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With the increase of populations in the Old World and the development of new countries, the transport of emigrants and of travellers for business and for pleasure became a highly important and lucrative source of employment for steam shipping. It is now indeed becoming a common practice on the part of ocean steamship companies to employ a surplus or superseded vessel of their fleet solely in carrying holiday tourists to a succession of foreign ports. In regular traffic the demand for increased speed and greater security and comfort on the part of ocean travellers resulted in the competitive evolution of passenger steamers of dimensions and draught which create an increasing strain on port and dock authorities.

These remarks must not be concluded without mention of the important part played in the evolution of modern shipping by the system of marine insurance and by the rules of classification. For the cost of insurance is a heavy tax on the profits of the shipowners, and only by providing vessels of the best construction and maintaining their reputation can owners gain the advantage of low insurance rates. And not only so, but by the merchants also, to whom insurance premiums are a no less serious consideration; vessels of the highest class and reputation are insisted on with a view to cheap cargo insurance, inferior ships being consequently placed at a serious disadvantage. On the other hand, the rules of construction and classification of the Society of Lloyd’s Register (a body altogether distinct from the Corporation of Lloyd’s) are most exacting, and any failure to comply with the rules of the Register or “Book,” which, moreover, are in a constant state of scientific evolution, may involve withdrawal of the vessel’s class, a result which would be fatal to her cheap insurance as well as to her employment in successful competition for freights. With its skilled surveyors at foreign, colonial and home ports, the great society offers every facility for the classing of the whole world’s shipping, and foreign as well as British owners are fully alive to the importance of a strict compliance with the Book’s requirements. Consequently, amongst the various factors making for improved construction and the greater safety of shipping, the beneficent influence of Lloyd’s Register occupies a foremost place.

But the various factors or forces which make for the evolution of shipping may all be summed up under the word “competition,” which is the mainspring of the machinery both of insurance and classification. These factors operate, however, in different ways. Thus, while insurance and classification make most for ships’ increased safety, the desire for profitable freights tends continually to their greater size. But making also for increased size, and in addition for the many improvements and inventions which result in luxury and comfort at sea, the vast influence of the ocean passenger is conspicuous. For, no longer regarded as an encumbrance to be made room for on a cargo ship, the modern age of travel has rendered him a vast source of profit. The old position is reversed, and now fast-steaming hotels are built for ocean travellers, in which cargo occupies a secondary place, which only merchandise able to pay highly for the costly advantage of a speedy voyage can afford to occupy. The growth of the passenger traffic and the demand of travellers for routes the most direct is, in turn, creating or developing ports which have small regard to cargo considerations, and involving the ports, both old and new, of the various maritime states in a keen and costly competition for the great passenger steamers. This competition is further enhanced by railway lines at rivalry for the conveyance of the ocean passenger and for the more valuable merchandise able to pay high rates for speed between ocean port and inland city, and therefore shipped by the fastest vessels. Competition for freights and competition for passengers, these are the great and beneficent forces which are silently but irresistibly developing the ship, while insurance and classification are the potent handmaids of this competition.

The following table illustrates the growth and progress of British home shipping:—

 (D. O.) 

SHIPTON, MOTHER, a witch and prophetess who is supposed to have lived in early Tudor times. There is no really trustworthy evidence as to her ever having existed, but tradition has it that her maiden-name was Ursula Southill, Sowthiel or Southiel, and her parents were peasants, living near the Dropping Well, Knaresborough, Yorkshire. The date of her birth is uncertain, but it is placed about 1486–1488. Her mother, Agatha Southill, was a reputed witch, and Ursula from her infancy was regarded by the neighbours as “the Devil’s child.” The girl’s appearance seems to have been such as to encourage superstitious. Richard Head in his Life and Death of Mother Skipton (1684) says, “the body was of indifferent height, her head was long, with sharp fiery eyes, her nose of an incredible and unproportionate length, having many crooks and turnings, adorned with many strange pimples of divers colours, as red, blue and dirt, which like vapours of brimstone gave such a lustre to her affrighted spectators in the dead time of the night, that one of them confessed several times in my hearing that her nurse needed no other light to assist her in her duties” Allowing for the absurdity of this account, it certainly seems (if any reliance is to be placed on the so-called authorities) that the child was phenomenally plain and deformed. While still at school she became known as a prophetess. When about twenty-four she married a builder of York, Tobias Shipton.