Steamships and their story

by E. Keble Chatterton

The advantage of this triple-expansion was found to give greater speed with less expenditure of horse-power. At first the City of Paris was not as fast as she ought to have been, but after the A-shaped brackets, which supported the two shafts, were removed and, instead, the hull at the stern was, so to speak, bulged out to contain the shafts, her speed was found to be 19 knots with an employment of 2,000 horse-power less than she had needed before this alteration.

The City of Paris had made her appearance in 1888, but in the following year it was the White Star Line’s turn to come to the front again. From 1873 till 1884 their fleet had been the fastest on the Atlantic; and now again they were ready to enter the lists. Sir Edward Harland was once more entrusted with the task of designing the new ships, and those two beautiful creatures the Teutonic and Majestic were launched, the former in January and the latter in June of 1889. The Majestic is illustrated [opposite page 162], but this view shows her as she was afterwards altered and appears now. When these ships first commenced to run they were both fitted with three pole-masts with a gaff on each; but following the custom now adopted on many modern liners, one of the masts and all the gaffs have since been removed. It will be seen that a modified turtle-deck is still retained at the stern, and in one other respect this ship also continued the influence of the first Oceanic. It will be recollected that the latter possessed the enormous proportion of ten beams to her length. The Teutonic measured 582 feet long and 57·8 feet broad, so that she is only a few feet lacking in this respect. Her gross tonnage is 9,984, and her indicated horse-power 18,000. The Majestic broke the record by crossing from Queenstown to New York in five days eighteen hours eight minutes; the Teutonic by doing the same journey in five days sixteen hours thirty-one minutes. If called upon, these ships could steam from Portsmouth to Bombay via the Cape of Good Hope, a distance of over 10,000 miles, in twenty-two days without having to coal on the way, a fact that might have some importance in the event of war breaking out.

In these two ships was also introduced the practice of overlapping the twin-screws, and in order that they might be able to clear the deadwood at the extreme end of the stern, a hole—technically called a “screw port”—was made after the manner in which a “port” is left for the screw to revolve when a vessel is provided only with a single propeller. The advantage in the case of the twin-screws was that they were allowed plenty of water for their propellers to revolve in. The advantage of the screws overlapping tended also to enable them to work in a manner as near as possible to the centre line of the hull.

The introduction of the twin-screw system was made in the Orient liner Ophir (see [opposite page 166]), which was built in 1891. Each of her four decks is of steel, and she was given the triple-expansion engines in two sets—one set for each propeller. She was the first vessel on the Australian route to be fitted with twin-screws, but many others have since followed and proved the wisdom of this innovation. Her propellers are made of manganese bronze, with three blades each, and give her a speed of between 18 and 19 knots. It will be recollected that it was this ship which was selected to carry the present King and Queen on their tour of the British Colonies in 1901.

The ceaseless competition in the Atlantic steamship progress continued without abatement, and by now the Cunard Line was ready again to fight for the lead. In September of 1892 the Campania was launched, and was followed in the next February by the Lucania. Since their length was greater than the width of the Clyde, where they were built, they had to be launched into the river diagonally. They were, of course, fitted with twin-screws and with triple-expansion engines, there being five cylinders, of which two are high-pressure, one intermediate, and two low-pressure. We do not intend to weary the reader with a list of statistics which can easily be obtained by those to whom bare figures make their appeal; our purpose is served if we show in what important detail each successive vessel advanced the history of the steamship so as to approach more nearly to what is considered the ideal by modern experts. But we shall be shirking our duty if we do not indicate some of the main characteristics which gave to such a craft as the Campania a distinctiveness that distinguished her and her sister the Lucania from her contemporaries. One greatly improved liner nowadays so quickly surpasses her predecessor; the age of obsolescence now moves at so greatly quickened a speed; that the general public, whose memory is also so short-lived, scarcely has time to appreciate all that the latest steamship means ere it has passed quietly from service and been handed over to the ship-breakers, or, under a new flag and a changed name, continues its work at some remote corner of the world.

THE “LUCANIA” (1893).

From a Photograph. By Permission of the Cunard Steamship Co.

Those who remember seeing the Campania lying in the Mersey soon after she was commissioned, and with their minds full of the hitherto unparalleled features which had been foretold concerning her, will recollect that the first impression conveyed was identical with that made on seeing the Mauretania immediately after she had left the builders’ hands. Not so much size but gracefulness; not the characteristics of a floating monster, but of a singularly beautiful creature whose every line suggested dignity with speed were the points that attracted one.

Handsome is as handsome does; these two sisters, one of which is no more, were not long in showing that their achievements were not belied by their good looks. In appearance less like “the biggest things afloat” than the most symmetrical colossal yacht, the Campania was built for business, and not primarily to be a thing of beauty. She has made the run between Queenstown and New York in 5½ days, and ocean travellers soon appreciated the important fact that in getting from one country to the other she had a reputation for regularity that would be hard to beat, irrespective of winter and summer weather. The Campania is slightly larger than her late sister, and has averaged just under 22 knots for a whole year’s east-bound voyages. The engines of these elegant ships were arranged in the manner already indicated so as to avoid having unnecessarily large cylinders, the two high-pressure cylinders driving one crank, being arranged tandem fashion, the intermediate cylinder driving one crank, whilst the two low-pressure were also put the one above the other like the high-pressure, and by an ingenious contrivance it is possible to prevent the screws racing; for when the number of revolutions begins to exceed its proper limit the supply of steam is automatically cut off.