Of course, as yet, there was no Suez Canal, so that, in a manner similar to that across the Isthmus of Panama, an overland route had to be instituted for passengers, cargo, and mails across the Isthmus of Suez. The P. and O. Company had, then, to land their passengers at Alexandria, and just as canoes and mules had to be employed in America, so boats and camels were requisitioned in Africa. But it was a complicated journey, for this “overland” route was mostly an over-water route. By means of the Mahmoudieh Canal the passengers and goods were sent from Alexandria to the Nile, whence they proceeded by steamer to Cairo. From there they travelled through the desert to Suez. Three thousand camels had to be employed for transporting a single steamer’s loading; every package had to be subjected to three separate transfers, and the inconvenience was indeed considerable. But for nearly twenty years this system continued.
Steam communication was inaugurated by the company with Australia in 1852, by means of a branch line from Singapore, and two years later the service between Suez and Bombay was absorbed by the P. and O. Company. This had been retained hitherto by the East India Company in order to keep alive their navy. In 1869, came the opening of the Suez Canal, and it was essentially the steamship and not the sailing ship which brought this about, although the Suez Railway preceded the canal by ten years. It is not generally known, perhaps, that a continuous waterway had already existed long years before. In the times of the early Egyptians there had been a canal which connected the Nile with the Red Sea, so that ships could circumnavigate Africa and, returning by the Mediterranean, could come out through the Nile into the Red Sea again. But the Suez Canal had not been demanded so long as the steamship remained undeveloped, and even for some time after the traffic to Australia and New Zealand was principally carried on in those handsome clipper-ships which were representative of the finest examples of the sailing ship. It is only by means of the steamship that it is possible to bring across so many thousands of miles the great quantities of frozen meat and other perishable foods which now reach this country, and the Suez Canal certainly assisted to make this possible. Not merely did the steamship indirectly bring about the Canal, but the latter increased the steamship’s sphere of usefulness.
About the time when the Suez Canal was opened the practical adoption of the compound engine was taking place in the mercantile marine. This idea had been introduced about 1856 by Messrs. Randolph Elder and Company, and had been installed in the ships of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company. In explanation of this system we may say at once that its great advantage lay in the fact that it reduced the coal consumption to just about half of what it had been hitherto in the most economical engines. The principle is based on the fact that steam possesses elastic properties which can be put to excellent use. Put simply, the compound engine allows the steam to enter one cylinder at high pressure, and, after it has moved the piston, escapes into one (or more) cylinders of larger size, where it does its work by direct expansion, and so much more work is done at little expense. The expression “triple expansion,” which frequently confronts the reader interesting himself in steamships, simply means that the steam is expanded one stage further. Quadruple expansion is the same idea pushed still another stage. When about twenty years ago the triple expansion system was brought in, the steam pressures were increased from 125 lb. to 160 lb. per square inch, and so the coal consumption was reduced also. But the triple expansion had been preceded by the compound and the low pressure engine, just as it was followed by the quadruple.
The opening of the Suez Canal was not devoid of side issues, for it took away that monopoly which the P. and O. had enjoyed, since the world’s steamships now poured in and began to go eastward and back again. There was difficulty with the Post Office, who refused to allow the Canal route for the conveyance of mails, on the ground that it was not so suitable as the Egyptian Railway, and it was not until 1888, when the charge for carrying the mails had been reduced by nearly £100,000 a year, that the accelerated mails sent via Brindisi were transferred to the Canal route, although the heavy mails had already been carried by it. But the P. and O. were unlucky in another way. The Mooltan, their first ship to be installed with the compound engine, in 1860, had proved such a success that several other steamers of the line were thus fitted, but the result was disappointing. Although it was quite clear that this type of engine made for economy, yet it was found unreliable, and in some cases had to be replaced by less complex machinery.
We have now been able to see steamship lines established and sending their fleets regularly with passengers, cargoes, and mails to the uttermost ends of the earth, and we have been able to look ahead a little so that we shall be free to concentrate our attention very shortly on that centre of steamship activity the North Atlantic. Between 1840 and 1860 the Cunard Company had practically a monopoly of the Atlantic trade. For a time the American clippers hung on, but as they had ousted the old brigs, even the fastest sailing vessels were replaced by the steamship. From 1850 to 1858 there was, indeed, some opposition from a steamship company called the Collins Line, which had been subsidised by the American Government. This competition was very keen, for both lines were compelled to put forth the best steamers they could, but in the end the Collins Line withdrew from the contest.
DESIGNS FOR SCREW PROPELLERS PRIOR TO 1850.
From the Drawing in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
But there was now another force coming in, which was to entirely alter the character of the liner. Let us trace the evolution of the screw propeller, which has completely banished the old-fashioned paddle-wheel from its place in the ocean-going ship, and is rapidly having the same effect in cross-Channel steamers. We saw that away back in 1804 John Stevens had crossed the Hudson in a little ship that was driven along by a screw propeller, but it was not until the year 1836 that the screw was re-introduced. In this year John Ericsson, a Swedish engineer, obtained a patent for his invention which consisted of two drums, on whose exteriors were seven helical blades, the interior of each drum having the three blades which formed the radii of the circle. Both these drums worked on one axis, and were placed behind the rudder, and not in front of it as is the modern propeller. If the reader will turn to [the plate facing page 118], he will see this at the beginning of the second line to the left. The drums were made to work in opposite directions, the object being to avoid loss due to the rotary motion already remaining in the water discharged by a single screw.
Ericsson applied this invention to the Francis B. Ogden, which was built in 1837. She was 45 feet long, and was driven by a two-cylinder steam engine with a boiler pressure of 50 lb. The result of the experiment showed that she could tow a vessel of 630 tons burthen at 4½ knots against the tide. The following year a larger vessel, the Robert F. Stockton, was built by Laird Brothers, and attained a speed of thirteen knots on the Thames, with the tide in her favour. Afterwards she crossed the Atlantic, but under canvas, and was turned into a tug as the New Jersey, for work in New York waters. [The illustration facing page 120], which has been lent by Messrs. Cammell, Laird and Company, Limited, of Birkenhead, shows her rigged as a topsail schooner under sail and steam. Her measurements were 63.4 feet long, 10 feet beam, 7 feet deep, with a register of 33 tons, and engines of 30 horsepower. Although she was the first screw steamer to cross the Atlantic, yet her voyage is interesting rather as a fairly daring trip of a small sailing ship than as proving the reliability of the screw propeller.