Triumphs and Wonders of the 19th Century: The True Mirror of a Phenomenal Era / A volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progress

by James P. Boyd

II. THE CENTURY’S TECHNICAL REVOLUTION IN COMMERCE.

During the first four decades of this century the wooden sailing vessel was the sole carrier of ocean traffic, and in the construction and operation of such ships the Americans had special advantages and manifested peculiar ingenuity. For forty years the American sailing clipper, whose fine lines made it stanch and speedy, had been “the type and model of excellence in ship-building;” but before the middle of the century the supremacy of the wooden clipper-ship had been destroyed, and the technical superiority of steam and iron had been demonstrated.

A CLIPPER SHIP.

There are six distinct steps in the technical evolution of the ocean liner of the present day,—six changes which mark the epochs in the history of the substitution of steam and steel for sail and wood. The first step in the evolution was taken when the steam engine and the paddle-wheel took the place of wind and sails. Like most epoch-making changes, this one was made slowly; indeed, it was preceded by thirty years of hesitation and conservative experimentation. Robert Fulton, taking advantage of ideas and plans which he had obtained in Europe, produced his Clermont in 1807, and demonstrated the practicability of the steamship for river traffic. Five years later, Henry Bell of Scotland constructed the Comet, the first passenger steamboat built in Europe, a vessel only forty feet long, ten and one half feet in width, and of four horse-power. The Clermont was somewhat larger, having a length of 130 feet, a beam of eighteen feet, and a hold six feet in depth. She succeeded in making five miles an hour against stream. These little vessels attracted great attention, and the problem of constructing ships that could cross the ocean by steam power began to be studied. In 1819, the Savannah was fitted with engines and crossed the Atlantic, using both steam power and sails, but the vessel did not prove a success, and her engines were taken out the following year. Indeed, it was not until 1833 that a vessel steamed all the way across the Atlantic; and this ship, the Royal William, a Canadian craft of four or five hundred tons, was able to make the trip from Quebec to Gravesend on the Thames only by stopping for coal at Picton, Nova Scotia, and Cowes near Portsmouth, England.

ROBERT FULTON.

The first steamships to cross the ocean without recoaling were the Sirius and Great Western, which arrived in New York the same day, April 23, 1838, the former vessel having sailed from London and the latter from Liverpool. This achievement on the part of these two wooden craft, neither one capable of carrying more than seven hundred tons, created a great impression. The New York “Courier and Enquirer” said, in its issue of April 24, 1838:—

“What may be the ultimate fate of this excitement—whether or not the expense of equipment and fuel will admit of the employment of these vessels in the ordinary packet service—we cannot pretend to form an opinion; but of the entire feasibility of the passage of the Atlantic by steam, as far as regards safety, comfort, and dispatch, even in the roughest and most boisterous weather, the most skeptical man must now cease to doubt.”

The employment of steamships in the regular packet service was assured in 1839, when Samuel Cunard founded the famous English line that still bears his name, and ordered four steamers of moderate size that cost between four and five hundred thousand dollars each. These, however, were wooden vessels, and it was not until 1856 that the conservative Cunards constructed any iron ships.

The construction of iron ships for ocean navigation marks the second important phase of the technical evolution of the past century’s commerce. It began on a small scale about 1830, and in 1837 an iron vessel, The Rainbow, of six hundred tons was built; but the first large iron steamer was ordered in 1840, and was the famous Great Britain before referred to, constructed by Brunel, the engineer who subsequently built the unfortunate naval monstrosity, the Great Eastern. The completion of the Great Britain, in 1843, was an important event in the progress of ocean navigation, not only because she was five times the size of her largest iron predecessor, but also because of the fact that Brunel decided, while building the vessel, to adopt the screw for propelling the ship.

The substitution of the screw instead of paddle-wheels represents a third phase of the technical evolution of ocean navigation. John Ericsson, who subsequently built the famous Monitor, had demonstrated the practicability of the screw as a propeller in 1836, and, three years later, the Archimedes, of two hundred and thirty-seven tons, was fitted with a screw. It was the success of the Archimedes that led Brunel to adopt the screw on the Great Britain.

THE CLERMONT. FULTON’S FIRST STEAMBOAT.

The superiority of the screw over paddle-wheels, and the greater merits of iron ships compared with wooden vessels, have long been accepted; but the adoption of iron as a material and of the screw for a propeller came about slowly. Indeed, iron ship-building made little progress in Great Britain before 1850, and in this country wood was adhered to till much later. One reason why the English did not change to the screw and iron more quickly was probably the great influence exerted by the powerful Cunard line, whose conservatism caused it to hold to wooden ships until 1856. The Great Eastern, finished as late as 1859, was an iron ship, but was fitted with both screw and paddle-wheels. Of the total tonnage built in the United Kingdom in 1853, about twenty-five per cent was steam tonnage and a little more than twenty-five per cent was of iron. At the present time three fourths of all British-built vessels are steamers, and no wooden ships are built in the United Kingdom.

America was slow in changing from wood to iron, because the cost of iron was so high. We had wood in abundance, numerous yards for the construction of wooden vessels, and were the builders of the best type of wooden ships. In 1853, the year just referred to for Great Britain, twenty-two per cent of the tonnage of the vessels built in this country was in steamships, but only an inappreciable portion was in iron vessels. The adherence of American ship-builders and owners to wood is well illustrated by the action taken by the owners of the famous but unfortunate American Collins line, established in 1847. The company began, in 1850, to run four palatial steamers, built without regard to cost, and supplied with luxurious appointments, some of which are retained in vessels of the present day; but the company built the ships of wood and propelled them with paddle-wheels. The great American ship-building firm, William Cramp & Sons, founded in 1850, did not begin constructing iron ships till 1870. Even in 1898, the tonnage of wooden vessels constructed was one and a half times the steel and iron tonnage. About twenty-six per cent of our merchant marine, foreign and domestic, is now made up of iron and steel vessels.

The next important step in maritime progress, following the adoption of iron and the screw, was taken about 1870, when the compound engine came into general use. Though the compound engine had been used on a small vessel in France as early as 1829, it was first extensively adopted as the result of the rapid development in steam navigation which took place in the seventies. In the compound engine the steam, instead of being used in only one cylinder in passing from the boiler to the condenser, exerts its force in two or three cylinders, and even in four, in the quadruple expansion engines. This results in a great economy in the amount of fuel used. In the earlier marine engines the pressure of steam in the boilers was thirteen pounds to the square inch, and the consumption of coal per horse-power per hour was five and one half pounds; whereas, at the present time, a pressure of two hundred pounds per square inch is maintained, and the fuel used has been reduced to less than one and a half pounds per hour for each indicated horse-power.

Ten years after the compound engine came into general use, the cheapened cost of steel made it possible to adopt steel in the place of iron in the construction of hulls. This may be regarded as marking a fifth epoch-making step in the progress of commerce; because the steel ship was stronger, lighter, and able to carry more cargo than iron vessels of the same size. The substitution of steel for iron in the British yards was made rapidly. In 1879, only ten and a quarter per cent of the tonnage constructed on the Clyde was of steel; but in 1889 the per cent had risen to ninety-seven.

During the past twenty years there have been many improvements made in the construction and appointments of ships; but the more important changes have consisted in dividing vessels, by means of bulkheads, into several water-tight compartments, and in substituting twin screws for the single screw. The Inmans placed twin screws on the City of New York in 1888, and since then their use has become general on the larger ocean liners. The twin screws add somewhat, though not greatly, to the speed of vessels; but they render ships much safer and less liable to be disabled. An ocean steamer with twin screws and water-tight compartments can suffer any one of the common accidents—such as breaking of one of its shafts, losing one of its screws, having its rudder damaged, or one of its engines give out, or having its side punctured by collision—without being disabled. Although ocean travel still has its dangers, the risks at the present time are far less than they were a half or a quarter of a century ago.

The technical progress of commerce during the nineteenth century is well summarized by Mr. Henry Fry in his book on the History of North Atlantic Steam Navigation, written in 1895. He says:—

“The Comet of 1812 has multiplied into twelve thousand steamships, measuring over sixteen million tons.... Her twenty tons have been multiplied into a ship of eighteen thousand; her forty feet to six hundred and ninety-two feet; and her four horse-power to thirty thousand in a single ship. Symington’s four-inch cylinder has grown to one hundred and twenty inches; the pressure of steam in the boiler has increased from thirteen pounds to two hundred pounds on the square inch; the two hundred and forty-three knots, the maximum of the Great Western in 1838, to five hundred and sixty; and the average speed from 8.2 to 22.01 knots, while the consumption of coal has decreased from about five and one half to one and one half pounds per indicated horse-power per hour.”

The century’s naval technical progress is epitomized in the White Star liner, the Oceanic. The length of this mammoth vessel is over an eighth of a mile, being 705 feet, 6 inches. 13½ feet longer than the Great Eastern was. When loaded, the Oceanic draws 32 feet, 6 inches of water, and on that draft her displacement is 28,500 tons. The figures for the Great Eastern were 25 feet, 6 inches, and 27,000 tons. The capacity of her engines is 28,000 horse-power, or two and one third times the capacity of those in the Great Eastern. The pressure in her boilers is 192 pounds to the square inch, or ten or twelve times that in the boilers of her famous predecessor. Though not built for speed, the Oceanic can average 500 miles a day, or sixty per cent more than the Great Eastern did. The Oceanic will accommodate 400 first-class passengers, 300 second-class, 1000 third-class, and a ship’s company of 394, making a total of 2104 persons. In this regard, however, her figures are fortunately less than those of the Great Eastern, for that vessel was designed to carry 4000 persons, besides crew. These figures regarding passenger accommodations indicate in a forceful way the great advancement that has been made in the comforts of ocean travel during the past forty years.