Ocean Greyhounds—Present Day Floating Palaces—Regal
Appointments—Passenger Accommodation—Food Consumption—The One
Thousand Foot Boat.
The strides of naval architecture and marine engineering have been marvelous within the present generation. To-day huge leviathans glide over the waves with a swiftness and safety deemed absolutely impossible fifty years ago.
In view of the luxurious accommodations and princely surroundings to be found on the modern ocean palaces, it is interesting to look back now almost a hundred years to the time when the Savannah was the first steamship to cross the Atlantic. True the voyage of this pioneer of steam from Savannah to Liverpool was not much of a success, but she managed to crawl across the sails very materially aiding the engines, and heralded the dawn of a new day in transatlantic travel. No other steamboat attempted the trip for almost twenty years after, until in 1838 the Great Western made the run in fifteen days. This revolutionized water travel and set the whole world talking. It was the beginning of the passing of the sailing ship and was an event for rejoicing. In the old wooden hulks with their lazily flapping wings, waiting for a breeze to stir them, men and women and children huddled together like so many animals in a pen, had to spend weeks and months on the voyage between Europe and America. There was little or no room for sanitation, the space was crowded, deadly germs lurked in every cranny and crevice, and consequently hundreds died. To many indeed the sailing ship became a floating hearse.
In those times, and they are not so remote, a voyage was dreaded as a calamity. Only necessity compelled the undertaking. It was not travel for pleasure, for pleasure under such circumstances and amid such surroundings was impossible. The poor emigrants who were compelled through stress and poverty to leave their homes for a foreign country feared not toil in a new land, but they feared the long voyage with its attending horrors and dangers. Dangerous it was, for most of the sailing vessels were unseaworthy and when a storm swept the waters, they were as children's toys, at the mercy of wind and wave. When the passenger stepped on board he always had the dread of a watery grave before him.
How different to-day. Danger has been eliminated almost to the vanishing point and the mighty monsters of steel and oak now cut through the waves in storms and hurricanes with as much ease as a duck swims through a pond.
From the time the Great Western was launched, steamships sailing between American and English ports became an established institution. Soon after the Great Western's first voyage a sturdy New England Quaker from Nova Scotia named Samuel Cunard went over to London to try and interest the British government in a plan to establish a line of steamships between the two countries. He succeeded in raising 270,000 pounds, and built the Britannia, the first Cunard vessel to cross the Atlantic. This was in 1840. As ships go now she was a small craft indeed. Her gross tonnage was 1,154 and her horse power 750. She carried only first-class passengers and these only to the limit of one hundred. There was not much in the way of accommodation as the quarters were cramped, the staterooms small and the sanitation and ventilation defective. It was on the Britannia that Charles Dickens crossed over to America in 1842 and he has given us in his usual style a pen picture of his impressions aboard. He stated that the saloon reminded him of nothing so much as of a hearse, in which a number of half-starved stewards attempted to warm themselves by a glimmering stove, and that the staterooms so-called were boxes in which the bunks were shelves spread with patches of filthy bed-clothing, somewhat after the style of a mustard plaster. This criticism must be taken with a little reservation. Dickens was a pessimist and always censorious and as he had been feted and feasted with the fat of the land, he expected that he should have been entertained in kingly quarters on shipboard. But because things did not come up to his expectations he dipped his pen in vitriol and began to criticise.
At any rate the Britannia in her day was looked upon as the ne plus ultra in naval architecture, the very acme of marine engineering. The highest speed she developed was eight and one-half knots or about nine and three-quarters miles an hour. She covered the passage from Liverpool to Boston in fourteen and one-half days, which was then regarded as a marvellous feat and one which was proclaimed throughout England with triumph.
For a long time the Britannia remained Queen of the Seas for speed, but in 1852 the Atlantic record was reduced to nine and a half days by the Arctic. In 1876 the City of Paris cut down the time to eight days and four hours. Twelve years later in 1879 the Arizona still further reduced it to seven days and eight hours. In 1881 the Alaska, the first vessel to receive the title of "Ocean Greyhound," made the trip in six days and twenty-one hours; in 1885 the Umbria bounded over in six days and two hours, in 1890 the Teutonic of the White Star line came across in five days, eighteen hours and twenty-eight minutes, which was considered the limit for many years to come. It was not long however, until the Cunard lowered the colors of the White Star, when the Lucania in 1893 brought the record down to five days and twelve hours. For a dozen years or so the limit of speed hovered round the five-and-a-half day mark, the laurels being shared alternately by the vessels of the Cunard and White Star Companies. Then the Germans entered the field of competition with steamers of from 14,500 to 20,000 tons register and from 28,000 to 40,000 horse power. The Deutschland soon began setting the pace for the ocean greyhounds, while other vessels of the North German Lloyd line that won transatlantic honors were the Kaiser Wilhelm II., Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, Kronprinz Wilhelm and Kronprinzessin Cecilie, all remarkably fast boats with every modern luxury aboard that science could devise. These vessels are equipped with wireless telegraphy, submarine signalling systems, water-tight compartments and every other safety appliance known to marine skill. The Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse raised the standard of German supremacy in 1902 by making the passage from Cherbourg to Sandy Hook lightship in five days and fifteen hours.
In 1909, however, the sister steamships Mauretania and Lusitania of the Cunard line lowered all previous ocean records, by making the trip in a little over four and a half days. They have been keeping up this speed to the present time, and are universally regarded as the fastest and best equipped steamships in the world,—the very last word in ocean travel. On her last mid-September voyage the Mauretania has broken all ocean records by making the passage from Queenstown to New York in 4 days 10 hours and 47 minutes. But they are closely pursued by the White Star greyhounds such as the Oceanic, the Celtic and the Cedric, steamships of world wide fame for service, appointments, and equipment. Yet at the present writing the Cunard Company has another vessel on the stocks, to be named the Falconia which in measurements will eclipse the other two and which they are confident will make the Atlantic trip inside four days.
The White Star Company is also building two immense boats to be named the Olympic and Titanic. They will be 840 feet in length and will be the largest ships afloat. However, it is said that freight and passenger-room is being more considered in the construction than speed and that they will aim to lower no records. Each will be able to accommodate 5,000 passengers besides a crew of 600.