Ocean steamer

“ We have seen the North Star and the Southern Cross, the pine and palm; blasts from high latitudes have chilled our limbs, and we have been faint and suffering under the terrible heat of the equator. But our tireless steamer bears us on and on, indifferent whether it breathes the airs of the tropics or the poles; its pulseless limbs are never wearied so long as we supply its digestive and respiratory organs with their needed aliments. The steamer has destroyed the poetry of the ocean, but it has been a material force in bringing peace on earth and good will to men. ”

“ When a great ocean racer is making ready to put out to sea, there can hardly be imagined a more bustling scene than that which presents itself on the deck and on the wharf. There is the rush of passengers, the banging about of luggage, the hurrying to and fro on the decks, the roar of escaping steam, the working of immense steam cranes hoisting and lowering great bales of merchandise and luggage from the wharf to the hold, and here and there in quiet corners, away from the rush, are tearful people bidding good-bye to one another. ”

“ Of all ships disabled at sea, a steamer who has lost her propeller is the most helpless. And if she drifts into an unpopulated part of the ocean she may soon become overdue. The menace of the "overdue" and the finality of "missing" come very quickly to steamers whose life, fed on coals and breathing the black breath of smoke into the air, goes on in disregard of wind and wave. ”

“ Ocean-Steamships.—A writer in the Evening Post notes some of the principal shortcomings of the ocean-steamship of the period, and offers some practical suggestions as to the proper construction of a passenger-steamer. The ocean-steamer of to-day is simply a huge freight-boat. ”

“ You see the great steamer crossing the ocean when under full headway, and she can turn how this way and now that, with the least little touch of the rudder, but when she is creeping, creeping through the narrow channel, she must have a strong, sure hand at the helm, and when she is coming up to her wharf, easy, easy, she must swing in a wide circle. ”

“ In America Watt’s beam engines were imitated very closely, and to-day, as every visitor to New York is aware, the curious sight is seen of enormous ferry-boats, towering high above the water, with the beam and connecting rods showing up through the top of the ship. Now this idea is all very well where the steamer is concerned only with navigation on rivers and peaceful waters, but for ocean steaming, where the deck needs to be covered in from the attacks of the mighty seas, it is out of the question. ”

“ Steam had obtained a recognized position in small ships for short voyages, ferry-boats, river steamers, and coasting craft, but on the open ocean the sailing-ship still held its own. An eminent scientist proved to demonstration that no steamship would ever be able to cross the Atlantic under steam alone. He showed that to do so it would be necessary for her to carry a quantity of coal exceeding her entire tonnage capacity, and he expressed his readiness to eat the first steamer that made the voyage from Liverpool to New York. ”

“ Sailing vessels charge very little more for a thousand miles than they do for five hundred; but a steamer may have to charge nearly three times as much; especially if she run fast, consume much fuel, and occupy her cargo-room with coal. There are distances at which steamers, however large, can not carry a pound of freight; but occupy all their available space with the power that drives them. ”

“ But go to Glasgow Bridge any day, and you will see how time has overcome fear and prejudice, for our ocean is covered with steamers of all sizes. It is not many years ago since it was said that steamers could never reach America; this has given way to proof, and even Australia has been reached by steam. I know of a steamer building which could carry the whole population of this place and not be full; she is 680 feet or 226 yards long, and a large vessel would hang like a boat alongside her. ”

“ Wednesday, 22d ─Blew quite hard all night.─About 7 1⁄2 the steward woke me up with the announcement of a steamer in sight, a short distance ahead. I was on deck as quickly as possible; but the fog lay on the ocean, had not yet lifted, and the steamer was invisible; but at length we saw her slowly moving through the waves, against the westerly wind, some 1000 ft. on our left. Our ensign was dipped, and the compliment returned by the stranger as we came opposite. The wind was very fresh at the time; the sea was rough; and the snow and sleet falling directly in our faces ”

“ It is not advisable to attempt to cross the bows of a steamer unless you have plenty of room and you are a good judge of distances. Steam vessels go at a faster rate than they seem to, and the 186momentum of their impact is very great. Instead of crossing a steamer's bow go about on the other tack, or haul your foresheet to windward till she has passed. Discretion is always the better part of valor. Not to monkey with ocean steamships or ferryboats is as valuable advice as that time-honored warning to boys not to fool with the buzz-saw. ”

“ Somebody will doubtless accomplish the desired result before the end of another decade, and when this is done he should give attention to the jar caused by the machinery. It is hardly reasonable to expect that a fast steamer will ever go over the water with the steadiness of a sailing-ship, and with no perceptible jarring, but so much has been done in the last twenty-five years in smoothing the ways of the ocean, and the vessels that plow it, that the scheme here suggested is by no means impossible. ”

“ While it is possible that a speed of six miles an hour, even in a dense fog, may not be excessive upon the open ocean and off the frequented paths of commerce, a different rule applies to a steamer just emerging from the harbor of the largest port on the Atlantic coast, and in a neighborhood where she is likely to meet vessels approaching the harbor from at least a dozen points of the compass. ”

“ The steamer has the current with her, and, instead of seventy-five, will run one hundred and twenty-five miles a day. This. will bring her to Angostura in six days; thence to the ocean, two hundred and fifty miles, in two days. This allows the steamer abundance of time to take in fuel, and to discharge and take in cargo, at the many villages she finds on her route; with a canal cut over the portage of six hours at Pimichim, she will make the voyage in five days less. ”

“ Most of the state-rooms were then situated below the main deck, and after such a sea they were likely to be flooded; many old passengers will remember how frequent an occurrence it was to find their cabins inundated. This was the least mischief it did, and when several seas were shipped in rapid succession, the vessel was in danger of foundering. The modern steamer is much better protected206 from incoming seas, and the main deck is completely covered in, instead of the bulwarks there is a simple rail and netting, and any water shipped flows overboard as quickly as it comes on board. ”

“ Keel, frames, flooring are put in hand together, and the hull plates are ready before the keel is in position. Simultaneously, too, the sawmill is preparing the planks which are to cover the steel decks: the joiners are at work on the saloon and cabins; the upholsterers are cutting and stitching the brocades, plushes, and silks which are so freely used in modern ocean steamers; the chain-maker is forging the cables, and each department is busying itself with its own share, conscious that what it produces will presently be sought to take its place in the rapidly progressing whole. ”

“ You can form no idea of one's sensations as the steamer pushes her way through an ice jam. For miles around, as far as the eye can reach, the sea is covered with huge, glistening blocks. Sometimes the deep-blue water shows between, and sometimes they are so tightly massed together that they look like a hummocky white field. How any one can get a steamer along through it is a never-ending source of amazement, and my admiration for the captain is unstinted. ”

“ She seems to belong to the sea, with her tall tapering masts, her cloud of moving canvas, and her buoyant motion over the rolling waves. Her movements are all comprehensible, and above-board she is invariably clean, and her crew are connected in one's mind with nautical stories which charmed one in the long-past days of youth. A steamer is very much the reverse. ”

“ While we gaze, there is seen against the horizon the black smoke of a steamer. On she comes over the bar, breathing asthmatically and beating the waters with her great wheels in a steady rhythm, until at last the boom of her gun gives notice to the custom-house officials of her arrival, and all the town hastens to the wharf to learn of her cargo and her passengers, and to question what sort of a voyage she has had. ”

“ A steamer whose screw or paddles are revolving and driving the hull through the water will not, amidst the heaviest sea, give you the same sensation you get from a vessel tumbling about on a strong, fine-weather swell, not a breath of air to steady her or give her way. The steamer in a measure escapes the worst of the seas by sliding out of them; her bows are lifting clear of the washing coil whilst her lee sponsons are buried, and she half jumps the intervening hollow as her paddles{114} thrust her from the summit of the surge. ”

“ Nor only to the history and the glamour of the great steam-driven vessel have I confined myself. The sea is not merely a wide ocean, but contains within its mighty bosom many smaller areas such as channels and bays wherein the steamboat is able to ply as well for pleasure as for profit; and besides the big, brave sisters with their enormous displacement and their powerful engines, there are other children which run across smaller sea-ways, and these, too, are not to be passed over lightly. ”

“ IT is impossible for the most careless spectator to look at a steam-vessel making her way along a lake, a boy’s boat skimming across a pond, or even a duck paddling on a stream, without noticing that the moving body is accompanied in all cases by a trail of waves or ripples, which diverge from it and extend behind. In the case of a steamer there is an additional irregular wave-motion of the water caused by the paddle-wheels or screw, which churn it up, and leave a line of rough water in the steamer’s wake. ”

“ The navigation of the Atlantic by means of the immense sea-going steamers of the present day, with all its superiority in most respects, is attended with one very serious disadvantage, at least for all romantic people, and those who particularly enjoy what is grand and sublime. To passengers on board an Atlantic steamer, a storm at sea—that spectacle which has, in former times, been so often described as the most grand and sublime of all the exhibitions which the course of nature presents to man—is divested almost entirely of that imposing magnificence for which it was formerly so renowned. ”

“ Great barges full of iron and copper ore, small steamboats tugging a whole line of lazy big barges, fine sailing vessels looking exactly like picture-book ships, and little naptha launches that came out and played around our big steamer when she neared a port. The great whaleback steamers looked like angry sea monsters snorting smoke out of their high stacks, but they are really kindly creatures for they carry immense loads of wheat or ore from the Lake Superior region to the southern and eastern ports. ”

“ The inhabitants are obliged to throw stones into the sea till they emerge like a geometrical reef, and vessels cling hard to the reef. One climbs on to it from the steamer; it is very long and thin, like a sword, and between shouting wind and water one precariously balances oneself on it. After some eighty years of steam, nothing more comfortable than the reef has yet been achieved. But far out on the water a black line may be discerned, with the silhouettes of cranes and terrific engines. ”

“ They presented a most extraordinary sight piled on top of each other, and half buried in a huge mass of seaweed swept in with them. A big distilling steamer, with her rudder gone and her rudder-post smashed, had been driven ashore farther along the bay; beyond her lay a "water-beetle" high and dry, and, still farther along the shore, one of those small provisioning "coaster" steamers which ran between Kephalo and the Peninsula. ”

“ I do not mean to say that at the end of a week a young fellow could take charge of a fifteen-thousand-ton steamer, driving twenty knots an hour through the brine, racing from land to land, fair weather and foul, clear sky or cloudy, steering by degrees on the compass card and making landfalls with most amazing precision. ”

“ As the steamer passed by, churning the muddy water into big waves, the tug put on all steam, the hawser straightened out as tense as iron, the big ship gave a lazy lurch as a wave struck her, and to the unspeakable delight of all hands they found themselves once more afloat and in deep water. ”

“ A busy, clamorous life prevails on every side. Steam launches dart hither and thither, innumerable sampans wriggle their tortuous courses backward and forward between the ships and the shore, junks pick their way up and down the fairways under lateen sails, and ocean-going steamers move in stately fashion to and from their moorings. ”

“ The thundering seas slowly rise with their white crests glowing in the ebon darkness as the brave old tramp steamer, like a frightened thing, stays her way a moment, and shivers as seas strike the weather bow. Then again she pitches onward, as wonderful little men, with bony, haggard faces with weary eyes in them, stare into the furnace fires of the steamer’s bowels, and shovel and stoke to sustain an honest existence, and drink tank water. ”