[185] The Great Britain was launched on the 19th of July 1843. The machinery was constructed in the works of the company, as no engineers could be found willing to undertake the task by contract. But, by putting the engines into the vessel at the works, it was found that she was so deeply immersed as to be unable to pass out of the dock, and she was, consequently, detained for some months until the requisite alterations could be made for her release. Soon after her experimental trip, made on the 12th December, 1844, she was placed on the American station. Her career, however, was prematurely brought to a close by an accident (stranded on the coast of Ireland) which, though occasioning a serious loss to her enterprising owners, proved at this early stage the great strength and value of iron ships. During the whole winter that she lay on the beach at Dundrum Bay, coast of Ireland, she sustained very little injury, and though frequently altered and under repair since then, the Great Britain is still successfully employed in the trade between Liverpool and Australia, and to all appearance is as sound a vessel as she was when launched thirty-one years ago.
[186] Mr. R. B. Forbes, of Milton, Massachusetts, in forwarding to the author the lithograph of his ship, remarks: “The lower yards and the topgallant yard are in the same position as in the ordinary rig; but the topsail and topgallant sail are so divided as to make three sails instead of two. The topsail being exactly of the size of an ordinary double reefed topsail, the yard being parrelled to the heel of the topmast, where the topmasts are fidded forward of the lower mast-head; and to the head of the lower mast where the topmasts are (as they ought to be) fidded abaft the mast-head; this renders it necessary to have the lower mast-heads longer, by several feet, than in the old rig. The next sail above the topsail, representing the upper half of the topsail of the old rig and a fraction of the old topgallant sail, is called the topgallant sail, and the old rig topgallant sail is in the new rig called the royal, while the royal of the old rig becomes the skysail of the new rig. As I consider it important to have the sail as much in the body of the ship as possible, and at the same time to dispose of the canvas and spars that the sails can be used in different places, I make the foreyard of the same length (excepting a slight difference in the yardarms) as the main topsail yard; the fore topsail yard the same as the main topgallant yard, the fore topgallant yard the same as the main royal yard, and so on with the mizen, so that the yards and sails on the fore fit on the main one stage higher up, those on the mizen fit on the fore one stage higher and on the main two higher.”
[187] In a letter which I had the pleasure of receiving from Mr. Forbes (November 1874) that gentleman further remarks: “On the 15th September, 1845, I sailed for Liverpool in the steam-propeller ship Massachusetts: she made one other voyage to that port and, in June 1846, she was chartered to carry troops to the Gulf of Mexico. She was afterwards bought by our government and bore the flag of General Scott to the siege of Vera Cruz. She long continued in the navy department, and was known as the Farralones. Three or four years ago our government sold her when her machinery was removed, and she is now running and is called the Alaska.”
| Name. | Date of Sailing. | Date of Arrival. | At | Advantages to credit of Massachusetts. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts | Oct. 22 | Nov. 18 | Holmes Hole | * |
| Shenandoah | Oct. 22 | Dec. 3 a 4 | Sandy Hook | 13 days |
| Adirondack | Oct. 22 | Dec. 3 | Sandy Hook | 13 days |
| Henry Clay | Oct. 23 | Nov. 26 | Sandy Hook | 5 days |
| Columbiana | Oct. 23 | Nov. 30 | Boston | 11 days |
| St. Patrick | Oct. 23 | Dec. 1 | New York | 11 days |
| St. Petersburg | Oct. 13 | Nov. 27 | Boston | 18 days |
[189] Mr. Forbes, one of the owners of this ship, is a remarkable man, and has, during the long period of sixty years, taken so useful and active a part in the development of the maritime resources of his country, that a brief note of his career, for which he has furnished the materials, cannot fail to interest my readers. In 1811, when a boy of only seven years of age, he and his mother were captured at sea on their passage to France, and, again, in 1813, on his return passage. In 1817 he adopted the sea as a profession; and by his genius and industry he obtained the charge of an Indiaman, before he had reached the age of twenty years, and by 1830 he was in command of a ship of his own engaged in the trade with the East. He retired from the sea in 1832, and, in 1839, he became the principal partner in one of the largest mercantile establishments in China—the still well-known house of Russell and Co. In November 1844 his Midas (propeller schooner) left New York for China: she was the first American steam-vessel that went beyond the Cape of Good Hope, and the first to ply on the waters of China. He was also interested in the propeller barque Edith, which left New York for Bombay and China, on January 18th, 1845. She was the first American steamer despatched to British India, and the first square-rigged propeller to China under that flag. In April 1845 he, with others, built an iron paddle-wheel steamer, nearly 300 feet in length, which they named the Iron Witch: she was designed by Ericsson for great speed, to ply on the River Hudson, but as she did not prove fast enough to compete with the regular Albany boats, her engines were transferred to a wooden vessel named the Falcon; the Falcon was the first American steamer that plied to Chagres in connection with the California route, as the Iron Witch had been the first iron passenger steamer that plied on the North River. In 1845 Mr. Forbes launched the first iron steam-tug, built for mercantile purposes in New England, designed so far back as 1838. In 1847 he loaded the ship Bombay with a full cargo of ice for Bombay, the first cargo taken there, a small quantity having previously gone in the Paul Jones in 1843. At that period it used to be a joke that the Americans had nothing to offer in return for the produce of India except ice, apples, and bills! On the 28th of March, 1847, he sailed from Boston to Cork in the sloop of war Jamestown with 800 tons of provisions, nobly contributed by citizens of Boston and other inhabitants of New England for the famine-stricken Irish—an act in itself which constituted a grand and imperishable monument of their goodness. In 1847 he sent to China on the deck of a ship, a small iron propeller called the Firefly, the first vessel of the kind to ply on the Canton river. He states that when in China in 1839-40, he sent the first cargo of tea to England in an American ship, the Oriental. In 1857-8 he built and despatched from Boston, an iron paddle-wheel steamer, called the Argentina, of 100 tons for the survey of the La Plata, which ascended the Parana beyond where any steamer had previously navigated. In 1861 he despatched the iron propeller Pembroke for China, where she was sold. She held the only “letter of marque” issued by the United States’ Government during the great civil war. Such are a few of the leading points in the active life of Mr. R. B. Forbes, of whom his country may be proud, who still in his fresh old age continues his career of usefulness. He now builds boats for the “good boys” of his native town, and I had great pleasure in executing for him the other day an order for no end of miniature blocks, dead-eyes, anchors, and cables.
[190] “We have to say that, if the Britannia beats the Washington over (and they both, we understand, start the same day), she will have to run by the deep mines, and put in more coal. We shall have, in two years’ time, a system of Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific steamers in operation that will tell a brilliant story for the enterprise of Brother Jonathan. We are bound to go ahead, and steam is the agent of the age. We expect yet to see the day when a traveller will be able to leave New York, and going eastward all the time, will be enabled to make the circuit of the earth, coming in by Huascualco, in the summer interval between two sessions of Congress, spending a month or two in the Mediterranean on the way.”
[191] “The Washington is stated to be of 2000 horses’ indicated power, and is 1750 tons Government measure, or 2000 tons carpenters’ measure; so her steam power is to her tonnage as one to one, while the Britannia has only one horse-power to 2¾ tons.[193] To go a little, however, more into detail: both vessels have two cylinders, I believe, of the same diameter, viz., 72 inches, and both have side beam engines; the stroke of the Washington is 10 feet; her boilers are able to carry (they say) 30 lbs. of steam; but, if we allow her only 23 lbs. ⨉ 13 vacuum, she will be still double the power of the Britannia with 5 lbs. ⨉ 13 lbs. i.e., = 900 horses’ power (450 ⨉ 2). I am now speaking of full steam, or at least both cutting off at the same point. The Herald (New York) says the Washington’s wheels are 39 feet in diameter, and 7½ feet dip; but the latter is of course an error, and probably means 7½ feet face; she has two boilers 36 feet ⨉ 15 on the plan; there are three furnaces, each 7 feet ⨉ 4 feet 6 inches ⨉ 6 = 189 feet. Well then, there you have data from which you may calculate how many horses’ power can be got off that great surface with anthracite and blowers. Her recipient heating surface must be large; she has flues, perhaps 12 inches in diameter.”
[192] The proportion was actually one to two as against one to two and three-quarters.
[193] “In point of size she looked like an elongated three-decker, with only one streak round her; but about as ugly a specimen of steam-ship building as ever went through this anchorage. She did not appear to make much use of her 2000 horse-power either, but seemed rather to roll along than steam through the water. She excited considerable curiosity, although her performance, as compared with the Britannia, had evidently taken the edge off the feeling with which the vessel would have been viewed had a different result been obtained in her favour.” (Spithead correspondent of the Times.)