The competition for the supremacy of the sea in these latitudes has been both keen and costly, but greatly to the benefit of the travelling community; and it has all along been conducted in an excellent spirit. Circumstances have frequently arisen when it might have been easy to take advantage of a rival, but when it resulted in acts of chivalry. Sir John Burns has mentioned one instance out of many such that have transpired: On a certain occasion the Cunard steamer Alps was seized in New York for an alleged infraction of the Customs laws on the part of some of the crew, and before she could be released, security had to be given to the extent of £30,000 sterling; when, “who should come forward and stand security for the Cunard Company but the great firm of Brown, Shipley & Co., the agents of the Collins Line!” Another case in point is connected with the foundering of the Cunard SS. Oregon. When the whole of the passengers and crew, to the number of nearly a thousand, had been taken off the sinking ship, and landed in New York by the North German Lloyd SS. Fulda, the question having been asked what compensation was demanded, the courteous reply was speedily received: “Highly gratified at having been instrumental in saving so many lives. No claim!”[15]
The Fairfield Ship-building and Engineering Company is one of the most famous of the many eminent ship-building firms in Britain. The yards at Govan on the Clyde occupy an area of sixty acres of ground, and employ from 6,000 to 7,000 men. The shops are fitted with machinery of the most approved description, in which every requisite of marine architecture has a place, where massive plates of steel and iron are clipped, shaped and pierced with rivet holes as if they were only sheets of wax or paper. Here have been built many of the record-breaking ocean greyhounds, as well as armour-plated cruisers for the Royal Navy. The Arizona, the Alaska and the Oregon were built here, and were accounted marvels in their day. The Umbria and Etruria, the Campania and the Lucania have secured for Fairfield a world-wide reputation. Ships for Sir Donald Currie’s Castle Line, for the Orient and the Hamburg-American lines, not to speak of the Isle of Man steamers, the swiftest coasting steamers of the day, have been built at Govan. Under the name of Randolph, Elder & Company the firm was founded, or rather reconstructed, by the late Mr. John Elder, a man of consummate ability in his profession, who died in 1869 at the early age of forty-five years.
The compound engine, by which steam is made to do double duty, is one of the most important of recent improvements in marine engineering, being the means of largely increasing the motive power and decreasing the consumption of fuel. The successful application of this system to ocean steam navigation is usually attributed to Mr. John Elder, of the above-named firm, who introduced it in some of the steamers of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company as early as 1856.[16] But it did not come into general use until some years later. The Admiralty, recognizing the importance claimed for the discovery, resolved to test its value, in 1863, by sending three ships of similar size on a voyage from Plymouth to Madeira, two of them being fitted with the ordinary engines of the day, and the third, the Constance, with Elder’s compound engine. The result placed the superiority of the compound engine beyond question, and led up to the triple and quadruple expansion engine which has revolutionized the ship-building and shipping interests; hence the enormous cargoes carried by ships of the Pennsylvania type, with a moderate consumption of fuel and the lowering of ocean freight rates.
Before taking leave of the Cunard Line, it may not be out of place to mention that an employee of that line has the distinction of having crossed the Atlantic more frequently than any other man. One is apt to think of his own voyages—thirty-five or forty—as a tolerably fair showing, but that is as nothing compared with other landsmen. On one occasion the writer sat next to a fine old French gentleman from Quebec who was then making his hundredth voyage; he was an octogenarian. Some years later a Montreal merchant, nearly a quarter of a century younger, informed me that he had crossed the ocean one hundred and eighty times! Taking his years into account, surely he must be entitled to wear the blue ribbon. As to sailors, an English newspaper recently offered a prize of £10 to the man who could prove that he had crossed the Atlantic oftenest. The prize was awarded to Captain Brooks, of Alaska, who had made seven hundred trips. In the meantime, however, it transpired that the distinction was due to another “old salt,” whose record far outran that of Captain Brooks, but whose modesty prevented him from applying for the prize. The real champion is George Paynter, well known throughout England and America as “the Old Man of the Sea,” who recently completed his eight hundred and fourth voyage across the Atlantic. Paynter is the officer in charge of the wines and liquors on board the SS. Etruria. He is one of the most remarkable men afloat to-day. He has been forty-eight years at sea, of which forty-five have been spent continuously in the service of the Cunard Company, and in all that time he has never encountered either a shipwreck or a cyclone. He is now seventy-five years old, hale and hearty as ever, and this he attributes to his having given up smoking and drinking thirty-one years ago, not having once indulged in either from that time until now.
CHAPTER IV.
NORTH ATLANTIC STEAMSHIP COMPANIES.
The Collins Line.
THE earliest formidable rival to the Cunard Line was the famous Collins Line, founded in New York in 1848, and which derived its name from Mr. E. K. Collins, its chief promoter, who had previously been largely interested in sailing ships, and more particularly in the splendid line of New York and Liverpool packets, popularly known as the Dramatic Line. The Collins Line started with a fair wind, so to speak. It was launched by a wealthy company, amid an outburst of national applause, and was liberally backed by the Federal Government, with an ill-concealed determination to drive the Cunarders from the seas. But the illusion was destined to be soon dispelled, for, as Charles MacIver put it in writing to Mr. Cunard, “The Collins Line are beginning to find that breaking our windows with sovereigns, though very fine fun, is too costly to keep up.” Disasters ensued. In ten years the losses had become stupendous, and the enterprise culminated in a total collapse.