Five steamers were built for this service by Laird of Birkenhead; they were of iron and were screw-propelled vessels. By 1860 the company was in difficulties and it was proposed to wind it up, but the directors were persuaded to try a service between Liverpool and the west coast of Africa, with excellent results to all concerned for a time, but the control of the company was not too efficient in London and the concern dwindled until, in 1891, it passed into the possession of Elder Dempster and Co., and then progressed even more rapidly than it had previously declined.
The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, who it will be remembered launched their first steamers in 1841, adopted the screw propeller in 1849 when they launched the Esk. They were the first to adopt screw propulsion for the conveyance of mails. The company assisted the Panama Railroad Company in 1850 by lending them 125,000 dollars towards the completion of the railroad across the isthmus, and in January 1851 opened a mail service from Southampton to Brazil and the River Plate. Several of their steamers were chartered as transports during the Crimean War. The Dee was chartered in 1860 to the French Government to convey the “Irish Brigade,” which had been raised in Ireland to fight for Pope Pius IX. against Garibaldi, from Havre to Cork on their return from Italy.
In the following year the Confederate States commissioners, Messrs. Slidell and Mason, were taken by force in West Indian waters by the Federals from the R.M.S.P. Trent. The “Trent affair,” as the ensuing international crisis was called, ended in January 1862, when the company’s La Plata arrived at Southampton with the two commissioners on board.
The Shannon, one of their steamers, arrived at Southampton in August 1864 from the West Indies with a record consignment of specie, consisting of gold and silver to the value of £1,511,426 in 2207 packages, which was transferred to the Bank of England in forty-one waggons. In 1869 the R.M.S.P. transatlantic steamers extended their voyage from Rio de Janeiro to Buenos Ayres, thus avoiding transfer to smaller vessels at Rio de Janeiro; the Douro being the steamer inaugurating this extension.
The steam-ship Victoria, built of iron in 1852 for the Australian Royal Mail Steam Navigation Company, gained the prize of £500 offered by the colonies for the fastest voyage to Australia. Her time from Gravesend to Adelaide was sixty days, including two days’ stay at St. Vincent. She was designed by Messrs. I. K. Brunel and J. Scott Russell for a speed of ten knots under full steam, and to provide as much passenger accommodation and space for high-priced cargo as her coal requirements would permit. She was 261 feet on the water-line and registered 1350 tons. The entrance and run of the ship were of the wave-like form, while the central 45 feet were parallel; the bilges were round, the topsides tumbled home, and there was no external keel, so that she was very heavy in a seaway. The hull was in twelve water-tight compartments, and longitudinal bulkheads were carried through from the engine and boiler rooms so as to separate the coal from the machinery. The engines were of the oscillating type. The ship had four masts and a sail area of 1540 square yards. Under steam alone the engines at full power made 59 revolutions per minute and gave a speed of 11 knots, with a coal consumption of 37 tons per 24 hours. Under sail alone, with the screw held vertically, the speed was 5¹⁄₂ knots, but when the screw was allowed to run freely the speed increased to 7¹⁄₂ knots. Her average speed was nearly 11³⁄₄ knots.
The Pacific Steam Navigation Company’s operations were confined to the west coast of South America until 1865, when, in pursuance of a supplemental charter, it extended its sphere to the River Plate. Steamers were specially built for the service, and in 1868, the Pacific, after being about three years on the coast, sailed for Liverpool from Valparaiso to inaugurate the new mail service. Six other iron screw vessels were added and the venture proved so profitable that it was determined to make the sailings fortnightly, and the steamers Chimborazo, Aconcagua, Garonne, Cuzco, and Lusitania were built. All these steamers were afterwards in the Orient Line’s service to Australia, together with the John Elder, which was one of the earlier batch of boats on the Liverpool-Valparaiso route. Seven more steamers were added in 1871, and by 1873 the number of new vessels totalled eighteen. They were all clipper-bowed barque-rigged steamers and were very handsome craft. After this the company went in for the straight stem and pole-masted type of steamer.
The rivalry in the various over-sea trades was very great, and no sooner did one shipowner secure a vessel which surpassed its competitors than other owners sought to improve upon it. The sailing ships were soon obliged to give way to the steam auxiliary vessels, especially when craft like the Lightning appeared. The Lightning was built by the Hendersons of Glasgow, and so pleased were her owners, Messrs. Apcar of Calcutta, and their representative, Captain Durham, with her, that he ordered the Thunder. The Thunder was built by Mr. Lungley at his yard on the Thames and engined by Messrs. Dudgeon, and was an improved edition of her predecessor.
The Thunder was launched in December 1859, and soon demonstrated that she was the fastest steamer yet provided with a screw propeller. She was a handsome vessel, ship-rigged, with clipper bows, and her masts and funnels had a slight rake which gave her a very attractive appearance. Her length was 240 feet between perpendiculars, beam 30 feet, depth 22¹⁄₂ feet, and her tonnage, builder’s measurement, was 1062. The engines were of 210 nominal horse-power with cylinders of 55 inches diameter, and a piston stroke of three feet. A peculiarity in her boilers was that they consumed the fuel and heat in furnaces and tubes to the point that the remainder escaped up the chimney and heated the superheater to a temperature of 300 degrees, without regulation. On her trial trip she travelled at the rate of at least seventeen statute miles per hour, and afterwards did even better. Her coal consumption also was the lowest then attained, being about one pound per indicated horse-power per hour. Her screw was of the ordinary type and was placed outside the rudder. The Lightning and the Thunder were both employed in the China trade.
The “Thunder.”