In 1884 Thomas Wilson and Son ran the steamship Humber between Hull and Liverpool carrying a mixed cargo of goods. Wilsons has long been recognized as Hull's largest shipowner, involved in many overseas trades, although no full-scale history of its business has been published. Passing reference has also been made to its occasional engagement in the coastal trade between Hull and Newcastie but not to its participation in the coastal trade between Hull and Liverpool. Yet by the 1880s the railway network was at its peak, and the distance by rail between the two cities was about 120 miles, whereas the distance by sea was nearly 1000 miles. On the face of it, this seems an absurd situation and a misallocation of resources. Why send the goods nearly eight times as far by a mode with a lower maximum speed, especially when the steamer took the northern route around the United Kingdom via the choppy and perilous passage to the north of Scodand, which included the Pentland Firth where “navigation is rendered difficult and dangerous by the rate of the tidal current – six to ten knots - and the existence of eddies and whirlpools“? The length and peril of the journey could be abated if the ships went through the Caledonian Canal, which was opened in the early nineteenth century and properly navigable by the mid-1840s. Such a route reduced the distance by over 150 miles, making the journey about 820 miles. However, the maximum length of the locks on the Caledonian was 160 feet; the vast majority of the ships employed by Wilson in this trade were too big to traverse the canal and had to use the longer and less safe voyage around the north of Scotland. Only the Torpedo at 151-feet-long was small enough to fit the Caledonian's locks. This article outlines the dimensions of this problem and then seeks to provide an explanation for this apparently perverse use of transport modes.

First, let us stress that this was no flash in the pan or one-off speculation to ascertain if there was demand for the service. Wilsons ran steamers between Hull and Liverpool from March 1884 to the First World War, i.e., over thirty years, very much the long term. In addition, this was a liner service with posted dates and times of departure and anticipated times of arrival.