Steamship

“ We crossed the steamship lanes in all directions with guns loaded and with a sharp lookout so as not to lose any opportunity to damage the enemy’s commerce.
Shortly before dinner the first merchant ship arose on the south horizon. It was a sailer, a large, full-rigged schooner, which, hard by the wind, headed towards the French coast. With majestic calm, lightly leaning to the wind, the splendid ship approached. ”

“ And, besides, your modern ship which is a steamship makes her passages on other principles than yielding to the weather and humouring the sea. She receives smashing blows, but she advances; it is a slogging fight, and not a scientific campaign. ”

“ Whether steamships will flourish much longer, or whether they will in turn be surpassed, as they have ousted the sailing ship, is a debatable proposition. At any rate, to anyone who has at heart one of the greatest and most powerful forces in the spread of civilisation, the story of steamship evolution, from comparative inutility to a state of efficiency which is remarkable even in this wonder age, cannot but appeal with an attractiveness commensurate with its importance. ”

“ When we read of fine,214 handsome, well-found modern liners going astray in the broad ocean, or of excellent, capable little cross-channel steamships foundering between port and port, without any living witnesses to tell how it all happened, we have a reminder that the ways of man are clever beyond all words, but that Nature is cleverer still. What the future of the steamship will be no one can tell. Already ship-builders profess themselves capable of turning out a monster up to 1,000 feet in length. ”

“ This steamship is indeed a masterpiece of naval construction; more than a vessel, it is a floating city, part of the country, detached from English soil, which after having crossed the sea, unites itself to the American Continent. ”

“ We pass now to another type of steamship, which is endowed with as much distinctive character as the steam tug. The steam trawler may not be as smart as a steam yacht nor as fast as a torpedo destroyer; yet, for all that, she is able to encounter as bad weather and—size for size—is perhaps a good deal better sea-boat. ”

“ If, then, as will be seen from this volume, the steamship has done so much within a hundred years, what, we may legitimately ask, will be accomplished by the airship or aeroplane before another century has come to an end? Those who have the temerity to give expression to their opinions, suggest that the steamship will ultimately be made obsolete by the flying craft. ”

“ For many a decade, even in the era of the steamship, it was necessary, when heading into a heavy sea, to slow down the engines, maintaining only sufficient speed to give steerage way. To-day, so great are the weight and engine power that the giant steamship, if the captain is willing to risk some minor mishaps to her upper works, may be driven resistlessly along the appointed lines of travel regardless of wind and sea. ”

“ Even to-day, even in an age which has so much to be thankful for in respect of conveniences, we actually hear of landsmen looking forward with positive horror to an hour’s crossing the Channel in a fast and able steamship, with its turbines, its comfortable cabins, and the rest. ”

“ On the most unpretentious modern steamship there is room enough in the chambers to put a small trunk, and even other articles of convenience to the traveller; and one may dress, if he takes reasonable care, without knocking his knuckles and elbows against the wall or the edges of his berth. ”

“ A modern steamship, with its multitude of comforts and conveniences for passengers and its complexities of machinery for fast and safe steaming, is a great triumph of engineering skill. Patience and forethought, the persevering development of sound principles, and the application of new ideas, have all contributed to this great achievement.
From the Comet to the Campania is a marvellous development within a century. ”

“ A vessel bound for parts unknown, carrying some fugitive from justice, is sighted by some steamship that is equipped with a wireless telegraph outfit. Hours before, perhaps, the master of the steamship has been asked to keep a weather-eye open for a vessel that answers the name or description of the runaway craft. Now, she is sighted by the master of the steamship. Ten minutes later the authorities on shore know the exact whereabouts of the fleeing craft. ”

“ One greatly improved liner nowadays so quickly surpasses her predecessor; the age of obsolescence now moves at so greatly quickened a speed; that the general public, whose memory is also so short-lived, scarcely has time to appreciate all that the latest steamship means ere it has passed quietly from service and been handed over to the ship-breakers, or, under a new flag and a changed name, continues its work at some remote corner of the world. ”

“ The steamship nowadays, both large and small, goes everywhere, and is ready to do almost anything, and one of the most interesting of all234 mechanically-propelled craft is the tug-boat, which it is quite possible the landsman, promenading his floating hotel, may have barely deigned to cast his eyes upon as his big steel home is being drawn out from the quay, or landing-stage, and swung round on her way to the other side of the world. ”

“ We have been enabled to gain some idea by now both of the nature and the historical evolution of the steamship liner. But not all steamships are liners, any more than all cattle are race-horses. Steamship is a word which covers a multitude of varying craft and embraces a large family of different natured children. ”

“ Many years of experience in the management of steamships have enabled the company to design and construct a magnificent fleet of fast cargo liners, having lofty ’tween decks, and fitted with anti-rolling keels, electric light and every modern improvement. Several of these were chartered at an early stage of the war by the British Admiralty, and retained for voyage after voyage as transports. Nine steamers, of an aggregate gross tonnage of 52,000 tons, were requisitioned in this way. ”

“ The docks, once so populous, seem deserted—not Page 54because maritime trade has fallen off, but because one steamship does the work that twenty stout clippers once were needed for. The clipper bow with figurehead and reaching jib-boom are gone, for the modern steamship has its bow bluff, its stem perpendicular, the "City of Rome" being the last great steamship to adhere to the old model. It is not improbable, however, that in this respect we shall see a return to old models, for the straight stem—an American invention, by the way—is held to be more dangerous in case of collisions. ”

“ When you remember what a single steamer like the Alabama did, practically wiping off the ocean all the United States shipping, imagine what might be accomplished by the German mercantile marine, with its magnificent fleet of fast steamships, excelling in speed anything on the waters except less than half-a-dozen of our own. ”

“ Many splendidly equipped steamships, with colors flying and bands playing left port in the old days of sails and steam, with multitudes waving their adieux and heartily wishing them God-speed and were never again heard from. ”

“ INTERESTING as the ocean fleet is from the point of view of the passenger who crosses the seas on business or pleasure bent, the part that steamships play in the commerce of the world is even more worthy of consideration. There is a vast region between decks and down in the lower hold of which the ordinary traveller knows little. And yet the ship’s cargo brings to the owners a large portion of their revenue, and makes possible the magnificent steamships of to-day. ”

“ Provided, that all steamships hereafter accepted for said service shall be of not less than four thousand tons register each, and shall be built of iron, and, with their engines and machinery, shall be wholly of American construction; and shall be so constructed as to be readily adapted to the armed naval service of the United States, in case of war, and, before acceptance, the officers by whom they are inspected shall report to the Secretary of the Navy and the Postmaster-General whether this condition has been complied with. ”

“ Commercially speaking, this factor of safety in favor of steam-shipping is to a great extent counterbalanced by the value of the steamship, which bears to that of the sailing-vessel per net carrying ton the proportion of 3: 1, thus reducing the ratio in favor of steam-shipping as 13·29 to 10·38, or in round numbers as as 4: 3. ”

“ It must be recollected that the same old obstinacy was still very much alive that had hindered other inventions connected with the ship, and it was not until the Archimedes had toured round Great Britain, and steamed across the Bay of Biscay and back without mishap, that people121 began to believe in this new method of propulsion. To-day everyone knows how entirely dominated by the screw the steamship now is, and that the paddle-wheel belongs almost exclusively to the excursion passenger steamer. ”

“ There are rules for all kinds of vessels, of which there are a far greater variety than perhaps you realize. Not only have we steamships, cruisers, and battleships but we have schooners, barques, brigs, tugboats, dredgers, oil-tankers, turret ships for freight, cargo boats, steam tramps, coalers, produce ships, ice-breakers, train ferries, steam trawlers, fire boats, river boats, harbor excursion boats, coasters, whalebacks, steam yachts, launches and lake steamers. ”

“ As steamship owners it controls the largest fleet of steamers in Great Britain. The business of the firm extends so rapidly, and new steamers to meet the necessities of the several trades are so frequently being added to the fleet, that it is impossible to give a list of the vessels owned, or under the management of the firm, which will not in a short time be obsolete, but according to the official sailing list issued 28th March, 1903, [Pg 162] the following steamers were sailing under the triple flags of Messrs. ”

“ Like some of our popular authors who write sea stories that are not [110] sea stories, the average man firmly believes that steamships can and do sail, and it will take many years of pounding to get this idea out of the public's head. There are afloat steam vessels that can and do sail, but they are sailing vessels equipped with engines. In former times almost all ocean-going steam craft could work to leeward under canvas, but they, unlike the vessel of to-day, were heavily rigged, most of them carrying full sets of yards forward, and spreading many thousand feet of cloth. ”

“ It is no doubt owing to the slowness with which Australia, India, and Ceylon have adopted land installations that a corresponding reluctance has been found in the case of the steamships to adopt what is so significant a feature of the modern steamship. ”

“ It is by no means an unfitting simile if I suggest that we liken the invention of steam to the discovery of the potentialities of the edge. Until the coming of the former we may well say that progress, as we now know it, remained stagnant, at any rate in respect of rapid movement. Omitting other uses for steam not pertinent to our present subject, we may affirm that in annihilating space, in quickly bridging over the trackless expanse of oceans, steamships have succeeded in accelerating the development of the countries of the world. ”

“ In the realm of steamships there has been scarcely any parallel to the rapid development which that nation exhibited, so that within a remarkably short space of time she became able not merely to build her own ships, but of a size that had been exceeded only by the Great Eastern, and with a speed that no liner of any sort or of any nationality had ever yet attained. It is fitting, therefore, to give here a brief sketch of the manner in which this new competition originated, for to this undoubtedly is due the coming of the mammoth ships represented by the Mauretania and Lusitania. ”

“ If it is a sailing ship the weed clings to the rudder, making steerage impossible, and even in a strong wind the ship cannot get free of the mass. The grass winds about the propellers of steamships, and holds them as tight as in a vise. ”

“ THE DEVELOPMENT OF STEAMSHIPS From the day a really successful steam-driven vessel first moved herself awkwardly in the water until the Majestic slid from her German ways was not much more than a hundred years. But that hundred years shows more of progress in the development of ships than the preceding thousand. So breathlessly rapid has been the development of steamships that there are men still alive who remember them as frail experimental craft upon which little dependence could be placed. “Sail,” said the citizen of a hundred years ago, “is a dependable mode of propulsion. ”

“ The steamships of the world, exclusive of those of the United States, measured, in 1906, more than 30,000,000 tons. Perhaps 800,000 men were employed on these ships, and there was an experienced force of owners and managers on shore to look after the interests of the fleet. ”

“ Ever since the time when primitive man first learned to harness the wind in his navigation of the waters of the earth, there had always been sailing vessels of some sort. For, at any rate, 8,000 years there is a chain of evidence illustrating one kind of sailing craft or another, and the work of later centuries was but to improve and increase the capabilities of the sailing vessels handed down from one generation to the3 other. But with the first experiments in steamships it was quite different. Here was a case of experimenting, with but few data on which to rely. ”