STEAMSHIPS AND THEIR STORY
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
In my previous book, “Sailing Ships and Their Story,” which, indeed, this present volume is meant to follow as a complement of the story of the development of the ocean carrier, I ventured to submit the proposition that a nation exhibits its exact state of progress and degree of refinement in three things: its art, its literature, and its ships; so that the development of the ship goes on side by side, and at the same rate, as the development of the State. And if this was found to be true with regard to the vessel propelled by sails, it will be seen that the same can be affirmed with no less truth in respect of the steamship.
In setting out on our present intention to trace the story of the steamship from its first beginnings to the coming of the mammoth, four-funnelled, quadruple-screw, turbine liners of to-day, it is not without importance to bear the above proposition in mind. For though the period occupied by the whole story of the steamer is roughly only about a hundred years, yet these hundred years represent an epoch unequalled in history for wealth of invention, commercial progress, and industrial activity. The extraordinary development during these years, alone, not merely of our own country and colonies, but of certain other nations—of, for instance, the United States of America, of Germany, of Japan—has been as rapid as it has been thorough. Consequently, if our proposition were correct, we should expect to find that the rate of development in the ship had been commensurate. Nor have we any cause for disappointment, for as soon as we commence to reckon up the achievements made in art and literature during the nineteenth, and the first decade of the twentieth centuries, and to compare the rate of progress of the ship during this same period, it seems at first not a little difficult to realise that so much should have been accomplished in so short a time.
When the inhabitant of the Stone Age had succeeded in putting an edge on his blunt stone implement, he had instantly “broken down a wall that for untold ages had dammed up a stagnant, unprogressive past, and through the breach were let loose all the potentialities of the future civilisation of mankind.” It is by no means an unfitting simile if I suggest that we liken the invention of steam to the discovery of the potentialities of the edge. Until the coming of the former we may well say that progress, as we now know it, remained stagnant, at any rate in respect of rapid movement. Omitting other uses for steam not pertinent to our present subject, we may affirm that in annihilating space, in quickly bridging over the trackless expanse of oceans, steamships have succeeded in accelerating the development of the countries of the world.
Ever since the time when primitive man first learned to harness the wind in his navigation of the waters of the earth, there had always been sailing vessels of some sort. For, at any rate, 8,000 years there is a chain of evidence illustrating one kind of sailing craft or another, and the work of later centuries was but to improve and increase the capabilities of the sailing vessels handed down from one generation to the other. But with the first experiments in steamships it was quite different. Here was a case of experimenting, with but few data on which to rely. For, granted that already some knowledge had been collected concerning the capabilities of steam, and notwithstanding the fact that a great deal more knowledge was extant concerning the art of shipbuilding, yet the condition of relationship between ships and steam was unknown, untried. How to generate the maximum of steam power at the lowest cost; how to apply this power in such a manner as to cause the hull to go through the water at a fair pace; whether the propelling power should find its expression at the side or the extremity of the ship—these and many other problems could be solved, not by previous history, but simply and solely by experimenting, as the primitive man had solved the problem of the mast and sail in their relation to the wind.
And yet it was scarcely probable that the value of the sail, which had been appreciated for so many thousands of years, should be suddenly found worthless. Inventions are no sooner born than they find themselves compelled in their weak infancy to fight for their lives against the militant conservatism of established custom. Seamen-descendants of ages and ages of seamen, themselves the most conservative of any section of society, were not likely to believe so readily that pipes and boilers were going to do as much for the ship as spars and sails. Nor, in fact, did they all at once. But something had to come as a greater propelling power than uncertain wind. For the world in the early part of this hundred years was waking up again after the dull Georgian period. It was perhaps rather a new birth—another Renaissance. Soon it began to get busy, and speed, not repose, became the general cry, whose noise is heard now louder and louder each day on land as well as sea. Every known device of the architect and builder was employed to coax additional knots out of the sailing ship: all the improvements in sails and gear were utilised to this purpose. As the result of these demands the magnificent clippers doing their marvellous passages homewards evolved. But that was all too slow. Passengers and freights were in a hurry to get from shore to shore, and, later, perishable food supplies could not be entrusted to the sailing ship. And so, when once the steamship had appeared, even though not as a pronounced success, yet the spirit of the times was such that she should be encouraged as being likely to satisfy the cravings of an active, restless age.
In the history of human progress we find everywhere exemplified a continuous effort through centuries and centuries of change to obtain an end with the least expenditure of labour. It is one of the most striking characteristics of our nature that we proceed along that road offering the least resistance and requiring the smallest amount of endeavour. Not more true is this assertion to-day than in the ages which have sunk into oblivion, and but for this human instinct, or failing, the progress of the world would have been impossible. The prehistoric man found the action of paddling his dug-out so irksome and wearying that he invented the sail as a means of harnessing the wind to do his work, and, as a result, what does the world not owe to his apparent laziness? How else would new countries have been discovered and peopled, commerce extended to nations beyond the seas, untilled areas made to yield their fruitful produce, and wealth amassed by production and exchange of commodities? It was not until Europe had at last begun to build her big caravels and caracks, and to learn how to handle them with adequate seamanship, that the art of navigation advanced so far as to enable Columbus to sail across the Atlantic, and to lay the foundation of the prosperity of the New World. To have attained such a feat by the means of physical propulsion would have been impossible; it was only by the invention of the sail and the perfection of the sailing ship after many centuries of experimenting that this came about. For man’s endurance is hedged in by stern limits. He can only work for part of the day, and he must eat and sleep. But by yoking the wind to the sail the voyage could be continued without the necessity for plying the oar, and most of the crew could be below at their rest or their meals.
But the sailing ship, too, has her limitations. When the wind drops her range of usefulness automatically ends. When the wind becomes contrary, or rises in sufficient fierceness as to become a gale, the sailing ship again loses some of her utility, whilst tides and currents in like manner combine to impede her advance from one port to another. And so, realising all these harassing circumstances, man has ever had a desire to shake himself free from such irritating restrictions, to assert his own independence of winds and seas and tides, and to steer his ships where he liked, and as fast as he liked with the minimum effort.
And yet he has been a very long time indeed finding the means of rising superior to the forces of Nature. He has had to fight very hard against heavy odds, he has had to devise no end of ingenious methods, most of which have been utterly useless, and many a man, overjoyed at his discovery of a sure means of overcoming the problem of propelling craft without sails or oars, has found at the last that in practice it was unworkable or too costly. Some have died from sheer want through sacrificing their all to this one end; others, rendered more sensitive by the ridicule and scorn of their fellow-men, have, on witnessing their own failure, died of a broken heart, and been reckoned by the least discerning as among those who wasted their lives in pursuing a shadow, frittered their time and money in seeking to attain the unattainable, and left behind them no monument except a pile of unworkable propositions and theories.