The safe arrival of these ships at New York was hailed with immense acclamation, thousands of persons having gathered early in the morning to bid them welcome, and, as this, too, is a matter of historical interest, I shall trouble my readers with the substance of the accounts of their arrival as they appeared, at the time, in the public journals.[172]
Details of the Great Western.
The Sirius sailed on her homeward voyage on the afternoon of the 1st of May, her advertised time, and the Great Western on the 7th of that month. The former reached England on the 18th of May, the latter on the 22nd, being respectively, sixteen and fourteen days on the passage. The whole distance run from Bristol to New York, by the Great Western, was 3125 knots,[173] her average speed being 208 miles each day, or 8·2 per hour, consuming 655 tons of coal. Her return passage was accomplished at an average of 213 knots each day, or close upon 9 knots an hour, with a consumption of 392 tons of coal (the difference of consumption arising no doubt in a great measure from the prevalence on her homeward passage of westerly winds); her average daily consumption on this occasion varied from 27 tons, with expansive gear in action, to 32 tons without it.[174]
As the Sirius was not intended for the American trade she made only the one voyage across the Atlantic and, on her return to Liverpool, was dispatched to London to open up steam communication between that city and St. Petersburg, where she was for some years successfully employed.
Royal William, the second of that name, the first steamship from Liverpool, 1838.
But another steam-vessel was soon engaged to take the place of the Sirius. On the 6th of July, 1838, a paragraph in the public journals[175] announced the interesting fact that the enterprising merchants of Liverpool, who now hold the great bulk of the Anglo-American trade in their hands, had dispatched their first steam-ship, the Royal William, though the second of that name, to New York.[176]
Although the practicability of steam navigation across the troubled waters of the Atlantic had now been triumphantly established, other steam-ships having followed the Royal William in rapid succession, many years elapsed before the magnificent sailing-vessels which American energy and skill had created, were driven from the trade.
followed by the Liverpool.
In October 1838, Sir John Tobin, a well-known merchant of Liverpool, seeing the importance of the intercourse now rapidly increasing between the old and new worlds, dispatched on his own account, a steamer to New York. She was built at Liverpool, after which place she was named, and made the passage outwards in sixteen and a half days. It was now clearly shown that the service could be performed, not merely with profit to those who engaged in it, but with a regularity and speed which the finest description of sailing-vessels could not be expected to accomplish. If any doubts still existed on these important points the second voyage of the Great Western set them at rest, she having on this occasion accomplished the outward passage in fourteen days sixteen hours, and the homeward passage in twelve days fourteen hours, bringing with her the advices of the fastest American sailing-ships which had sailed from New York long before her; and thus proving the necessity of having the mails in future conveyed by steamers.
But this idea so far from being new was coexistent with the introduction of steam itself for the purposes of navigation; nor indeed was it the idea of any one person interested in the trade between Great Britain and the United States of America, though one man set himself more zealously to carry it into practical and continuous operation than any one else.