STEAMSHIPS OF MANY TYPES
Of the super-giant ships there were, in 1924, but ten, but as one
starts looking for smaller ships, he finds them much more numerous.
Under the British flag alone there are about two hundred ships of ten
thousand or more tons. In the entire world there are about twenty-nine
thousand steamships of five hundred tons or more.
It is this enormous fleet to which we now must turn in order that we
may continue our ever-widening story of the development of ships.
And with this vast fleet we shall include the countless thousands of
still smaller steamers that serve as many thousand masters in a great
diversity of ways. The ships to which I shall refer in this chapter are
so diverse in size, in duties, and in model that it almost seems that
the only thing they have in common is their universal ability to float
on the surface of the water.
First there are the mail liners, which differ in few things other than
size from the huge vessels I have described in Chapter V. And even
in size they are more or less comparable, as they are from twelve or
fifteen thousand tons to twenty-five thousand. As a class they are
hardly less luxurious than their greater sisters, and their speed
is only slightly less. And aside from these two things there is no
essential difference, except that they are more numerous and are less
expensive to build and to operate. And, too, they are less expensive to
travel on, which is a blessing for those of us who cannot afford to pay
the rates of the giant liners.
But other differences are few, and a description of the super-liners
is, in all details save those I have just mentioned, a description of
these other ships which travel most of the main ocean lanes, and girdle
the earth with comfortable travel routes. They cross the North Atlantic
between Europe and America. They cross diagonally from the Old World to
the wonder cities of Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, and Buenos Ayres. They
journey through Suez on their trips to the Far East and return. They
link China and Japan with the United States and Canada, and regularly
sail from North America to South. For all their comparatively limited
numbers these ships visit many of the world’s important ports, for
they are busy—very busy—and one never sees them laid up when business
is slack, nor do they idle about port for lengthy stays. Every minute
that is possible they are on their way across the oceans, and a year
or more ahead their sailing dates are scheduled. These are the ships
that sail the great sea lanes almost as regularly as the great express
trains pass along their tracks. And these are the ships that visit
the most important ports of earth. But important though they are, we
can give them no more time. Already we have told about their greater
counterparts and, too, have said that there are no vital differences
save size.
But dropping down the scale of size, which is the only yardstick that
is ready at hand by which to classify these ships, we come to a more
numerous category. Captain Bone, in “The Lookoutman,” lists these as
“intermediate liners.” I have vainly endeavoured to find a better way
to list them, but I always come back to his method, and so, I suppose,
must use it.
The intermediate liners, ranging, perhaps, from five thousand tons
to twelve or even fifteen, are of many types and are engaged in the
performance of many tasks. They visit the lesser ports and the greater
with a fine disregard for anything save the business on which they
are engaged. You will find them stopping at Capetown on their way to
Australia from Liverpool. You will find them at Central American ports
loading bananas. They visit Guayaquil, Havana, Piræus, and Sydney, and
lord it over the smaller craft that fill those busy harbours. They fill
a less pretentious place in Liverpool and New York, and now and then
they drop their anchors in tiny mid-pacific ports, or manage, with
difficulty, to get behind the breakwaters at Ponta Delgada, or churn
the tropic water at Mombasa, or anchor at Christchurch.
[Illustration: A MAIL LINER
_These ships, while somewhat smaller than the biggest ships and not
quite so fast, are perhaps the most popular of passenger ships, for
their rates are not so high as those of the great ships, and their
accommodations are more or less comparable._
]
Some of them are dowdy and old and keep themselves respectable only by
many applications of paint, as a man who has seen better circumstances
will often keep his ancient suit from appearing too unpresentable by
the frequent application of the whisk broom and the pressing iron.
But others of these ships are sparkling in bright woodwork and have
the smoothest of unscarred sides. Their decks are holystoned to the
whiteness of a Dutch matron’s kitchen table, and their passenger
accommodations are beyond criticism.
But the passenger space on these ships is generally somewhat limited,
although many of them are most elaborately equipped, and the holds are
for ever being emptied or filled with the kinds of freight that require
rapid shipment, or, coming in small parcels, can afford to pay the
higher rates these ships demand.
They sail on scheduled dates and have routes of their own, which often
include more or less numerous ports of call, and they all belong to
steamship lines of major or minor importance which maintain offices or
representatives at most of the ports that give them their business. The
United Fruit Company, the ships of which traverse the Caribbean, and
call at Havana and other major ports in addition to many small ones on
their voyages from and to New York, maintains great banana plantations,
which furnish the larger portion of the freight these beautiful white
ships carry. Other lines have other interests, some maintaining a rigid
aloofness from interests farther from their ships than the passengers
and freight of the ports at which they call. But these ships take one
comfortably to many such out-of-the-way places as would hardly seem
worthy of their attention.
Again, however, the fundamental differences, save size, between these
and the great liners are comparatively slight. In size, it is true,
the difference is vast. It would take a round dozen of the smaller
intermediate liners to equal in bulk the great _Majestic_. And still
these ships are not to be called small. They may, perhaps, be four or
five hundred feet in length. Their speed, it is true, is likely to be
far less than that of the great ships, for they make, perhaps, fifteen
or sixteen or eighteen knots, while the great ships may reel off
twenty-five or more an hour.
[Illustration: AN AMERICAN INTERMEDIATE LINER
_Ships of this type were developed during the World War._]
Still, their likenesses, at least superficially, are greater than
their differences. There is likely to be a difference in the number of
funnels and masts. Derricks are probably more numerous on the smaller
ships, for they carry more cargo, strange as that may seem, than the
great ships. The intermediate liner has fewer decks, but that would
seem at first glance to be because the proportions of the ship are
such that numerous decks are impossible. The real reason, however, is
that the cabin accommodations are limited. But a passenger on the
intermediate liners will probably be very nearly as comfortable as a
passenger on the greatest of ships, although he won’t find a Pompeian
bath, or a Palm Garden, or any of those super-elegant appurtenances
that are common on the greatest ships. But for pleasurable travel these
ships—or at least the better of these ships—are often preferred by
experienced travellers, for simple surroundings are to many people more
pleasant than gorgeous elegance.
“Cargo liners,” again using Captain Bone’s classification, are
of a different type. Their sizes are hardly subject to definite
restrictions, for, granted that a ship belongs to a shipping line and
sails on scheduled dates between two or more ports and carries such
freight as may be brought to her, she is a “cargo liner,” whether she
be of five hundred or of fifteen thousand tons. In practice, however,
these ships range, perhaps, from five to fifteen thousand tons, and as
they supplement, to some extent, the freight-carrying passenger ships
of the lines to which they belong, their speed is high, for freighters.
They make, perhaps, fourteen or fifteen or even sixteen knots an hour,
and they are likely to be fine, wholesome-looking ships, handsome in
their lines and proud in their appearance. And for this they have some
reason, for they are the queens of the cargo fleets, and steam proudly
past the dowdy tramps just as the giant liners and the mail liners
sweep past the intermediate liners.
But now we come to what seems to me to be a more romantic class—the
tramp steamers—for they are of the rank and file—as the farmer and
the workman in our factories are of the rank and file. Kings and
presidents, members of Parliament and of Congress are for ever in
the papers, while the simple folk who give these people the exalted
positions they hold seldom see their names in print. And likewise the
great liners and, to a lesser degree, the mail and intermediate and
cargo liners, are often in the public print, while the tramp steamers,
which make possible the conditions that have brought the others into
being, are seldom written of. For, from the point of view of the
world’s work, these simple ships are mostly vitally important to it,
just as the “common people” are of more value to a country than are the
holders of high office.
And as one finds great differences among a country’s “common people” so
does one find great differences among these “common people” of the sea,
upon whose sturdiness and brawn and energy depends that vast web of
commerce without which the modern world, as we know it, could not exist.
[Illustration: A CARGO LINER
_A cargo liner is a freight ship that sails on scheduled dates and
routes, and is different in this from a “tramp” which takes what
cargoes it can at any time and to any port._
]
There is hardly a single important thing that is common to all these
ships. True, the possession of but one funnel seems to be an all but
universal attribute, but aside from that the streaks of rust that mar
their dingy sides are almost the only marks they all possess. Sometimes
one sees a smartly painted tramp, it is true, and she presents a
pleasant sight, but paint is not tough enough long to stand the wear
and tear of this service, and coat after coat is scratched by piers
or heavy freight, or peels beneath the blistering tropic sun, or is
stained by chemicals or strange cargoes from outlandish ports. And even
the most careful captain cannot prevent the rusty-looking spots, for
red lead paint must first be applied to the denuded steel, ere it is
covered with the more seemly black, and while one spot is being made
more reputable, another is fast losing its thin armour of paint, so
that rust or red lead seem always to be in evidence.
But all of this is merely superficial, and appearances, in ships as in
people, often grossly deceive.
It is perhaps unfortunate that these hard-working ships should ever
have been called “tramps,” for the word suggests a lack of respectable
employment to people ashore, as well as a wandering spirit. Among
people ashore a tramp is looked down upon because he is content with
hardly more than enough to eat. He produces nothing. He works at
nothing. His irresponsibility is ever uppermost, and he is sure to do
but one single thing—to keep for ever on the move. But at sea a tramp
is a ship that works most diligently. She journeys, it is true, on
no set route, and never knows—or seldom—for what port she is likely
next to steer. But she works! Every possible moment of her workaday
life she works. From the day she has passed her builders’ tests and is
turned over to her owners she labours as no man or no man’s beasts of
burden were ever worked. Day and night she sails the lonely seas—from
Liverpool to Shanghai—from Shanghai to Capetown—from Capetown to
Sydney—from Sydney to New York—from New York, perhaps, to Liverpool
again—but not for rest. She may, it is true, be docked and repaired,
but once afloat again, and noisy, dirty streams of dusty coal pour
chokingly into her cavernous holds, and off she goes again, perhaps to
Spain, where her coal may be exchanged for a cargo of iron ore, and
back she sails, to discharge and load again and sail, until, at last,
when years have passed, she has outgrown her usefulness and is flung
upon a scrap heap where everything of value is taken from her hulk and
she is forgotten—as workmen sometimes are, who through all their lives
have laboured, day after day, at forge or bench, making for the world
some of the many things it needs, only to find themselves, when they
are worn out, forgotten and replaced by a man more new.
[Illustration: A TRAMP STEAMER
_Perhaps the hardest-working machine ever designed by man, and
undoubtedly the most romantic of all steam-driven ships._]
These are the ships that make world commerce possible. These are the
ships that carry the world’s goods. These are the ships that make a
nation’s merchant marine, and these, basically, are the ships that
make necessary great navies and great ports. Here, then, lies the
modern romance of the sea.
The most common type of tramp steamer has a raised section amidships,
where are placed the bridge, the funnel, and a group of houses
containing the galley (which is the kitchen of a ship), staterooms for
her officers, and, perhaps, a messroom. Below this lie the boiler and
engine rooms. Forward of the bridge the deck drops six or eight feet
to a lower level, and as it nears the bow, it is raised again to a
little above the altitude of the midship deck. This is still called the
forecastle, after those weird structures raised at the bows of ships in
the Middle Ages. Aft the midship section the deck drops away as it does
forward, and at the stern is raised again, until the stern is about
level with the midship deck. Long since, however, the name sterncastle
has been dropped. This section is the “poop.”
Sometimes light bridge-like runways are raised above the lower parts
of the deck forward and aft of the midship section, connecting the bow
and stern with the group of deck houses amidships, for when the cargo
has been stowed these ships are deep in the water, and these low decks
are but a little way above the surface. Once they are at sea, at least
in heavy weather, “lippers,” or waves that reach their crests just over
the low bulwarks, seem for ever to be flooding these sections of the
ship. And once a storm blows up, these decks are often buried beneath
tons of solid water, and the crew, housed forward in the forecastle,
and the captain, who sometimes lives astern, would, without the raised
runway, be more or less marooned and helpless on board the very ship
they are supposed to operate.
So diverse in design, in operation, and in equipment are these ships
that it is impossible to describe them as a unit. Their tonnage ranges
from a few hundred to ten thousand. Their crews range from fifteen,
perhaps, to fifty. Their engines may be reciprocating or turbine. It
is usual, however, for them to have but one propeller, and their speed
is low. Seldom do they make less than eight knots an hour, and seldom,
too, are they able to make as much as fifteen. Some are well equipped
with useful auxiliary machinery for doing much of the heavy work.
Others have hardly more than a few steam winches installed to aid in
loading and discharging their strange variety of cargoes.
A ship may sail from Newport News to Havana with coal, and while she
is discharging at her berth may receive orders to proceed to Caibarien
for a cargo of sugar. She grunts and shrieks and groans as the Havana
stevedores take the coal ashore, her crew more or less idle, except
for odd jobs, for crews of tramps attend to neither the discharging
of cargoes nor the loading. Once the coal is ashore, however, the
crew has a job. The ship must be fumigated, by order of the port
authorities, and once fumigated the hatches must be lifted off, and
the vast caverns into which the new cargo is to go must be swept and
cleaned with care, for sugar does not mix too well with coal dust.
And then the ship is off down the Cuban coast, riding high out of
water, her propeller blades splashing half in and half out. If the
weather is pleasant the holds may be cleaned on the way, and once she
arrives off Cay Frances—for she cannot enter the shallow harbour of
Caibarien—her captain orders the motor boat over the side, if he has
one, and journeys a dozen miles to the little port. Here he tries to
hurry the cargo lighters out to his anchorage, for it costs money to
keep a ship idle. She is paying dividends only when she is on her way
from port to port, and it is one of a captain’s important duties to do
everything he can to get her on her way again. If his company has an
agent at Caibarien, which is unlikely, the agent, too, tries to speed
matters, but Cuban ways tend to slowness, and it is likely to be a day
or two before a couple of barges are brought alongside, with a gang of
Negro stevedores who slowly commence their operations. The derricks
are rigged beside each hatch and the great bags come aboard in sixes
or eights and are dropped into what seem to be the bottomless pits
below the yawning openings. Far below, another group of stevedores cast
the tackle off, and one by one the bags are packed, so as to fill the
hold to the exclusion of a cubic inch of space not utilized. All day
they load, and all night, for as one barge is emptied another appears.
Relief crews of stevedores appear, and under a cluster of lights
hanging from bridge or mast they labour—their toil seemingly endless,
but gradually, nevertheless, approaching its conclusion. Lower and
lower the ship sinks into the water. Her propeller blades disappear,
and down and down she goes. No longer is she the wall-sided affair
that anchored a day or two before. And finally, as the bags reach up
and up to the combings of the hatch, she is down once more, until her
Plimsoll mark, which is cut in her side by Lloyd’s to show how deep she
is permitted to ride, is washed by every wave. A few more bags—the last
big barge is empty—the last bit of space in her great holds is filled
and she is ready for her voyage to Brooklyn.
Once more the crew becomes active. Girders are lowered into their
places across the twenty-foot-wide hatches. Great planks cover the
opening, and several huge tarpaulins are unrolled and spread above the
planks, for cargoes must be guarded against salt water. These coverings
are carefully put in place while the stokers raise the boiler pressure
once more, and ere the last of the preparations is completed another
voyage has been begun.
* * * * *
There are many other types of ships that busy themselves about the sea.
One of these is the oil tanker, a ship built for but a single purpose.
These are owned by the big oil companies whose products come from
Mexico or the Dutch East Indies, or, originating in the United States,
are sold to countries not so fortunate as to have oil wells of their
own.
[Illustration: AN OIL TANKER
_These ships have come to the seas in very recent years. They are used
only for the transportation of oil, and are owned largely by the great
oil companies._]
An oil tanker has an appearance more or less its own, although the
great carriers of ore and grain on the Great Lakes are very similar.
On these ships the engines and boilers are in the stern, and sometimes,
too, the bridge is there, with the funnel rising from behind it, in
a position which few sailors can accept as normal. Sometimes, again,
the bridge and a small deck house are amidships. On these tankers the
propelling machinery is in the stern in order that the cargo may be
insulated to the greatest possible extent from the fires. Incidentally,
too, it is the empty tanker that requires the most care, for just as an
empty gasolene tin will explode while one filled to overflowing with
gasolene will not, so the empty tanker, reeking with the gas left by
the oil it carries, is more apt to explode.
The turret steamer falls into almost any category. It is built in
order to save money on certain port and canal dues and other taxes,
and its appearance is perhaps the weirdest of that of any ship, save,
perhaps, the antediluvian whalebacks once so common on the Great Lakes.
Below the water line these turret steamers are much the same as other
freighters, but from there up they are vastly different. Just above
the water line their sides are turned in until they are almost a deck.
These “decks” run forward nearly to the bow and aft almost to the
stern. But the central portion of the ship from bow to stern is raised
ten or a dozen feet above these strange side “decks,” which in reality
are not decks at all, but only sections of the sides of these strange
hulls. The turret ships have few, if any, advantages over more normal
ships, their only purpose being to save what money they can in tolls
that ships less strangely designed are forced to pay. The turret ship
is only the naval architect’s way of making it possible for the ship’s
owners to take advantage of certain technicalities in wording. They are
few in number and are of minor importance.
* * * * *
In these days of large shipments it does not usually pay owners to
send ships of small tonnage on long sea voyages. Few steamers of
less than five or six hundred tons make voyages across the Atlantic,
for instance. Time was, and not so long ago, when a five-hundred-ton
clipper sailed halfway round the world, but steam and steel have made
deep-sea cargo ships much larger than they were, and the smaller fry
are kept in the coasting trades or busy themselves in the Mediterranean
or other more or less landlocked waters. These “coasters” seem to be
as diverse in design as naval architects are capable of producing.
Every coast has developed its own particular type, although, of
course, the fundamentals of their construction are basic and permit
of little change. Many of them cross the North Sea, and consequently
must be seaworthy, for the North Sea has a habit of being rough. The
Irish Sea is filled with them—of many shapes and sizes. European ports
seem always crowded with these little ships, which steam about their
business with a sort of jaunty cocksureness that is amusing in smooth
waters. But they lose that jauntiness when they poke their noses into
the ocean swells, and as they roll and pitch along their way they have
a worried but determined air. Europe is the home of more of them,
perhaps, than all of the rest of the world combined. America uses
schooners or sends out ocean-going tugs with long tows of ancient
ships once proud under their own canvas, but now converted into barges
with stubby masts and sawed-off bowsprits.
[Illustration: A TURRET STEAMER
_These strange vessels are comparatively rare, and seem to be passing
away entirely._]
Now and then one sees an ocean-going car ferry, carrying trains of box
cars across some narrow arm of the sea. A notable one of these—the
_Henry M. Flagler_—runs from Key West to Havana, carrying American
freight trains to Cuba and Cuban trains back, in order that the freight
need not be handled at each end: from car to ship, and again from ship
to car.
The tourist, too, is sure, sooner or later, to travel on fast express
steamers that cross similar narrow straits. The cross-channel steamers
between Calais and Dover, the small ships from Copenhagen to Norway
and Sweden, and others, are of this type. Their runs are short, and
their schedules often are set to meet trains. Consequently, they are
powerful, speedy, and sometimes most uncomfortable. But being meant for
passengers, they are attractive, in their way. Sturdy, self-reliant,
fast—they are perfectly adapted to the work that they perform.
Another type of vessel is the passenger ship that runs between ports
not widely separated on the same coast. The United States has many
of these. The ships running between Boston and New York are fast and
well equipped. The lounges and dining saloons are handsome, and the
staterooms, while they are small, are thoroughly comfortable. These
ships are popular, and many travellers prefer the all-night ride on
them to spending five hours on the train. Other ships run from New York
to Norfolk; from New York to Charleston, Savannah, and Jacksonville.
Others still make the longer voyage from New York to New Orleans. On
the West Coast similar ships run regularly from Los Angeles and San
Francisco to Portland and Seattle and return. Every continent has some
ships in similar services, and they often reach ports which have no
important land communications system. Such ships connect Japan and
Korea; Ceylon and India; ports along the African coast; Marseilles and
Tunis; and run on countless other routes. They are comfortable for
short voyages, but many of them would not do well at transoceanic work,
for in their size and their accommodations they are not comparable to
the great ocean liners.
* * * * *
So far all the ships I have mentioned, save the Great Lakes freighters,
float in salt water. But rivers and lakes the world over are often busy
with ships, some of them of such size as to place them in a class with
ships intended for the deep sea.
The greatest fleet of ships in the world on fresh water is the fleet
that busies itself on the Great Lakes. During the winter these lakes
are frozen and the whole fleet is laid up, which necessitates unusual
activity for the rest of the year in order that they may pay their way.
From Duluth, on Lake Superior, to Buffalo, on Lake Erie, these ships
sail back and forth, deeply laden with the ore of Minnesota or the
grain of the great Northwest. Piers specially designed to load the ore
carriers pour huge streams of ore into their holds, and within a few
hours of their arrival at Duluth the ships are on their way back to
Gary or Cleveland or Erie. At these ports the cargoes are taken from
their holds at such a speed as is not equalled at any salt-water port
in the world.
The freighters of the Great Lakes make up the greatest part of the
fleet, of course, but passenger ships comparable to almost any of the
“intermediate liners” in the world sail regularly from half-a-dozen
of these inland ports. Car ferries, too, are used by the railroads to
take great freight trains across the lakes in order to save the land
trip around. Ice-breakers, also, are used to keep open channels through
the ice in order that ships may sail in winter. The ice-breakers are
powerful ships whose bows are so cut away as to make it possible for
them to ride up on the ice, as their powerful propellers drive them
along. The ice is broken by the weight of the ship, the bow of which is
built of exceptional strength to stand such rough usage. Such ships are
used, too, in the Baltic, in Russia, and in Siberia, but little use is
found for them elsewhere, and they are rare.
But other inland waters have developed other types of ships. The Rhine,
because of its rapid current, has necessitated the building of fast
steamers able to make headway against it—fast, small steamers that
slowly make their way up stream and scurry rapidly down, laden with
passengers or with freight, depending on the service for which they
have been built.
The Seine, particularly at Paris, has a most attractive type of
passenger boat which has always reminded me of a Fifth Avenue bus
mounted on a hull. True, their lines are better than those of the bus,
but their whole appearance, nevertheless, suggests a bus. They are
long and narrow, sharp and fast, and carry many passengers along that
historic river beneath the many bridges.
River boats in America are vastly different. The early Mississippi
River boats were scows with stern wheels. These developed into strange
boats with decks supported by what seemed to be fearfully weak timbers.
They were high and wide, with blunt low bows and expansive forward
decks. They usually possessed two funnels, rising high above the
topmost deck and standing beside each other. The tops of these, and
every place else on the boat that lent itself to decoration, were
decorated with gewgaws and scrollwork. The pilot house stood high above
the topmost deck, and in it was a steering wheel that sometimes was so
great in diameter that it was swung through a slot cut in the deck, in
order that the pilot, who was a vastly important person, could handle
the spokes.
These ships burned wood, and great was the rivalry between them, and
great the races that were run.
Mark Twain has told the story of these picturesque boats, and his story
is their history. It could not be improved upon.
[Illustration: A WHALEBACK
_A strange type of cargo steamer once common on the American Great
Lakes, but gradually disappearing._]
But the famous old steamboats of the Mississippi are gone. A few of the
species still ply up and down, and some find their way up the Ohio and
other tributaries, but the life seems gone from them. The romance of
the Mississippi steamboat is dead.
But a type of river steamer still in use is the one so common on the
Hudson. Huge ships these are, with many decks, of great breadth, for
often they are side-wheelers and their decks are carried out to the
outside of the paddle boxes or, if they are propeller driven, still
their decks reach out over the water. Deck on deck is piled one upon
another, until the larger of these steamers may sail from New York to
Poughkeepsie and West Point with as many passengers as the _Majestic_
is equipped to carry. But they are not to be compared to the _Majestic_
any more than a trolley car is to be compared to a Pullman.
This chapter is a hodgepodge, and contains as great an assortment of
goods as a country store, so I may, perhaps, be permitted to jump from
the river steamers, to which I have done scant justice, to the tugs
and other harbour craft that are occasionally to be seen about the
many-decked river steamers at such a port as New York.
Perhaps the ferries are most in evidence as they shuttle back and forth
from Manhattan to Jersey City and Hoboken, to Weehawken and Fort Lee,
to Staten and Governor’s islands, and to half a dozen slips in Brooklyn.
These ferries are powerful vessels, and are capable of getting quickly
under way. They have no bows or sterns—or, if you prefer, each end is
bow or stern, depending on the direction the boat is travelling at
the moment. The two ends, to make it plain, are identical. Each is
round on deck. Each has a sharp “cut water” over which the round-ended
deck projects. Each has a rudder, and each a propeller, save the
old-fashioned ones—of which there are a few still in existence—that are
driven by side paddle-wheels. The ends of these ferries are rounded
and the slips at which they dock are so constructed as to fit the bows
perfectly—so perfectly, in fact, that the automobiles and trucks with
which the ferry is generally crowded drive ashore without a gangplank.
In order to make simpler the task of docking these nimble craft two
great rows of piles are driven into the harbour mud so that the
ferries, entering between the outermost ends of these two “fences,”
where they are at some distance from each other, are led directly to
the slip by the converging lines of piles. Once the ferry’s nose has
touched the slip, great hawsers are passed aboard and are made fast,
whereupon special windlasses on the slip take up the slack and the
boat is made fast, in hardly more time than it takes to tell of it.
These ferries are sometimes of considerable size, but none of them are
comparable in tonnage to anything more than the smallest of deep-sea
steamers.
[Illustration: A GREAT LAKES FREIGHT CARRIER
_This type of ship is eliminating the whaleback on the Great Lakes, and
is used largely to transport ore and grain._]
In a modern harbour there is another type of boat more numerous than
ferries, and, from the point of view of the deep-sea sailor, more
important. This is the tug.
A tug is a towboat, and once a sea-going ship has reached a harbour,
she is largely dependent on that harbour’s tugs. In appearance, at
least, European tugs are very different from American.
In British and German and French ports, and elsewhere on the continent,
one sees many paddle-wheel tugs—a thing unknown, or nearly so, in
America. American tugs are universally propeller boats, except on
shallow rivers, where paddle-wheel steamboats sometimes are made to do
the work of tugs.
An American tug is a busy-looking boat. Her bow is fairly high, her
deck slopes aft in a rather marked curve. Her stern is low. A deck
house extends from the “towing bits,” or heavy built-in posts to which
the towline is made fast, up to within ten or a dozen feet of the
bow. This deck house is not high—hardly higher than a man’s head—and
contains a galley and a mess room, besides entrances to the boiler
and engine rooms. On top of this, at its forward end, is the wheel
house, as high as the deck house on which it sits. Astern of the wheel
house is a huge funnel for so small a boat, and astern of that sits a
lifeboat, resting in its “chocks.”
But the surprise comes if an inquisitive observer goes to a local
shipyard and sees one of these small steamboats in a floating dock
with her bulky underbody visible. What stands above the surface seems
but little compared with what is below. She may draw eight or ten or
more feet. Her body lines are very full, and at her stern is mounted a
propeller that seems almost large enough for a good-sized freighter.
And it is, for these boats have not only themselves to propel; they
must meet incoming ships which are more or less helpless to direct
their movements in such limited spaces as are available in a harbour.
If the new arrival be small, one tug can readily place her beside her
pier. If the ship be the _Majestic_ or the _Leviathan_, then a dozen or
more tugs must push against her mighty side, or puff great clouds of
steam as they strain at great hawsers before the giant is safely at her
berth.
Every harbour needs these little workers, and their work is important,
but there are other ships whose work is of a different sort, and even
more important. These are the dredges that keep a harbour’s channels
open, or cut new ones or widen the ones already there. I have not the
space in which to go into a description of these grubbers in the mud,
but I can mention a few of their more salient points.
There are several kinds. A suction dredge lowers a great pipe into the
harbour mud and pumps great quantities of mud-charged water to the
surface. This is run into tanks where most of the mud settles while
the water runs over the top. In some cases it is possible for the pipe
carrying this mud and water to be led ashore where a low spot is to be
filled or where the mud is needed for some other reason. Here the water
trickles gradually away, and the troublesome mud that had been silting
up a channel is converted, perhaps, into valuable city property.
Another type of dredge carries an endless belt on which are great
ladle-shaped containers, called “buckets.” One end of this belt is
lowered to the bottom. The belt is set in motion, and each gigantic
“bucket” dumps the mud of the harbour bottom into a great “well” built
into the ship which is capable of carrying a startling quantity.
There are other types of less importance than these, but already this
chapter has grown beyond the length assigned to it and I must bring it
to a close. To pretend for a moment that I have amply described the
ships I have mentioned would be, of course, ridiculous. I have done
hardly more than mention the more important and more picturesque types
of steamships that exist in the world to-day. A book could be written
on any one of them, and my greatest hope is that I may interest a few
readers who will go to other volumes more complete than mine, in order
to learn more of some phase or another of this fascinating subject.
Should I be so fortunate I shall be content, for one volume cannot
do more than outline what can be found in countless others that have
specialized on a thousand phases of the subject I am attempting to
discuss.