FOOTNOTES:
[145] Lake Ontario, which lies nearest to the Atlantic, is 172 miles in length, about 60 miles in extreme breadth, and 483 miles in circumference. Lake Erie is about 265 miles in length, from 30 to 60 miles in breadth, and 529 miles in circumference; while Lake Huron is 240 miles long, from 186 to 220 miles wide, and 1000 miles in circumference. Michigan, which is connected with Lake Huron by a navigable strait, is 300 miles in length, 75 miles in width, and 920 miles in circumference, having a superficies of 16,200 square miles. But Lake Superior is the largest of all the lakes, being no less than 360 miles in length, and 140 miles in breadth, with a circumference of 1116 miles; the line of coast formed by the margins of these lakes extends to upwards of 4000 miles, while they are all, nearly throughout their entire length and breadth, navigable for vessels of the largest description, their depth varying, except within a short distance of the shores, from 12 to 200 fathoms.
[146] Chicago, situated on the south-west shore of Lake Michigan, at the mouth of a river of the same name, was in 1830 a mere station in the midst of a forest where a few Americans traded with the Indians in furs. Ten years afterwards it had 4470 inhabitants; but in 1850 these had increased to 27,620, and in 1853 to 60,552. In 1860, when I visited that place, it had become a great city, with somewhere about 150,000 inhabitants, numerous handsome stone buildings, and magnificent stores; those for grain capable of containing, according to the annual report of the Chicago Board of Trade, 5,475,000 bushels of corn, with a capacity for shipping no less than 1,835,000 bushels each day. Indeed, I witnessed the loading of a brigantine with 9000 bushels of wheat from one of these stores in two hours!
[147] The first vessel ever built on western waters was the brig Dean, launched at Alleghany City, Pa., in 1806.
[148] In a letter I received, January 5th, 1855, from Mr. E. P. Dorr, the President of the Buffalo Board of Trade, he says: “The Welland Canal, as it now stands, is used almost wholly by American vessels. It is the key of the other canals; its length is 28 miles, and there are 28 locks, as Lake Erie is 256 feet above Lake Ontario: but a new and enlarged canal is in process of construction, which, when finished, will admit vessels of large tonnage.”
[149] In 1860 there were 265 steam-vessels of 104,543 tons register, belonging to the United States, and 104 similar vessels, registering 33,269 tons, owned in Canada, all of which were engaged in the commerce of the lakes. On January 1st, 1875, the number of steamers belonging to both countries, thus employed, had increased to 689, measuring 258,980 tons. They range in size from 250 to 1500 tons. But, besides these, there were 1770 sailing-vessels of 386,554 tons similarly engaged, or an aggregate of 645,534 tons, one in every five of which vessels can go through the Welland Canal, three-fourths of them being American and one-fourth Canadian. Some of the lake sailing-vessels occasionally trade to England, the first, the Dean of Richmond, having taken a cargo from Chicago direct to Liverpool in 1856.
[150] “Civil Engineering of North America,” pp. 60, 61.
[151] Long Island Sound lies between that island and the mainland, and extends in a north-easterly direction from New York Harbour, affording a sheltered line of navigation of about 120 miles in extent.
[152] If any further proofs were necessary to show that almost everything done in this new business had its origin in England, these will be found in the fact, that a boat launched by Fulton on July 4th, 1815, was a counterpart of the one belonging to Mr. Miller, which he had seen on Dalwinston Lock some years previously. She was a structure resting upon two boats, separated from end to end by a channel 15 feet wide and 60 feet long. One boat contained the copper cauldrons, for preparing the steam; the other, the iron cylinder, piston, levers and wheels. The water-wheel revolved in a space between them just as in one of Mr. Miller’s boats. Had Fulton, in this matter, claimed originality, it would, certainly, be another and striking instance of two persons resident far apart from each other, carrying out the same idea, even in its most minute details.
[153] See Western States and Buffalo Advertiser, quoted by Mr. John MacGregor in his “Statistics of the American Lake Trade,” London, 1847.
[154] Batture is the original French word, still retained, applied to the new formation of alluvial soil formed by the capricious action of the Mississippi. The Levee extends from 43 miles below the city to 120 miles above it.
[155] In an address by Mr. Lothian Bell (May 1875), late President of the Iron and Steel Institute of Great Britain, the area of pit coal in the United States is computed at 192,000 square miles, as compared with 8000 square miles in the United Kingdom. Hitherto the expense of working any portion of these vast coal fields was too great to make it remunerative, but, now, the use of coals is being so rapidly substituted for wood in the American steamers that the facilities for working the mines and transporting the coals has marvellously increased within the last twenty years. Mr. Bell remarks, in the same address, that 20,000 tons of coal are sometimes embarked at Pittsburg on a flotilla of flat bottomed boats towed by one steamer and conveyed 1600 miles down the Ohio at something under a shilling a ton, including the cost of bringing back the empty barges.
[156] Between 1816 and 1848 no less than 233 steam-boats employed on American waters exploded, some of them involving terrible disasters, the lowest number during that period being one annually, but sometimes there were as many as ten, twelve, and thirteen in the course of a year. The loss of life in each accident averaged eleven persons, being a total of 2563 human beings killed, besides 2097 persons wounded. In one terrible explosion, that of the Louisiana, on the New Orleans levee, nearly 200 persons lost their lives. See St. Louis Republican and Insurance Reporter (U.S.A.).
[157] In the rule for nominal horse-power, Watt assumed 7 lbs. of steam as a mean pressure.
[158] I am enabled through the courtesy of Mr. Webb, the well-known ship-builder of New York, to furnish in the [Appendix No. 6, p. 600], a description of the engines of the Bristol and Providence, the two finest steamers at present (1875) employed on the line between New York and Boston.
[159] Coals are now worked from mines on the coast, and, from this and other causes, the price of coals on the Pacific coast has been materially reduced.
[160] These “magnificent” vessels are each 5560 tons burden, and are 423 feet in length, 48 feet wide, and 38 feet deep. They are the largest steam-ships that have ever carried the American flag. It is confidently believed in America, that the running time from Hong Kong to San Francisco, viâ Yokohama, by these vessels will be reduced to within twenty days; and they are guaranteed by the builder, under a heavy penalty, to make fourteen and a half knots per hour. The City of Pekin, on her trial trip, made fifteen knots an hour, with fifty-three revolutions per minute and 57 lbs. of steam. This company has now in course of construction another three steamers similar in size; all are being built of iron at Chester, Pa., U.S. Each vessel will have capacity for 800 passengers, and 3000 measurement tons of freight.
[161] The advantages of this system of trussing are described by a practical authority, as follows: “Running fore and aft, and constituting the frame of the sides of the ship, are two arched trusses of wood and iron, of the most ingenious construction. The vertical depth, from the crown of the truss down to the level of the keel, is about 53 feet. In the truss is also interwoven a counter arch, the trusses, therefore, not only prevent the sinking of the two extremities and rising of the middle, but they likewise prevent any rising of the extremities, and sinking of the middle of the ship, and thus effectually prevent any tendency to bend or break in the direction up or down in a fore and aft vertical plane; and, by a most perfect system of lateral trussing interwoven with the tiers of beams, she is prevented from bending or breaking in the direction of a horizontal plane, running fore and aft through the ship. Where strain by tension or pulling is exerted, wrought iron is to be used, and where thrusts or compression is exerted, wood is used, and where both compression and extension are felt, wood and iron together are used.”—Address by Captain T. J. Cram, delivered at the Board of Trade Room, Philadelphia, July 11th, 1860.
[162] So far as regards the stability of the proposed vessel, Captain Cram, who was a member of the United States’ Corps of Topographical Engineers, remarks, in the lecture on her, delivered in 1860 at Philadelphia, as follows: “She is to be a four-storey ship. Commencing at the bottom and going upwards we have the first storey, a hold, 16 feet high in the clear, with ample room for the machinery, boilers, and coals, and for a large quantity of freight besides. All this great weight of engines, boilers, coals, and dead weight freight, which is to be stowed in the very bottom of the ship, will act as ballast placed in the right position to insure stability and to relieve the ship from that dangerous topheaviness usually observed in many sea-going steamers.”
[163] In 1833, Mr. Randall designed and built the Wisconsin, 218 feet in length and 38 feet in width, at Detroit, Michigan, and ran her successfully, under his own command, through three of the lakes between Buffalo and Chicago, carrying freight and passengers, in spite of strong head winds, on round trips of 2000 miles, averaging a speed quite as great as the maximum contemplated many years afterwards by the projectors of the Great Eastern. In 1845 he designed and navigated in the same trade the Empire of 251 feet in length, with a beam of 38 feet, at an average speed of 16 statute miles per hour. Soon afterwards the City of Buffalo and the Western Metropolis, constructed according to his design, were sent afloat. They were sister ships, each 340 feet in length with a beam of 42 feet, and far in advance of any ship England had then afloat, while their draught of water, when laden, was only 9½ feet. By a report which appeared in the Cleveland Herald (U.S.) [and there is no reason to doubt its accuracy], the trip between Buffalo and Cleveland was made at an average speed of 21 miles an hour by the Metropolis, while the City of Buffalo made a similar voyage, averaging still greater speed in the ordinary course of trade. Nor were Mr. Randall’s practical experiments in vessels of similar model and design confined to the lakes, for he commanded the Yankee Blade, a vessel of still larger dimensions, with a draft of 11 feet of water, on her voyage from New York to California round Cape Horn, encountering, successfully, a gale in which many vessels foundered; afterwards, he continued to ply with her for some years on the station between San Francisco and Panama.