The Vanderbilt, also an auxiliary steamer, built by Simonson of New York for his uncle, Commodore Vanderbilt, in 1855, was 331 feet in length, and had a gross tonnage of 3360. She was probably the first and perhaps the only American-built vessel with two overhead beams to cross the Atlantic; certainly her appearance attracted no small amount of attention. Her two cylinders were each 90 inches diameter and 12 feet stroke; her indicated horse-power was 2800 and her boiler-pressure was as high as 18 lb. The engines were built at the Allaire works. She ran on the New York, Havre, and Cowes route until November 1860, besides going once to Bremen in 1858, and on the outbreak of war was presented by the Commodore to the United States Government. She was afterwards laid up and bought in 1873 by a San Francisco firm, who removed the engines and turned her into the full-rigged three-masted ship The Three Brothers; she was next bought by a British firm to end her days as a hulk at Gibraltar.
One of the last of the vessels carrying steam for admittedly auxiliary purposes only was the clipper Annette, built by Messrs. Russell and Co. in 1863. She was fitted with a screw and a small oscillating engine with cylinders 3 feet in diameter and 3 feet stroke, and a tubular boiler 9¹⁄₂ feet long by 13 feet high gave steam at 20 lb. pressure. Her screw was 11 feet in diameter with 22 feet pitch, and a universal joint connected it to the engine-shaft so that it could be lowered or raised as desired. The masts carried 1418 square yards of canvas.
The full-rigged, fast-sailing clipper ships, fitted with auxiliary screw propellers, found one of the finest representatives of their class in the Sea King, which was built at Glasgow for the trade with China, where several splendid vessels, fast under sail and carrying powerful auxiliary engines, were engaged. They were peculiarly suitable for those waters, for the coaling stations were few and far between, and coal was expensive, and their engines consumed a great deal more fuel in proportion to results than do those of modern steamers. The Sea King was composite built; that is, she had an iron frame with wood planking. Her screw could be lifted when the wind was favourable, and her ability to show a clean pair of heels to most sailing craft afloat is proved by her making the passage home from Shanghai in seventy-nine days, or, after allowing time for coaling en route, seventy-four days. She was of 1018 registered tonnage, and her engines were of 200 nominal horse-power; she was 220 feet in length by 32¹⁄₂ feet beam, and 20¹⁄₂ feet depth.
Her career for a time was exciting. She was one of the many vessels bought by the agents of the Confederate States in 1864, nominally as a blockade-runner, but she became a privateer—pirate the Northerners called her—and as such she had the distinction of being the only vessel which carried the Confederate flag round the world. Her name was changed to Shenandoah when she was purchased; she was neither the first nor the last famous sailing vessel of that name. The last Shenandoah, the biggest wooden sailing vessel ever built in America, a four-masted barque, returned the fire of a Spanish gunboat in the recent Spanish-American War, and then out-sailed her. The commander of the Shenandoah of the ’sixties was James Tredell Waddell, whose record justified his appointment. He was formerly an officer in the United States Navy, and was wounded and lamed for life in a duel in 1842. He nevertheless served in the Mexican War and then commanded the American storeship Release at the building of the Panama Railway. All his officers and crew were down with yellow fever, but with a few convalescent seamen he sailed his vessel to Boston. He declined, in 1862, the offer to command one of the vessels in the bomb fleet then being fitted out to attack New Orleans, but instead he got through the blockade from Annapolis to Richmond and joined the Confederate Navy. He was in command of the ram Louisiana when the Southern fleet was attacked and scattered by the Federal fleet under Admiral Farragut, and sank the Louisiana rather than let her be captured. Next he was ordered to take command of the Shenandoah, then being fitted out at Liverpool for a cruise in the Pacific. He commissioned his ship off Madeira in October 1864 and set sail for the south. He captured and either burnt or sank nine American sailing ships before he arrived at Melbourne on January 25, 1865, but the ship’s stay was a short one, for it was expected an American vessel or two would be on her track, and she left Port Phillip on February 8, 1865. Three months later she began her destructive work among the whalers in the Okhotsk and Behring Seas and the Arctic Ocean. Three months after General Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Court-house, the Shenandoah continued her activity, and it was not until the British barque Barracouta was spoken that Waddell learnt that the war was ended. Waddell then sailed the Shenandoah to Liverpool and surrendered her to the British Government, by whom she was handed over in November 1865 to the United States Consul. During her career under Waddell’s command she captured thirty-eight vessels, of which six were released on bond and thirty-two were sunk or burnt. She afterwards passed into the possession of the Sultan of Zanzibar, and some years later was lost with all hands in a gale. Waddell returned to America in due time and commanded the San Francisco, of the Pacific Mail Line, until she struck a rock and went to the bottom. All the passengers were saved and Waddell was the last to leave the ship.[69]
[69] Appleton’s “Cyclopædia of American Biography.”
The other most notorious blockade-runner and commerce-harrier was the Liverpool-built Alabama, a wooden three-masted screw steamer, rigged as a barque; she was of 1040 tons register and 220 feet in length and had horizontal engines of 300 nominal horse-power, operating one propeller and giving her a speed, under steam, of nearly 13 knots, while with steam and sail together she could cover 15 knots. The story of her exploits and of her destruction by the United States wooden cruiser Kearsarge off Cherbourg in June 1864, and of the “Alabama claims,” is too well known to need repetition here.[70]
[70] A good account may be found in Appleton’s “Cyclopædia.”
The mail route between England and India via the Cape was admittedly slow; and it seemed possible to carry the mails by way of Suez in a much shorter time. The eastern half of this service was maintained in a very inefficient manner by the East India Company. The British Government had inaugurated in February 1830 its mail steam-packet service from Falmouth to the Mediterranean. Up to this date the mails had been carried in sailing brigs, although steam navigation with the Mediterranean had already been established and the steamers beat the sailing brigs by many days. The first of these Government steam packets was the Meteor, and the others employed included the African, Messenger, Firebrand, Echo, Hermes, Colombia, Confiance, and Carron.
The Dublin and London Steam Packet Company, under the management of Messrs. Bourne, decided in 1834 upon establishing a line of steamers between London and the Spanish peninsula. The proposed line was to be called the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company, and its first steamer was probably the Royal Tar. This steamer, by the way, had previously been chartered in 1834 to Don Pedro and then to the Queen Regent of Spain.
It is hardly correct, however, to describe these Admiralty vessels as warships, for the Admiralty steam vessels at that time were gunboats, or despatch vessels, steam for line-of-battle ships not being used until some years later.