But no generation is at any time of its career independent. From its first moments it is under a debt to those which have come and gone. Literature is but a collection of data amassed by our predecessors and handed down to the next age, which adds a little more to what is already known. It is scarcely possible to point to one man and say that he alone was the inventor of any new theory or device, although in carelessness we actually so speak. His own conclusions have been based on the accumulation of what his predecessors have left for him; and it is the same with the invention of the steamship. Some writers of different nationalities have patriotically upheld one man or another as the father of the steamship with a zeal that does more credit to their national loyalty than to their sense of historical fairness. In point of fact, although in different epochs one man has been more successful in practical experiment than another, we cannot, at any rate in the history of the steamship, give to that man a place of honour to the exclusion of all those who have gone before. Without their help he would never have succeeded. Their failures, even if they left him little to work on, at least showed him what to avoid. As an example we might here cite the instance of using a propeller shaped after the manner of a duck’s foot, which, being a close copy of the method employed by a species of animal which has its being on the surface of the water, appealed powerfully to more than one inventor as the likely way to solve a great problem; just as the early days of aviation were wasted in endeavouring to follow too closely the methods of locomotion adopted by birds. The years of man are but threescore and ten, and he cannot go on wasting his allotted time in trying and discarding all the experiments possible; but from the disordered mass of accumulated data he can extract just those which have any semblance of sound sense and practicability, from which he can deduce his own new theory and put it to actual test.
Because, then, of this mutual inter-dependence we shall give the palm to no individual, but endeavour to show how, step by step, the ship has shaken herself free of entire slavery to the wind, one age helping her a little in her ambition, others sending her forward farther still towards her goal. Chance plays so curious a game with progress. A genius may spring up too early or too late to be appreciated. He may be hailed as a dangerous lunatic or as a benefactor of mankind, according to whether the time was ripe for his appearance.
Papin, as we shall see presently, was born out of due season. His fellow-men did not want his steamer, so they smashed it to pieces. Solomon de Caus, who showed that he knew more about the application of steam than anyone who had ever lived, was shut up as a madman, whereas Fulton, another man of rare genius and wonderful fertility of invention, has recently had his centenary celebrated and fêtes in his memory held, lest the recollection of his great gift to mankind should be easily forgotten. But Fulton was just the kind of man to acknowledge his dependence on the work of his predecessors, and, in fact, did this in so many words when he was being denounced by a rival inventor. Desblanc, a Frenchman, pretended that his was the prior invention, but Fulton wisely replied that if the glory of having invented the steamboat belonged to anyone, it belonged not to himself nor to Desblanc, but to the Marquis de Jouffroy, who had obtained a success with his steamer on the Saône twenty years before. And the designers and builders of the Mauretania and Lusitania to-day would be among the first to admit that such achievements as these mammoth ships are but the results of all that has gone before: in other words, it is evolution rather than sudden invention.
Genius is the exclusive possession of no particular nation, still less of any particular age: but it needs just that happy condition of opportunity which means so little or may mean so much. And the more we realise that this is so, and that it is even possible for two men, separated by thousands of miles, to be working at the same scientific problem and to arrive at similar solutions at about the same date (as happens more than once in the story of the steamship), so much more quickly shall we approach a fair and impartial verdict in assessing praise to whom praise is due. All the mutual recriminations and slanders, all the long years of law-suits, and the pain and grief to both parties in several instances regarding their rival claims for priority of invention of the essential characteristics of the steamboat, might have been thus avoided. Coincidence is a recognisable factor, and when men’s minds are at one particular time more keenly set on bringing about a craft capable of moving without sails or oars, and working with the same historical data before them, it is, in fact, more probable than improbable that the same conclusions will be arrived at by men who have never seen each other, nor availed themselves of each other’s secrets.
There had always been a feeling that some means other than sails or oars could be found for ship-propulsion, but it was not until the possibilities of steam had begun to be appreciated that the idea of a mechanically-propelled ship took on any practical form. Thus we might divide our study into two separate sections. The first would consist of all those vessels propelled by some mechanism moved by man or beast: in other words, by physical strength employed to turn a paddle-wheel or other arrangement. The other section would include all those efforts to turn the machinery, not by physical, but by steam force. The first dates from a time almost as old as the ship herself; the second in actual success covers, as we have already said, a space of about a hundred years only, but the first efforts date from the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Papin performed his historic achievement.
For years and centuries man has longed to be able to navigate the air, and to this end he has tried all shapes and kinds of balloons, yet he is always more or less dependent on the currents of the sky. But the recent jump from years of failure to marvellous success is due as much to the collateral invention and development of the motor. It was chance that caused the aeroplane and the motor industry to develop simultaneously, and yet but for the latter the former could not have advanced. It is much the same with the evolution of the steamship. It was only after Solomon de Caus had, early in the seventeenth century, published his treatise on the application of steam as a means for elevating water, and the Marquis of Worcester, in 1663, had published his description of “An admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by fire,” that Papin was able to supply the key to the question of the mechanical propulsion of ships. Even if it were possible to prove that he had never acquainted himself with the theories of de Caus and the Marquis of Worcester, that argument would avail but little, for the solution was bound to come sooner or later; it was inevitable. There must be, man reasoned, some means for propelling a ship along the water other than by sails or oars. The Chinese had been working at the idea, the Romans had at least attempted it; through the Middle Ages there had been actually accredited instances, and so the eighteenth century was not too soon for its accomplishment. Thus, when Papin determined to apply steam power to vessels, he was just one of those many benefactors of the world who have succeeded by means of Nature to overcome Nature: by employing fire and water to overcome water and space.
Let us, then, turn to the next chapter and see something more of the different methods which were tried before the satisfaction of full and undoubted success rewarded man in his struggle against the limits to his freedom. As this is a history rather of steamships than of all kinds of mechanically-propelled craft, we must examine not all the ingenious theories and the wild conceptions which many minds in many ages have conceived for propelling ships by mechanical means other than steam (for with those alone we could fill this book), but having shown something of the main principles which underlay these, we shall pass on to tell, for the benefit of the general reader, something of the vicissitudes through which has passed that swift and majestic creature which carries him across vast oceans and broad turbulent channels, as well as the peaceful waters of the land-locked lake and river. For this reason, while not omitting anything that shall contribute to the better understanding of the story, we shall omit from our study such technical details and theories as came to nothing practical and, notwithstanding their importance in fashioning the future of the steamship, are of less interest to the average reader than to the shipbuilder and engineer. Modern activity is now so rapid; event follows event so quickly; the ship of yesterday is already made obsolescent by a newer type, that we cannot fairly be accused of living too near the period to obtain an accurate perspective. Whether steamships will flourish much longer, or whether they will in turn be surpassed, as they have ousted the sailing ship, is a debatable proposition. At any rate, to anyone who has at heart one of the greatest and most powerful forces in the spread of civilisation, the story of steamship evolution, from comparative inutility to a state of efficiency which is remarkable even in this wonder age, cannot but appeal with an attractiveness commensurate with its importance.
CHAPTER II
THE EVOLUTION OF MECHANICALLY-PROPELLED CRAFT
When the prehistoric man was returning home from his day’s fishing or hunting, and the evening breeze had died away to a flat calm so that the primitive sail became for the time a hindrance rather than a saving of labour, and the tired navigator was compelled reluctantly to resort to his paddles once more—it was, no doubt, then that our ancestry was first inoculated with the germ for desiring some mechanical form of propulsion, and the fever went on developing until it broke out in full infection when the possibilities of steam were beginning to be weighed.
The earliest records of the employment of some artificial means for sending the ship along are not preserved to us, although it is certain that repeated attempts were made in many ages to do without oars and sails. When slave labour was cheap and plentiful, and this could easily be turned into propelling power, perhaps it was hardly likely that there would be much incentive for discovering or rediscovering such forces as steam to do the work of physical energy. It seems to me to be a curious and interesting fact that it was not until the freedom of the individual from some sort of slavery and servitude—whether belonging to ancient times or the Middle Ages—began to be asserted that there was any real progress made in labour-saving devices. The dignity of man, and his superiority as a being possessed of intelligence and discernment, and, consequently, his right to be considered as something more than a drawer of water, a hewer of wood, and the motive force for any method of transport, had fully to be recognised and appreciated before means were earnestly sought to save human labour. The cry of the last few years and the tendency exhibited by many world movements have been all for asserting the right of the individual. The French Revolution, the American War of Independence, the rise of Socialism of some sort or another in most civilised countries, have happened collaterally with the progress of machinery, and the development of power independent of physical force, necessitating less and less the expenditure of human energy. Never in the history of the world has so much been accomplished for obtaining mechanical energy as within the last hundred and fifty years, and never perhaps has the individual been able to possess himself of so much freedom.