THE DEVELOPMENT OF STEAMSHIPS
From the day a really successful steam-driven vessel first moved
herself awkwardly in the water until the _Majestic_ slid from her
German ways was not much more than a hundred years. But that hundred
years shows more of progress in the development of ships than the
preceding thousand. So breathlessly rapid has been the development of
steamships that there are men still alive who remember them as frail
experimental craft upon which little dependence could be placed.
“Sail,” said the citizen of a hundred years ago, “is a dependable mode
of propulsion. Steam is a ridiculous power, or at best a dangerous and
highly experimental one.”
“Steam,” says the “landlubber” of to-day, “is satisfactory for me.
Sailing is a foolhardy business.”
And neither the century-old viewpoint nor the new one is entirely right.
* * * * *
Steam was vaguely recognized as a source of power even in early
Egyptian history, and several times before the birth of Watt
inconsequential experiments were made with it.
There is a story, not now accepted as true, of one Blasco de Garay,
who in 1543 experimented at Barcelona, Spain, with a boat propelled
by steam. It was not for another 100 years, however, that steam
was practically applied. But as early as 1690 it is known that
Thomas Savery and Denis Papin proposed the use of steam as an aid
to navigation. Papin even built a model boat in which a crude steam
engine was installed. A man named Newcomen seems to have been the
builder of the engines used in these and other early experiments. One
engine built by this experimenter was used in 1736 in a boat built by
Jonathan Hulls in England.
That great American, Benjamin Franklin, whose genius touched such a
diversity of subjects, saw, as early as 1775, that paddle-wheels were
inefficient machines, and called attention to the fact, suggesting
that an engine be devised to draw a column of water in at the bow, to
project it forcibly astern in order to give the ship headway. This
method was tried but before much success had been attained, all engines
being of such low power, the screw propeller had been perfected and
the water-jet system was dropped, although in 1782 James Rumsey built
a boat of this type on the Potomac. In France a steamboat built by the
Marquis de Jouffroy is said to have been operated in 1783. This boat
was 150 feet long and ran with some degree of success for about a year
and a half. Jouffroy has sometimes been given credit for the invention
of the steamboat. In 1788 a small vessel of strange design was driven
at four or five miles an hour by William Symington in Scotland.
This boat was built at the expense of a Scotch banker named Patrick
Miller. Two years before this John Fitch, a New Englander, built a
fairly successful steamboat that was propelled by steam-driven oars.
Symington’s experiments were continued and another boat that made seven
miles an hour was running in 1789. Still more successful was another of
Symington’s boats, the _Charlotte Dundas_, when, in 1802, she towed two
loaded vessels, totalling nearly one hundred and fifty tons at three
and one-half miles an hour for a score of miles in the Forth and Clyde
Canal. The project was abandoned, however, because of the effect of the
agitated water on the banks of the canal. The _Dundas_ was, of course,
driven by a paddle-wheel. Symington continued his efforts but was
unfortunately handicapped financially, and when Lord Bridgewater, his
next backer, died, he withdrew from the field, reduced to poverty.
[Illustration: THE _CHARLOTTE DUNDAS_
_Before the_ Clermont _was built, this boat had operated successfully
on the Forth and Clyde Canal in Scotland. The objection to her was
that she stirred the water up so that she injured the banks of the
canal._
]
But all of these were merely preparatory to the first steamboat that is
to be accepted as a thoroughly practical affair. In 1807, after several
years of travel in Europe where he inspected all the steam engines of
which he could learn, and where he experimented with a steamboat of
his own design on the Seine, Robert Fulton built the _Clermont_ in
New York. Her engine, or at least the major part of it, was built in
England and shipped to New York where it was installed in the first
definitely successful steamboat ever built. The _Clermont_ was 133 feet
long and 18 feet wide, and made the run from New York to Albany, a
distance of about one hundred and fifty miles, in thirty-two hours.
But the _Clermont_ had a greater task in the breaking down of prejudice
than ever she had in propelling herself through the smooth waters of
the Hudson on her round trips between New York and Albany.
The first steamer to make an ocean voyage was a boat named the
_Phœnix_, built in 1809. She was driven under her own power from
Hoboken, New Jersey, on the Hudson River, opposite New York City, to
Philadelphia.
So rapid was the increase in the number of steamboats that by 1814
a contributor to the columns of the _Gentlemen’s Magazine_ wrote
that “most of the principal rivers in North America are navigated
by steamboats. One of them passes 2,000 miles on the great river
Mississippi in twenty-one days, at the rate of five miles an hour
against the descending current,” which, if true, tells a dramatic story
of the rapid development of this new apparatus.
During the next decade a number of boats and small ships were built,
in the hulls of which steam engines were placed, and on the masts
of which the ever-present sails were spread to guard against what
were, evidently, the inevitable breakdowns. But another step in the
development of steamships was to be made. Up to 1818 steam-driven
ships had been used only on inland or on coastal waters. But in that
year a 380-ton full-rigged ship was built in New York City and was
equipped with paddle-wheels operated by a steam engine of seventy-two
horse power. (Some say this engine developed ninety horse power but
the measurement of the power of engines was then at best an inaccurate
science.)
After a number of trials, this ship, which was named the _Savannah_,
crossed the Atlantic in 1819 taking twenty-five days from Savannah,
Georgia, to Liverpool. The passage attracted much attention, even
though the ship had been under power for only a part of the time. This
did not prove, however, that her engines were not capable of more
extended operation. They were stopped for the excellent reason that the
fuel ran out. While this voyage created widespread interest it also
suggested to the wits of the day the necessity for a fleet of sailing
ships to accompany the steamers of the future in order to keep them
supplied with fuel.
Later, when the _Savannah_ returned to America, her engines were
removed, but she had served a useful turn, and she is accepted as the
first steam-driven ship to cross the Atlantic.
With this mark to shoot at, the progress of steamships became more
rapid, although for sixty years most of them that were intended for
deep-sea work carried masts and spars from which sails could be spread.
[Illustration: ROBERT FULTON’S _CLERMONT_
_The first completely successful steamboat ever built. Others built
before the_ Clermont _were made to go, but this ship carried passengers
for years._]
Confidence in steam grew slowly, and with reason, for the engines were
anything but reliable, safety appliances were unknown or inadequately
understood, and steam-driven vessels often broke down, or worse still,
blew up. So common was this latter happening that an advertisement that
appeared in an American paper enlarged upon it. The notice went on to
say that there had been much talk about the explosions that had taken
place on the vessel that was being advertised but that that was no
cause for alarm for “not a passenger has been injured.”
The engines were single-cylinder affairs, with their parts, more often
than not, improperly designed and imperfectly machined. Good lubricants
were unknown and proper lubrication was almost impossible, with the
result that parts wore out and shrieked dismally at their treatment.
The boilers were crudely made of iron, riveted together by hand, so
that leaking seams were, apparently, the rule, when any pressure was
generated. Pressure gauges were long in coming and the safety valves
worked so imperfectly that the engineer’s first notice of any excess
pressure was often the bursting of a steam pipe, the further widening
of a leaking seam, or, worse still, the sudden, and sometimes tragic,
eruption of the whole boiler.
Then, too, another trouble affected the boilers. They were, more often
than not, unprotected from the weather, and, their design being of
the simplest, it was difficult, when the temperature was low, to get
up enough pressure to operate the crude engines. They burned wood, at
first, and ate cords of it, so that frequent stops were necessary in
order to secure more fuel. There were no condensers, and so steamboats
that sailed on salt water often ran out of fresh water for their
boilers. Furthermore, good insulation had not been developed, and
occasionally, when the perverse machines seemed ideally happy, when the
cylinder energetically turned the awkward paddle-wheels with a will,
to the tune of creaking bearings, clanking joints, and hissing steam,
the whole vessel was thrown into a furor, the engine was stopped, the
passengers and crew were forced to turn to in an effort to save the
ship from some fire or other, started by a red-hot fire box, or a
burning ember from the funnel.
[Illustration: THE _SAVANNAH_
_The first steamship to cross the Atlantic._]
Such were the difficulties that the pioneer steamboat-men had to face,
and it speaks well for their patience and nerve that they hung on until
improvement after improvement turned those dangerous and imperfect
machines of theirs into the safe and almost flawless examples of
mechanical artistry that now propel so many thousands of hulls in every
part of the world.
In 1820 the General Steam Navigation Company was formed in England, and
this, the first steamship company, may be considered, properly enough,
a highly important influence in the development of steamships, for
the merchant ships of the world are almost exclusively in the hands of
lines of greater or lesser strength, and it is these lines that make
possible the building and operation, and consequently the perfection,
of such vessels.
In the next few years a number of steamships were built in America, in
Great Britain, and on the continent, and in 1825 a 470-ton ship—the
_Enterprise_—made a voyage from England to India, 11,450 miles, around
Good Hope, in 103 days during but 39 days of which she was under
sail exclusively. This accomplishment, together with others less
spectacular, added impetus to the growing popularity of steam, and
by 1830 Lloyd’s Register listed 100 steamers, and there were others,
particularly in America, not included in that list. The Register
published in 1841 announced that in 1839, 720 steamers were owned in
England, Scotland, and Ireland.
In the ’thirties steam navigation went ahead by leaps and bounds, and
before the ’forties came, a steam-driven vessel—the _Great Western_—had
crossed the Atlantic in 15 days, which was well under the fastest time
for sailing ships of her day, and only 2 days over the fastest crossing
ever made by a sailing ship. The _Red Jacket_, a clipper, crossed in
1854 from Sandy Hook to Rock Light in 13 days, 1 hour.
But with the rapid increase of steamships arose a condition due to the
change in economic conditions and the widening power of Great Britain
that was of the greatest value in the development of shipping and
consequently of steamships.
Steam had been applied to machinery on land no less than to the
propulsion of ships. Factories sprang up, railroads slowly spread their
tentacles over Great Britain, the continent, and the American seaboard,
and commerce consequently became more rapid. Goods were shipped in
ever-increasing amounts, and the widening field of business called men
here and there who formerly had done what overseas business they had
had through the captains of ships, or through supercargoes and agents.
[Illustration: THE _GREAT BRITAIN_
_An awkward and unsuccessful ship. She proved, however, when she was
wrecked, that for ship construction iron is stronger than wood, and
proved, too, that double bottoms, bulkheads, and bilge keels, which
were new departures when she was built, were most desirable in ships
of her size._
]
Great Britain, in addition to, or perhaps because of, her growing power
as a centre of manufacture and shipping, thrust out her long arms
to India and China, to Australia and New Zealand. The growth of the
population at home and the opportunities for colonists in America, in
Australia, and other parts of the world, resulted, almost for the first
time, in the construction of ships intended solely for the purpose of
carrying passengers and mails. A large travelling public was, for the
first time in history, beginning to appear.
In the ’forties, therefore, began a division of ships into two major
classes—carriers of freight and carriers of passengers. Sailing ships
were still greatly more numerous than steamships and, as a matter of
fact, the finer sailing ships were still considered the aristocrats of
the sea. But as steam engines were perfected, and particularly after
the screw propeller was invented by Colonel John Stevens, an American,
early in the 19th Century, and perfected by F. P. Smith, an Englishman,
and John Ericson, the Scandinavian-American, steamships increased in
power, in speed, in reliability, and consequently in popularity.
This period saw the beginning of a number of new steamship lines,
some of which, notably the Cunard and the Royal Mail, are still in
existence, although they are now operated on a scale that could never
have been imagined even by their forward-looking founders.
And now, as if for the purpose of aiding this great increase in the
efficiency and size of steamships, came another development, without
which the leviathans of to-day would be impossible, and but for which
the beautiful clipper ships which were brought so close to perfection
in the middle of the 19th Century might still be supreme upon the
seas, or at least might still be able to hold their own against their
steam-driven sisters.
It was the rolling mill, a thing prosaic enough to-day, that made
possible the great increase in the size and strength of ships. The
rolling mill and the screw propeller are still the basic improvements
that have led to the building of most of the ships on the high seas
to-day.
The first suggestion of the use of iron plates for the building of
ships was received with withering sarcasm. How could ships be built of
iron when everyone knows that iron will sink? But even in the face of
such criticism ships were built, and they were not only built—they were
launched and they floated.
[Illustration: THE _GREAT EASTERN_
_A ship that was built half a century too early. This huge vessel,
built in 1857, was designed to make the voyage from England to
Australia without refuelling. She never made the voyage to Australia,
but was used to lay the Atlantic cable. She was ahead of her time, for
engines had not developed to the point where she could be properly
propelled._
]
So far as I can learn the first boat to be built of iron was launched
in 1777 on the Foss river in Yorkshire. Later several lighters for
canal work were built, one in particular being constructed near
Birmingham in 1787. Less spectacular, but still highly important, was
the introduction of iron for special uses in wooden vessels. This later
grew into what came to be known as “composite” construction. The year
1818 is sometimes given as a definite date for the recognition of iron
as an accepted ship-building material because in that year a lighter
named the _Vulcan_ was built in the vicinity of Glasgow, but it is
known that several iron hulls were built prior to that time. An iron
steamboat named the _Aaron Manby_, after her builder, was operated for
twenty years on the Seine after being built in England in 1821. She
crossed the English Channel under her own power and made the trip from
London to Paris. Still, however, there were many doubters, and not for
more than twenty years was an iron ship of large size built. In 1843
the _Great Britain_, a ship of 3,600 tons, was built of iron, and this
vessel was a notable step in the advancing art of ship-building. She
was 322 feet long, 50 feet 6 inches broad, and was equipped to carry
260 passengers and more than a thousand tons of freight—surely no mean
vessel, even to-day.
This ship, as a matter of fact, proved a highly important affair, for
she proved many things to the wiseacres of the day. I am indebted to E.
Keble Chatterton, author of “The Mercantile Marine,” for his valuable
story of her building and her adventures.
So great and so unusual was this ship that, according to Mr.
Chatterton, no contractor could be found who was willing to construct
her. Consequently, the Great Western Steamship Company constructed her
itself.
She turned out, says Mr. Chatterton, to be “an awkward, ill-fated
monstrosity,” but despite the fact that she did not prove that the
combination of screw propeller and iron construction were successful,
she did prove, after she ran ashore on the coast of Ireland, where
she remained for eleven months exposed to the weather, before she was
refloated, that an iron hull could withstand far more strenuous strains
than any wooden hull could hold up under.
This ship, furthermore, was divided into watertight compartments
and was equipped with bilge keels, which are accepted to-day as an
excellent method for lessening a ship’s rolling.
By the time the American Civil War broke out in 1861, steam had made
such definite strides that there were few to question its supremacy
over sail.
The navies of both the North and the South were, except for a few
out-of-date ships, exclusively steam driven. Then, in 1862, the
Cunard Line built the _Scotia_, a 3,300-ton iron steamer, driven by
paddle-wheels. She had seven watertight compartments and a double
bottom, the value of these having been proved by the unfortunate _Great
Britain_, and she crossed the Atlantic in eight days and twenty-two
hours—a record not to be ignored even to-day with the records of the
_Mauretania_ and the _Leviathan_ before us. Many ships on transatlantic
routes to-day cannot equal that record, and for the first time the
outstanding records of the fast sailing ships were finally and
completely outclassed.
But before the _Scotia_ slid from her ways the _Great Eastern_ was
launched. So great was she and so unusual that she created a furor in
the shipping world that even yet has not entirely subsided.
The idea of building so great a ship originated because of the desire
to carry a large passenger list and a great cargo from England to
Australia without having to coal on the way. This desire led to the
designing of a ship of truly huge proportions. She was driven both
by paddle-wheels and by a screw propeller, and was 679 feet 6 inches
long, 82 feet 8 inches beam, and her tonnage was 18,900—dimensions that
were not surpassed until 1905 when the White Star Line launched the
_Baltic_. She was under construction for four years, being launched in
1858.
So huge was the _Great Eastern_ that her engines, which were of only
3,000 horse power, were inadequate, and she never proved to be a real
success, financially or mechanically, although her hull proved to be
staunch enough, despite the little past experience her designers and
her builders could profit by in her construction.
This great ship was equipped with six masts, each capable of carrying
sail, five funnels, two paddle-wheels, and a propeller. She never
voyaged to Australia, but she did cross the Atlantic, and from 1865 to
1873 she was used for laying the first Atlantic cable. In 1888 she was
beached and broken up. She, however, was ahead of her day. Engines had
not developed to the point where ships of her size could be properly
powered, and she merely stands for the courage and inventiveness of the
mid-Victorian ship-builders who dared to undertake so vast and so new a
task.
With the exception of the _Great Eastern_, however, ships increased
only gradually in size, and their increases in speed were approximately
parallel to their growing tonnage. The _Great Eastern_ was an
attempt—an unsuccessful attempt—to leap ahead half a century. But the
semi-failure of this ship did not retard the growth of ships. Perhaps,
even, it aided that growth.
And now again a new development puts in its appearance in the world
of ships—a less spectacular one than the introduction of steam,
less spectacular even than the introduction of iron, but important,
nevertheless. In the ’seventies steel was first introduced as a serious
competitor to iron for the construction of ships. Its greater strength
and its comparative lightness were its principle claims to superiority,
but so important are those that while the Allan liner _Buenos Ayrean_,
launched in 1879, was the first steel sea-going ship, to-day every
merchant ship (with exceptions hardly worthy of mention) is built of
steel.
About this same time the White Star Line organized its transatlantic
service, and in 1870 a 420-foot liner (carrying sails in addition to
her engines, as was still the rule) was launched and put into service
in the North Atlantic. The White Star Line had previously owned a
fleet of clipper ships, but when trade between Britain and the United
States increased so enormously and the trade became profitable the
White Star owners decided to enter it. This first White Star liner,
the _Oceanic_, may, perhaps, be called the first of the transatlantic
greyhound fleet, for in her, for the first time, there were really
great concessions made with the comfort of the passengers in mind, and
from her time until to-day new and improved liners have been launched
in ever-increasing numbers. In 1881 the Cunarder _Servia_, the greatest
of her kind save only the _Great Eastern_, was put in service. This
515-foot, 7,300-ton ship was a marvel of mechanical perfection in her
day and lowered the transatlantic record to seven days, one hour, and
thirty-eight minutes.
[Illustration: THE STEAMSHIP _OCEANIC_
_This ship may be said to be the first of the transatlantic liners,
for in her, for the first time, great concessions were made for the
comfort and convenience of the passengers._
]
One of the greatest reasons for the increased speed of these new ships
was the introduction of the compound engine. It was in 1854 that John
Elder, a Briton, adapted the compound engine to marine uses. This
improvement, by utilizing more thoroughly the expansive power of
steam, increased at one stroke the power developed by engines without
increasing the supply of steam. The principle of the compound engine
is simple. Steam escaping from the single cylinder of a simple steam
engine still retains a part of its pressure—that is, a part of its
power to expand. As it is largely the expansion of the steam that
forces the piston from one end of the cylinder to the other this means
that a part of the useful force of the steam is wasted in the average
single-cylinder engine. A compound engine, however, utilizes this power
by leading the steam from the exhaust port of the first cylinder to the
inlet port of another and much larger cylinder. Here the steam, now
occupying more space, is used again to operate another piston connected
to the same crankshaft. There is often still a third cylinder, and
in some cases a fourth, in each of which some of the remaining power
of the steam is utilized. The gradual increase of steam pressure in
the better boilers that were being built also aided the development
of these compound engines. In 1854, for instance, 42 pounds pressure
per square inch was seldom exceeded, while in 1882, 125 pounds was a
pressure occasionally reached.
With the development of compound engines and boilers capable of more
pressure the screw propeller became even more efficient, and gradually
the paddle-wheel disappeared from the deep sea. Furthermore, the
compound engine, by its more economic power, made it possible for the
steamer to compete with the sailing ship in the carrying of cargoes,
even on long voyages, and so began the rapid growth of the cargo
steamers that now have practically driven sailing ships from the sea.
And now comes a division of this subject of steamships—a division that
later led to subdivision after subdivision, but which I shall treat in
two major parts: steamers equipped to carry passengers, and steamers
not so equipped.
The passenger steamers have gone through an amazingly rapid growth
since 1888, and have developed along many lines, but it was in that
year that the first twinscrew steamers of large dimensions were put
in service. The Inman liners _City of New York_ and _City of Paris_
were the first large ships to be so equipped. This double system of
propulsion eliminated the necessity for sails on liners, and from that
time on the masts of ocean liners have deteriorated to mere supports
for derricks and signal spars. By this time, too, all the larger
steamers were being fitted with steam steering gears. This important
(and now almost universal) appliance was first installed on the Inman
liner _City of Brussels_ in 1869.
And now, in the late ’eighties and early ’nineties, came the
forerunners of the long list of ships that have grown into the finest
fleet of express steamers to be found on any of the Seven Seas. Great
Britain and the United States were primarily interested in this trade,
but the other nations of northern Europe also had a part to play, and
even Austria-Hungary and Italy entered the competition. But the United
States gradually grew to depend more and more on the ships of other
nations until finally the American Line with its handful of ships was
almost the only serious American contender for the profits of the
rapidly growing passenger business that had developed.
But into this furious competition a new nation thrust itself. Germany
had become a power—a forceful, dominating power—as was proved in the
Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and 1871. And she saw that her “place in
the sun” could only be gained by venturing on the sea. Government aid
to shipping and an enthusiastic demand on the part of the people for
increased tonnage resulted in the building up of a merchant marine that
for size and speed, for energy and enterprise became, shortly, second
to none but Britain, and in some aspects exceeded even that great sea
power.
Britain, it is interesting to note, had built up a fleet of merchant
ships that was predominantly composed of freight ships. Germany, on the
other hand, built up a fleet dominated in numbers by her liners.
Of the dozen or so principal German lines that dominated her entire
merchant marine, the Hamburg-American Line was the most important,
and the North German Lloyd was second. At the outbreak of the World
War the Hamburg-American Line made up about twenty per cent. of the
entire German mercantile fleet, and totalled nearly five hundred ships
of about eleven hundred thousand tons. This great organization in
the sixty-seven years of its existence had become the most powerful
steamship line in the world. Nor was the North German Lloyd far behind.
In 1914 its tonnage had reached the huge total of 700,000.
These two lines, and eight or nine others, all of great size,
controlled the great part of Germany’s tonnage, and because of
subsidies, of preferred rates given them by German railroads, of the
practical control of German and Russian emigration, aided, or at least
not opposed, by the Government, this huge fleet captured a very large
percentage of the European emigrant travel and much of the world’s fast
freight. So vast was the Hamburg-American Line that their ships called
regularly at literally hundreds of the world’s principal ports and
operated seventy-five separate services.
While the Hamburg-American Line was organized in 1847 and the North
German Lloyd in 1857, their startling growth did not really begin until
after the Franco-Prussian War, and even then for nearly twenty years
their development was not surprising.
But in the twenty-four years following 1890 the German lines built fast
and furiously. As late as the ’eighties they were buying British-built
ships or were having their ships built in British yards, but then
came the development of German ship-building and before many years
had passed greater and faster liners than any Britain had built came
sliding from their German ways into German waters.
[Illustration: THE _DEUTSCHLAND_
_Formerly the holder of the transatlantic record._]
But Britain’s claim to the mastery of the seas was not one based
solely on her matchless fleet, and each time a German ship was built
to outstrip the British flyers, a British yard was set to work on
still a faster ship, with the result that despite the _Kaiser Wilhelm
der Grosse_, the _Deutschland_, the _Kaiserin Auguste Victoria_, the
_Kaiser Wilhelm II_, and many others, the British were able to answer
with ships still faster until the _Lusitania_ and _Mauretania_ were
built and the Germans called off their race for speed and started
the building of such monster ships as have not yet been surpassed.
The three greatest ships in the world to-day—the _Majestic_, the
_Leviathan_, and the _Berengaria_—are all German built.
But Germany overreached herself and fell, carrying with her in her
collapse all her ambitions upon the sea, for the end of the World War
saw her reduced to an inconsequential sea power—and reduced to such
a state largely because of her illegitimate use of another kind of
ship—the submarine.
While the race with Germany was at its height, however, Britain was
never for a moment out of the running. The _Olympic_, the _Titanic_,
the _Justicia_, the _Britannic_, the _Lusitania_, the _Mauretania_,
and many others came from her ways. And although the _Titanic_ ended
her first voyage when she sank after a collision with an iceberg, and
the _Justicia_, the _Britannic_, and the murdered _Lusitania_ were
casualties of the war, still Britain has giant ships, for the Germans,
to pay partially for their submarine campaign, were forced to give
over the most important section of their merchant fleet to the Allies,
and Britain, properly enough, for her losses were far the greatest,
rightfully secured the lion’s share.
These giant ships, however, and their smaller sisters in the passenger
trade are only a part of recent shipping developments. Once the
compound engine had been perfected, steam, as I have said, began its
competition with sail in the carrying of freight. Already the major
portion of passenger travel had been taken over by steam, but until
steam had become a more reliable and a less expensive power, sailing
ships contended successfully for freight—particularly on long voyages.
In the ’eighties, however, or perhaps a little earlier, steam began its
irresistible competition for freight and in thirty years sailing ships
had come to play a small and comparatively unimportant part in the
world’s affairs. Still there remain many sailing ships, particularly in
the fishing fleets and the coasting trade, and occasionally, but with
less and less frequency, one sees a fine old square-rigged ship driving
through the great green swells of mid-ocean, but they are few—and
for the person who is drawn by the drama and adventure of the sea,
painfully few.
In the ’sixties steamship tonnage was launched at about the same
rate as sail in Great Britain, but early in the ’seventies the rapid
increase of steamship tonnage began, and sailing ships correspondingly
declined. Sailing ships were built, of course, and are still being
built, and in Britain their average size even continued to increase
until 1892, but then began to decrease in size to correspond with their
decrease in numbers.
Steamships, on the other hand, increased both in individual size and
in numbers. This increase in size had been noticeable ever since
steam came to be a recognized source of power for ships. In 1815, for
instance, steamships averaged only 80 tons. By 1830 this had grown to
102 tons; by 1860 it had risen to 473 tons; and its temporary maximum
was attained in 1882 when the average had grown to 1,442 tons. The next
few years saw a decrease, but 1890 saw the figure raised to 1,500 tons.
By that time steam had absolutely proved itself, and the day of the
supremacy of the sailing ship on the high seas had definitely passed,
and steamships had reached the point of almost infinite variety of
design. So great and so diverse are the designs of present-day ships
that Captain David W. Bone, in “The Lookoutman,” published in 1923,
expended the space of an entire volume to a discussion of them; nor
did he enter into technicalities other than those that, at least to
the sailor, lie on the surface. With this precedent to guide one I
feel that I am perhaps unduly optimistic in endeavouring to cover this
subject, even superficially, in the following two chapters; but so vast
is the subject that this book pretends to cover that each chapter could
easily be enlarged to many times its size.