Moreover, the turbine has proved that it gives increased reliability to the steamship, which, in the case of the short cross-channel voyages, is a matter that cannot lightly be regarded. In the case of the Ben-my-Chree just mentioned, the mean time in performing the distance from Liverpool Bar lightship to Douglas Head differed only by a minute in one season from that of the previous year, a fact that is highly significant. It is the time that is wasted in manœuvring to get alongside the quay and clearing away that detracts from the smartness of the voyage, although in this connection it may be stated that bow rudders are in use in certain cross-channel craft in order to enable this manœuvre to be accomplished with greater celerity.
It is curious how the channel service of a steamship line presents difficulties and problems of its own no less than those demanded by the ownership of ocean-going steamships. Obviously the short-voyage ship is limited as to size. What she has to accomplish must be done quickly. Not only must she get out of one harbour and into the other with the greatest economy of time, but she must get up her full speed at once. Then, again, owing to the demands of the passengers for special comfort a great strain is put on the patience of those responsible, as well as on the designer of the ship. Cross-channel steamers which have a fairly long night passage require a good deal of their limited space to be usurped by extra state-room accommodation, and the modern demand for single-berthed cabins means rather more than the average passenger realises. The figures work out something as follows in the case of a four-berthed room the measurement of the space occupied comes to about seven-eighths of a ton per passenger. In the single-berthed cabin it becomes nearly two and a quarter tons per passenger. All this means that the ship has less available space for earning her living, since fewer passengers and less cargo can thus be carried.
Again, the passenger is spoiled nowadays. If a line has turbines and wireless telegraphy, submarine bells, the latest conceivable luxury, speed and other virtues, he is sufficiently well informed to appreciate these things to the disadvantage of another service, scarcely less efficient, but perhaps a little less advanced in accordance with the very latest inventions and improvements. An old ship that has done years of good service and earned a reputation for punctuality and reliability has to be scrapped before her time just because a rival service has held out the tempting bait of the latest steamship features. On the other hand, there was room for an approach to be made towards more satisfactory conditions. The short crossings on some of the cross-channel steamers were in the past no unmixed joy. The bad sea-boats which some of these proved themselves to be, driven at a speed that made them vibrate from stem to stern, wet and generally uncomfortable, badly ventilated and equally inefficiently lighted, they certainly belonged to the days that are past. What the future has in store this deponent knoweth not; but if the internal combustion engine should ever become sufficiently popular for big ships, certainly in no service is it likely to be more suitable than in the cross-channel voyages, where speed is a vital consideration. But economy is equally to be taken into account, if steamers are still to be regarded as commercial, dividend-earning concerns, and not exclusively as objects for the exercise of sentiment. We have, owing to the influences at work everywhere, come to regard the virtue of speed as excelling everything else. Whether this is deserving of all-powerful merit, or whether in the future there may be a reaction and a desire to “go slow,” time alone can tell. Perhaps such a condition might lead to an increased tranquillity of life as a whole, but it would also put a brake on progress generally, and on the steamship in particular.
CHAPTER IX
STEAMSHIPS FOR SPECIAL PURPOSES
We have been enabled to gain some idea by now both of the nature and the historical evolution of the steamship liner. But not all steamships are liners, any more than all cattle are race-horses. Steamship is a word which covers a multitude of varying craft and embraces a large family of different natured children. Some of them go out into the world far beyond the horizon and vanish until a few weeks or months later they come returning homewards proud of their achievements as the safe carriers of mails and passengers. But there are other members of the same family whose duty keeps them close to the home where they first saw the light; who rarely venture out of sight of land. There are others who, though they never carry any passengers but their crew, nor an ounce of cargo, are yet as useful to the human race as those great speed-makers which go rushing through night and day across the ocean. Some of these steamships used for special purposes have a character of their own no less distinctive than their more elegant sisters, and the mere fact that they are not so violently advertised, or so prominently pushed before the eyes of the average citizen, detracts nothing from their interesting virtues. Nor, again, do we wish to give the impression that this large class of special steamships is in any way entirely confined to coasting or inland voyages. The steamship nowadays, both large and small, goes everywhere, and is ready to do almost anything, and one of the most interesting of all mechanically-propelled craft is the tug-boat, which it is quite possible the landsman, promenading his floating hotel, may have barely deigned to cast his eyes upon as his big steel home is being drawn out from the quay, or landing-stage, and swung round on her way to the other side of the world. How frequently indispensable is the tug to the big steamship, both when entering and leaving the comparatively narrow harbours! You see her at Southampton, for instance, pulling the great steel hull away from the quay; you see her at Liverpool hauling ahead to get the mighty, towering bows of the liner clear of the landing-stage out into the river. You see them in New York when the mammoth comes to enter the narrow opening alongside the pier, pressing their noses on to the mammoth’s stern and compelling her giant dimensions to move round. Or, again, you see the tug towing her overgrown sister through the dock at the end of her voyage, coming slowly in as if she had captured one mightier than herself, and was proudly conscious of her performance. Yet it is not only the big steamships, but those beautiful modern steel sailing ships which have to employ her help. You meet them down Channel somewhere with perhaps only staysails and jigger set and a powerful tug ahead at the end of a strong tow-rope. In a day or so they will have parted company. The tug will return whence she set out; the bigger ship will spread her canvas and begin her many-monthed voyage.
THE OCEAN TUG “BLACKCOCK.”
From a Photograph. By permission of the Liverpool Screw Towing & Lighterage Co.
THE PASSENGER TENDER “SIR FRANCIS DRAKE.”