One of the most important factors in the early development of the petroleum industry in America was the realization that there existed an almost limitless market overseas awaiting this new product. American petroleum met an ever-growing need. Owing to the decline in the annual catch of whales the world was being searched for substitutes for whale oil and in the matter of lubricants for machinery there was something like famine. Within two or three years after the sinking of Drake’s well, Europe was eagerly seeking to purchase not only the crude but the refined products, and the demand has grown apace ever since, despite the development of oil fields in other parts of the world. In the annals of the oil industry the name of Dr. A. F. Crawford, who in 1861 was U. S. Consul at Antwerp, holds an honourable place. In that year he arranged that a shipment of forty barrels of refined oil should be sent to the industrial country of Belgium and thus export to the continent of Europe was begun. Great Britain, which had been trying to develop Scottish shale oil production, was also quick to avail herself of the American discoveries. From the outset the problem of how to carry large quantities of petroleum products without waste, danger or injury to other cargoes, occupied the minds of shipping men. The earlier shipments were in the nature of samples despatched in ordinary cargo vessels, usually from the port of Philadelphia. In November of 1861 Messrs. Peter Wright and Sons, a well known shipping firm of that city, chartered a small sailing vessel, the _Elizabeth Watts_, to carry oil exclusively and to deliver her cargo in London. So great was the apprehension among sailors of the dangers of sailing on an oil-ship that to get a crew the old-fashioned plan of kidnapping seamen under the influence of drink was resorted to; and the crew reached London without other disaster than the injury to their sensibilities involved. The success of this voyage prompted other shipowners to embark in the business, so that by 1864 shipments of oil from various Atlantic ports had grown to a very respectable total. Casks or barrels were used for transport, entailing a very great waste of oil, time and labour. The casks themselves called for a large initial outlay and leakages were a source of loss, damage and possible danger. In 1863 the thought of carrying oil in bulk in vessels, specially designed for that purpose, appears to have occurred almost simultaneously to importers in different parts of England. Henry Duncan of Bromley, Kent, is generally admitted to have been the father of the idea. He chartered a schooner at Chicago, fitted her to carry oil in bulk and in her hold and loaded her at Sarnia, Canada, then as now, an oil shipping point of inland America. The experiment was ill-fated, for the schooner was lost in the Gulf of St. Lawrence before entering on the high seas. But the scheme of carrying oil in the holds of wooden