Dodd, alas, though he worked so hard for the establishment of the steamship, does not seem to have profited by his labour. Like some other ingenious men he unhappily fell into poverty.
The next in order of succession, who apparently became the most prominent and among the most useful in the story of the steamship, was David Napier. Russell avers that from 1818 to about 1830 he “effected more for the improvement of steam navigation than any other man.” David Napier ran the Rob Roy, a steamer of 90 tons and 30 horse-power, fitted with his own engines, between Greenock and Belfast. It appears that at one of the worst seasons he sailed in a vessel plying between the two ports,—sometimes taking a week to cover the journey, afterwards made in nine hours by steam,—and eagerly watched the effect of the heaving waves on the ship as she was tossed by the storm. Then, assured that there was no overwhelming difficulty for steamers, he started the Rob Roy. He also experimented upon the best shape of hull, and, without apparently any communication with Stevens across the Atlantic, came to adopt a wedge-shaped bow, instead of a rounded fore front as common in sailing ships.
In 1819 he put the Talbot on the Channel between Dublin and Holyhead. She was built by Wood & Company, and was one of the most perfect vessels of the kind then constructed. She had two engines of 60 horse-power combined, and was 150 tons burthen. She was followed by the Ivanhoe, and in 1821 steam vessels were regularly used to carry the mails.
Gradually the length of vessels increased without the beam being proportionately widened. The builders of those early boats did not at first realise the practicability and usefulness of altering the form of vessels for steamers. David Napier altered the bow, and gradually the vessels were lengthened. The idea came gradually to be grasped that as a steamer was forced forward along the line of its keel, and not by a power exerted upon it from without and in various quarters, its form might advantageously be changed. Moreover, it would seem that the best form for steamers is also the best for fast sailers. Russell is of opinion “that the fastest schooners, cutters, smugglers, yachts, and slavers” approach more nearly to the form of the best steamers than any other class of sailing vessels. However this may be, the shape of a steamer as well as its machinery has much to do with its speed, and David Napier appears to have contributed largely to these results in Britain.
Steamers had now sped out from the rivers into the narrow seas around Great Britain. The next step would be into the wide and open ocean. Who would venture to take it?
CHAPTER III.
ON THE OPEN OCEAN.
Why should not the Great Western end at New York?
That was Brunel’s idea, and it had an immense effect on the establishment of transatlantic steamships.