo of cans, kegs, and barrels of olive, coconut,
 and peanut oil for Buenos Aires. At Buenos Aires steamers are
already engaged to take the available cargoes, so our tramp proceeds
to Santos in ballast and there loads with coffee for New Orleans. At
this busy port it is filled with bales of cotton for Manchester, England.
It goes without cargo from that city to Glasgow, where it takes on
structural steel and iron for Vancouver. Then it goes to Seattle for
a cargo of lumber for Sydney, Australia, where it picks up a half-million
 dollar cargo of wool for Boston, proceeding via the Cape of Good
Hope route and putting in at Cape Town to get coal for its engines.
Such is the year’s work of our tramp. We have kept a record of
only the chief cargo on each voyage. In addition to the chief cargo,
our tramp loaded several hundred tons of miscellaneous cargo at nearly
every port, and called at intermediate ports to leave or take on something
 else.