The “Pacific.”
There was launched in the beginning of 1861 by Messrs. Pearse and Co. of Stockton-on-Tees, for the conveyance of troops on the lower Indus, a vessel which fulfilled the rather unusual requirements of a Government Commission appointed to discover the best means of navigating the Indian rivers which, though broad, are often shallow in places, and abounding in sandbanks. This vessel was 377 feet over all, beam 46 feet, breadth over paddle-boxes 74 feet, depth 5 feet, with a displacement at 2 feet draught of 730 tons. Her tonnage was 3991 under the old system of measurement. Her engines, by Messrs. James Watt and Co., were of 220 nominal horse-power, with horizontal cylinders of 55 inches diameter and 6 feet stroke. The paddle-wheels were 26 feet in diameter. The hull was of steel strengthened longitudinally by four arched girders, two of which carried the paddle-wheels, and the other two extended nearly the full length of the ship. Other girders strengthened her athwartships. She had no rudders in the ordinary sense, but was steered at each end by blades, which were raised from or lowered into the water at the required angle. The vessel had two tiers of cabins, and could accommodate 800 troops and their officers.
The paddle-steamer Athole, built by Messrs. Barclay, Curle and Co., Ltd., in the year 1866, was the first steamer to be fitted with the saloon above the upper deck. The credit for this improvement rests entirely with the late Mr. John Ferguson, who was then manager of the shipbuilding yard. So impressed were Lloyd’s that they desired Mr. Ferguson to patent his improvement, but this he refused to do as he considered it ought to be given to the shipbuilding world free of royalty.
Messrs. A. and J. Inglis were the builders in 1882 of the steel paddle-steamer Ho-nam, which has the distinction of being one of the few, and probably the first, English-built vessels constructed on the American plan. She was rigged as a two-master carrying fore and aft sails only. Her paddles were placed very far aft, and she was fitted with a walking beam-engine. She was constructed for the Chinese coastal trade and was of 2364 tons gross register, and was so successful that others of the same type followed.
These necessarily brief notices of some of the more remarkable paddle-boats of modern times, together with references in other chapters to paddle-steamers of still more recent years, are sufficient to show that the earlier form of propulsion has never been entirely superseded by the screw.
Possibly the earliest definite attempt to apply the screw for propelling purposes was made by David Bushnell in his abortive submarine exploit, an account of which appears in Chapter XII. hereafter;[81] but the propeller seems to have been very primitive. The screw propeller was also proposed in 1752 by the mathematician Daniel Bernoulli. A patent was granted in 1794 to William Lyttleton for a screw propeller which was caused to revolve by an endless rope passing round a wheel at the end of the axle. It was a distinct attempt to solve the problem and nearly succeeded, but it failed because there was too much of it. Had he been contented to use one pair of blades he would have obtained better results than by using two pairs of wide blades and two odd blades, arranged with three blades on either side of the axle so that his propeller became really a long spiral wheel. He also failed from the lack of sufficient power to drive the wheel, as manual labour only was used. Still, a boat fitted with this screw was tried at the Greenwich Dock, London, and a speed of two miles an hour was stated to have been obtained.
In 1800 Mr. Shorter, master of the transport Doncaster, brought out two plans of propulsion. One was in the form of two duck-foot paddles with an alternate movement; the other was a two-bladed screw propeller. The latter was attached to an inclined shaft carried by a universal joint to the deck of the vessel. One of these methods was said to have moved the Doncaster at a speed of about a mile and a half an hour, the contrivance being driven by eight men running round a capstan. It is difficult to believe from the picture which accompanies his plan, dated 1800, that a transport of the size depicted could have been moved at half that speed with the apparatus shown, although the fact that it was mechanically propelled is attested by credible witnesses.
The first really successful screw-propelled boats were those of Colonel John Stevens, which were in operation on the Hudson River from the years 1802 to 1806, and were the first to be used for the effective navigation of the waters of any country. References have already been made to Stevens’ experiment with paddle propulsion in 1796. When he, Chancellor Livingston, Nicholas J. Roosevelt, and Isambard Brunel were making experiments in steam propulsion on the Passaic River, New Jersey, they tried a horizontal centrifugal wheel in a boat of 30 tons, drawing water from the bottom of the boat and discharging it at the stern. This is in its general principles similar to the plan that Mr. Ruthven tried in England on the Waterwitch more than half a century afterwards. They also, unsuccessfully, attempted to use elliptical paddle-wheels.