THE “BRITISH QUEEN” (1839).
By permission of James Napier, Esq.
THE “BRITANNIA,” THE FIRST ATLANTIC LINER (1840).
From a Model. By permission of the Cunard Steamship Co.
Finally, we come to the British Queen, which was yet another vessel to steam across the broad Atlantic, and to show once more that it was neither good fortune nor the powers of any single vessel that had conquered the ocean, but the building of the right kind of ship, engined with suitable machinery. Built in London, and installed with engines by Robert Napier (by the courtesy of whose kinsman, Mr. James Napier, [the illustration is here given]), the British Queen was considered a wonder in her day, and even exceeded the dimensions of the famous Great Western, costing as much as £60,000 to build. As will be seen, she is neither brig- nor ship-rigged, but is a barque. In spite of the hideous old stern of those times and the old-fashioned square ports, and the medieval custom of stowing one of her anchors abreast of the fore-mast—a practice which survived until well into the nineteenth century—her appearance shows that she was an advance on what had gone before. She had about seven beams to her length, and her bow gives evidence that the old Dutch influence was at last being forsaken: it is, in fact, the transition stage before the clippers modified it still more. The same long space which we noted in an earlier ship, extending between the fore- and main-mast to afford room for the engines, will here be recognised, and the paddle-wheels, unlike those of the early river craft, are placed about amidships. In designing her with about 40 feet greater length than the Great Western had possessed, the aim was no doubt to attain not merely sufficient space for passengers, cargo, engines and ample fuel, but also to be able to wrestle with the long Atlantic waves, whose average length has been computed at about 200 feet. Seventy years ago this British Queen was designed to be 275 feet over all; to-day, the Lusitania is 760 feet thus measured, and it is this appreciation of the value of length which has a good deal to do with the evolution of the modern liner from being a moderate-sized vessel to one of enormous proportions. In her first voyage from Portsmouth to New York, the British Queen kept up an average speed for one day of over ten knots, whereas the Great Western had on her maiden voyage outward-bound averaged about two knots less. Leaving Portsmouth on April 2nd, 1839, the British Queen arrived in New York on April 16th, or three days quicker than the first Royal William had done the journey in the opposite direction under sail and steam. The British Queen consumed about 613 tons of coal on the way.
Thus we have seen the steamship arrive at a stage very far from being merely experimental. We have watched her gradually grow from her infancy, when she was good only as a tug or river craft, until now she has shown in the enthusiasm of her youth that she can stride across the Atlantic. It will be our duty in the following chapter to indicate how she came to be treated with entire confidence, and to take her part in the regular routine of the world’s work.
CHAPTER IV
THE INAUGURATION OF THE LINER
It was not to be thought that the achievements which we chronicled at the end of the preceding chapter would remain without their immediate results. If such small vessels as the Sirius, propelled by steam, could cross the Atlantic and return safe and sound; if still more easily the Great Western had been able to perform the feat and to show a substantial return on the capital laid out, surely there was an assured future for steamship enterprise. “What man has done, man can do,” is an old proverb, the application of which has led to the founding of those mighty, excellently equipped fleets which have transformed the trackless, desolate North Atlantic into a busy thoroughfare, along whose fixed routes every day of the year are carried thousands of passengers and tons of merchandise from one continent to the other. Although nowadays there is scarcely a corner of the world to which a regular line of steamships does not run, yet it is the North Atlantic that has always been the scene of the greatest enterprise in steamship development. We could find plenty of reasons for this if we cared to inquire into the matter. It was not until the advent of the transatlantic steamship that all the possibilities of the Tudor voyages and discoveries began to be appreciated fully. A continent, like a single country, flourishes not merely by its produce of wealth, but by its exchange thereof. So long as it is separated by thousands of miles, every fathom of which is fraught with danger and has to be traversed by sailing ships whose arrival may be weeks or months late, which may, in fact, never arrive at all, a tight restriction is kept on the exchange of wealth; stagnation ensues, people travel as little as possible, and remain ignorant in their own narrow provincialism. Whereas, to-day, they take every possible advantage of travel, of voyaging the world over, not merely to exchange wealth but to exchange ideas, to add to their knowledge, to wipe out their provincialism.