Steamships and their story

by E. Keble Chatterton

From Drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

In the history of the sailing ship the flow of progress was from east to west, from Babylon to North America, and then it ebbed back again, bearing in its stream improvements which newer nations had been able to effect to the sail-propelled ship. To an extent, something of the same kind happened in the case of the steamship. The latter’s physically-driven, paddle-wheel prototype began, if not in China, at least in the Mediterranean, and the first efforts of steam propulsion were made not many hundred miles north of this. Then, after the Fulda, the Saône, and the Seine, the movement was to the Hudson, and so back to Europe through Great Britain and on to Germany and Russia. Of the progress in steam navigation made in the two latter countries about this time [the illustrations facing page 84] are interesting instances, and we shall deal with them presently. But before we proceed to discuss them let us turn back for a moment to Robert Fulton. After he had at length established the steamboat as a thoroughly sound concern in America we find him not unnaturally sighing for other countries to conquer. Accordingly he set his mind on introducing the steamboat not merely on the chief rivers of North America, but even on the Ganges and the Neva. The year in which Bell’s Comet had come into service Fulton had actually entered into a contract with one Thomas Lane to introduce steamboats into India, and on April 12th of that year he wrote to a Russian gentleman, who was then staying in London, with reference to obtaining an exclusive contract for twenty years, for establishing a steamboat service between St. Petersburg and Cronstadt within three years after obtaining the grant. It is evident from Fulton’s correspondence that Imperial permission for this was obtained. Fulton, however, died in the year 1815, and at the time of his death the steamboat The Emperor of Russia was in course of construction previous to being transferred to Russian waters. This enterprise was postponed and subsequently taken up by other contractors. But the same year (1815) we find Charles Baird engaged in doing what Fulton would have carried out had he lived. [The upper illustration, then, which faces page 84] represents a drawing of the steamboat Elizabeth. Originally a barge, she was rebuilt and engined by Baird in 1815 at St. Petersburg for service on the Neva. The steering arrangement is not dissimilar to that of some of the Thames sailing barges of to-day, with the use of the tackle leading from the rudder through the ship’s quarter to the helm. The reader will doubtless be not a little amused to notice the brick chimney which stands up in the boat as if rising from a factory. The engine is hidden away underneath the deck, but it was of the side-lever type, of which we have already spoken, with a single cylinder and air-pump. The boiler will be seen placed aft. The weight of the paddle-wheels was partly supported by the rectangular frame-work which will be seen stretched across the hull. The paddle-wheels had each four floats, which were kept level by means of bevel gear. [The other illustration facing page 84] shows another steamer, which Baird built two years later for passenger traffic between St. Petersburg and Cronstadt. It will be noticed that, as in all these early steamboats, the paddle-wheels were placed far forward towards the bows. In this ship both paddle-wheels were fitted with six floats, which were driven at fifty revolutions per minute by means of a side-lever engine that had a large fly-wheel. The arrangement of this ship’s engines was similar rather to those of the Comet than of the Clermont. Looking at the lower drawing in this illustration we can easily see how she was propelled. Amidships is the boiler, from which steam is conveyed to the cylinder, through which appears the piston-rod, which in turn connects with the side-lever, that is placed as low as it can be in the boat. The connecting rod comes up from the forward end of the side-lever to the crank, which is attached to the shaft, and the latter, revolving, of course turns the paddle-wheels.

And here it may not be out of place to say something concerning the survival of the beam engine. I have already referred on an earlier page to its introduction and traced its development from Newcomen’s atmospheric engine. When, in the early days of the steam engine, its use had been limited to pumping out water from mines, one connecting rod was employed in pumping and the other was driven up by the steam in the cylinder. Then, when the engine was made, not for pumping, but for giving rotatory motion, the connecting rod which had been in use for pumping was used to give a rotatory motion, by means of either the sun-and-planet movement (as in Watt’s patent) or by means of a crank (as in the patent which his workman stole from him). In America Watt’s beam engines were imitated very closely, and to-day, as every visitor to New York is aware, the curious sight is seen of enormous ferry-boats, towering high above the water, with the beam and connecting rods showing up through the top of the ship. Now this idea is all very well where the steamer is concerned only with navigation on rivers and peaceful waters, but for ocean steaming, where the deck needs to be covered in from the attacks of the mighty seas, it is out of the question. Therefore, since it was advisable to retain the beam in some form, and it could not be allowed to protrude through the deck, the obvious expedient was adopted of placing it below, but as far down in the ship as possible. As a general statement we shall not get far wrong if we state that thus placed, at the bottom, with the rods working upwards instead of downwards, it was really a case of turning the engine upside down. Thus arranged it became known as the side-lever engine, and now, if the reader will look again at [the bottom illustration facing page 84], he will see our meaning. By turning the illustration round, so that the beam or side-lever is at the top, this resemblance to the old-fashioned beam engine becomes still more apparent. Later on we shall be able to show a more complicated form of the side-lever engine, but for the present this may suffice for the interest of the non-technical reader. For many years the side-lever was the recognised form of marine engine, and its advantages included that of being remarkably steady in its working because its parts were so nicely balanced. Moreover, it was easy to drive from the beam the various auxiliary parts, such as the air-pump. It was also very strong, though both heavy and costly, as it became in the course of time more complicated.

Although it is true that in Fulton’s Clermont the beam was placed below the piston-rod, yet that was entirely owing to English influence, as represented in Boulton and Watt, who had manufactured this engine, or at any rate a good many of its parts. It is now that the dividing line comes between the two types, English and American. “From this primitive form,” says Admiral Preble, in his volume already quoted, “the two nations diverged in opposite directions—the Americans navigating rivers, with speed the principal object, kept the cylinder upon deck and lengthened the stroke of the piston: the English, on the other hand, having the deep navigation of stormy seas as their more important object, shortened the cylinder in order that the piston-rod might work entirely under deck, while Fulton’s working (walking) beam was retained.” From the engine, in fact, which Boulton and Watt had constructed at Soho for Fulton, by far the majority of the engines for the earliest steamboats took their pattern. And if to the Americans belongs the credit of having so thoroughly and so quickly developed the steamboat navigation of large rivers, it is the British, as we shall see shortly, who have been the pioneers of ocean navigation in steamships.

[The upper illustration facing page 90], which has been taken from a contemporary engraving, is worthy of notice as being the first steamer actually built in Germany. She represents rather a retrogression than an advance in the story of the steamship, for she was following still on those lines which had been in mind when Miller’s double-hulled ship and the Charlotte Dundas were launched. This vessel, the Prinzessin Charlotte, was built by John Rubie at Pichelsdorf in 1816, for service on the Elbe, Havel and Spree. As will be seen from the illustration, her paddle-wheel was placed amidships and covered in. She was driven by an engine possessing 14 horse-power and made by J. B. Humphreys. Her long, lanky smoke-stack is supported by numerous stays, while her double-rudders, though still preserving the helms as used in contemporary sailing ships, are moved by means of a steering wheel. Clumsy and beamy, she is inferior in design to the Comet, and would no doubt have needed all the help of her twin-rudders to get her round some of the narrow reaches of the river. In the adoption and employment of the steering wheel neither the Prinzessin Charlotte nor the Clermont was the pioneer of this more modern method, its evolution having come about on this wise: as the tillers became heavier when the size of ships increased and the pull on them became greater, some sort of lanyard was first attached to them so as to get a purchase and divide the strain; otherwise the steersman would not have been able to control the ship. We see this as far back as the times of the Egyptian sailing ships. In medieval times and even in the seventeenth century the big, full-rigged ships were still steered by a helm in the stern, the pilot shouting down his orders to the steersmen placed under the poop. Then, in order to counteract the wild capers which some of these vessels had a tendency to perform in a breeze, it was an obvious expedient to fit up an arrangement of blocks and tackles to the tiller. From this came the transition to the employment of these in connection with a winch, such as had been used for hoisting up the anchor. This winch was driven by means of “hand-spikes,” a method that was not conducive to rapid alteration of the ship’s course. But in the eighteenth century, when ships were better designed, and many improvements were being introduced, the handspikes were discarded and the spoked wheel was connected with the barrel of the winch, placed not ’thwart-ship, but fore-and-aft, so that not merely could the direction of the ship’s head be altered more quickly, but a steadier helm could be kept, because it was less difficult to meet the swervings of the vessel from her proper course. As everyone knows, this steering-wheel has been improved by many minor alterations, and ropes have given way to chains and steel wire: but though steam-steering gear is now so prominent a feature of the modern steamship, the wheel itself is not yet superseded.

THE “PRINZESSIN CHARLOTTE” (1816).

From a Contemporary Print.

THE “SAVANNAH” (1819).