A Coffee Freighter on the Cauca River, Colombia
Recently, at the suggestion of the Commercial Association of Santos, the minister of transport of São Paulo ordered that coffees destined for legitimate traders should be transported during four days of the week, and those of a speculative nature during the remaining two days. A premium of as much as five milreis a bag has been paid by speculators in order to obtain immediate transport.
Shipping Coffee from Colombia
As Colombia ranks next to Brazil in coffee, a brief description of its transportation methods, which are unique, should be of interest to coffee shippers. A goodly portion of Colombia's coffee exports comes from the district around the little city of Cucuta, whose official name is San José de Cucuta. It is the capital of North Santander, is situated in a beautiful valley of the Colombian Andes mountains that is watered by several rivers, and is only about a half-hour's ride by motor from the Venezuelan frontier.
Coffee Steamers on the Magdalena, Colombia
Due to its geographical position, Cucuta serves as the most convenient inland port and commercial center for most of the department of North Santander. For the same reason, it is forced to depend on Maracaibo as its seaport, even though the Venezuelan government has a number of annoying laws controlling the commerce thus conducted. The Colombian ports of Baranquilla and Cartagena on the Atlantic are too distant from Cucuta to be available; and a large part of the traffic would have to be done on mule-back across one of the most formidable ranges of the Colombian Andes, involving high cost and delay in transportation. Yet its frontier position makes it possible for Cucuta to have important commercial relations with the neighboring republic of Venezuela, and to enjoy exceptional privileges from the Colombian central government.
A cargo of coffee leaving Cucuta has to go through the following steps on its way to a foreign market:
1. From Cucuta, it travels thirty-five miles by railroad to Puerto Villamizar, a Colombian river port on the Zulia river.
2. At Puerto Villamizar it is loaded into small, flat-bottomed, steel lighters that are taken to Puerto Encontrados by man power. Puerto Encontrados, belonging to Venezuela, is on the Catatumbo river; and the trip from Villamizar takes from two to four days, depending on the depth of water in the river. During high water, river steamers are also used, and make the trip in less than a day.
3. At Encontrados the cargo is loaded on river steamboats more or less of the Mississippi river type, which take it to Maracaibo, Venezuela. Coffee is also carried to Maracaibo by small sailing vessels.
4. At Maracaibo it is taken by ocean vessel, which either carries it direct to New York or to Curaçao, Dutch West Indies, where it is transhipped to steamers plying between New York and Curaçao. It is obvious that the many transhipments that coffee coming from Cucuta has to undergo greatly retard its arrival at a foreign port; and a cargo sometimes takes a month or more to reach New York.
Old and New Methods Employed in Loading Heavy Cargo on the Santa Cecilia
Coffee from Cucuta is stored in the Venezuelan custom-house, from which it must be shipped for export within forty-five days, or the shipper runs the risk of having it declared by the Venezuelan government for consumo (home consumption) at a prohibitory tariff. Arrangements can be made at considerable cost to have the coffee taken to a private warehouse; but it is no longer possible to make up the chops in Maracaibo, as was done formerly with all the Cucutas. The Venezuelan customs will not even allow the Maracaibo forwarding agent the same chops, as a general rule. Special permission must be obtained to change any bags that are stained or damaged. Schooners from Curaçao have, in the past, carried a great deal of the Colombian coffee to Curaçao.
Port Handling Charges in Brazil
It is almost impossible to list all the various charges for the handling of coffee at the port of shipment in Brazil, the figures not being accessible to outsiders. Some figures, such as warehouse charges and various forms of tax, are obtainable, however. For every bag of coffee which is in warehouse over forty-eight hours from the time of its arrival from the railroad there is a charge of two hundred reis (about five cents). In São Paulo there is an export tax of nine percent ad valorem levied by the state, and in Rio the state tax is eight and a half percent. Then there is a surtax of five francs per bag in Santos, and of three francs in Rio, which goes toward defraying the expenses of valorization. For every bag of coffee that passes over the dock the dock company charges one hundred reis (about two and a half cents).
Some Record Coffee Cargoes
With its superior loading and shipping facilities Brazil has been able to send extraordinarily large cargoes of coffee to the United States since the development of large modern freight-carrying steamships. While 75,000 or 90,000 bag cargoes were of common occurrence just prior to the outbreak of the World War, several shipments of more than 100,000 bags were made in the years 1915, 1916, and 1917. Up to January, 1919, the record was held by the steamship Bjornstjerne Bjornson which unloaded 136,424 bags at New York on November 17, 1915. Other shipments of more than 100,000 bags were by the Rossetti (December, 1900), 125,918 bags; the Wascana (March 3, 1915), 108,781 bags; the Wagama (October, 1916), 105,650 bags; the American (October 23, 1916), 124,212 bags; the Santa Cecilia (November 2, 1916), 105,500 bags, and the Dakotan (January 6, 1917), which carried 136,387 bags.
Transport Overseas
To bring green coffee to the consuming markets, both steamships and sailing vessels are used, although the latter have almost wholly given way to the speedier and more capacious modern steamers. Because of its large consumption, a constant stream of vessels is always on the way to the markets of the United States. The majority of these unload at New York, which in 1920 received about fifty-nine percent of all the coffee imported into this country. New Orleans came next, with about twenty-five percent; and San Francisco third, with about twelve percent.
The approximate time consumed in transporting green coffee overseas from the principal producing countries to the United States by freight steamships is shown in the table in the next column.
In some cases, that of Guadeloupe, for instance, the vessels stop at a number of ports, and this lengthens the time. This is also true of vessels running on the west coast of Central America and of those from Aden.
During the World War, one shipment of Timor coffee consumed three and a half years coming from Java to New York. It was aboard the German steamship Brisbane, which cleared from Batavia, July 4, 1914, and fearing capture, took refuge in Goa, Portuguese India, where it lay until Portugal joined the Allies. Then the Portuguese seized the vessel, and turned it over to the British, who moved it to Bombay. Here the cargo was finally transhipped to the City of Adelaide, reaching New York in January, 1918, three and a half years after the coffee left Batavia.
| Transportation Time for Coffee[J] | |||||
| Rio de Janeiro to New York | 11 to 16 | days | |||
| Santos | " | " | " | 14 to 18 | " |
| Bahia | " | " | " | 17 | " |
| Victoria | " | " | " | 19 | " |
| Maracaibo | " | " | " | 10 | " |
| Puerto Cabello | " | " | " | 10 | " |
| La Guaira | " | " | " | 8 | " |
| Costa Rica | " | " | " | 10 | " |
| Salvador | " | " | " | 18 | " |
| Mexico | " | " | " | 9 | " |
| Guatemala (Puerto Barrios) | " | " | " | 11 | " |
| Colombia | " | " | " | 10 | " |
| Haiti | " | " | " | 7 | " |
| Porto Rico | " | " | " | 5 | " |
| Guadeloupe | " | " | " | 10 | " |
| Hawaii (via P.C.) | " | " | " | 28 | " |
| Java (via Suez) | " | " | " | 30 | " |
| Sumatra (via Suez) | " | " | " | 30 | " |
| Singapore (via Suez) | " | " | " | 35 | " |
| India (via Suez) | " | " | " | 35 | " |
| Aden (via Suez) | " | " | " | 45 | " |
| Porto Rico | " | New Orleans | 7 | " | |
| Guadeloupe | " | " | " | 10 | " |
| Haiti | " | " | " | 7 | " |
| Guatemala | " | " | " | 8 | " |
| Colombia | " | " | " | 6 | " |
| Mexico | " | " | " | 4 | " |
| Salvador | " | " | " | 15 | " |
| Guatemala | " | San Francisco | 10 | " | |
| Costa Rica | " | " | " | 18 | " |
| Salvador | " | " | " | 14 | " |
| Mexico | " | " | " | 8 | " |
| Hawaii | " | " | " | 8 | " |
| Singapore | " | " | " | 30 | " |
| India | " | " | " | 33 | " |
[J] The American Legion and the Southern Cross, of the Munson Line, make the journey from Rio de Janeiro to New York in eleven days. These are freight-and-passenger vessels, and have carried as many as 5,000 bags of coffee at one time.
Java Coffee "Ex-Sailing Ships"
Up to 1915 it was the custom to ship considerable Java coffee to New York in slow-going sailing vessels of the type in favor a hundred years ago. Java coffees "ex-sailing ships" always commanded a premium because of the natural sweating they experienced in transit. Attempts to imitate this natural sweating process by steam-heating the coffees that reached New York by the faster-going steamship lines, and interference therewith by the pure-food authorities, caused a falling off in the demand for "light," "brown," or "extra brown" Dutch East Indian growths; and gradually the picturesque sailing vessels were seen no more in New York harbor. At the end they were mostly Norwegian barks of the type of the Gaa Paa.
It usually took from four to five months to make the trip from Padang or Batavia to New York. Crossing the Equator twice, first in the Indian Ocean, then in the South Atlantic, the trip was more than equal to circumnavigating the earth in our latitude. In the hold of the vessel the cargo underwent a sweating that gave to the coffee a rare shade of color and that, in the opinion of coffee experts, greatly enhanced its flavor and body. The captain always received a handsome gratuity if the coffee turned "extra brown."
Unloading Java Coffee from a Sailing Vessel at a Brooklyn Dock
The ship is the Gaa Paa, which made the voyage from Padang in five months in 1912
The demand for sweated, or brown, Javas probably had its origin in the good old days when the American housewife bought her coffee green and roasted it herself in a skillet over a quick fire. Coffee slightly brown was looked upon with favor; for every good housewife in those days knew that green coffee changed its color in aging, and that of course aged coffee was best.
And so it came about that Java coffees were preferably shipped in slow-going Dutch sailing vessels, because it was desirable to have a long voyage under the hot tropical sun suitably to sweat the coffee on its way to market and to have it a handsome brown on arrival. The sweating frequently produced a musty flavor which, if not too pronounced, was highly prized by experts. When the ship left Padang or Batavia the hatches were battened down, not to be opened again until New York harbor was reached.
Many of the old-style Dutch sailing vessels were built somewhat after the pattern of the Goed Vrouw, which Irving tells us was a hundred feet long, a hundred feet wide, and a hundred feet high. Sometimes she sailed forward, sometimes backward, and sometimes sideways. After dark, the lights were put out, all sail was taken in, and all hands turned in for the night.
The last of the coffee-carrying sailing vessels to reach the United States was the bark Padang, which arrived in New York on Christmas day, 1914.
The Bush Terminal System of Docks and Warehouses
Much of the green coffee received in New York is discharged and stored here, at one of the most modern waterfront and terminal developments in the world
Airplane View of New York Dock Company's Piers and Warehouses
This is the Fulton Street section of the Brooklyn waterfront, where more than half the coffee received in New York is unloaded. The storage warehouses are to be seen back of the piers
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