Section of the Goubet Submarine Boat.Section of the Goubet Submarine Boat.
The Goubet class are of iron, sixteen feet long, three feet wide, and about six feet deep. The motive power is a Siemens motor driven by storage batteries. Fifty of these boats were purchased by the Russian government. They have no rudder, but a universal joint in the screw shaft permits of the screw being moved through an arc of ninety degrees. The torpedo is carried outside the boat, secured by a catch worked from inside. On arrivingunder the enemy, the torpedo is released, and striking the ship's bottom, is held there by spikes. The boat then withdraws, unreeling a connecting wire; and when at a safe distance, fires. The absence of a rudder, however, causes erratic steering, and the spikes with which the torpedo is fitted might fail to stick in steel-bottomed ships.
Submarine boats cannot be driven under water at a speed exceeding six knots. If driven beyond, they are inclined to dive, and in deep water, before the corrective forces against a dive have had time to act, might reach a depth where the pressure would drive in the sides or compress them to a sufficient extent to seriously reduce the displacement. In shallow water, the boat might be driven on to the bottom, and if it be clay, held there, an accident attended with fatal consequences in the case of one boat.
It is also difficult to direct the course of a submarine boat; and it is doubtful whether the advantage of not being seen counteracts the disadvantage of not being able to see. According to Mr Nordenfelt in a lecture on Submarine Boats, 'The mirror of the surface throws a strong light into the boat; you cannot see forward at all, and you cannot see far astern; it is as black as ink outside; you can only see a sort of segment.' This means that you cannot safely advance at a great speed under water. It is impossible to think of a submarine boat as a boat that actually manoeuvres and does its work under water. The boat should run awash, and you can then see where you are. When we consider, then, that a boat totally submerged cannot be driven over six knots, and cannot be properly directed; when we consider the speeds of seventeen and eighteen knots attained by modern battleships, we arrive at the conclusion that boats totally submerged are useless against modern battleships in motion. Running awash, they could be tackled by torpedo catchers and torpedo boats.
In praise of Cycling—Number of Cycles in Use—Medical Opinions—Pioneers in the Invention—James Starley—Cycling Tours.
S
ir Walter Scott once told a friend that if he did not see the heather once a year he would die. He saw it much oftener than once a year. When the building and planting of Abbotsford had become a passion with him, and when the vacation came round in connection with his duties in the Court of Session, he would not stay ten minutes longer in Edinburgh than he could help. Sometimes his carriage would be waiting in Parliament Square to bear him off as swiftly as possible to Abbotsford. John Locke says there is a good vein of poetry buried in the breast of most business men; there is at least in the breast of most men, strong or latent, a longing, a passion for freedom, for change. When the buds swell and burst; when the May-blossom breaks forth on the hawthorn, and makes a spring snowstorm in the valley; when the cuckoo is heard, and the lark rains down his drops of melody above the springing clods; when the lambs gambol in the green fields, and the hives are murmurous with their drowsy insect hum—the awakening comes in man, too, for freedom, freshness, change. Theyare happy who can enjoy such, and be rested and refreshed; for millions are chained to the oar, and know not what they miss, and millions more have not had their eyes or their desires awakened to what they miss. Lowell expresses the feeling:
What man would live coffined with brick and stone,Imprisoned from the healing touch of air,And cramped with selfish landmarks everywhere,When all before him stretches, furrowless and lone,The unmapped prairie none can fence or own?What man would read and read the self-same faces,And like the marbles which the windmill grinds,Rub smooth for ever with the same smooth minds,This year retracing last year's, every year's, dull traces,When there are woods and unpenfolded spaces?
To change and change is life, to move and never rest:Not what we are, but what we hope, is best.The wild, free woods make no man halt or blind;Cities rob men of eyes and hands and feet.
We want, then, to recover our eyes, and hands, and feet, remembering the story of eyes and no eyes. For this end, few things are better than a day now and then in the open air, in order to bring a man to himself. The best stimulant in the world is mountain air, and the grandest restorative music the rhythmic beat of the waves along the shore.
The cyclist covers a wonderful stretch of country, going and returning, and comes back refreshed too, though tired, thinking that nobody in the universe can have had a better or pleasanter holiday than he has enjoyed. He has whizzed along leafy lanes, with glimpses of running streams to right and left; he has heard the musical monotony of the hill burns as he rested on the bridge; he has awakened sleepy villages, and enjoyed his repasts at country inns. And so the cyclist has a ready power to give himself the requisite and healthful change of scene.
The pastime of cycling, at first only patronised by athletic youth, has now spread to every class of the community. The vast improvement in machines, and the health and exhilaration to be gained by the exercise, have had much to do with its popularity alike with aristocracy and democracy. Like golf, it has come to stay, although many who take cycling up for amusement will drop it again as they would do anything else. But there will always remain a strong and increasing contingent, fully aware, by practical experience, of its health and pleasure giving powers, who will place it second to no existing recreation. And so the cyclist gets gleams and glances of beauty from many a nook and corner of the land, where railway, coach, or his unaided pedestrian powers would never carry him. It has widened a twenty-mile radius to a forty-mile radius, and increased man's locomotive powers threefold. Let no one imagine that there is not a considerable amount of exertion and fatigue, and sometimes hardship. But it is of a wholesome kind, when kept within limits, and physically, morally, and socially, the benefits that cycling confers on the men of the present day are almost unbounded.
Truly, we have here a great leveller; as one says: 'It puts the poor man on a level with the rich, enabling him to "sing the song of the open road" as freely as the millionaire, and to widen his knowledge by visiting the regions near to or far from his home, observing how other men live. He could not afford a railway journey and sojourn in these places, and he could not walk through them without tiring sufficiently to destroy in a measure the pleasure which he sought. But he can ride through twenty, thirty, fifty, even seventy miles of country in a day, withoutserious fatigue, and with no expense save his board and lodging.' This is very well put. Another enthusiast has said: 'If you want to come as near flying as we are likely to get in this generation, learn to ride on a pneumatic bicycle.' 'Sum up,' says another, 'when summer is done, all the glorious days you have had, the splendid bits of scenery which have become a possession for ever, your adventures worth telling, and see how you have been gladdened and enriched.'
An enthusiastic journalist who had been burning the candle at both ends betook himself to the wheel, and found it of so much service to body and mind that he straightway, in the columns of his newspaper, began to advise the whole world to learn the bicycle. He could hardly tell the difference it had made to his feelings and general health, and he knew of no exercise which brought so easily such a universal return in good health, good spirits, and amusement. Mr G. Lacy Hillier, of the Badminton volume on Cycling, confirms this. The cyclist seems to enter into the spirit of Emerson's saying as thoroughly as Thoreau might have done: 'Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of empires ridiculous.' Many overdo the exercise, then renounce it, or give it a bad name; others, by over-rapid riding in towns, make themselves public nuisances, and vastly increase the dangers of overcrowded streets. The sensible cyclist rides for health, increase of knowledge, and amusement.
Though at one time Mr Ruskin was prepared to spend all his best bad language in abusing the wheel, the world has gone its own way, and the careering multitudes in Battersea Park and elsewhere, on country and suburban roads, in crowded towns, have been the means of creating new manufactures, which have vastly benefited our home industries. Mr H. J. Lawson, inventor of the rear-driving safety, lately estimated the annual output of cycles at overa million, and the money spent at over ten millions. But in the absence of statistics this is only guesswork. The periodical calledInventionhas stated that in 1884 there were 8 bicycle factories, which turned out 6000 machines. In 1895 there were about 400 factories, with an estimated output of 650,000 bicycles. The bicycle tax in France is said to yield not less than £80,000 a year. In the United States, where cycling has become a greater craze than with us, two hundred and fifty thousand cycles at least were purchased in 1894; in 1895 more than four hundred thousand changed hands. When the proposal was made some time ago to impose a tax on cycles, it was calculated that there were at least eight hundred thousand riders in the United Kingdom. Now the number is estimated at over a million. The past few seasons have witnessed quite a 'boom' in cycling and a great increase in the number of riders. Ladies have taken more rapidly to the pastime in America and France than in England. The rubber and then the pneumatic or inflated tyre have wrought a marvellous revolution; the high 'ordinary,' the tricycle, and the heavy 'solid,' and even the 'cushion,' have in most cases been relegated to the home of old iron. The Pneumatic Tyre Company, with a capital of four millions sterling, when in full swing, turns out twenty-five thousand tyres per week. The profits of this concern in 1896 were at the rate of £432,000 a year. Coventry, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, London, and other towns, have largely benefited by the cycle trade.
Sir B. W. Richardson has often called attention to the benefit of cycling in the case of dwellers in towns. Dr Turner finds that nothing neutralises better the poison introduced into the blood through faulty digestion than gentle and continued exercise on the wheel. Mr A. J. Watson, the English amateur one-mile and five-mile champion in 1895, declared that he never suffered fromany ill effects, save perhaps during the hard days in winter, when prevented from riding. Dr Andrew Wilson once quoted a budget of correspondence from ladies who had tried the wheel, all of which was in the same direction, provided that overstrain was avoided. Where the heart is weak, cycling should be left alone. The muscles of the legs are developed and the circumference of the chest increased in the case of healthy riders.
Here are a few hints by a medical man: 'Never ride within half an hour of a meal, either before or after. Wheel the machine up any hill the mounting of which on the wheel causes any real effort. See that the clothing round the stomach, neck, and chest is loose. Have the handle-bar sufficiently raised to prevent stooping. Be as sparing as possible of taking fluids during a long ride. Unless the wind, road, &c., be favourable, never ride more than ten miles an hour, save for very short distances, and never smoke while riding.'
The cycle as we know it did not burst upon the world in all its present completeness, but has been a gradual evolution, the work of many a busy hand and brain, guided by experience. As far back as 1767 we find that Richard Lovell Edgeworth had something of the nature of a velocipede; and about the same date, William Murdoch, inventor of gas for illuminating purposes, had a wooden horse of his own invention upon which he rode to school at Cumnock.
The French appear to be entitled to whatever of credit attaches to the original invention of the hobby-horse, a miserable steed at best, which wore out the toes of a pair of boots at every journey. M. Blanchard, the celebrated aëronaut, and M. Masurier conjointly manufactured the first of these machines in 1779, which was then described as 'a wonder which drove all Paris mad.' The Dandy-horse of 1818, the two wheels on which the rider satastride, tipping the ground with his feet in order to propel the machine, was laughed out of existence. In 1840, a blacksmith named Kirkpatrick Macmillan, of Courthill, parish of Keir, Dumfriesshire, made a cycle on which he rode to Glasgow, and caused a big sensation on the way. This worthy man died in 1878, aged 68. The notable fact regarding Macmillan's cycle is, that he had adapted cranks and levers to the old dandy or hobby-horse. Gavin Dalziel, of Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire, had a bicycle of his own invention in daily use in 1846. The French are probably justified, moreover, in claiming as their own the development of the crude invention into the present velocipede, for, in 1862, a M. Rivière, a French subject residing in England, deposited in the British Patent Office a minute specification of a bicycle. His description was, however, unaccompanied by any drawing or sketch, and he seems to have taken no further steps in the matter than to register a theory which he never carried into practice. Subsequently, the bicycle was re-invented by the French and by the Americans almost simultaneously, and indeed, both nations claim priority in introducing it. It came into public notoriety at the French International Exhibition of 1867, from which time the rage for them gradually developed itself, until in 1869 Paris became enthusiastic over velocipedes. Extensive foundries were soon established in Paris for the sole purpose of supplying the ironwork, while some scores of large manufactories taxed their utmost resources to meet the daily increasing demand for these vehicles.
There was a revival of cycling between 1867-69. An ingenious Frenchman, M. Michaux, had some years before fitted pedals and a transverse handle to the front wheel of what came to be irreverently known as the 'bone-shaker.' This embryo bicycle had a considerable vogue, and was introduced to Mr Charles Spencer's gymnasiumin London in 1868. Spencer was in Paris in 1868, in company with Mr R. Turner, representative of the Coventry Machinists' Company, and they were each admiring the graceful evolutions of Henri Tascard on his velocipede over the broad asphalt paths of the Luxemburg Gardens. 'Charlie, do you think you could do that?' said Turner. Spencer said he thought he would have a trial, and would take home a machine that very night. He accordingly brought over a machine to London, practised riding stealthily in some of the most out-of-the-way London streets, and soon gained sufficient confidence to appear in public. Mr John Mayall, jun., photographer, Regent Street, witnessed the arrival of one of the first bicycles at Spencer's gymnasium, in Old Street, St Luke's. 'It produced but little impression upon me,' he says, 'and certainly did not strike me as being a new means of locomotion. A slender young man, whom I soon came to know as Mr Turner of Paris, followed the packing-case and superintended its opening. The gymnasium was cleared, Mr Turner took off his coat, grasped the handles of the machine, and, with a short run, to my intense surprise, vaulted on to it, and putting his feet on the treadle made the circuit of the room. We were some half-a-dozen spectators, and I shall never forget our astonishment at the sight of Mr Turner whirling himself round the room—sitting on a bar above a pair of wheels in a line, that ought, as we inadvertently supposed, to fall down as soon as he jumped off the ground.'
It is almost laughable, now, to read how Spencer at first always rode on the pavement, and how politely everybody cleared out of his way. Even Policeman X helped to make a passage for him. Some wiseacre, on being quizzed as to the uses of this strange new machine, would reply, 'Why, it is a machine for measuring roads, of course;' and a street arab would shout, 'Oh, crikey, Bill, 'ere's alark. A swell a ridin' on two wheels. Mind how you fall, sir,' &c. Spencer's speed at first was but five miles an hour. Soon there were many inquiries for this wonderful new aid to locomotion. Spencer and Turner entered heartily into the business. An order for 500 machines was given to the Coventry Machinists' Company in the end of 1868. This was the firm with which Mr James Starley, inventor of the 'Coventry Tricycle,' was connected, and this order helped the start of what has grown to be an enormous and beneficial industry to the town of Coventry.
The account of feats of long-distance riding, of forty and fifty miles a day, got abroad—the feat by Turner, Spencer, and Mayall particularly, in riding to Brighton and back in a day, in February 1869, further popularised cycling. Charles Dickens and James Payn were amongst those who were bitten by the velocipede 'mania.'
Yet the bone-shaker craze might have died a natural death but for the introduction of the rubber tyre and other improvements. Mr James Starley, of Coventry, through whose inventive genius the tricycle was evolved from the bicycle, was also an improver and pioneer. Starley says of his improvements: 'I regarded the rider as the motive force; and believing it absolutely necessary that he should be so placed that he could exert the greatest amount of power on his pedals, with the least amount of fatigue to himself—believing, also, that the machine of the future must be so made that such essentials as the crank-shaft, pedals, seat, and handles could easily be made adjustable—I decided to change my shape, make my wheels of a good rolling size, place my crank-shaft as near the ground as safety would permit, connect my back wheel with my crank by means of a chain, so that the gear might be adjusted and varied at pleasure, and a short, strong man could ride with a fifty, a sixty, a seventy, or even a higher gear, while a tall, weak man could ride with a lower gearthan the short, strong one; to give my saddle a vertical adjustment so that it could be raised or lowered at will; so to place my handles that they could be set forward or backward, raised or lowered, as might be desired; and finally, to make it impossible for the pedalling to interfere with the steering.' In the 'Rover' bicycle he gave an impetus to the early history of the machine, which has been crowned in the pneumatic tyre, the invention of John Boyd Dunlop, born at Dreghorn, Ayrshire, in 1840. Mr Dunlop was engaged as a veterinary surgeon near Belfast, where he built himself an air-wheel from ordinary thin rubber sheets, with rubber valve and plug. Mr C. K. Welch followed with the detachable tyre. The big, ungainly looking wheels were at first laughed at, but when pneumatic tyred machines won race after race, they became the rage. And when the company formed to make the Dunlop tyre sold their interest in the concern, in 1896 it was worth about £3,000,000. The capital originally subscribed was £260,000, and £658,000 had been paid in dividends.
A cycling tour is health-giving and enjoyable when gone about rationally and prudently. It is pleasant to plan, and no less so to carry out, as it is always the unexpected which happens. There are halts by the wayside, conversations with rustics, fine views; and every part of the brain and blood is oxygenated, giving that kind of wholesome intoxication which Thoreau said he gained by living in the open air. One's own country is explored as it has never been explored before. Some wheelmen have been credited with seven and eight thousand miles in a single season. Others, more ambitious, have made a track round the globe. Mr Thomas Stevens, starting from San Francisco in April 1884, occupied three years in going round the world. Mr T. Allen and Mr L. Sachtleben, two American students, as a practical finish to a theoretical education, occupied three years in riding round the world—15,404miles on the wheel. They climbed Mount Ararat by the way, and interviewed Li Hung Chang, the Chinese viceroy. The wheel ridden by these 'foreign devils' was described by one Chinaman as 'a little mule that you drive by the ears, and kick in the sides to make him go.'
Mr Frank G. Lenz, who started from America in June 1892 to ride round the world, was unfortunately killed by six Kurds, sixty-five miles from Erzeroum, between the villages of Kurtali and Dahar, on May 10, 1894. There have been many interesting shorter rides. Mr Walter Goddard of Leeds, and Mr James Edmund of Brixton, started from London and rode entirely round Europe on wheels; Mr Hugh Callan rode from Glasgow to the river Jordan; Mr R. L. Jefferson, in 1894, rode from London to Constantinople, between March 10 and May 19. In 1895 the same gentleman rode from London to Moscow, 4281 miles, and had nothing good to say of Russian inns or roads. A lady of sixty has done seventy miles in one day; while an English lady tourist did twelve hundred miles in her various ups and downs between London and Glasgow during one holiday.
The lighter the machine, the more expensive it is. Racing-machines are built as light as twenty pounds in weight. Some of the swiftest road-riders patronise machines of twenty-six or twenty-seven pounds; but for all-round work, one of thirty-three pounds, without lamp or bell, is a good average machine. As to speed, we have had 460 miles in the twenty-four hours on the racing-track, and 377 miles on the road. Huret, a French rider, has done 515 miles between one midnight and another; the Swiss cyclist Lesna has done 28 miles an hour; while Mr Mills and Mr T. A. Edge, in a ride from Land's End to John o' Groat's on a tandem, beat all previous records, doing the journey in three days four hours and forty-six minutes.
A very sensible American rider, when on tour, starts shortly after breakfast, and with a brief rest for lunch, has his day's work of about fifty miles over by fourP.M.Then he changes underclothing—a most important and never-to-be-forgotten matter—has dinner, and an enjoyable ramble over the town or village where he stays over-night. But he is a luxurious dog, and not many will carry such an abundant kit in the triangular bag below the handle bar. Imagine three light outing shirts, three suits, gauze underclothing, a dark flannel bicycle suit, laced tanned gaiters, light-weight rubber coat, comb; clothes, hair, and tooth brushes; soap and towel, writing-pad and pencil, map and matches, and tool bag! Many a cyclist carries a hand camera, and brings home a permanent record of his journeys.
It has been well said that many a boy will start in life with a more vigorous constitution because of the bicycle, and many a man who is growing old too fast by neglect of active exercise will find himself rejuvenated by the same agency. Only let the getting over a certain distance within a certain time not be the main object. And winter riding, when the roads permit, need not be neglected, for nothing is more invigorating than a winter ride. The doctors tell us that as long as one can ride with the mouth shut, the heart is all right. A fillip should be given to the appetite; whenever this is destroyed, and sleeplessness ensues, cycling is being overdone.
Cycling, of course, as we have already said, is not all pleasure or romance. There is a considerable amount of hard work, with head-winds, rain, mud, hills, and misadventures through punctures of the tyre. This last may happen at the most inopportune time; but the cyclist is generally a philosopher, and sets about his repairs with a cool and easy mind.
A word in closing about accidents, which are often dueto carelessness and recklessness. A cyclist has no right to ride at ten or fourteen miles an hour in a crowded thoroughfare. He takes his life—and other people's!—in his hands if he does so. No less is caution needed on hills, the twists and turns in which are unseen or unfamiliar, and where the bottom of the incline cannot be seen. As the saying goes, 'Better be a coward for half an hour than a corpse for the rest of your lifetime.' But experience is the best guide, and no hard-and-fast rules can be laid down for exceptional circumstances.
The Dandy-horse.The Dandy-horse.
Early Shipping—Mediterranean Trade—Rise of the P. and O. and other Lines—Transatlantic Lines—India and the East—Early Steamships—First Steamer to cross the Atlantic—Rise of Atlantic Shipping Lines—TheGreat Easternand the New CunardersCampaniaandLucaniacompared—Sailing-ships.
O
f all the industries of the world, that which is concerned with the interchange of the products of nations is suffused with the most interest for the largest number of people. Not only is the number of those who go down into the sea in ships, and who do business on the great waters, legion, but three-fourths of the population of the globe are more or less dependent on their enterprise. The ocean-carrying trade we are accustomed to date from the time of the Phœnicians; and certainly the Phœnicians were daring mariners, if not exactly scientific navigators, and their ships were pretty well acquainted with the waters of Europe and the coasts of Africa. But the Phœnicians were rather merchant-adventurers on their own account than ocean-carriers, as, for instance, the Arabians were on the other side of Africa, acting as the intermediaries of the trade between Egypt and East Africa and India. In the earlydays, too, there is reason to believe that the Chinese were extensive ocean-carriers, sending their junks both to the Arabian Gulf and to the ports of Hindustan, long before Alexander the Great invaded India. But there is nothing more remarkable in the history of maritime commerce than the manner in which it has changed hands.
Even down to the beginning of the present century, almost the whole of the carrying-trade of the Baltic and the Mediterranean was in the hands of the Danes, Norwegians, and Germans, while our own harbours were crowded with foreign ships. This was one of the effects of our peculiar Navigation Laws, under which foreigners were so protected that there was hardly a trade open to British vessels. It is, indeed, just ninety years since British ship-owners made a formal and earnest appeal to the government to remove the existing shackles on the foreign trade of the country, and to promote the development of commerce with the American and West Indian colonies. One argument of the time was the necessity for recovering and developing the Mediterranean trade, as affording one of the best avenues for the employment of shipping and the promotion of international commerce. It was a trade of which England had a very considerable share in the time of Henry VII., who may very fairly be regarded as the founder of British merchant shipping. He not only built ships for himself for trading purposes, but encouraged others to do so, and even lent them money for the purpose. And it was to the Mediterranean that he chiefly directed his attention, in eager competition with the argosies of Venice and Genoa. There resulted a perfect fleet of what were called 'tall ships' engaged in carrying woollen fabrics and other British products to Italy, Sicily, Syria, and the Levant, and in bringing home cargoes of silk, cotton, wool, carpets, oil, spices, and wine.
Steam has worked a change in favour of this countrynowhere more remarkable than in the Mediterranean trade. When the trade began to revive for sailing-vessels, by a removal of some of the irksome restrictions, Lisbon was the most important port on the Iberian Peninsula for British shipping. There was a weekly mail service by sailing-packets between Falmouth and Lisbon, until the Admiralty put on a steamer. Some time in the 'thirties,' two young Scotchmen named Brodie Wilcox and Arthur Anderson had a small fleet of sailing-vessels engaged in the Peninsular trade, and in the year 1834 they chartered the steamerRoyal Tarfrom the Dublin and London Steam-packet Company. This was the beginning of the great Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, destined to revolutionise the carrying-trade both of the Mediterranean and the East. When the Spanish government negotiated for a line of steamers to be established between England and Spain, Wilcox and Anderson took up the project, organised a small company, and acquired some steamers, which at first did not pay. They persevered, however, until shippers saw the superiority of the new vessels to the old sailers, and at last the Peninsular Company obtained the first mail-contract ever entered into by the English government. This was in 1837; the Cunard and Royal Mail (West Indian) lines were not established until 1840. In a couple of years the Peninsular Company extended their line through the Straits to Malta and Alexandria, and again to Corfu and the Levant. In 1840 they applied for and obtained a charter as the Peninsular and Oriental Steam-navigation Company, with the object of establishing a line of steamers on the other side of the Isthmus of Suez, from which have developed the great ramifications to India, China, Japan, the Straits Settlements, and Australia. It was, indeed, through the Mediterranean that we obtained our first hold on the Eastern carrying-trade.
In considering the development of maritime commerce, it is always to be remembered that the design of Columbus and the early navigators in sailing westwards was not to find America, but to find a new way to India and Far Cathay. Mighty as America has become in the world's economy, its first occupation was only an incident in the struggle for the trade of the Far East. But with the occupation of America came two new developments in this carrying-trade—namely, one across the Atlantic, and one upon and across the Pacific. To the eventful year in which so many great enterprises were founded—namely, 1840—we trace the beginning of steam-carrying on the Pacific, for in that year William Wheelwright took or sent the first steamer round Cape Horn, as the pioneer of the great Pacific Steam-navigation Company. Within about a dozen years thereafter, the Americans had some fifty steamers constantly engaged on the Pacific coast of the two Continents, besides those of the English company. Out of one of those Pacific lines grew Commodore Vanderbilt's Nicaragua Transit Company, a double service of two lines of steamers, one on each side of the Continent, with an overland connection through Nicaragua. Out of another grew the New York and San Francisco line, connecting overland across the Isthmus of Panama—where M. de Lesseps didnotsucceed in cutting a Canal. And out of yet another of those Pacific enterprises, all stimulated by Wheelwright's success, grew in the course of years a line between San Francisco and Hawaii, and another between San Francisco and Australia. Some forty years ago the boats of this last-named line used to run down to Panama to pick up passengers and traffic from Europe, and it is interesting to recall that at that period the design was greatly favoured of a regular steam service between England and AustraliaviâPanama. A company was projected for the purpose; but it came to nothing, forvarious reasons not necessary to enter upon here. But as long ago as the early fifties, when the Panama Railway was in course of construction, there were eight separate lines of steamers on the Atlantic meeting at Aspinwall, and five on the Pacific meeting at Panama. Later on, when the Americans had completed their iron-roads from ocean to ocean across their own dominions, they started lines of steamers from San Francisco to China and Japan. And later still, when the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed across Canada, a British line of ships was started across the Pacific to Far Cathay, and afterwards to Australia and New Zealand. So that the dream of the old navigators has, after all, been practically realised.
The repeal of the corn laws gave an immense impetus to British shipping, by opening up new lines of traffic in grain with the ports of the Baltic, the Black Sea, and Egypt; and the extension of steamer communication created another new carrying-business in the transport of coals abroad to innumerable coaling stations. Thus demand goes on creating supply, and supply in turn creating new demand.
From the old fruit and grain sailers of the Mediterranean trade have developed such extensive concerns as the Cunard line (one of whose beginnings was a service of steamers between Liverpool and Havre), which now covers the whole Mediterranean, and extends across the Atlantic to New York and Boston; the Anchor line, which began with a couple of boats running between the Clyde and the Peninsula, and now covers all the Mediterranean and Adriatic, and extends from India to America; the Bibby line, which began with a steamer between Liverpool and Marseilles, and now covers every part of the Mediterranean (Leyland line), and spreads out to Burma and the Straits. These are but a few of many examples of how the great carrying-lines of the world, east and west, have developedfrom modest enterprises in mid-Europe. And even now the goods traffic between the Mediterranean and the United Kingdom, North Europe and America, is less in the hands of these great lines than in that of the vast fleets of ocean tramps, both sail and steam.
One of the most wonderful developments in the carrying-trade of the world is the concern known as the Messageries Maritimes of France—now probably the largest steamer-owning copartnery in the world. Prior to the Crimean War, there was an enterprise called the Messageries Impériales, which was engaged in the land-carriage of mails through France. In 1851 this company entered into a contract with the French government for the conveyance of mails to Italy, Egypt, Greece, and the Levant; and as years went on, the mail subsidies became so heavy that the enterprise was practically a national one. During the war, the Messageries Company's vessels were in such demand as transports, &c., that the company had to rapidly create a new fleet for mail purposes. With peace came the difficulty of employing the enormously augmented fleet. New lines of mail and cargo boats were therefore successively established between France and the Danube and Black Sea; Bordeaux and Brazil and the River Plate; Marseilles and India and China, &c. In fact, the Messageries Company's ramifications now extend from France to Great Britain, South America, the whole of the Mediterranean, the Levant, the Black Sea, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean and the China Seas, and the South Pacific.
Few people, perhaps, have any conception of the numbers of regular and highly organised lines of steamers now connecting Europe and America. Besides the Messageries, the Austro-Hungarian Lloyd's and the Italian mail lines run between the Mediterranean and the River Plate. Argentina and Brazil are connected with differentparts of Europe by about a dozen lines. Between the United States and Europe there are now about thirty distinct regular lines of steamers carrying goods and passengers; and about a dozen more carrying goods only. Four of these lines are direct with Germany, two with France, two with Holland, two with Belgium, one with Denmark, and two with Italy, one of which is under the British flag. All the rest of the passenger lines and most of the cargo lines run between the United Kingdom and the United States. As for the 'tramps' steaming and sailing between North America and Europe, they are of all nations; but again the majority fly the British flag, though once upon a time the American-built clippers, of graceful lines and 'sky-scraping' masts, used to monopolise the American carrying-trade under the stars and stripes. Once upon a time, too, these beautiful American clippers had the bulk of the China tea-trade, and of the Anglo-Australian general trade. But they were run off the face of the waters by the Navigation Laws of America and the shipping enterprise of Britain. The great and growing trade between the United States and India, too, is now nearly all carried in British vessels; and a large part of the regular steam service between New York and the West Indies is under the British flag. That a change will take place when America repeals the laws which forbid Americans to own vessels built abroad or manned by foreigners is pretty certain.
With regard to India, the growth in the carrying-trade has been enormous since Vasco da Gama, four hundred years ago, found his way round the Cape of Good Hope to Calicut. For an entire century, down to 1600, the Portuguese monopolised the trade of the East, and as many as two and three hundred of their ships would often be gathered together in the port of Goa, taking in cargo for different Eastern and European ports. To-day, Goais a deserted port, and the Portuguese flag is rarely seen—a ship or two per annum now being sufficient for all the trade between Portugal and India. In the century of Portuguese prosperity the English flag was hardly known in Eastern waters. It was the Dutch who drove out the Portuguese; and the reason why the Dutch were tempted out to India was because the rich cargoes brought home by the Portuguese could not be disposed of in Portugal, and had to be taken to Amsterdam, or Rotterdam, or Antwerp, where the opulent Dutch merchants purchased them for redistribution throughout Europe. This is how the Dutch came into direct relations with the Indian trade before the English, and why Barentz and others tried to find a near way to India for the Dutch vessels by way of the north of Europe and Asia. Failing in the north, the Dutch followed the Portuguese round the Cape, and reaching Sumatra, founded the wide domain of Netherlands-India. This occupation was effected before 1600; and between that year and 1670 they expelled the Portuguese from every part of the Eastern Archipelago, from Malacca, from Ceylon, from the Malabar Coast, and from Macassar.
The Dutch in turn enjoyed a monopoly of the Indian trade for about a hundred years. Then with the rise of Clive came the downfall of the Dutch, and by 1811 they were stripped of every possession they had in the East. Later, we gave them back Java and Sumatra, with which Holland now does a large trade, reserved exclusively to Dutch vessels. But in India proper the Dutch have not a single possession, and it is doubtful if in all the Indian Peninsula there are now a hundred Dutchmen resident.
Two immense streams of trade are constantly setting to and from India and Europe through the Suez Canal and round the Cape. Not only is the bulk of that trade conducted by the well-known Peninsular and Oriental, BritishIndia, City, Clan, Anchor, and other lines (though the Messageries Maritimes, North German Lloyd's, and other foreign lines have no mean share), but the whole coast-line of India is served by the steamers of the British-India and Asiatic lines; and British vessels conduct the most of the carrying-trade between India and Australia, China, Japan, the Straits, Mauritius, &c.
A new carrying-trade was created when the Australasian colonies were founded one after the other—in the taking out of home manufactures, implements, machinery, &c., and bringing back wool and tallow; and then gold, wheat, fruit, and frozen meat. This colonial trade is now divided between sailers and steamers, and in the steamer traffic some of the foreign lines are eagerly bidding for a share. Similarly, a new carrying-trade has been of quite recent years developed by the opening up of South Africa, and this is practically all in British hands.
An important item of international carriage of recent development is the mineral oil of America and Russia. The carriage of these oils is a trade of itself. Another special branch of the world's carrying-trade is connected with the sea-fisheries. All the fishing-grounds of the Atlantic and North Sea may be said to be now connected with the consuming markets by services of steamers. The cod-fishers off the Banks of Newfoundland transfer their dried and salted fish to vessels which speed them to the good Catholics of Spain and France and Italy, just as the steam auxiliaries bring to London the harvests gathered by the boats on the Dogger Bank.
Of late years not unsuccessful efforts have been made, especially by Captain Wiggins, to establish direct communication between Great Britain and the arctic coasts of Russia once every summer. And hopes are entertained that on the completion of the railway from Winnipeg to Fort Churchill, the greatly shorter sea-routeviâHudsonStrait and Hudson Bay may greatly facilitate communication with Manitoba and the Canadian North-west.
It is computed that on the great ocean highways there are not fewer than ten thousand large and highly-powered steamers constantly employed. If it be wondered how sailing-vessels can maintain a place at all in the race of competition in the world's carrying-trade, a word of explanation may be offered. Do not suppose that only rough and low-valued cargo is left for the sailers. They still have the bulk of the cotton and wheat and other valuable products, not only because they can carry more cheaply, but because transport by sailing-vessels gives the merchant a wider choice of market. Cargoes of staple products can always be sold 'to arrive' at some given port, and it is cheaper to put them afloat than to warehouse them ashore and wait for an order.
What, then, are the proportions borne by the several maritime nations in this great international carrying-trade? The question is not one which can be answered with absolute precision, but the tables of the Marine Department of the Board of Trade enable one to find an approximate answer. In 1893 the tonnage of steam and sailing vessels of all nationalities in the foreign trade entering and clearing at ports in the United Kingdom was 74,632,847, of which 54,148,664 tons were British, and 20,484,183 tons were foreign. In the foreign total, the largest proportions were Norwegian, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, and French. The Teutonic races have thus the most of the ocean-carrying; the United States proportion of the above total was small.
So far the United Kingdom. Now let us see what part British shipping plays in the foreign trade of other countries. We find that the total tonnage of the British Empire was 10,365,567. The other principal maritime countries owned 12,000,000 tons. Therefore,roughly speaking, the British Empire owns about five-elevenths of the entire shipping of the world. Even so recently as thirty years ago, about two-thirds of the ocean-carrying trade was performed by sailing-vessels; to-day, about four-fifths of it is performed by steamers.
The earliest steamers the world ever saw, not reckoning the experimental craft constructed by such men as Fulton, Bell, Symington, and Watt, were those employed in the transatlantic trade. As far back as the year 1819, the Yankee paddle-steamerSavannah, of three hundred tons burden, crossed from the port of that name, in Georgia, to Liverpool. She occupied twenty-five days upon the passage; but, as she was fully rigged, and under all sail during at least two-thirds of the voyage, the merit of her performance, as an illustration of the superiority of the engine over canvas, is somewhat doubtful. Yet she was beyond dispute the first steamer to accomplish a long sea-voyage, and to the Americans belong the credit of her exploit. Indeed, from the time of their last war with us, down to within a quarter of a century ago, our Yankee neighbours generally seemed to be a little ahead of this country in maritime matters. They taught us a lesson in shipbuilding by their famous Baltimore clippers, and they were the first to demonstrate in a practical manner, and to the complete capsizal of the learned Dr Lardner's theories, the possibility of employing steam for the purposes of ocean navigation.
Although in 1838 theSiriusand theGreat Westernsuccessfully made the journey from England to America, yet five years before that date, Canadian enterprise accomplished the feat of bridging the Atlantic Ocean with a little vessel propelled wholly by steam. This was theRoyal William, whose beautiful model was exhibited at the British Naval Exhibition in London, where she attracted the attention and curiosity of the first seamen in the empire. TheRoyal William—named in honour of the reigning sovereign—was built in the city of Quebec by a Scotchman, James Goudie, who had served his time and learned his art at Greenock. The keel was laid in the autumn of 1830; and her builder, then in his twenty-second year, writes: 'As I had the drawings and the form of the ship, at the time a novelty in construction, it devolved upon me to lay off and expand the draft to its full dimensions on the floor of the loft, where I made several alterations in the lines as improvements. The steamship being duly commenced, the work progressed rapidly; and in May following was duly launched, and before a large concourse of people was christened theRoyal William. She was then taken to Montreal to have her engines, where I continued to superintend the finishing of the cabins and deck-work. When completed, she had her trial trip, which proved quite satisfactory. Being late in the season before being completed, she only made a few trips to Halifax.'
The launching of this steamer was a great event in Quebec. The Governor-general, Lord Aylmer, and his wife were present, the latter giving the vessel her name. Military bands supplied the music, and the shipping in the harbour was gay with bunting. The city itself wore a holiday look. TheRoyal William, propelled by steam alone, traded between Quebec and Halifax. While at the last-named place, she attracted the notice of Mr Samuel Cunard, afterwards Sir Samuel, the founder of the great trans-continental line which bears his name. It is said that theRoyal Williamconvinced him that steam was the coming force for ocean navigation. He asked manyquestions about her, took down the answers in his note-book, and subsequently became a large stockholder in the craft.
The cholera of 1832 paralysed business in Canada, and trade was at a standstill for a time. Like other enterprises at this date, theRoyal Williamexperienced reverses, and she was doomed to be sold at sheriff's sale. Some Quebec gentlemen bought her in, and resolved to send her to England to be sold. In 1833 the eventful voyage to Britain was made successfully, and without mishap of any kind. TheRoyal William'sproportions were as follows: Builder's measurement, 1370 tons; steamboat measurement, as per Act of Parliament, 830 tons; length of keel, 146 feet; length of deck from head to taffrail, 176 feet; breadth of beam inside the paddle-boxes, 29 feet 4 inches; outside, 43 feet 10 inches; depth of hold, 17 feet 9 inches. On the 4th of August 1833, commanded by Captain John M'Dougall, she left Quebec, viâ Pictou, Nova Scotia, for London, under steam, at five o'clock in the morning. She made the passage in twenty-five days. Her supply of coal was 254 chaldrons, or over 330 tons. Her captain wrote: 'She is justly entitled to be considered the first steamer that crossed the Atlantic by steam, having steamed the whole way across.'
About the end of September 1833, theRoyal Williamwas disposed of for ten thousand pounds sterling, and chartered to the Portuguese government to take out troops for Dom Pedro's service. Portugal was asked to purchase her for the navy; but the admiral of the fleet, not thinking well of the scheme, declined to entertain the proposition. Captain M'Dougall was master of the steamer all this time. He returned with her to London with invalids and disbanded Portuguese soldiers, and laid her up off Deptford Victualling Office. In July, orders came to fit out theRoyal Williamto run between Oporto and Lisbon. Onetrip was made between these ports, and also a trip to Cadiz for specie for the Portuguese government.
On his return to Lisbon, Captain M'Dougall was ordered to sell the steamer to the Spanish government, through Don Evanston Castor da Perez, then the Spanish ambassador to the court of Lisbon. The transaction was completed on the 10th of September 1834, when theRoyal Williambecame theYsabel Segunda, and the first war-steamer the Spaniards ever possessed. She was ordered to the north coast of Spain against Don Carlos. Captain M'Dougall accepted the rank and pay of a Commander, and, by special proviso, was guaranteed six hundred pounds per annum, and the contract to supply the squadron with provisions from Lisbon. TheYsabel Segundaproceeded to the north coast; and about the latter part of 1834 she returned to Gravesend, to be delivered up to the British government, to be converted into a war-steamer at the Imperial Dockyard. The crew and officers were transferred to theRoyal Tar, chartered and armed as a war-steamer, with six long thirty-two pounders, and named theReyna Governadoza, the name intended for theCity of Edinburghsteamer, which was chartered to form part of the squadron. When completed, she relieved theRoyal Tarand took her name.
In his interesting letter, from which these facts are drawn, to Robert Christie, the Canadian historian, Captain M'Dougall thus completes the story of the pioneer Atlantic steamer: 'TheYsabel Segunda, when completed at Sheerness Dockyard, took out General Alava, the Spanish ambassador, and General Evans and most of his staff officers, to Saint Andero, and afterwards to St Sebastian, having hoisted the Commodore's broad pennant again at Saint Andero; and was afterwards employed in cruising between that port and Fuente Arabia, and acting in concert with the Legion against Don Carlos until thetime of their service expired in 1837. She was then sent to Portsmouth with a part of those discharged from the service, and from thence she was taken to London, and detained in the City Canal by Commodore Henry until the claims of the officers and crew on the Spanish government were settled, which was ultimately accomplished by bills, and the officers and crew discharged from the Spanish service about the latter end of 1837, andYsabel Segundadelivered up to the Spanish ambassador, and after having her engines repaired, returned to Spain, and was soon afterwards sent to Bordeaux, in France, to have the hull repaired. But on being surveyed, it was found that the timbers were so much decayed that it was decided to build a new vessel to receive the engines, which was built there, and called by the same name, and now [1853] forms one of the royal steam-navy of Spain, while her predecessor was converted into a hulk at Bordeaux.'
This, in brief, is the history of the steamer which played so important a rôle in the maritime annals of Canada, England, and Spain. Her model is safely stored in the rooms of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, where it is an object of profound veneration. At the request of the government, a copy of the model was made, and formed part of the Canadian exhibit to the World's Fair at Chicago in 1893.
It was not, however, until five years later that the successful passages of two memorable vessels from England to America fairly established the era of what has been called the Atlantic steam-ferry. These ships were respectively theSiriusand theGreat Western. The former was a craft of about 700 tons burden, with engines of three hundred and twenty horse-power: she sailed from Cork on the 4th of April 1838, under the command of Lieutenant Roberts, R.N., bound for New York. The latter vessel was a steamer of 1340 tons, builders' measurement, with engines of four hundred and forty horse-power: she was commanded by Captain Hoskins, R.N., and sailed from Bristol on the 8th of April in the same year, bound likewise for New York. TheSirius, it was calculated, had a start of her competitor by about seven hundred nautical miles; but it was known that her utmost capabilities of speed scarcely exceeded eight knots an hour; whilst theGreat Western, on her trial trip from Blackwall to Gravesend, ran eleven knots an hour without difficulty.
The issue of the race was therefore awaited with the utmost curiosity on both sides of the Atlantic. Contemporary records usually afford good evidence of the significance of past events, and the interest in this novel ocean match was prodigious, to judge from the accounts with which the Liverpool and New York papers of the day teemed. The following is in brief the narrative of the voyage of these two famous ships across the Western Ocean. TheSirius, after leaving Cork on the 4th of April, encountered very heavy weather, which greatly retarded her progress. She arrived, however, off Sandy Hook on the evening of Sunday, the 22d of April; but going aground, she did not get into the North River until the following morning. When it was known that she had arrived, New York grew instantly agitated with excitement.
'The news,' ran the account published by theJournal of Commercein the United States, 'spread like wildfire through the city, and the river became literally dotted all over with boats conveying the curious to and from the stranger. There seemed to be a universal voice in congratulation, and every visage was illuminated with delight. A tacit conviction seemed to pervade every bosom that a most doubtful problem had been satisfactorily solved; visions of future advantage to science, to commerce, to moral philosophy, began to float before the "mind's eye;"curiosity to travel through the old country, and to inspect ancient institutions, began to stimulate the inquiring.
'Whilst all this was going on, suddenly there was seen over Governor's Island a dense black cloud of smoke spreading itself upward, and betokening another arrival. On it came with great rapidity, and about three o'clock in the afternoon its cause was made fully manifest to the accumulated multitudes at the Battery. It was the steamshipGreat Western, of about 1600 tons burden (sic) [the difference probably lies between the net and the gross tonnage], under the command of Lieutenant Hoskins, R.N. She had left Bristol on the 8th inst., and on the 23d was making her triumphant entry into the port of New York. This immense moving mass was propelled at a rapid rate through the waters of the Bay; she passed swiftly and gracefully round theSirius, exchanging salutes with her, and then proceeded to her destined anchorage in the East River. If the public mind was stimulated by the arrival of theSirius, it became almost intoxicated with delight upon view of the superbGreat Western. The latter vessel was only fourteen clear days out; and neither vessel had sustained a damage worth mentioning, notwithstanding that both had to encounter very heavy weather. TheSiriuswas spoken with on the 14th of April in latitude 45° north, longitude 37° west. TheGreat Westernwas spoken on the 15th of April in latitude 46° 26´ north, longitude 37° west. At these respective dates theGreat Westernhad run 1305 miles in seven days from King Road; and theSirius1305 miles in ten days from Cork. TheGreat Westernaveraged 186½ miles per day, and theSirius130½ miles;Great Westerngained on theSiriusfifty-six miles per day. TheGreat Westernaveraged seven and three-quarter miles per hour; theSiriusbarely averaged five and a half miles per hour.'
Such was the first voyage made across the Atlantic bythese two early steamships, and there is something of the true philosophy of history to be found in the interest which their advent created. It is worthy of passing note to learn what ultimately became of these celebrated vessels. TheSirius, not proving staunch enough for the Atlantic surges, was sent to open steam-communication between London and St Petersburg, in which trade she was for several years successfully employed. TheGreat Westernplied regularly from Bristol to New York until the year 1847, when she was sold to the Royal Mail Company, and ran as one of their crack ships until 1857, in which year she was broken up at Vauxhall as being obsolete and unable profitably to compete with the new class of steamers being built.
The success of these two vessels may be said to have completely established steam as a condition of the transatlantic navigation of the future. 'In October 1838,' says Lindsay, in hisHistory of Merchant Shipping, 'Sir John Tobin, a well-known merchant of Liverpool, seeing the importance of the intercourse now rapidly increasing between the Old and New Worlds, despatched 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 proved 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 theGreat Westernset them at rest, she having on this occasion accomplished the outward passage in fourteen days sixteen 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.'
In fact, as early as October 1838, the British government, being satisfied of the superiority of steam-packets over sailing-ships, issued advertisements inviting tenders for the conveyance of the American mails by the former class of vessels. The owners of theGreat Western, big with confidence in the reputation of that ship, applied for the contract; but, not a little to their chagrin, it was awarded to Mr (afterwards Sir Samuel) Cunard, who as far back as 1830 had proposed the establishment of a steam mail service across the Atlantic. The terms of the original contract were, that for the sum of fifty-five thousand pounds per annum, Messrs Cunard, Burns, and MacIver should supply three ships suitable for the purpose, and accomplish two voyages each month between Liverpool and the United States, leaving England at certain periods; but shortly afterwards it was deemed more expedient to name fixed dates of departure on both sides of the Western Ocean. Subsequently, another ship was required to be added to the service, and the amount of the subsidy was raised to eighty-one thousand pounds a year. The steam mail service between Liverpool, Halifax, and Boston was regularly established in 1840, the first vessel engaged in it being theBritannia, the pioneer ship of the present Cunard line.
We get an admirable idea of what these early steamships were from Dickens's account of this sameBritannia, which was the vessel he crossed to America in on his first visit to that country in 1842. In one of his letters to John Forster, describing a storm they were overtaken by, he unconsciously reflects the wondering regard with which the world still viewed the triumphant achievements of the marine engine. 'For two or three hours,' he writes, 'we gave it up as a lost thing. This was not the exaggerated apprehension of a landsman merely. The head-engineer, who had been in one or the other of the Cunardvessels since they began running, had never seen such stress of weather; and I afterwards heard Captain Hewitt say that nothing but a steamer, and one of that strength, could have kept her course and stood it out. A sailing-vessel must have beaten off and driven where she would; while through all the fury of that gale they actually made fifty-four miles headlong through the tempest, straight on end, not varying their track in the least.' What would the skipper of one of the modern 'Atlantic greyhounds' think of such a feat? And, more interesting speculation still, what must Dickens himself have thought of the performances he lived to witness as against this astonishing accomplishment on the part of the oldBritannia?
There exists a tendency to ridicule the early steamers as they appear in portraits, with their huge paddle-boxes; tall, thin, dog-eared funnels; and heavily-rigged masts, as though their engines were regarded as quite auxiliary to their sail-power, and by no means to be relied upon. Contrasted with some of the leviathans of the present day, the steamers of half a century ago are no longer calculated to strike an awe into the beholder; but, in truth, some very fine vessels were built whilst the marine engine was still quite in its infancy. In a volume of theRailway Magazinefor 1839 is an account of what are termed colossal steamers. 'An immense steamer,' runs the description, 'upwards of two hundred feet long, was lately launched at Bristol, for plying between England and America; but the one now building at Carling & Co.'s, Limehouse, for the American Steam-navigation Company, surpasses anything of the kind hitherto made. She is to be named after our Queen, theVictoria; will cost from eighty to one hundred thousand pounds, has about one hundred and fifty men now employed daily upon her, and is expected to be finished in November next. The extreme length is about 253 feet; but she is 237 feetbetween the perpendiculars, 40¼ feet beam between the paddle-boxes, and twenty-seven feet one inch deep from the floor to the inner side of the spar-deck. The engines are two, of 250 horse-power each, with six feet four inch cylinders, and seven feet stroke. They are to be fitted with Hall's patent condensers, in addition to the common ones. She displaces at sixteen feet 2740 tons of water; her computed tonnage is 1800 tons. At the water-line every additional inch displaces eighteen and a half tons. The average speed is expected to be about two hundred nautical miles a day, and consumption of coal about thirty tons. The best Welsh coal is to be used. It is calculated she will make the outward passage to New York in eighteen days, and the homeward in twelve, consuming 540 tons of coal out, and 360 home. Expectation is on tiptoe for the first voyage of this gigantic steamer, alongside of which other steamers look like little fishing-boats.'
The next route on which steam-navigation was opened, following upon that of the North Atlantic passage, was between Great Britain and India. The steamers of the Honourable Company had indeed doubled the Cape nearly two years before theSiriusandGreat Westernsailed upon their first trip. TheNautical Magazinefor 1836 contains the original prospectus issued by a syndicate of London merchants upon the subject of steam-communication with the East Indies. As an illustration of the almost incredible strides that have been made in ocean travelling since that period, this piece of literature is most instructive. The circular opens by announcing that it is proposed to establish steam traffic with India, extending, perhaps, even to Australia! It points out in sanguine terms how those distant parts of the earth, by the contemplated arrangement, 'will be reached at the outset in the short period of seventy-three days; and, when experience is obtained, this time willin all probability be reduced by one-third; shortening the distance by the route in question, from England to Australia, in forty days' steaming, at ten miles an hour. If two days be allowed for stoppages at stations, not averaging more than a thousand miles apart throughout the line, the whole time for passing between the extreme points would only be sixty days, but a relay of vessels will follow, if the undertaking be matured, in which case twenty-four hours will be ample time at the depots, and a communication may be expected to be established, and kept up throughout the year, between England and Australia, in fifty days. It is reasonably expected that Bombay will be reached in forty-eight days, Madras in fifty-five, Calcutta in fifty-nine, Penang in fifty-seven, Singapore in sixty, Batavia in sixty-two, Canton in sixty-eight, and Mauritius in fifty-four days.'
TheNautical Magazinewriter gravely comments upon this scheme as quite plausible. He is indeed inclined to be anticipatory. Instead of seventy-three days to Australia, he is of opinion that the voyage may ultimately be accomplished in fifty, and that the table of time generally may be reduced by about one-third throughout; although, to qualify his somewhat daring speculations, he admits that it is well to base the calculations on the safe side. But the Honourable East India Company asserted their prerogatives, and put a stop to the scheme of the New Bengal Steam Company, as the undertaking was to have been called. This raised a strong feeling of dissatisfaction, and the Court of Directors was obliged to provide a substitute in lieu of the new line they had refused to sanction. Their own homely, lubberly craft were quite unequal to the requirements of 'prompt despatch' which even then was beginning to agitate the public mind. The possibility of establishing steam-communication between England and India had beenclearly demonstrated as early as the year 1825, when theEnterprise, of 480 tons and 120 horse-power, sailed from London on the 16th of August, and arrived in Calcutta on the seventh of December. She was the first steamer to make the passage from this country to our great Eastern Empire; the first, indeed, ever to double the stormy headland of the Cape.
But it was not until the people of India began to petition and the merchants of London to clamour for the adoption of steam-power in the Indian navigation that the conservative old magnates of John Company were stimulated into action. Lieutenant Waghorn's Overland Route had almost entirely superseded the sea-voyage by way of the Cape; but the want of an efficient packet service between London and Alexandria, and Suez and Bombay, was greatly felt. Accordingly, in December 1836, the steamshipAtalantawas despatched from Falmouth to ply on the Indian side of the route. She was a vessel of 630 tons burden, with engines of 210 horse-power, and was built at Blackwall by the once famous firm of Wigram & Green. The orders of Captain Campbell, who commanded her, were that he was to steam the whole distance, only resorting to sail-power in case of a failure of machinery, in order fully to test the superiority of the marine engine over canvas. She sustained an average speed of about eight knots an hour during the entire passage, and but for her repeated stoppages would undoubtedly have accomplished the quickest voyage yet made to India. She was followed, in March 1837, by theBernice, of 680 tons and 230 horse-power. This vessel, which likewise made the run without the assistance of her sails, left Falmouth on March 17, and arrived at Bombay on the 13th of June.
As the race between theSiriusand theGreat Westernmay be said to have inaugurated the steam-navigationof the Atlantic, so did the voyages of theAtalantaandBernicefirst establish regular communication by steamers between Great Britain and India. True, there had been desultory efforts of enterprise prior to this time, and the pioneer of the Peninsular and Oriental steamers, theRoyal Tar, had sailed some three years before; but there was no continual service. TheTimesof November 11, 1838, pointed out the approaching change. 'Scarcely,' it says, 'has the wonder created in the world by the appearance of theGreat WesternandBritish Queenbegun to subside, when we are again called upon to admire the rapid strides of enterprise by the notice of an iron steamship, the first of a line of steamers to ply between England and Calcutta, to be called theQueen of the East, 2618 tons, and 600 horse-power. This magnificent vessel is designed by Mr W. D. Holmes, engineer to the Bengal Steam Committee, for a communication between England and India. Great praise is due to Captain Barber, late of the Honourable East India Company's service, the agent in London for the Steam Committee in Bengal, who has given every encouragement to Mr Holmes in carrying forward his splendid undertaking. When these vessels are ready, we understand the voyage between Falmouth and Calcutta will be made in thirty days.'
From this time ocean steamers multiplied rapidly. One after another of the now famous shipping firms sprang up, beginning with the Cunard and the Peninsular and Oriental lines. The first British steamship was registered at London in the year 1814: in 1842 there were 940 steamers registered; and already was the decay of the sailing-ship so largely anticipated, that Mr Sydney Herbert, in a Committee of the House of Commons, had this same year pointed out 'that the introduction of steamers, and the consequent displacement of the Leith smacks,Margate hoys, &c., would diminish the nursery for seamen by lessening the number of sailing-vessels.'
Less than fifty years ago the Eastern Steam-navigation Company having failed to obtain the contract to carry the mails from Plymouth to India and Australia—in vessels of from twelve hundred to two thousand tons, with engines of from four to six hundred horse-power, which were never built—began to consider a new enterprise, suggested by the late Isambard K. Brunei. This was to build the largest steamer ever yet constructed, to trade with India round the Cape of Good Hope. The general commercial idea was, that this leviathan vessel was to carry leviathan cargoes at large freights and great speed, to Ceylon, where the goods and passengers would be rapidly trans-shipped to smaller swift steamers for conveyance to various destinations in India, China, and Australia. The general mechanical idea was, that in order to obtain great velocity in steamers it was only necessary to make them large—that, in fact, there need be no limit to the size of a vessel beyond what might be imposed by the tenacity of material. On what was called the tubular principle, Brunei argued—and proved to the satisfaction of numerous experts and capitalists—that it was possible to construct a vessel of six times the capacity of the largest vessel then afloat that would steam at a speed unattainable by smaller vessels, while carrying, besides cargo, all the coal she would require for the longest voyage.
Thus originated theGreat Eastern, which never went to India, which ruined two or three companies in succession, which cost £120,000 to launch, which probably earned more as a show than ever she did as an ocean-carrier—except in the matter of telegraph cables—and which ignobly ended a disastrous career by being sold for £16,000, and broken up at New Ferry, on the Mersey.