“Into a ship of the line man has put as much of his human patience, common sense, forethought, experimental philosophy, self-control habits of order and obedience, thoroughly wrought handwork, defiance of brute elements, careless courage, careful patriotism, and calm expectation of the judgment of God, as can well be put into a space 300 feet long; by 80 feet broad.”—Ruskin.
“If any body of men have just cause to feel pride in their calling, and in the fruits of their labour, shipbuilders have. If we look at the magnitude of the operations of building, launching, engining, and completing a modern passenger ship of the first rank, and regard the multiplicity of the arrangements and beauty of finish now expected, and then think this structure has to brave the elements, make regular passages, convey thousands of human souls, and tens of thousands of tons of merchandise every year across the ocean, in storm or calm, we cannot but feel that they are occupied in useful human labour. But more than this, there is a public sentiment surrounding ships that no other mechanical structures can command. Beautiful churches, grand buildings, huge structures of all kinds have a certain interest pertaining to them, but it is different in kind from that which surrounds a ship. The former are fixed, immovable, inert; the ship is here to-day and gone to-morrow, building up a history from day to day with a reputation as sensitive as a woman’s to calumny, and like her consequently often a bone of contention as well as an object of admiration.”—William John.
MODERN SHIPBUILDING.
CHAPTER I.
RECENT PROGRESS IN STEAMSHIP CONSTRUCTION.
The achievements in shipbuilding and marine engineering within recent years may be said to borrow lustre from one particular feat of past times. The Great Eastern undoubtedly furnished, in large measure, the experience that has recently been causing so great a change in the tonnage of our mercantile marine. Commercially, as is well known, that huge vessel—“Brunel’s grand audacity,” she has been called—has all along proved a lamentable failure. It has been stated on good authority that between 1853—the year in which the contract for her was entered into—and the year 1869, no less than one million sterling had been lost upon her by the various proprietors attempting to work her. Financially, indeed, she may be said to have proved the “Devastation” of the mercantile marine. Although at various times in her long life-time she has unquestionably done most useful service in sub-marine cable-laying—service, indeed, which, but for her, could not well have been accomplished—these times of usefulness have been far outbalanced by her long periods of inactivity.
Apart from commercial considerations, however, this premier leviathan still stands out as a wonder and pattern of naval construction. In her admirably-conceived and splendidly-wrought structural arrangements—due to the joint labours of the late Mr I. K. Brunel and Mr J. Scott Russell—she possesses as successful an embodiment of the dual quality of “strength-with-lightness” as can be found in any subsequent ocean-going merchant ship. She was, if not the first, certainly the greatest embodiment of the longitudinal system of construction, and in virtue of this, as well as of her phenomenal proportions, she represents, alone, more of the intrepidity and skill essential to thorough progress, than are exhibited by combined hosts of the “departures” of recent times.
Despite the far-reaching views of the eminent designer, those changes which have since taken place in the essential conditions for successful ocean navigation eluded his vision. Owing to the opening of coal mines in almost all parts of the world, it is now no longer necessary nor desirable that a steamer should be capable of carrying coals for a return voyage, either from India or Australia—this being the dominant and regulating condition in the Great Eastern’s design. Further, the improvements in marine engineering, represented by the greater possible economies in coal consumption and the fuller utilization of steam, which have since been effected, have rendered the great ship inefficient and obsolete. In short, Brunel and his financial supporters were ahead of their time, and failed to appreciate the law of progress, now better understood—“invention must wait on experience.”
The urgent demands of our broader civilisation, improvements in navigation, the spread of population in new colonies and over wider continents, and, above all, the fresh accessions of experience and invention, are forces which now impel shipowners to increase the dimensions of their vessels, and shipbuilders to carry out the work. Each year the contrasts as to dimensions between the first leviathan and her later sister grow less and less. The completion within the past few years of such monster merchant ships as the Servia, the City of Rome, the Alaska, and the Oregon, and the forward state of the Etruria and Umbria, two remarkable steamships, building on the Clyde for the Cunard Company, constitute an epoch in the history of our mercantile marine, and give colourable justification to the belief sometimes expressed, that the proportions of the Great Eastern will in time be surpassed.