DEVELOPMENT OF SHIPBUILDING
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 Phœnicians, 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 12¼ 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 shipbuilding 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 shipbuilding; but much may still remain to be spoken.