James Croil

“ WHEN the history of the nineteenth century comes to be written, not the least interesting chapter of it will be that which treats of the origin, the development, and the triumphs of Steam Navigation—that mighty combination of inventive genius and mechanical force that has bridged the oceans and brought the ends of the earth together. ”

“ The arrival and departure of the boats at either end of the route were scenes of indescribable confusion. Vast crowds of people assembled on the wharves, while clouds of smoke issuing from the funnels and the roar of escaping steam plainly indicated that the stokers were doing their level best to burst the boilers. This vicious and ruinous opposition was brought to an end by a tragic occurrence, the burning of the steamer Montreal. ”

“ In course of time, however, he became a prosperous merchant and the owner of whaling-ships that sailed from Halifax to the Pacific Ocean. How he came to identify himself with the Atlantic mail service has already been mentioned, and little else remains to be said about him. He was small of stature, but a man of rare intelligence; a keen observer of men and things, and who had the faculty, largely developed, of influencing other men. In private life he was one of the most gentle and lovable of men. ”

“ Torrance added that the Canada was built to carry 7,000 tons of cargo, that if she had a speed of seventeen knots she would only carry 4,000 tons of cargo; if eighteen knots, she would carry but 3,000 tons, and that with a speed of twenty knots it would not be safe to calculate on her capacity for more than 1,000 tons of freight: “in short, that the twenty-knot ship must be, virtually, a passenger ship, and well subsidized.” The Canadian Government has not been slow to back up private enterprise of this nature in the past, and will doubtless continue to do so in the future. ”

“ A distinct class of steamboats peculiar to America is the ferry-boat. In one of its forms it is to be found fully developed in New York harbour, and serves to convey daily countless thousands of people whose business lies in New York City, but whose homes are on Brooklyn Heights or elsewhere on Long Island, or the New Jersey coast. The boats are very large and very ugly, but do their work admirably, being adapted for the transport of wheeled carriages of every description as well as for foot-passengers. ”

“ The intervening years have witnessed the transition from wooden ships to iron, and from iron to steel; from the paddle-wheel to the single screw-propeller, and then to the twin-screw; from the simple side-lever engines to the compound, and from the compound to the triple and quadruple expansion engines of the present time. These successive changes, common to all the other important lines of ocean steamers, have resulted in greatly increased speed with economy of fuel. ”

“ The captain of a twenty-knot steamship has seldom need to “resolve a traverse;” he steers a straight course for his destination, and can usually estimate within a few hours, or even minutes, when he will reach it. It is quite different with the master of a sailing vessel; after contending with contrary winds and being driven out of his course for weeks at a time, he must often wrack his brains before he can locate his exact position on the chart. ”

“ What about ocean steamers racing? The question was raised in the British House of Commons a few years ago, and elicited the answer that there is no law in the statute book forbidding it. Are not these ocean greyhounds built and subsidized with a special view to speed? Other things being equal, the fastest boat draws most passengers. A competing ship may be in sight or out of sight; it makes little difference. There is a race going on all the same, and the palm is awarded to the one that lands the mails in London or New York, as the case may be, in the fewest number of hours and minutes. ”

“ The occasion was thus noticed in the New York papers of the 2nd and 3rd of August, 1896:
“The American liner Paris and the Cunarder Etruria, which arrived on Saturday, had a rough-and-tumble battle before daylight on Tuesday morning with a summer gale that had an autumn chill and a winter force in it. The wind blew a whole gale and combed the seas as high as they are usually seen in the cyclonic season. The crest of a huge wave tumbled over the port bow of the Etruria with a crash that shook the ship from stem to stern, and momentarily checked her speed ”

“ The thirst of competing steamship companies for conquest on the high seas—at any cost—and the ambition of ship-builders to improve upon the latest improvements, will not be satisfied with present attainments, even if it can be proved to a demonstration that thousands of additional horse-power and hundreds of additional tons of coal per day would be required to increase to any appreciable extent the maximum rate of speed that has already been reached. ”

“ The Fairfield Ship-building and Engineering Company is one of the most famous of the many eminent ship-building firms in Britain. The yards at Govan on the Clyde occupy an area of sixty acres of ground, and employ from 6,000 to 7,000 men. The shops are fitted with machinery of the most approved description, in which every requisite of marine architecture has a place, where massive plates of steel and iron are clipped, shaped and pierced with rivet holes as if they were only sheets of wax or paper. ”

“ This is a measure felt to be due to the lakes’ marine, which has already done so much to develop the resources of the North-West, especially the mineral resources, which would otherwise have lain comparatively dormant. “The United States have expended some $12,000,000 in widening and deepening channels, which has already been more than repaid by the rapid development of commerce. The largest item in the lakes’ traffic is the transportation of iron—the richest ores are now being mined along a line of coast of one thousand miles, dotted with manufacturing towns.” ”

“ The harbour of Halifax is one of the finest in the world. It is easy of access and open all the year round. It is nearly six hundred miles nearer to Liverpool than is New York, and has therefore many advantages to offer as a point of arrival and departure for ocean steamers. It is the centre of an extensive local and coasting trade, in which a large number of both steamers and sailing vessels are employed. The number of arrivals of sea-going vessels in 1895 was 978, with a gross tonnage of 627,572 tons ”

“ The Commissioners appointed by the Canadian Government to meet with a similar Committee appointed by the United States Government to consider the subject of international and deeper waterways, preface their report by alluding to the commerce of the Great Lakes in these terms: “It is impossible to convey, within reasonable space, an adequate idea of the extraordinary [49] development of inland water transportation on the Upper Lakes—which for rapidity, extent, economy and efficiency has no counterpart even on the ocean. ”

“ On Saturday, the 8th of May, 1897, no less than 1,500 saloon passengers left New York for Liverpool on the great ocean greyhounds. The travelling season is comparatively short, the competition is keen, and the enormous expense of building, furnishing and running up-to-date steamships renders it difficult to provide the requisite accommodation on a paying basis. The up-to-date steamship must be built of steel, to combine light weight with strength. It must have triple or quadruple expansion engines to economize fuel. ”

“ In the spacious dining-room 325 persons may be seated at one time. The grand saloon is a magnificent spectacle, large and lofty, superbly decorated and lighted by electricity. The Priscilla has cargo capacity for 800 tons of freight. “Her machinery is not only a marvel of design and workmanship, but it fascinates all persons interested in mechanical devices.” It consists of a double inclined compound engine, with two high-pressure cylinders, each fifty-one inches in diameter, and two low pressure, each ninety-five inches in diameter, all with a stroke of eleven feet. ”

“ The failure of the Liverpool firm to fulfil their contract opened the way for Canadian enterprise, and the man who was destined to see it carried out to a successful issue was already awaiting his opportunity. That man was Hugh Allan (the late Sir Hugh) , a man of intense energy and force of character. The Allans came honestly by their liking for the sea and ships. Their father, Alexander, was a ship-owner, and himself the well-known captain of the Favourite, one of the most popular vessels then sailing from the Clyde to the St. Lawrence. ”

“ Toronto is largely interested in steam navigation. Not to speak of numerous steam yachts, ferry steamers and tug-boats, it controls a large passenger traffic. The Niagara Navigation Company of Toronto has three very fine steamers running to Niagara and Lewiston—the Chicora, Chippewa and Corona. The Chicora was built in England, as a “blockade runner,” more than thirty years ago, but the civil war was ended before she reached this side of the Atlantic. She is an iron side-wheel vessel of 518 tons, with a rakish, Old-Country look about her. ”

“ In estimating the runs of the Atlantic liners from Liverpool to New York and return, Daunt’s Rock, off Queenstown, and the Sandy Hook lightship, twenty-six knots from New York, are regarded as the points of departure and arrival; but as Daunt’s Rock is about 244 knots from Liverpool, it follows that, to complete the voyage, a full half day’s run must be added to the record as usually announced. It is also to be remembered that the day at sea is longer or shorter according to the speed of the ship. On a twenty-knot vessel going east the average length of day is about 23 hours and 10 minutes ”

“ The bossing out of the stern, as in the Teutonic and Majestic, permits the screws to work without any exterior overhanging bracket, as in other screw steamers. The central boss of the propeller is made of steel; the three blades, weighing eight tons each, are of manganese bronze. A new feature in the machinery is what is called an “emergency governor,” which, in case of the shaft breaking, or the screw racing from any other cause beyond a certain speed, is designed to act automatically on the reversing gear and stop the engines. These gigantic engines are started and reversed by steam. ”

“ The weight that can be hauled by a locomotive depends largely on the gradients of the road traversed. Winnipeg and Fort William are nearly on the same sea level, but between them the line of railway ascends and descends some 800 feet, limiting the drawing power of a sixty-ton locomotive in certain sections to, say, 900 tons. On a level road a large American locomotive will easily draw sixty cars containing 1,000 bushels of wheat each, or a total weight of 3,000 tons. As with steamships, the tendency is to increase the size of the locomotive. ”

“ The Victoria Steamboat Association, with its fleet of forty-five river steamers, can carry 200,000 people daily for a penny a mile. The Rhine steamers and those plying on the Swiss lakes are in keeping with the picturesque [Pg 39] scenery through which they run. Painted in bright colours, they present a very attractive and smart appearance. They are kept scrupulously clean and are admirably managed. Many of them are large, with saloon cabins the whole length of the vessel, over which is the promenade deck covered with gay awnings. They run fast. ”

“ Tsien-Tang-Kiang in China is said to advance up that river like a wall of water thirty feet in height, at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour, sweeping all before it. [33] The ocean tidal wave dwarfs these and all other waves by its huge size and tremendous energy. The effective pressure of such a wave being estimated at 6,000 pounds to the square foot, it is easy to understand how completely it becomes master of the situation when it topples over on the deck of a ship. Only once in the course of a good many voyages has the writer been an eye-witness of its tremendous force. ”

“ Grain merchants, East and West, hold strongly to the opinion that the route which will bring the largest class of vessels navigating the Great Lakes to the seaboard at least expense is the route that will capture the trade. A ship canal for the Ottawa route, having twenty-five to thirty feet depth of water, with locks of 500 to 600 feet in length, would seem to offer many advantages, though in the estimation of the Deep Waterways Commission “its consideration is not now justified.” ”

“ Captain McKinstry is a young man to have reached the top of his profession, and has already given many proofs of his gallantry and pluck. On several occasions he has risked his life to save that of others, notably during the naval review at Spithead, in 1887, when he jumped from the deck of the Teutonic to rescue a drowning sailor. Another instance of fine seamanship occurred recently on board the City of Rome, Atlantic liner, which had a narrow escape from destruction by fire on her voyage to New York with a large number of passengers on board. ”

“ The contrast between Fulton’s Clermont, or Bell’s Comet and the Atlantic Liner coursing over the sea at railway speed is very striking, and scarcely less remarkable the comparison of the river steamboat of [Pg 44] to-day with these early experiments. America has developed a type of steamboat, or rather types of steamboats, peculiarly its own. The light-draught Mississippi steamers [6] bear little resemblance to the Hudson River and Long Island Sound boats while the American steam ferry-boat is a thing certainly not of beauty, but unique. ”

“ Pierre and other places call at Halifax, while the Canada Atlantic and Plant Line supplies a direct route to Boston and all points in the United States.
Many “tramp” steamers call at Halifax with freight or for freight. Many [Pg 342] call for coal. Many a storm-tossed mariner is glad to make for Halifax and to find in it a secure harbour of refuge, with all needful appliances for refitting a battered ship. The whole coast of Nova Scotia, indeed, is indented with harbours of refuge, which are the resorts of large numbers of sailing craft. ”

“ The steamers are not to call at any foreign port, and the company is forbidden to accept a subsidy from any foreign country. The mails are to be carried free. The termini of the line will be Liverpool and Quebec during summer, the ships proceeding to Montreal if and when the navigation permits. In winter the Canadian terminus will be Halifax or St. John, N. B., at the option of the contractors, who are to provide a 22-knot tender of the torpedo type to meet each steamer on her approach to the Canadian coast when required, and pilot her to her destination. ”

“ The White Star fleet at present consists of nineteen ocean steamers, ranging in size from 3,807 to 10,000 tons and upwards. Five of these steamers are employed in the Atlantic weekly mail service, three keep up a monthly line to New Zealand, four ply monthly from San Francisco to Japan and China, the remainder are cargo boats of large carrying capacity. A number of vessels built for this company have been sold to other lines and are still running. The Oceanic, pioneer ship of the line, after a few years in the Atlantic service, was transferred to the company’s trans-Pacific line. ”

“ The tonnage passing down the Detroit River from lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron, during the seven or eight months of navigation, is, by official statements, greater than the entire foreign and coastwise trade of London and Liverpool combined in twelve months. It is estimated by competent experts to be three times greater than the foreign trade of the port of New York, and to exceed the aggregate foreign trade of all the seaports of the United States by 10,000,000 tons! ”

“ The Great Northern Transit Company, with headquarters at Collingwood, has four freight and passenger steamers—the Majestic, Pacific, Atlantic, and Northern Belle—keeping up a well-appointed service twice a week from Collingwood to Sault Ste. Marie, and having connection with the Northern Railway to Toronto. The Majestic, built at Collingwood, is a steel screw steamer, 230 feet long, 36 feet wide, 1,600 tons register, and cost $125,000. She has compound condensing engines of 1,200 horse-power, and is fitted up internally with great elegance. ”