Triumphs and Wonders of the 19th Century: The True Mirror of a Phenomenal Era / A volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progress

by James P. Boyd

ROBERT FULTON.

The first steamships to cross the ocean without recoaling were the Sirius and Great Western, which arrived in New York the same day, April 23, 1838, the former vessel having sailed from London and the latter from Liverpool. This achievement on the part of these two wooden craft, neither one capable of carrying more than seven hundred tons, created a great impression. The New York “Courier and Enquirer” said, in its issue of April 24, 1838:—

“What may be the ultimate fate of this excitement—whether or not the expense of equipment and fuel will admit of the employment of these vessels in the ordinary packet service—we cannot pretend to form an opinion; but of the entire feasibility of the passage of the Atlantic by steam, as far as regards safety, comfort, and dispatch, even in the roughest and most boisterous weather, the most skeptical man must now cease to doubt.”

The employment of steamships in the regular packet service was assured in 1839, when Samuel Cunard founded the famous English line that still bears his name, and ordered four steamers of moderate size that cost between four and five hundred thousand dollars each. These, however, were wooden vessels, and it was not until 1856 that the conservative Cunards constructed any iron ships.

The construction of iron ships for ocean navigation marks the second important phase of the technical evolution of the past century’s commerce. It began on a small scale about 1830, and in 1837 an iron vessel, The Rainbow, of six hundred tons was built; but the first large iron steamer was ordered in 1840, and was the famous Great Britain before referred to, constructed by Brunel, the engineer who subsequently built the unfortunate naval monstrosity, the Great Eastern. The completion of the Great Britain, in 1843, was an important event in the progress of ocean navigation, not only because she was five times the size of her largest iron predecessor, but also because of the fact that Brunel decided, while building the vessel, to adopt the screw for propelling the ship.

The substitution of the screw instead of paddle-wheels represents a third phase of the technical evolution of ocean navigation. John Ericsson, who subsequently built the famous Monitor, had demonstrated the practicability of the screw as a propeller in 1836, and, three years later, the Archimedes, of two hundred and thirty-seven tons, was fitted with a screw. It was the success of the Archimedes that led Brunel to adopt the screw on the Great Britain.

THE CLERMONT. FULTON’S FIRST STEAMBOAT.

The superiority of the screw over paddle-wheels, and the greater merits of iron ships compared with wooden vessels, have long been accepted; but the adoption of iron as a material and of the screw for a propeller came about slowly. Indeed, iron ship-building made little progress in Great Britain before 1850, and in this country wood was adhered to till much later. One reason why the English did not change to the screw and iron more quickly was probably the great influence exerted by the powerful Cunard line, whose conservatism caused it to hold to wooden ships until 1856. The Great Eastern, finished as late as 1859, was an iron ship, but was fitted with both screw and paddle-wheels. Of the total tonnage built in the United Kingdom in 1853, about twenty-five per cent was steam tonnage and a little more than twenty-five per cent was of iron. At the present time three fourths of all British-built vessels are steamers, and no wooden ships are built in the United Kingdom.