EVOLUTION OF WATER TRAVEL--INCREASES IN SIZE OF VESSELS--IS THERE ANY
LIMIT?--ACHIEVEMENTS IN SPEED--TITANIC NOT THE LAST WORD.
THE origin of travel on water dates back to a very early period in human
history, men beginning with the log, the inflated skin, the dug-out
canoe, and upwards through various methods of flotation; while the
paddle, the oar, and finally the sail served as means of propulsion.
This was for inland water travel, and many centuries passed before the
navigation of the sea was dreamed of by adventurous mariners.
The paintings and sculptures of early Egypt show us boats built of sawn
planks, regularly constructed and moved both by oars and sails. At
a later period we read of the Phoenicians, the most daring and
enterprising of ancient navigators, who braved the dangers of the open
sea, and are said by Herodotus to have circumnavigated Africa as early
as 604 B. C. Starting from the Red Sea, they followed the east
coast, rounded the Cape, and sailed north along the west coast to
the Mediterranean, reaching Egypt again in the third year of this
enterprise.
The Carthaginians and Romans come next in the history of shipbuilding,
confining themselves chiefly to the Mediterranean, and using oars as
the principal means of propulsion. Their galleys ranged from one to five
banks of oars. The Roman vessels in the first Punic war were over 100
feet long and had 300 rowers, while they carried 120 soldiers. They did
not use sails until about the beginning of the fourteenth century B. C.
Portugal was the first nation to engage in voyages of discovery, using
vessels of small size in these adventurous journeys. Spain, which soon
became her rival in this field, built larger ships and long held the
lead. Yet the ships with which Columbus made the discovery of America
were of a size and character in which few sailors of the present day
would care to venture far from land.
England was later in coming into the field of adventurous navigation,
being surpassed not only by the Portuguese and Spanish, but by the
Dutch, in ventures to far lands.
Europe long held the precedence in shipbuilding and enterprise in
navigation, but the shores of America had not long been settled before
the venturous colonists had ships upon the seas. The first of these was
built at the mouth of the Kennebec River in Maine. This was a staunch
little two-masted vessel, which was named the Virginia, supposed to have
been about sixty feet long and seventeen feet in beam. Next in time came
the Restless, built in 1614 or 1615 at New York, by Adrian Blok, a Dutch
captain whose ships had been burned while lying at Manhattan Island.
This vessel, thirty-eight feet long and of eleven feet beam, was
employed for several years in exploring the Atlantic coast.
With the advent of the nineteenth century a new ideal in naval
architecture arose, that of the ship moved by steam-power instead of
wind-power, and fitted to combat with the seas alike in storm and calm,
with little heed as to whether the wind was fair or foul. The steamship
appeared, and grew in size and power until such giants of the wave as
the Titanic and Olympic were set afloat. To the development of this
modern class of ships our attention must now be turned.
As the reckless cowboy of the West is fast becoming a thing of the past,
so is the daring seaman of fame and story. In his place is coming a
class of men miscalled sailors, who never reefed a sail or coiled a
cable, who do not know how to launch a life-boat or pull an oar, and
in whose career we meet the ridiculous episode of the life-boats of the
Titanic, where women were obliged to take the oars from their hands and
row the boats. Thus has the old-time hero of the waves been transformed
into one fitted to serve as a clown of the vaudeville stage.
The advent of steam navigation came early in the nineteenth century,
though interesting steps in this direction were taken earlier. No sooner
was the steam-engine developed than men began to speculate on it as a
moving power on sea and land. Early among these were several Americans,
Oliver Evans, one of the first to project steam railway travel, and
James Rumsey and John Fitch, steamboat inventors of early date. There
were several experimenters in Europe also, but the first to produce a
practical steamboat was Robert Fulton, a native of Pennsylvania, whose
successful boat; the Clermont, made its maiden trip up the Hudson in
1807. A crude affair was the Clermont, with a top speed of about seven
miles an hour; but it was the dwarf from which the giant steamers of
to-day have grown.
Boats of this type quickly made their way over the American rivers and
before 1820 regular lines of steamboats were running between England and
Ireland. In 1817 James Watt, the inventor of the practical steam-engine,
crossed in a steamer from England to Belgium. But these short voyages
were far surpassed by an American enterprise, that of the first ocean
steamship, the Savannah, which crossed the Atlantic from Savannah to
Liverpool in 1819.
Twelve years passed before this enterprise was repeated, the next steam
voyage being in 1831, when the Royal William crossed from Quebec to
England. She used coal for fuel, having utilized her entire hold to
store enough for the voyage. The Savannah had burned pitch-pine under
her engines, for in America wood was long used as fuel for steam-making
purposes. As regards this matter, the problem of fuel was of leading
importance, and it was seriously questioned if a ship could be built to
cross the Atlantic depending solely upon steam power. Steam-engines in
those days were not very economical, needing four or five times as much
fuel for the same power as the engines of recent date.
It was not until 1838 that the problem was solved. On April 23d of that
year a most significant event took place. Two steamships dropped anchor
in the harbor of New York, the Sirius and the Great Western. Both of
these had made the entire voyage under steam, the Sirius, in eighteen
and a half and the Great Western in fourteen and a half days, measuring
from Queenstown. The Sirius had taken on board 450 tons of coal, but all
this was burned by the time Sandy Hook was reached, and she had to burn
her spare spars and forty-three barrels of rosin to make her way up the
bay. The Great Western, on the contrary, had coal to spare.
Two innovations in shipbuilding were soon introduced. These were the
building of iron instead of wooden ships and the replacing of the paddle
wheel by the screw propeller. The screw-propeller was first successfully
introduced by the famous Swede, John Ericsson, in 1835. His propeller
was tried in a small vessel, forty-five feet long and eight wide, which
was driven at the rate of ten miles an hour, and towed a large packet
ship at fair speed. Ericsson, not being appreciated in England, came
to America to experiment. Other inventors were also at work in the same
line.
Their experiments attracted the attention of Isambard Brunel, one of
the greatest engineers of the period, who was then engaged in building
a large paddle-wheel steamer, the Great Britain. Appreciating the new
idea, he had the engines of the new ship changed and a screw propeller
introduced. This ship, a great one for the time, 322 feet long and of
3443 tons, made her first voyage from Liverpool to New York in 1845, her
average speed being 12 1/4 knots an hour, the length of the voyage 14
days and 21 hours.
By the date named the crossing of the Atlantic by steamships had become
a common event. In 1840 the British and Royal Mail Steam Packet Company
was organized, its chief promoter being Samuel Cunard, of Halifax, Nova
Scotia, whose name has long been attached to this famous line.
The first fleet of the Cunard Line comprised four vessels, the
Britannia, Acadia, Caledonia and Columbia. The Unicorn, sent out by this
company as a pioneer, entered Boston harbor on June 2, 1840, being the
first steamship from Europe to reach that port. Regular trips began with
the Britannia, which left Liverpool on July 4, 1840. For a number of
years later this line enjoyed a practical monopoly of the steam carrying
trade between England and the United States. Then other companies came
into the field, chief among them being the Collins Line, started in
1849, and of short duration, and the Inman Line, instituted in 1850.
We should say something here of the comforts and conveniences provided
for the passengers on these early lines. They differed strikingly
from those on the leviathans of recent travel and were little, if any,
superior to those on the packet ships, the active rivals at that date
of the steamers. Then there were none of the comfortable smoking rooms,
well-filled libraries, drawing rooms, electric lights, and other modern
improvements. The saloons and staterooms were in the extreme after part
of the vessel, but the stateroom of that day was little more than a
closet, with two berths, one above the other, and very little standing
room between these and the wall. By paying nearly double fare a
passenger might secure a room for himself, but the room given him
did not compare well even with that of small and unpretentious modern
steamers.
Other ocean steamship companies gradually arose, some of which are still
in existence. But no especial change in ship-building was introduced
until 1870, when the Oceanic Company, now known as the White Star Line,
built the Britannic and Germanic. These were the largest of its early
ships. They were 468 feet long and 35 feet wide, constituting a new type
of extreme length as compared with their width. In the first White Star
ship, the Oceanic, the improvements above mentioned were introduced, the
saloons and staterooms being brought as near as possible to the center
of the ship. All the principal lines built since that date have followed
this example, thus adding much to the comfort of the first-class
passengers.
Speed and economy in power also became features of importance, the
tubular boiler and the compound engine being introduced. These have
developed into the cylindrical, multitubular boiler and the triple
expansion engine, in which a greater percentage of the power of the
steam is utilized and four or five times the work obtained from coal
over that of the old system. The side-wheel was continued in use in the
older ships until this period, but after 1870 it disappeared.
It has been said that the life of iron ships, barring disasters at sea,
is unlimited, that they cannot wear out. This statement has not been
tested, but the fact remains that the older passenger ships have gone
out of service and that steel has now taken the place of iron, as
lighter and more durable.
Something should also be said here of the steam turbine engine, recently
introduced in some of the greatest liners, and of proven value in
several particulars, an important one of these being the doing away with
the vibration, an inseparable accompaniment of the old style engines.
The Olympic and Titanic engines were a combination of the turbine and
reciprocating types. In regard to the driving power, one of the recent
introductions is that of the multiple propeller. The twin screw was
first applied in the City of New York, of the Inman line, and enabled
her to make in 1890 an average speed of a little over six days from New
York to Queenstown. The best record up to October, 1891, was that of the
Teutonic, of five days, sixteen hours, and thirty minutes. Triple-screw
propellers have since then been introduced in some of the greater ships,
and the record speed has been cut down to the four days and ten hours of
the Lusitania in 1908 and the four days, six hours and forty-one minutes
of the Mauretania in 1910.
The Titanic was not built especially for speed, but in every other way
she was the master product of the shipbuilders' art. Progress through
the centuries has been steady, and perhaps the twentieth century will
prepare a vessel that will be unsinkable as well as magnificent. Until
the fatal accident the Titanic and Olympic were considered the last
words on ship-building; but much may still remain to be spoken.