Services seem to have been started between almost every two or three ports of the United Kingdom. The little wooden vessels were long-lived, and had some unique experiences owing to the venturesome characters of their captains, owners, or charterers. Provided the vessel would float and get along it seemed to be the opinion of its owners that it could go anywhere and carry anything. Thus a vessel built for river traffic was thought suitable for deep-sea work also. It is not surprising to find that many of the steamers changed hands frequently. They were renamed at every change, and the resulting confusion makes it difficult to trace their history.
It seems fairly certain, however, that accidents were frequent, and it became necessary to devise means of carrying boats which would accommodate at least a considerable number of the passengers if necessary. Regulations as to the compulsory carriage of life-buoys, life-belts, rafts, floating seats, and other contrivances for supporting people in the water did not come into force until many years after. The sole means of safety in the early days of steam navigation were the boats and such wreckage as happened to float if the vessel sank or went to pieces. But most of the steamers were so small, and on their voyages so crowded, that they could not carry nearly as many boats as were required.
The boats were generally carried on the tops of the paddle-boxes. A suggestion which was carried into effect, especially in some of the larger ocean-going steamers, was that the paddle-boxes should be built square and be detachable from the guards, so that if a disaster should befall the vessel they could be used as boats. This contrivance had numerous disadvantages, not the least of them being the unwieldiness of the paddle-boxes, and the difficulty of managing them when afloat. Another suggestion was that each steamer should carry two large boats of equal dimensions which could be used as the tops of the paddle-boxes. The main advantage claimed for this idea was that it would not add materially to the weight of the vessel. Captain George Smith, in the ’thirties, contrived a peculiarly shaped lifeboat which would fit over the paddle-wheels and take the place of the paddle-boxes, and might when occasion required be turned right side uppermost and launched outside the paddle-wheel. He tried this experiment on the steamer Carron. “The upper section,” he wrote, “of her paddle-wheel is covered by a lifeboat 25 feet long, 9 feet beam, and having four air-tight cases which may be removed if required on particular occasions. This lifeboat is capable of containing between forty and fifty persons. When in her place over the paddle-wheel the midship thwarts are unshipped, which admits of the wheel revolving within 6 inches of her keelson; she lies bottom upwards on two iron davits, which enable her to be turned over and lowered by six men in two or three minutes.”
The early river steamers were often overcrowded, which is not to be wondered at in those days of insufficient control, and a cartoon of the period represents the passengers as hanging on to the rigging, the bowsprit, the funnel, and anything else of which they could catch hold. Complaints of reckless speed and careless navigation were frequent, and the Worshipful Company of Watermen and Lightermen gave orders that the speed should not exceed five miles an hour: but the captains of the Thames steamers were often fined for breaking the rules, as they were in the habit of racing against boats belonging to rival companies. As to overcrowding, the Times of April 16, 1838, thus delivered itself: “It would be as well if some measures be adopted to prevent steamers being overcrowded during the Easter holidays. During the last Easter and Whitsuntide holidays the steamers were crammed with passengers in a fearful manner, the small vessels carrying 500 and 600 passengers at one trip, and the larger ones 1000 and 1500 persons, as closely packed as negroes in the hold of a slave-ship.”
By 1846 the rivalry among the companies on the river brought about the usual rate war. The steamers and the Watermen’s Company were often at loggerheads, and neither always agreed with the City Corporation. An attack of the City Corporation employees upon those of the Watermen’s Company was valiantly resisted, and the watermen went to gaol in consequence. Punch commented on this as follows: “Considerable excitement has been occasioned by some experiments which have lately been tried in the Thames navy, on the same principle as that recently applied to the Bellerophon, which was got ready for sea in sixty hours, and got unready again with equal promptitude. The Waterman No. 6 took in coals and ginger-beer, manned her paddle-box, lit her fire, threw on a scuttle of coal, filled her boiler, blackleaded her funnel, tarred her taffrail, and pitched her stoker into her engine-room, all within twenty minutes, and sailed away from her moorings at Paul’s Wharf amidst the cheers of her checktaker. This manœuvre was accomplished for the purpose of striking terror into the minds of the civic forces at Blackfriars Pier, who are only tranquil at present in compliance with the terms of a recent armistice.”
The modern development of the coastal steamer service has naturally been confined to a strict meeting of its own requirements, and it is not proposed to go at length into all the minutiæ of the differences between the steamers of the various lines. Some of the most famous companies have already been mentioned and their early struggles with competitors described. In connection with coastal and cross-channel traffic it will now be sufficient to sketch the careers of a few others which have helped to make steam-ship history.
| TRINITY YACHT | MONARCH | ROYAL GEORGE | TRIDENT |
The “Monarch” and “Trident” (General Steam Navigation Co.) convoying the Royal Yacht with the Queen and Prince Consort to Edinburgh, 1842.