The Maritime Commerce of Austria [II] (1856)

Published unsigned, under the headline “The Maritime Commerce of Austria”, in the New-York Daily Tribune, No. 5082, August 4, 1857, p. 3; attributed to Karl Marx by MEW (vol. 12); MEGA² I/15 not yet published. Letters and a word missing in the print are supplied in square brackets. Text from the original newspaper (Library of Congress, Chronicling America). Traducción al español.

In a former article we traced the natural circumstances which have brought about the resurrection of Adriatic commerce at Trieste. The development of that commerce is, in a great measure, due to the efforts of the Austrian Lloyd—a Company founded by Englishmen, but, since 1836, in the hands of Triestine capitalists. At first, the Lloyd had only one steamer running once a week between Trieste and Venice. This communication soon became a daily one. By and by the steamers of the Lloyd engrossed the commerce of Rovigno, Fiume, Pirano, Zara and Ragusa, on the Istrian and Dalmatian coast. The Romagna was the next to be enveloped in this intercourse; then came Albania, Epirus and Greece. The steamers had not left the Adriatic, before the Archipelago, Salonica, Smyrna, Beyrout, Ptolemais and Alexandria already solicited admission into the network projected by the Lloyd. Lastly, its vessels penetrated into the Black Sea, taking possession, under the very eyes of Turkey and Russia, of the lines connecting Constantinople with Sinope, Trebizond, Varna, Ibraila and Galatz. Thus a company, organized for the mere coast service of Austria in the Adriatic, gradually pushes out into the Mediterranean, and having made sure of the Black Sea, appears to wait only for the cutting of the Isthmus of Suez to push on into the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.

The capital of the Lloyd Company, originally fixed at 1,000,000 florins, has been increased by successive emissions of new shares, and by loans, to 13,000,000 florins. Its movement and operations since the year 1836 are set forth in the last report of the Directors as follows:

The Lloyd, being itself a commercial enterprise of great importance, as may be judged from the above table, has rendered immense service to the growth of industry and commerce wherever its ships have penetrated. It is calculated that, on valuing the Austrian quintal at 300 fl., and each passenger’s parcels at 10 fl., the Lloyd has transported between 1836 and 1853:

“It is certain,” says a French author, “that the modest but sustained action of this company of merchants on the affairs of the Levant has been for years, to say the least, quite as efficient, and much more honorable than that of Austrian diplomacy.”

The revival of commerce and the development of steam navigation in the Adriatic cannot fail to call into life, in a more or less remote future, an Adriatic navy, extinct since the downfall of Venice. Napoleon, with his peculiar turn of mind, thought to create this navy without waiting for the reéstablishment of maritime commerce—an experiment he made simultaneously at Antwerp and at Venice. Having succeeded in raising armies without a people to back them, he did not doubt his power to organize navies without a marine to rely upon. But apart from the inherent impossibilities of such a scheme, Napoleon stumbled on difficulties of a local character altogether unforeseen. Having dispatched his ablest engineers to Venice, completed the fortifications of that city, repaired the floating matériel, restored the ancient activity of the ship-building yards, it was all at once discovered that the technical progress in maritime war and navigation had struck with the same impotence the harbor of Venice to which the new roads of commerce had condemned its commerce and shipping. It was ascertained that, however excellent for the accommodation of the ancient galleys, the harbor of Venice lacked the depth required for modern ships of the line, and that even frigates were unable to enter the port without disembarking their guns, save with a concurrence of southern winds and spring tides. Now, for modern naval ports, it is a vital condition that they admit ships to enter at all times, and that they be deep and capacious enough to harbor a whole fleet, both for attack and defense. Bonaparte found, too, that he had committed another mistake. By the treaties of Campo Formio and Luneville, he had cut off Venice from the eastern shores of the Adriatic, and thus deprived it of the crews for manning its fleets. From the mouth of the Isonzo down to Ravenna, he searched in vain for a maritime population, the gondoliers of Venice and the fishermen of the Lagunes (a timid and scanty race) being wholly unable to supply any valuable maritime force. Napoleon saw now, what the Venetians had discovered already in the tenth century, that the rule of the Adriatic can belong only to the possessor of its eastern shores. He perceived that his treaties of Campo Formio and Luneville were enormous mistakes—surrendering to Austria the maritime populations of the Adriatic, and reserving for himself the name of an obsolete harbor (magni nominis umbram). To make good his earlier blunders, he appropriated Istria and Dalmatia by the subsequent treaties of Presburg and Vienna.

Strabo long ago observed that while the Adriatic coast of Italy is totally deficient in creeks and harbors, the Illyrian coast on the opposite side abounds in excellent ports; and, during the civil wars of Rome, we see Pompey easily forming large fleets on the coasts of Epirus and Illyria, while Cæsar, on the Italian shores, was able only after unexampled efforts to collect [a] small force of boats for the conveyance of his troops i[n] divisions. With its deep incisions, with the wild rocks of its islands, with the sandbanks strewed about everywhere, and with its admirable harbors of refuge, the coast of Istria and Dalmatia is a first-rate nursery of good seamen—sailors with vigorous limbs and intrepid hearts, seasoned in the storms which almost daily agitate the Adriatic. The borà, which is the great disturber of that sea, always arises without the least warning; it attacks seamen with all the violence of a tornado, and permits none but the hardiest to keep the deck. Sometimes it rages for weeks together, and the domain of its greatest fury is comprised exactly within the mouths of Cattaro and the south point of Istria. The Dalmatian, however, accustomed to brave it from childhood, hardens under its breath, and despises the vulgar gales of other seas. Thus, air, land and sea combine to breed the robust and sober mariner of this coast.

Sismondi has remarked that silk-manufacture is as natural to the peasant of Lombardy as the spinning of silk is to the silk-worm. Thus, to take to the sea is as natural to the Dalmatian as it is to the sea-fowl. Piracy is as much the theme of their popular songs as robbery by land is the theme of the old Teutonic poetry. The Dalmatian still cherishes the memory of the wild exploits of the Uskoks, who for a century and a half kept in check the regular forces of Venice and Turkey, and whose career was not stopped before the treaty concluded between Turkey and Austria in 1617, till which time the Uskoks had enjoyed the convenient protection of the Emperor. The history of the Uskoks has no parallel except in the history of the Cossacks of the Dnieper—the one being exiles from Turkey and the other from Poland; the one carrying terror over the Adriatic, the other over the Black Sea; the former being at first secretly supported and then extinguished by Austria, and the latter by Russia. The Dalmatian sailors in the Mediterranean squadron of Admiral Emerian were the admiration of Napoleon. There can be no doubt, then, that the eastern shores of the Adriatic possess all the materials for manning a first-rate navy. The only thing they want is discipline. By a census taken in 1813, Napoleon ascertained the existence of 43,500 sailors on this coast.

Their number must now be at least 55,000.

Having found the crews, Napoleon looked out for the harbors of an Adriatic navy. The Illyrian provinces were acquired definitely by the treaty of Vienna in 1809, but they had been occupied by French troops since the battle of Austerlitz, and Napoleon improved the opportunity of a state of war to prepare the great works intended to be executed during peace. In 1806 M. Beautemps-Beaupré, assisted by several engineers and hydrographers of the French Navy, was sent to survey the coasts of Istria and Dalmatia, with a view of discovering the most suitable focus for the naval foundation contemplated in the Adriatic. The whole coast was explored, and the attention of the engineers finally stuck to the harbor of Pola, situated at the southern extremity of the Istrian Peninsula. The Venetians, unwilling to fix the seat of their naval power anywhere but at Venice itself, had not only neglected Pola, but had anxiously propagated the opinion that Pola was inaccessible to ships of war on account of a pretended bar. However, M. Beaupré ascertained that no such bar existed, and that Pola answered all the conditions of a modern naval port. At different times it had been the seat of the naval forces of the Adriatic. It was the center of the naval operations of the Romans during their Illyrian and Pannonian expeditions, and it became a permanent naval station under the Roman Empire. At different times it has been in the occupation of the Genoese, the Venetians, and lastly of the Uskoks. Deep and capacious in every part, the harbor of Pola is defended in front by islands, and in the rear by rocks which command the position. Its only disadvantage is the unhealthiness and the fevers which, as M. Beautemps-Beaupré affirms, will yield to a system of drainage that has hitherto not been applied.

The Austrians have been very slow in familiarizing themselves with the notion of becoming a naval power. Up to a very recent period their naval administration was, in their own eyes, merely a branch of their land service. A colonel in the army had the rank of a naval captain; a lieutenant-colonel, that of a captain of a frigate; a major, that of a captain of a corvette; and the equivalence in the rank list seemed to guarantee to the Austrians an equivalence in the services. To make a midshipman, they considered to have hit on the best expedient by making him previously a cornet of hussars. The recruits of the navy were levied in the same manner as the recruits for the army—with the only difference that the provinces of Istria and Dalmatia were allotted exclusively to the sea-service. The time of service was equal, viz: Eight years, either by land or sea.

The separation of the two services, like all modern progress in Austria, is the result of the revolution of 1848. In spite of the Napoleonian precedent, Venice had remained up to 1848 the only arsenal of Austria. The defects of the Venetian harbor had failed to strike the Austrians, because they had, in fact, no modern navy at all. Their naval force consisted of but 6 frigates, 5 corvettes, 7 brigs, 6 sloops, 16 steamers, and 36 armed boats—in all 850 guns. By way of punishing the Italian revolution, the Austrians transferred from Venice to Trieste the naval school, the observatory, the hydrographic office, the floating material and the artillery park. The building-yards and the stores remained behind; and thus, by a bureaucratic vengeance, the naval service was cut in two. Instead of Venice being punished, both branches were deprived of their efficiency. Slowly the Austrian Government discovered that, however excellent Trieste might be for a commercial harbor, it was unfit for a naval station. At last they had to fall back on the lesson Napoleon had set up in the Adriatic, and to make Pola the center of their naval administration. Quite in keeping with Austrian usage, the first few years after this removal of their Admiralty to Pola have been employed in building barracks instead of ship-yards. The system of defense reposes on the establishment of a cross-fire from the islands at the entrance of the harbor, with a chain of Maximilian towers to prevent ships from throwing bombs into the harbor. Beside its strategical advantages, Pola answers the indispensable condition of a good port, viz: of being able to provision a good fleet. Istria has oaks equal to Naples; Carniola, Carinthia and Styria are inexhaustible in pines, which already form the staple tunnage of Trieste exportation; Styria is rich in iron; the hemp of Ancona has no more commodious outlet than Pola; coal is hitherto received from England, but the Dalmatian works at Sebenico begin to yield a better quality; and when the Trieste-Vienna Railway opens, the best quality may be had from Sommering. All Istrian produce, being grown on a chalky soil, endures long voyages. Oil is abundant, Hungarian grain at hand, and pork in immense quantities to be had from the Danubian valley. That pork goes now to Galatz and Hamburg, but the railway will bring it to Trieste and Pola.

To all these excellent bases for the revival of the naval power in the Adriatic, there is only one drawback—Austria itself. If, with its present organization and under its present Government, Austria were able to found a commercial and naval power in the Adriatic, it would upset all the traditions of history, which has ever coupled maritime greatness with Freedom. On the other hand, it would upset Austria to upset tradition.