Speed obtained and cost.
Arguments such as these, too frequently honoured with the title of political economy, are often employed to hide direct taxation; so, instead of attempting to refute them, I prefer inviting my readers to inquire with me into the practical results.
Now, there can be no doubt that the Collins line of steamers did honour to the naval architecture of the time, and in their performances equalled the expectations of their most sanguine friends. Mr. C. B. Stuart, with feelings of national pride, places upon record that, in May 1851, the Pacific accomplished the passage from New York to Liverpool in nine days, twenty hours, and sixteen minutes, and that, in July 1852, the Arctic made the same passage in nine days, seventeen hours, and twelve minutes, which considerably exceeded in swiftness any voyages hitherto made across the ocean by the vessels of any nation. But while this determination to surpass every other vessel afloat is one which commends itself to our admiration, if not to our better judgment (as speed unless it is combined with safety should always be condemned), it was attended with enormous extra outlay, for, by a statement afterwards laid before Congress, it appeared “that to effect a saving of a day or a day and a half in the run between New York and Liverpool costs the company nearly a million of dollars annually.”[202] So eager, however, are the public to make rapid passages (and this applies to railways as well as ships) that the Collins line for the time had a decided preference with passengers.[203] Nor was there any lack of valuable goods; the gross earnings of the company by freights and passage money alone amounting in the two first years to $1,979,760. But while the Government during these two years paid the Collins line for mail service $770,000, they only recovered $513,546, showing a pecuniary loss of $256,453, so that, so far as the public was concerned, the establishment of the Collins line of steamers can only be regarded as a costly and doubtful experiment; and, as will hereafter be shown, the establishment and maintenance of a costly Transatlantic line was not merely an equivocal success on the whole, but to the shareholders resulted in a vast loss of capital.
Great competition, 1850-1852.
The owners of the Cunard steamers were, however, not listless spectators of the great preparations which the Americans were making to run them off their ocean lines, and, in 1850, they added two new vessels to their fleet, the Asia and Africa; they were sister ships[204] but, though magnificent vessels, they were not equal in speed to those which the Collins Company had sent forth.
The competition between these two great lines of steam-ships excited extraordinary public interest at the time on both sides of the Atlantic, and indeed in all parts of the world; numerous records were kept for twelve months of the length of the respective voyages of the ships of the contending companies, and large sums of money were expended in bets on the result of each passage. Dividing the year into two parts it appears that the average length of passage from Liverpool to New York of the Collins steamers during the last half of 1851 was eleven days eighteen hours, while the average time of the Cunard boats was eleven days, twenty-three hours, thirty minutes; but, in the last quarter of that year, they were respectively, on the return passages from New York to Liverpool, ten days, twenty-three hours, and ten days, thirteen hours, seventeen minutes.
Results of it.
During the first half of 1852, the Collins line made the passage from Liverpool to New York, on an average of eleven days, twenty-two hours, and the Cunard Company on an average of twelve days, thirteen hours, and fifty-two minutes, while the return passages to Liverpool were respectively eleven days, one hour, and ten days, twenty-one hours, forty-four minutes, showing, on the whole, an average gain each passage of fourteen hours, twenty-three minutes, in favour of the Collins line.[205]
It must, however, be mentioned that the Cunard line had only two of their new, or best boats engaged in the race, and that had their old boats, the Canada, Niagara, and Europa, been equal in speed to the Asia[206] and Africa, the gain of the Collins line would have been reduced to nine hours and ten minutes each passage. Still, in that great ocean race, the Americans were triumphant, and the rejoicings which spread throughout the United States, were, to our credit, re-echoed on the shores of Great Britain, for the struggle was one which, up to that time, had involved no loss of life, and the triumph honestly gladdened the hearts of every lover of progress on both sides of the Atlantic, encouraging as it did two great nations to extend the benign influence of art and science to their legitimate object—the advancement of the human race.
But though the Cunard Company were thus far behind in the contest, they were far from vanquished, and, with renewed exertions and indomitable energy, at the same time ever bearing in mind the value of human life and the stupendous responsibility they incurred in the continuation of this struggle, they, as will hereafter appear, produced steamers which surpassed their competitors in speed, and were unrivalled in the regularity and safety with which their passages were performed. It was far otherwise with the Collins Company, and the closing years of their brief career is a sad, sad story to tell.