CHAPTER I.
THE DAWN OF STEAM NAVIGATION.
Ah! what pleasant visions haunt me As I gaze upon the sea! All the old romantic legends. All my dreams come back to me. —Longfellow.
The up-to-date standard—Old-time sailing ships—The clipper packet-ship—Dawn of steam navigation—Denis Papin on the Fulda—Bell’s Comet—Fulton’s Clermont—American river steamers and ferry-boats.
TRAVEL increases in faster ratio than do facilities for inter-communication. The prophecy surely is being fulfilled in these latter days, “Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” It is estimated that at least 750,000 persons travel yearly between Europe and America; 99,223 cabin passengers and 252,350 steerage passengers landed at New York from Europe in 1896. The Cunard Line brought the largest number of cabin passengers, 17,999, from Liverpool, and the North German Lloyd Line the largest number of steerage, namely, 38,034, from Bremen.
Notwithstanding the wonderful development of railway and steamship systems, means of conveyance during the summer months often fall short of the demand. Passages by the more popular lines of steamships must be engaged months ahead; in many cases the ships are uncomfortably crowded. At such times sofas take the place of berths, and all the officers’ rooms, from the coveted Captain’s cabin to the second and third stewards’ bunks, are called into requisition and held at a round premium. On Saturday, the 8th of May, 1897, no less than 1,500 saloon passengers left New York for Liverpool on the great ocean greyhounds. The travelling season is comparatively short, the competition is keen, and the enormous expense of building, furnishing and running up-to-date steamships renders it difficult to provide the requisite accommodation on a paying basis. The up-to-date steamship must be built of steel, to combine light weight with strength. It must have triple or quadruple expansion engines to economize fuel. It must be propelled by twin or triple screws, as well for the easier handling of the vessel as for safety in case of a breakdown of machinery, and for attaining the highest possible speed. Our ideal steamship must be able to turn quite round in its own length, and to go through the water at an average speed of at least twenty knots an hour. To attain these results, ships of a very large class are called for—nothing short of from eight to ten thousand tons burthen will come up to the mark. There are many magnificent steamships in the North Atlantic trade and elsewhere but as yet few have in all respects reached the up-to-date standard, and even those that are such this year, a few years hence are certain to be regarded as quite behind the times. There is no valid reason to suppose that the process of development which has been going on during the last fifty years in this direction is to be arrested at the close of the century. The indications, so far as they can be interpreted, are all in the opposite direction. The paddle-wheel ocean steamer reached its zenith with the launch of the Scotia of the Cunard Line in 1862. She was the last of the race.
The wooden steamship, “copper-fastened and copper-bottomed,” etc., etc., is long since a thing of the past. The iron age, which succeeded the wooden, has been changed to steel, and steel may change to something else, and steam to electricity. Who knows? Mr. Maginnis, who is himself an engineer and an architect, speaks with authority when he says that, “Whether the improvements be in the ship or in the machinery, gradual advances will be made in the near future.” The thirst of competing steamship companies for conquest on the high seas—at any cost—and the ambition of ship-builders to improve upon the latest improvements, will not be satisfied with present attainments, even if it can be proved to a demonstration that thousands of additional horse-power and hundreds of additional tons of coal per day would be required to increase to any appreciable extent the maximum rate of speed that has already been reached. In the meantime some idea may be formed of the possible saving in the consumption of fuel when it is stated that, by a system of induced draught, discovered since the last two Cunarders were designed, the number of boilers necessary to generate steam enough for 30,000 indicated horse-power may be reduced to little more than one-half, which, to put it briefly, means a corresponding saving in space, weight and first cost.[1] In fact, well-informed marine engineers do not hesitate to express their opinion that the day is not far distant when Atlantic greyhounds may be coursing across the ocean at the rate of thirty knots an hour, bringing Queenstown and Sandy Hook within ninety-three hours of each other.
It is difficult to form a correct idea, from any verbal or pictorial representation, of the elegance, the convenience and the comfort attaching to the “Express Steamship.” Nothing short of a voyage or voyages in one of these floating palaces would suffice to give an adequate conception of their excellence. And yet, when all is said that can be said in praise of the steamship, some of us “old stagers” can look back, if not with lingering regret, at least with pleasant recollection, to the days of the packet-ship, and even of the sailing vessel of humbler pretensions.