THE STEAM ENGINE
THE SONG OF STEAM
BY GEORGE WASHINGTON CUTTER
Harness me down with your iron bands;
Be sure of your curb and rein;
For I scorn the power of your puny hands,
As the tempest scorns a chain.
How I laughed as I lay concealed from sight
For many a countless hour,
At the childish boast of human might,
And the pride of human power.
When I saw an army upon the land,
A navy upon the seas,
Creeping along, a snail-like band,
Or waiting the wayward breeze;
When I marked the peasant faintly reel
With the toil which he daily bore,
As he feebly turned the tardy wheel,
Or tugged at the weary oar;
When I measured the panting courser's speed,
The flight of the courier dove,
As they bore the law a king decreed,
Or the lines of impatient love,--
I could not but think how the world would feel,
As these were outstripped afar,
When I should be bound to the rushing keel,
Or chained to the flying car;
Ha, ha! they found me out at last;
They invited me forth at length;
And I rushed to my throne with a thunder-blast,
And I laughed in my iron strength.
Oh, then ye saw a wondrous change
On the earth and the ocean wide,
Where now my fiery armies range,
Nor wait for wind and tide.
Hurrah! hurrah! the waters o'er;
The mountain's steep decline;
Time--space--have yielded to my power;
The world--the world is mine!
The rivers the sun hath earliest blest,
Or those where his beams decline;
The giant streams of the queenly West,
And the Orient floods divine.
The ocean pales where'er I sweep,
I in my strength rejoice;
And the monsters of the briny deep
Cower, trembling, at my voice.
I carry the wealth and the lord of earth,
The thoughts of his god-like mind;
The wind lags after my going forth,
The lightning is left behind.
In the darksome depths of the fathomless mine
My tireless arm doth play,
Where the rocks never saw the sun decline,
Or the dawn of the glorious day.
I bring earth's glittering jewels up
From the hidden caves below,
And I make the fountain's granite cup
With a crystal gush o'erflow.
I blow the bellows, I forge the steel,
In all the shops of trade;
I hammer the ore, and turn the wheel,
Where my arms of strength are made;
I manage the furnace, the mill, the mint;
I carry, I spin, I weave;
And all my doings I put into print
On every Saturday eve.
I've no muscle to weary, no breast to decay,
No bones to be "laid on the shelf,"
And soon I intend you may "go and play,"
While I manage this world myself.
But harness me down with your iron bands,
Be sure of your curb and rein;
For I scorn the power of your puny hands,
As the tempest scorns a chain!
The most powerful and important mass of matter on the earth is the
steam engine. It is the throbbing heart of civilization, even as the
printing press is its brain. It would be difficult for man to compute
his debt to steam. Upon it he relies for food, clothing, and shelter,
the three necessities for which the race has always striven; and
without it he could have scarcely any of life's comforts and luxuries.
Steam is the mistress of commerce, manufacturing, and mining, and the
servant of agriculture. Steam gives employment to millions of men. It
plants cities and towns in waste places. It enables man to leave the
little valley or hillside where his fathers lived, and makes of him a
citizen of the world. It lessens the power of time and space, and makes
neighbors of ocean-divided continents.
It would not be easy for men living in the twentieth century to imagine
a society uninfluenced by the use of steam; but nearly all of man's
life on the earth has been passed without its help. Fire and water, the
two productive factors of steam, have always existed; but it was not
until a few score of years ago that man learned to put them together
successfully, and to produce the greatest force known to civilization.
In the few years since its discovery it has spread to every nook and
corner of civilization. Suppose you could ascend to some great height
whence you could see working at one time all the steam driven machinery
in the world. What a sight it would be! What if the noise from all this
machinery--the screech of the speeding locomotive, the hum and roar of
factory and mill, the hoarse yell of ships, and the puffing of
mine-engines--should reach your ear at once? What a sound it would be!
The idea of using steam for driving stationary machinery originated in
the early centuries. This was the first use to which steam was put. For
a long time no one seems to have thought of using it for transportation
purposes. As far back as 130 B.C., we find mention of "heat engines,"
which employed steam as their motive power, and were used for organ
blowing, the turning of spits, and like purposes. But from this early
date till the seventeenth century practically no progress was made in
the use of steam. Though men had experimented with steam up to this
time with more or less success, the world is chiefly indebted for the
developed type of the steam engine to James Watt and George Stephenson.
Watt was born in Greenock, Scotland, January 19, 1736. He was a poor
boy and early in life he was thrown upon his own resources. During his
youth he struggled against ill health; for days at a time he was
prostrated with severe headaches. But he was bright, determined, and
had a genial disposition that made him many friends. When he was
twenty-one years old, he secured a position as maker of scientific
instruments for the university in Glasgow. He began discussing with
some scientific friends at the university the possibility of improving
the steam engine, which at that time was used only for pumping water,
chiefly in the drainage of mines. He entered upon a scientific study of
the properties of steam and tried to devise means for making the steam
engine more useful. One Sunday afternoon early in 1765, while walking
in Glasgow, the idea he had studied so long to evolve suddenly flashed
into his mind. Without delay Watt put his plan to the test and found
that it worked.
For a long time, owing to a lack of money, he had difficulty in
establishing the merits of his improvements. Finally he formed a
partnership with Matthew Boulton, a wealthy and energetic man who lived
at Birmingham, England. They began the manufacture of steam engines at
Birmingham, under the firm name of Boulton and Watt. This partnership
was very successful. Watt supplied the inventions; Boulton furnished
the money and attended to the business.
Before the time of Watt, the steam engine was exclusively a steam
pump--slow, cumbrous, wasteful of fuel, and very little used. Watt made
it a quick, powerful, and efficient engine, requiring only a fourth as
much fuel as before. Under his first patent the engine was still used
only as a steam pump; but his later improvements adapted it for driving
stationary machinery of all kinds and, save in a few respects, left it
essentially what it is to-day. Prior to Watt's inventions, the mines of
Great Britain were far from thriving. Many were even on the point of
being abandoned, through the difficulty of removing the large
quantities of water that collected in them. His improvements made it
possible to remove this water at a moderate cost, and this gave many of
the mines a new lease of life. The commercial success of his engine was
soon fully established.
Watt paid practically no attention to the use of steam for purposes of
transportation. In one of his patents he described a steam locomotive;
but he offered little encouragement when his chief assistant, Murdoch,
who was the inventor of gas lighting, made experiments with steam for
locomotion. The notion then was to use a steam carriage on ordinary
roads. Railroads had not been thought of. When the idea of using steam
on railways began to take shape in the later days of Watt, he refused
to encourage the plan. It is said that he even put a clause in a lease
of his house, providing that no steam carriage should ever approach it
under any pretext whatever.
Besides developing the steam engine, Watt made other inventions,
including a press for copying letters. He also probably discovered the
chemical composition of water. He died at Heathfield, England, on the
nineteenth of August, 1819.
It is denied many men to see the magnitude of their achievements. Moses
died on Pisgah, in sight of the "Promised Land," toward which for forty
years he had led the children of Israel through the wilderness. Wolfe
gave up his life on the plains of Quebec just as the first shouts of
the routed French greeted his ears. Columbus was sent home in chains
from the America he had discovered, not dreaming he had given to
civilization another world. Lincoln's eyes were closed forever at the
very dawn of peace, after he had watched in patience through the long
and fearful night of the Civil War. It never appeared to James Watt
that the idea which flashed into his mind that Sunday afternoon while
he was walking in the streets of Glasgow, would transform human life;
that like a mighty multiplier it would increase the product of man's
power and give him dominion, not over the beasts of the field and the
fowls of the air, but over tide and wind, space and time.
Victor Hugo calls locomotives "these giant draft horses of
civilization." But man never harnessed these wonderful iron animals
until the time of George Stephenson, less than a hundred years ago.
Stephenson was born at Wylam, near Newcastle, England, June 9, 1781.
His father was a fireman of a coal-mine engine at that place. In
boyhood George was a cowherd, but he spent his spare time making clay
models of engines and other objects of a mechanical nature. When he was
fourteen years old, he became assistant to his father in firing the
engine at the colliery, and three years later he was advanced to engine
driving. At this time he could not even read; but, stimulated by a
strong desire to know more of the engines made by Boulton and Watt, he
began in his eighteenth year to attend a night school. He learned
rapidly. During most of this time he studied various experiments with a
view to making a successful steam locomotive.
Modern railways had their origin in roads called tramways, which were
used for hauling coal from the mines of England to the sea. At first
ordinary dirt roads were used for this purpose; but as the heavy
traffic wore these roads away, it become the practice to place planks
or timbers at the bottoms of the ruts. Afterwards wooden rails were
laid straight and parallel on the level surface. The rails were oak
scantlings held together with cross timbers of the same material,
fastened by means of large oak pins. Later strips of iron were nailed
on the tops of the wooden rails. Over these rails, bulky, four-wheeled
carts loaded with coal were pulled by horses.
Stephenson made what he called a traveling engine for the tramways
leading from the mines where he worked to the sea, nine miles distant.
He named his engine "My Lord." On July 25, 1814, he made a successful
trial trip with it.
The successful use of steam in hauling coal from the mines led
thoughtful persons to consider its use for carrying merchandise and
passengers. At this time freight was transported inland by means of
canals. This method was slow; thirty-six hours were required for
traveling fifty miles. Passengers were conveyed by coaches drawn by
horses. In 1821 a railroad for the transportation of merchandise and
passengers was opened between Stockton and Darlington in England. The
line, including three branches, was thirty-eight miles long. The plan
was to use animal power on this road, but George Stephenson secured
permission to try on it his steam locomotive.
In September, 1825, the first train passed over the road. It consisted
of thirty-four cars weighing, all told, ninety tons. The train was
pulled by Stephenson's engine, operated by Stephenson himself, with a
signalman riding on horseback in advance. The train moved off at the
rate of ten or twelve miles an hour, and on certain parts of the road
it reached a speed of fifteen miles per hour. The trial was a complete
success.
The road had been built chiefly for the transportation of freight, but
from the first passengers insisted on being carried, and in October,
1825, the Company began to run a daily passenger coach called the
"Experiment." This coach carried six persons inside and from fifteen
to twenty outside. The round trip between Stockton and Darlington was
made in two hours. A fare of one shilling was charged, and each
passenger was allowed fourteen pounds of baggage free. The Stockton
and Darlington was the first railway in the world over which
passengers and freight were hauled by steam.
Stephenson was next employed to help construct a railway between
Liverpool and Manchester. The most eminent engineers of the day
predicted that the road could not be built. But it was built. On the
fifteenth of September, 1830, Stephenson made a trial trip over the
road with an improved locomotive named the "Rocket." On the trial trip
the "Rocket" made twenty-nine miles an hour. This trip firmly proved
the possibilities of steam as motive power on railways and started the
modern era of railroad building. Other railways were quickly built and
soon they radiated from London to nearly every English seaport.
[Illustration: AN EARLY RAILROAD TRAIN IN ENGLANDAN EARLY RAILROAD
TRAIN IN ENGLAND]
Stephenson's son, Robert, assisted him in the construction of the
"Rocket" and later attained considerable reputation as an engineer.
It is claimed that George Stephenson was the inventor of the safety
lamp for use in mines, an invention usually accredited to Sir Humphry
Davy. He was often consulted in the building of subsequent railroads,
but he spent the last years of his life in farming and gardening at his
home at Chesterfield, England, where he died August 12, 1848.
Before the days of railroads in America, freight was hauled on canals
and passengers rode in stage coaches or on horseback. A coach made the
trip from Boston to New York twice a week and the journey required six
days. A trip from New York to Philadelphia took two days. From
Philadelphia to Baltimore the roads were good, but south of Baltimore
they were bad and even dangerous. South of the James River the traveler
was compelled to make his journey on horseback. A coach from Charleston
to Savannah was the only public conveyance south of the Potomac River.
In the days of the old colonial stagecoach, if a traveler wished to go
from Boston to New York, he would have to be ready to begin the journey
at three o'clock in the morning. The stage had no glass windows, no
door or step, and passengers were obliged to climb in at the front. One
pair of horses pulled the stage eighteen miles, and then they were
relieved by another pair. At about ten o'clock in the evening, after a
day's journey of forty miles, the stage drew up at an inn for the
night. At three o'clock the next morning, after dressing by the light
of a horn lantern, the traveler must resume his journey. If the roads
were bad, he might have to alight from the stage and help the driver
pull the wheels out of the mud. Rivers were crossed on clumsy
flat-boats. When the streams were swollen with rains or filled with
floating ice, the passage across was often dangerous. The trip from
Boston to Philadelphia, which would have taken eight days of
Washington's time, can easily be made now by train in as many hours. In
these days of the modern railroad, San Francisco is nearer in time to
New York than Washington was scarcely a hundred years ago.
The first railway in America was built in 1826. It connected a granite
quarry at Quincy, Massachusetts, with the town of Milton in the same
state. It was only two or three miles long, and was operated with
horses. In May, 1829, three English locomotives--the first ever seen in
America--were unloaded at New York City. On August 9 of the same year,
one of these engines was tried at Honesdale, Pennsylvania. This was the
first time that a locomotive ever turned a wheel on a railway in
America.
A canal which the business men of Philadelphia proposed to construct
from their city to Pittsburg, in order to give them access to the trade
centers of the West, threatened the commercial prosperity of Baltimore.
To offset the advantages which this canal would give Philadelphia, at a
great public meeting in Baltimore it was decided to build a railway
from Baltimore to some point on the Ohio River. The road was named the
Baltimore and Ohio. In 1830 it was finished from Baltimore as far as
Ellicott's Mills, a distance of fifteen miles. The Baltimore and Ohio
was the first railroad in the United States built for the express
purpose of carrying passengers and freight. The original intention was
to pull cars over this road with horses. But Peter Cooper persuaded the
railroad officials to try his engine "Tom Thumb," which he had built in
1829. The trial was successful, for "Tom Thumb" drew a car-load of
passengers at the rate of fifteen to eighteen miles per hour. This
engine was the first locomotive built in America, and its trial was the
first trip ever made by an American locomotive.
The first railroad in the United States constructed with the original
purpose of using steam as motive power was the South Carolina railroad,
a line one hundred thirty-six miles long between Charleston and
Hamburg. A locomotive built in New York City, called the "Best Friend,"
made its first trip over this road in November, 1830. It was the first
locomotive to run regularly on a railroad in the United States.
Railroad building spread rapidly in America, as it had in England. By
1835 there were twenty-two railroads in the United States, two of them
being west of the Alleghenies, though no road was more than one hundred
forty miles in length. There was no railroad west of the Mississippi
River prior to 1853, and in that year a line only thirty-eight miles
long was built. During 1906 alone, 5516 miles of railroad were
constructed in the United States. At the end of that year, there was a
total in the United States of 222,635 miles, or nearly enough to reach
nine times around the entire globe. The United States now has thirty
per cent. more miles of railway main track than all of Europe, and
contains two fifths of the railroad mileage of the world. The railroads
of the United States represent a value of about fifteen billion
dollars, and give employment to a million and a half persons.
The Pennsylvania Railroad was originally owned by the state. Any one
could use it by paying certain charges, and each person operating the
road furnished his own cars, horses, and drivers. There were frequent
blockades; when two cars going in opposite directions met, one had to
turn back. If rival shippers came together and neither was willing to
yield to the other, a fight probably settled the rights of precedence.
After a time steam became the sole motive power, and the locomotives
were owned by the state.
The railroad journeys of our grandfathers were very different from our
own. In their day the rails were wooden beams or stringers laid on
horizontal blocks of stone. Strips of iron were fastened with spikes to
the tops of the wooden rails. The cars were small, each seating only a
few passengers. The locomotive was crude. Its greatest speed was about
fifteen miles an hour. It could not climb a hill, and when a grade was
reached, the cars had to be pulled up or let down with ropes managed by
a stationary engine. No cab sheltered the engineer; no brake checked
the speed. Sometimes the spikes fastening the iron strips to the tops
of the wooden rails worked loose, and these strips curled up and
penetrated the bottoms of the cars, greatly to the annoyance and fright
of the traveler. The bridges in those days were roofed. The smokestack
of the locomotive, being too tall to pass under the roof, was made in
two joints or sections fastened together with hinges. When the train
approached a bridge, the top section of the stack was lowered. As wood
only was used for fuel, the stack emitted a shower of sparks, smoke,
and hot cinders. The passengers coughed and sputtered, and covered
their eyes, mouths, and noses with handkerchiefs.
The trip from Chicago to New York is about a thousand miles, over
prairie, river, and mountain. Should you make the journey between these
cities over the Pennsylvania Railroad of to-day, there would be little
danger of conflict because two rival trains might want the track at the
same time. Nor would you have to wait while ropes pulled the train up a
grade, for the locomotive can climb the hills. Instead of the old
wooden rails with their strips of iron, there is a double track of
solid steel rails all the way. The landscape would fly past you at the
rate of a mile a minute, instead of fifteen miles an hour.
Let us suppose that you leave Chicago at 2.45 o'clock P.M., central
time. Before the train starts you could telephone to a friend without
leaving the car. You might sit down, in an elegant dining-car, to a
dinner of all the delicacies the market could afford. You might occupy
your own exclusive compartment in a luxuriously equipped Pullman car,
lit by electric bulbs, or you could spend the evening reading the
magazines, newspapers, and books provided in the train library. You
might write at a comfortable desk with train stationery, or dictate
letters and telegrams to the train stenographer. You are provided with
hot and cold water, bathing facilities, and a barber shop. A maid could
be summoned to the service of women and children; and a valet would be
in attendance to sponge and press clothing over night. You would arrive
in New York the next morning at 9.45 o'clock, having traveled the
thousand miles in eighteen hours.
Simple as the idea of the sleeping-car is in reality, it was not
introduced until 1858, when the Lake Shore Railroad ran the first crude
and uncomfortable night-cars. George M. Pullman in 1859 set for himself
the task of producing a palace car which should be used for continuous
and comfortable travel through long distances by day and night. He
remodelled into sleeping-cars two passenger coaches belonging to the
Chicago and Alton Railroad. Though these cars fell far below the
inventor's ideal, they were far in advance of the first make-shifts and
in consequence created a demand for more and better cars of the same
kind. In 1863, at his factory in Chicago, Pullman began the
construction of the "Pioneer," the first of the Pullman palace cars.
This car was built at a cost of $18,000. It was first used in the
funeral train which conveyed the body of President Lincoln to his
burial place in Springfield, Illinois.
Few inventions have been financially so remunerative to the inventors
as the Pullman palace car. It brought Mr. Pullman an immense fortune.
The Pullman Palace Car Company, founded by Pullman in 1867, is one of
the largest and most successful manufacturing concerns in America. It
employs a capital of $40,000,000, gives work to fourteen thousand
persons, furnishes sleeping-car service for 120,000 miles of railway,
and operates over 2,000 cars. Mr. Pullman adopted plans for the
vestibule car in 1887. He died at his home in Chicago, October 19,
1897.
The idea of the steamboat did not originate in the brain of Robert
Fulton. It is claimed that, as early as 1543, Blasco de Garay propelled
a boat by steam, and that in 1707, just a hundred years before the time
of Fulton's _Clermont_, Papin ran a boat with steam on a river in
Germany. In 1763 William Henry experimented with a steamboat on the
Conistoga River in Pennsylvania.
James Rumsey, a Scotchman living in Maryland, is said to have been the
first American to discover a method for running a vessel with steam
against wind and tide. He conceived the idea in August, 1783. During
1785 he made his boat, and in 1786 he navigated it on the Potomac River
at Shepherdstown, Virginia, in the presence of hundreds of spectators.
He wrote to General Washington of his invention, and Washington wrote
concerning it to Governor Johnson of Maryland. In 1839 Congress voted a
gold medal to James Rumsey, Jr., son and only surviving child of the
inventor, in recognition of the elder Rumsey's achievement.
In 1787 John Fitch exhibited on the Delaware River a vessel to be
propelled by steam, and in 1790, from June to September, he ran a
steamboat on that river between Philadelphia and Trenton. But he could
not induce the public to patronize his boat, and for lack of business
it had to be withdrawn.
Some British authorities claim that the first practical steamboat
in the world was the tug "_Charlotte Dundas_," built by William
Symmington, and tried in 1802 on the Clyde and Forth Canal in Scotland.
The trial was successful, but steam towing was abandoned for fear of
injuring the banks of the canal. Symmington had built a small steamboat
that traveled five miles an hour in 1788.
[Illustration: ROBERT FULTON]
To Robert Fulton, an American, belongs the credit for placing the
steamboat on a successful commercial basis. Fulton was born at Little
Britain, Pennsylvania, in 1765. At the age of seventeen he adopted the
profession of portrait and landscape painter. At twenty-two he went to
England to study art. There he met James Watt, the inventor of the
steam engine, and soon he began to give attention to mechanics. In
1793 he started to work on the idea of propelling boats by steam. He
made an unsuccessful experiment with a steamboat on the Seine River in
France. The vessel sank because its construction was faulty. Fulton
returned to America and in New York harbor began to build another
boat which he named the _Katherine of Clermont_, shortened to the
_Clermont_. Her engine was procured from Boulton and Watt in England.
The boat was one hundred feet long and twenty feet wide, weighed one
hundred sixty tons, and was equipped with side paddle wheels and a
sheet-iron boiler. As the inventor worked patiently at his task, the
newspapers gave him but little notice and the public ridiculed him.
The New York legislature had passed a bill granting to Fulton and to
Chancellor Livingston the exclusive right to navigate with steam boats
the waters of New York State. This bill was a standing subject of
ridicule among the legislators at Albany.
In August, 1807, the _Clermont_ was ready for her trial trip. A large
crowd of spectators lined the banks of the Hudson as the boat slowly
steamed out into the river. The crowd jeered and hooted and shouted at
the vessel their nick-name of "Fulton's Folly." As the _Clermont_
moved up the river, making slow headway against the current, the crowd
changed their jeers to expressions of wonder and finally to cheers.
The dry pine wood used for fuel sent out a cloud of thick, black
smoke, flames, and sparks, which spread terror among the watermen of
the harbor. The _Clermont_ made the voyage from New York up the Hudson
to Chancellor Livingston's country estate near Albany, a distance of a
hundred ten miles, in twenty-four hours. The trip was without mishap
and it thoroughly established the practicability of steam for purposes
of navigation.
Concerning this voyage Fulton wrote to a friend in Paris: "My
steamboat voyage to Albany and back has turned out rather more
favorably than I had calculated. The voyage was performed wholly by
power of the steam engine. I overtook many sloops and schooners
beating to windward, and parted with them as if they had been at
anchor. The power of propelling boats by steam is now fully proved.
The morning I left New York there were not thirty persons in the city
who believed that the boat would ever move a mile an hour, or be of
the least utility. While we were putting off from the wharf, I heard a
number of sarcastic remarks. This is the way in which ignorant men
compliment what they call philosophers and projectors. I feel infinite
pleasure in reflecting on the immense advantages my country will
derive from the invention."
The _Clermont_ was soon running as a regular packet between New York
and Albany. The owners of sailing craft on the river hated her and
tried to sink her. The New York legislature passed a bill declaring
that any attempt to destroy or injure the _Clermont_ should be a
public offense punishable by fine and imprisonment. Then the enemies
of the boat applied to the courts for an injunction restraining Fulton
from navigating the Hudson with his steamboat. Daniel Webster appeared
as Fulton's attorney. He won the case and secured for the _Clermont_
the full rights of the river.
Fulton afterward built other steamboats, including a system of steam
ferries for New York City. In 1814 he constructed the first United
States war steamer. Before constructing the _Clermont_, Fulton was
interested in canals and in the invention of machinery for spinning
flax and twisting rope. He also made experiments with sub-marine
explosives in England, France, and the United States; but these were
considered failures. He died February 24, 1815.
[Illustration: THE CLERMONT ON THE HUDSON]
The first steamboat in the West was built at Pittsburg in 1811, and
within a few years after the first trip of the _Clermont_, steamboats
were being used on all the leading rivers of the country.
From the earliest times men had sailed the seas, but their ships were
small and slow and subject to wind, tide, and current. The success of
the river steamboat led to the use of steam in ocean navigation. The
first steamship to cross the Atlantic was the _Savannah_, in 1818.
The vessel relied almost as much upon wind as upon steam for motive
power, but during the voyage of twenty-five days steam was used on
eighteen days.
The wood required for fuel left little room in the vessel for freight.
With the advent of coal for fuel, and better machinery, steamships
grew in importance, and in 1837 two ships, the _Sirius_ and the _Great
Western_, crossed the Atlantic from Liverpool to New York with the use
of steam alone. By 1850 the average time for a trans-Atlantic voyage
had been reduced to eleven or twelve days.
[Illustration: THE LUSITANIA OF THE CUNARD LINE]
If the old _Savannah_ could be placed beside the _Lusitania_, the
giantess of the Cunard line of ocean steamers, a comparison would
demonstrate the triumphs of the century in ocean navigation. If you
were to cross the ocean on the _Lusitania_ or her sister-ship the
_Mauretania_, you would enter a vast floating mansion seven hundred
ninety feet long, eighty-eight feet wide, eighty-one feet high from
keel to boat deck, and weighing thirty-two thousand five hundred tons.
Her height to the mastheads is two hundred sixteen feet; each of her
three anchors weighs ten tons; and her funnels are so large that a
trolley car could easily run through them. The _Lusitania_ has
accommodation for three thousand passengers, officers, and crew, and
is driven by mighty turbine engines of sixty-eight thousand horse
power. The steamer was built at a cost of $7,500,000. She has traveled
the three thousand miles across the Atlantic in about four and a half
days--the quickest trans-Atlantic voyage ever made. She moves through
the great waves of the ocean with such steadiness that passengers can
scarcely tell whether they are on water or land. A telephone system
connects all parts of the ship; there are electric elevators, a
special nursery in which children may play; a gymnasium for exercise,
shower baths, and an acre and a half of upper deck. There are five
thousand electric lights, requiring two hundred miles of wire.
Wireless telegraphy flashes messages to the moving ship from distant
parts of the world, and bears back greetings from her passengers. A
daily illustrated newspaper of thirty-two pages is published on board
ship.