The Straits of New York--When is a Ship not a Ship?--Nationality of
Passengers--A Dream Realized.
R.M.S. _Lucania_.
The Atlantic Ocean is geographically a misnomer, socially and
politically a dwindling superstition. That is the chief lesson one
learns--and one has barely time to take it in--between Queenstown and
Sandy Hook. Ocean forsooth! this little belt of blue water that we cross
before we know where we are, at a single hop-skip-and-jump! From north
to south, perhaps, it may still count as an ocean; from east to west we
have narrowed it into a strait. Why, even for the seasick (and on this
point I speak with melancholy authority) the Atlantic has not half the
terrors of the Straits of Dover; comfort at sea being a question, not of
the size of the waves, but of the proportion between the size of the
waves and the size of the ship. Our imagination is still beguiled by the
fuss the world made over Columbus, whose exploit was intellectually and
morally rather than physically great. The map-makers, too, throw dust
in our eyes by their absurd figment of two "hemispheres," as though
Nature had sliced her orange in two, and held one half in either hand.
We are slow to realise, in fact, that time is the only true measure of
space, and that London to-day is nearer to New York than it was to
Edinburgh a hundred and fifty years ago. The essential facts of the
case, as they at present stand, would come home much more closely to the
popular mind of both continents if we called this strip of sea the
Straits of New York, and classed our liners, not as the successors of
Columbus's caravels, but simply as what they are: giant ferry-boats
plying with clockwork punctuality between the twin landing-stages of the
English-speaking world.
To-morrow we shall be in New York harbour; it seems but yesterday that
we slipped out of the Cove of Cork. As I look at the chart on the
companion staircase, where our daily runs are marked off, I feel the
abject poverty of our verbs of speed. We have not rushed, or dashed, or
hurtled along--these words do grave injustice to the majesty of our
progress. I can think of nothing but the strides of some Titan, so vast
as to beggar even the myth-making imagination. It is not seven-league,
no, nor hundred-league boots that we wear--we do our 520, 509, 518, 530
knots at a stride. Nor is it to be imagined that we are anywhere near
the limit of speed. Already the _Lucania's_ record is threatened by the
_Oceanic_; and the _Oceanic_, if she fulfils her promises, will only
spur on some still swifter Titan to the emprise.[A] Then, again, it is
hard to believe that the difficulties are insuperable which as yet
prevent us from utilising, as a point of arrival and departure, that
almost mid-Atlantic outpost of the younger world, Newfoundland--or at
the least Nova Scotia. By this means the actual waterway between the two
continents will be shortened by something like a third. What with the
acceleration of the ferry-boats and the narrowing of the ferry, it is
surely no visionary Jules-Vernism to look forward to the time when one
may set foot on American soil, within, say, sixty-five hours of leaving
the Liverpool landing-stage; supposing, that is to say, that steam
navigation be not in the meantime superseded.
As yet, to be sure, the Atlantic possesses a certain strategic
importance as a coal-consuming force. To contract its time-width we have
to expand our coal-bunkers; and the ship which has crossed it in six
days, be she ferryboat or cruiser, is apt to arrive, as it were, a
little out of breath. But even this drawback can scarcely be permanent.
Science must presently achieve the storage of motive-power in some less
bulky form than that of crude coal. Then the Atlantic will be as
extinct, politically, as the Great Wall of China; or, rather, it will
retain for America the abiding significance which the "silver streak"
possesses for England--an effectual bulwark against aggression, but a
highway to influence and world-moulding power.
Think of the time when the _Lucania_ shall have fallen behind in the
race, and shall be plying to Boston or Philadelphia, while larger and
swifter hotel-ships shall put forth almost daily from Liverpool,
Southampton, and New York! Think of the growth of intercourse which even
the next ten years will probably bring, and the increase of mutual
comprehension involved in it! Is it an illusion of mine, or do we not
already observe in England, during the past year, a new interest and
pride in our trans-Atlantic service, which now ranks close to the Navy
in the popular affections? It dates, I think, from those first days of
the late war, when the _Paris_ was vainly supposed to be in danger of
capture by Spanish cruisers, and when all England was wishing her
god-speed.
For my own taste, this sumptuous hotel-ship is rather too much of a
hotel and too little of a ship. I resent the absolute exclusion of the
passengers from even the most distant view of the propelling and guiding
forces. Practically, the _Lucania_ is a ship without a deck; and the
deck is to the ship what the face is to the human being. The so-called
promenade-deck is simply a long roofed balcony on either side of the
hotel building. It is roofed by the "shade deck," which is rigidly
reserved "for navigators only." There the true life of the ship goes on,
and we are vouchsafed no glimpse of it. One is reminded of the
Chinaman's description of a three-masted screw steamer with two funnels:
"Thlee piecee bàmboo, two piecee puff-puff, wàlk-along ìnside, no can
see." Here the "wàlk-along," the motive power, is "ìnside" with a
vengeance. I have not at this moment the remotest conception where the
engine-room is, or where lies the descent to that Avernus. Not even the
communicator-gong can be heard in the hotel. I have not set eyes on an
engineer or a stoker, scarcely on a sailor. The captain I do not even
know by sight. Occasionally an officer flits past, on his way up to or
down from the "shade deck"; I regard him with awe, and guess reverently
at his rank. The ship's company, as I know it, consists of the purser,
the doctor, and the army of stewards and stewardesses. The roof of the
promenade-deck weighs upon my brain. It shuts off the better half of the
sky, the zenith. In order even to see the masts and funnels of the ship
one has to go far forward or far aft and crane one's neck upward. Not a
single human being have I ever descried on the "shade-deck" or on the
towering bridge. The genii of the hundred-league boots remain not only
inaccessible but invisible. The effect is inhuman, uncanny. All the
luxury of the saloons and staterooms does not compensate for the lack of
a frank, straightforward deck. The _Lucania_, in my eyes, has no
individuality as a ship. It--I instinctively say "it," not "she"--is
merely a rather low-roofed hotel, with sea-sickness superadded to all
the comforts of home. But a first-class hotel it is: the living good
and plentiful, if not superfine, the service excellent, and the charges,
all things considered, remarkably moderate.
What chiefly strikes one about the passengers is their homogeneity of
race. Apart from a small (but influential) Semitic contingent, the whole
body is thoroughly Anglo-Saxon in type. About half are British, I take
it, and half American; but in most cases the nationality is to be
distinguished only by accent, not by any characteristic of appearance or
of demeanour. The strongly-marked Semites always excepted, there is not
a man or woman among the saloon passengers who strikes me as a
foreigner, a person of alien race. I do not feel my sympathies chill
toward my very agreeable table-companion because he drinks ice-water at
breakfast; and he views my tea with an eye of equal tolerance. It is not
till one looks at the second-class passengers that one sees signs of the
heterogeneity of the American people; and then one remembers with
misgivings the emigrants who crowded on board at Queenstown, with their
household goods done up in bundles and gaping, ill-roped boxes. The
thought of them recalls an anecdote which was new to me the other day,
and may be fresh to some of my readers. In any case it will bear
repetition. An Irishman coming to America for the first time, found New
York gay with bunting as he sailed up the harbour. He asked an American
fellow-passenger the reason of the display, and was told it was in
honour of Evacuation Day. "And what's that?" he inquired. "Why, the day
the British troops evacuated New York." Presently an Englishman came up
to the Irishman and asked him if he knew what the flags were for. "For
Evacuation Day, to be sure!" was the reply. "What is Evacuation Day?"
asked the Sassenach. "The day we drove you blackguards out of the
country, bedad!" was the immediate reply. If not literally true, the
story is at least profoundly typical.
There is a light on our starboard bow: my first glimpse, for two and
twenty years, of America. It has been literally the dream of my life to
revisit the United States. Not once, but fifty times, have I dreamed
that the ocean (which loomed absurdly large even in my waking thoughts)
was comfortably crossed, and I was landing in New York. I can clearly
recall at this moment some of the fantastic shapes the city put on in
my dreams--utterly different, of course, from my actual recollections of
it. Well, that dream is now realised; the gates of the Western world are
opening to me. What experience awaits me I know not; but this I do know,
that the emotion with which I confront it is not one of idle curiosity,
or even of calmly sympathetic interest. It is not primarily to my
intelligence, but to my imagination, that the word "America" appeals. To
many people that word conveys none but prosaic associations; to me it is
electric with romance. Only one other word in existence can give me a
comparable thrill; the word one sees graven on a roadside pillar as one
walks down the southern slope of an Alpine pass: ITALIA. But that word
carries the imagination backward only, whereas AMERICA stands for the
meeting-place of the past and the future. What the land of Cooper and
Mayne Reid was to my boyish fancy, the land of Washington and Lincoln,
Hawthorne and Emerson, is to my adult thoughts. Does this mean that I
approach America in the temper of a romantic schoolboy? Perhaps; but,
bias for bias, I would rather own to that of the romantic schoolboy than
to that of the cynical Old-Worldling.