“In the whole world there is no place whatever that can in any degree compare with the Clyde for either extent or quality of steamship building; and at this moment an indisputable verification can be adduced, for between American and European ports there are at the present time something like a score of steam navigation companies, doing an immense passenger and carrying trade, with vessels of great power and magnificence, and notwithstanding the variety of trade nationalities, at least two-thirds of the vessels employed were built and equipped on the Clyde; and more—unless there has very recently been a change, there is not an American steam company in the whole Atlantic trade. With a run of about fifty years to try it, and after many unsuccessful attempts, the Americans have utterly failed to sustain permanent competition. All the British companies have prospered beyond any probable anticipation clothed with reason. The Cunard Company, starting with four vessels some forty years ago, have now twenty times that number. What is this something which enables Europeans to so far outstrip the Americans in a competitive traffic so as to exclude them from the merest show in the largest steam trade in the world? A baneful, overweening, and ignorantly selfish conceit invariably leads to disastrous results, and a nation given over to the fulmination of concentrated boast cannot fail to be suffocated with foolery of its own making.”
This is doubtless the outcome of a vicious antipathy—natural in the circumstances—to those stringent and over-reaching laws which forbid that ships built away from America shall sail under the American flag, or enjoy the pertaining privileges. American shipbuilders thus secured from the encroaches of foreign competition, have enjoyed their own pace, but at too great a sacrifice. Preferring to take the material most at hand, the manipulation of which they well understood, they have allowed their wood age to be dove-tailed thirty years into our iron one, with the other result that America now occupies as unimportant a place in the traffic of the sea, as the above quotation indicates.
Evidences are not wanting, however, to show that America is at least endeavouring, in some respects, to be abreast of the times, and that she has brought herself to acknowledge and follow the lead of this country. In this connection, the four new vessels presently being constructed for the U.S. Navy may be shortly referred to. The vessels comprise three cruisers and one despatch boat, all of which are being built by Mr John Roach, of Chester, Pa., the material employed in their construction being mild steel of American manufacture. Twin screws will be employed for the propulsion of the largest vessel—the Chicago—which is to be 315 feet long between perpendiculars, 48 feet beam, and 34 feet 9 inches moulded depth to spar deck. The other vessels are the Boston and the Atalanta, single screw cruisers of 270 feet length; and the Dolphin, single screw despatch boat, of 250 feet length and high speed.
In almost every feature except machinery these new American naval vessels strongly resemble Government vessels of recent British build, a circumstance for which there is little difficulty in accounting, as it is well known the naval authorities in the States have within recent times been recruited by young American naval architects educated in our Naval College at Greenwich, and consequently steeped in British naval practice. This and other facts, such as the visit of a technical commissioner of the States’ navy, two years ago, to our naval and mercantile shipyards—upon which he has since fully reported—leave one in no doubt as to the source of coincidence in design and structure.
S.S. UMBRIA.—Cunard Line.
| Length, | 500 ft. 0 in. | Depth, | 40 ft. 0 in. |
| Breadth, | 57 ft. 0 in. | Tonnage (Gross), | 7,718 tons. |
| Built by Messrs Elder & Co., 1884. | |||
The subject of America’s position as a shipbuilding and shipowning country has involved reference to wood shipbuilding, but to revert at any length to this topic in a work dealing with modern progress in British shipbuilding, the bulk of which is written of and for industrial and commercial centres where wood shipbuilding has been long entirely tabooed, is quite unnecessary. Doubtless, however, the amount of wood and composite building still carried on in the minor seaports of the United Kingdom, and in several of the British possessions, is of sufficient importance to demand some reference. As the present position of affairs in this connection is briefly and forcibly illustrated by statistics compiled and issued by the British Iron Trade Association, two tables taken from this source may be given, the subject thereafter being finally departed from:—
Tonnage of Vessels constructed and registered in the United Kingdom of Iron, Steel, and Wood respectively, in each of the years 1879 to 1883, with Percentage of Total Tonnage constructed in Iron and Steel.
| Year. | Gross Tonnage of Vessels built of | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Iron and Steel. | Wood. | Excess Tonnage in Iron and Steel. | |
| 1879 | 484,636 | 26,186 | 458,450 |
| 1880 | 525,568 | 19,938 | 505,630 |
| 1881 | 730,686 | 18,107 | 712,579 |
| 1882 | 913,519 | 14,850 | 898,669 |
| 1883 | 1,012,735 | 15,202 | 997,533 |
| Totals, | 3,667,144 | 94,283 | 3,572,861 |