The Great Meat Safe: How Seattle’s Fishermen Could Have Rivalled London’s Beef Trade

FRESH BEEF IN LONDON FROM THE UNITED STATES.

The Agricultural Gazette of February 21, 1876, in noticing the fact that on the previous Monday 70 tons of beef, in quarters, shipped from this country, arrived safe in London, in addition to about [missing number] tons arriving in January, states that "the possibility of landing dead meat in a sound and sweet condition, after a three weeks' voyage, has at length been clearly demonstrated. The successful arrivals for sale shipment are thus described:

Square compartments are formed in the hold of the vessel, outside of which tanks are placed. By these means the temperature of the atmosphere in which the meat hangs is kept down to something under [missing number] degrees. To prevent condensation of vapor in this ice-bound tank, a constant current is kept up by a fan driven by steam from the boiler of the vessel.

The newly-slaughtered meat, cut in quarters, each covered in cheap cotton cloth tightly sewed around it, is hung up in this net, the quarters not being permitted to touch one another. The writer states:

'It is undoubted that an immense trade of this kind will be done before many years; and this, not only in the winter, but through the summer months. Arrangements are being made for increasing this traffic at an early date. The margin of prices is so great that efforts will be made to get the White Star and Cunard lines of steamers to take in a meat-safe and ice-tanks, by which means consignments may be made almost every day of the voyage. Yet what has arrived has been brought by the Union steamers. Viewing this matter commercially, there is ample room for expanding this trade. The average weight of meat sent to the metropolitan market during the last seven years has been 500 tons per day.'

A later paragraph announces the arrival, in good condition, by the White Star line, of quarters weighing about [missing number] tons.

The above item is of interest in connection with our Puget Sound fisheries. Our nice, fresh Puget Sound Halibut brings 10 cents a pound in the San Francisco market, when it can be had there, which is so seldom that it is not usually quoted in the market reports. Various experiments have been tried to introduce them into that market, as by packing in ice, etc., but have all as yet proved unsuccessful. So abundant is this delicious fish in our waters, especially in the vicinity of Port Townsend and the Straits, that fishermen make handsome profits in retailing them in our market at 5 cents per pound. If small vessels can be so constructed that these fish can be carried down to San Francisco fresh as caught, there are fortunes to be made in the business.