Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 January 30

= January 30 =

Grain races
In the 1920s through the 1940s, sailing ships ran routes known as grain races beginning in south-central South Australia and going round Cape Horn to reach England. If one's trying to reach England from Australia as rapidly as possible (without the undue strain that would likely cost a captain his job), using the strong west-to-east winds of the Roaring Forties, why would one begin in Adelaide or points farther west? I see from the grain race article that some champion routes began at Melbourne or Geelong; why didn't they all do that? Judging by Rail transport in Australia, the South Australian and Victorian rail networks met in 1887, which presumably means that Adelaide and Melbourne were connected then or soon afterward: it wouldn't seem hard to transport South Australian grain to Victorian ports by the 1920s. I understand that there wouldn't be a strong economic reason to try to beat other ships, but I don't see why anyone would be shipping grain from South Australia to the UK when it could be transported by rail to the eastern states instead. Nyttend (talk) 03:38, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Grain was exported for a higher price than the price on the domestic market. Sleigh (talk) 05:10, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I think you need to read the question as saying "transported by rail to the eastern states and then by ship from there". --76.69.46.228 (talk) 07:55, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
 * There was no standard rail gauge in Australia, making shipping grain between states very expensive. See Rail gauge in Australia --TrogWoolley (talk) 11:29, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Ah, okay, that makes sense; thank you. All I was looking for was the dates of connecting the colonies' railways; I didn't consider other factors.  And yes, that was my (poorly expressed) meaning: why ship it directly from SA to the UK when you could transport it by rail from SA to VIC and then ship it from VIC to the UK.  Nyttend (talk) 12:26, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Victoria is further from the Cape of Good Hope. Sleigh (talk) 20:31, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, but they were sailing around South America, not Africa. (Otherwise I would have asked "why Adelaide, not Perth".)  The latter route is shorter (per, even from Melbourne it's shorter, 12,207 miles to London versus 13,320 miles around Cape Horn), but the strong winds of the Roaring Forties make it much easier to proceed west-east than east-west with a sailing ship.  Nyttend (talk) 22:47, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Cape Horn is too dangerous. They're sailing round Cape of Good Hope. Sleigh (talk) 01:58, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Please note that Grain race mentions Cape Horn by name nine times and never uses the words "Hope" or "Africa". Nyttend (talk) 02:18, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Everything I wrote was wrong. Sleigh (talk) 04:24, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Trains are more expensive than ships. There's a rail link from China to Europe, the Eurasian Land Bridge, but it's mostly used for expensive things like computers, for which the extra speed pays off because of high capital cost. 99% of all goods from China to Europe go by ship.
 * Those windjammers from Autralia to Europe went around Cape Horn, but on the return to Australia they went around Cape of Good Hope, following the clipper route. For the total distance travelled it didn't matter where in Australia they picked up their load. The grain traders preferred loading in South Australia as that would save them an expensive train journey, so these ships were loaded in South Australia. In Europe using the train to get from Cornwall to London made sense, as it may be hard to get a windjammer westbound out of the English Channel.
 * Grain is a seasonal product that is used year-round, so it has to be stored for months and you can do that just as well while in transit. Grain traders didn't care about speed, only about cost and reliability. They wouldn't pay for the faster trip via East Australian ports. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:19, 31 January 2019 (UTC)