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OLD OCEAN'S FERRY.

HISTORICAL.

SHIPS OF THE ANCIENTS.

THE first known record of a vessel is one inscribed on an Egyptian monument, made about 4,000 years ago. A vessel is represented pulling forty oars, having a double mast of two spars with sail bent to yard and managed evidently by sheets and braces.

Large ships were not unknown to the ancients, and some of the most roomy attained dimensions equal to ships of modern times. Nevertheless, they were unmanageable monstrosities, almost at the mercy of wind and wave, and utterly unfit to cope with the fury of a hurricane. Doubtless, we are indebted to travelers' tales for the detailed descriptions that survive the lapse of ages. Constantius conveyed from Heliopolis to Rome an obelisk weighing 1,500 tcns and, in addition to this long-coveted monolith, the ship carried about 1,200 tons of pulse, stowed about the smaller end of the obelisk, in order to bring the ship on ar even keel. In 268 B. C., Archimedes devised a marvellous ship for Hiero, of Syracuse. Her three lofty masts had been brought from Britain. Luxuriously fitted sleeping apartments abounded, and one of her banqueting halls was paved with agate and costly Sicilian stone. Other floors were cunningly inlaid with scenes from the Iliad. Stables for many horses, ponds stocked with live fish, gardens watered by artificial rivulets, and hot baths, were provided for use or amusement. Ptolemy Philopater possessed a nuptial yacht, the Thalamegon, 312 feet long and 45 feet deep. A graceful gallery, supported by curiously carved columns, ran round the vessel, and within

were temples of Venus and Bacchus. Her masts were 100 feet high, her sails and cordage of royal purple hue

THE VIKINGS.

Two thousand years ago, the chiefs and great warriors of the races dwelling on the islands of the Baltic were known as Vikings. There were five or six kinds of warships used by the chiefs. The ships of the Norsemen were reckoned by the number of benches of oars. The little Viking ship seen in America in 1893 was of the smallest size. It had fourteen benches of oars, but there was one with sixty-four benches, which must have been 475 feet long and carried 1,500 men. The Vikings thought everything of their ships, and at one time they had about 10,000 ships at sea, with fully 1,000,000 men on board. These maritime tribes of the Baltic were called Franks by the Romans. The Vikings overcame the Romans in many sea fights. There are preserved in Denmark five distinct descriptions of journeys of the Vikings to America from Iceland. The accounts are long and tell of many experiences. On one trip they sailed so far south that the grass was green all winter. On another, several barrels of grapes were carried home. The names of the men and of the ships which went upon these voyages are in the records. It was in 985 that the first journey took place.

One of the most interesting of the nautical exhibits at the Chicago World's Fair, was a fac-simile of an old Viking ship which was sent by Norway. In 1879 a Norwegian sailor living in Sandefjord, one of the small ports of Norway, having faith in a tradition of the townsfolk that a Viking was buried in a mound, called "Kingsmound," together with all his earthly possessions, began to dig there for them. His spade struck a solid oak plank, which, on further investigation, proved to be the side of a ship. When the entire mound was cleared away a Viking ship was revealed in good condition, and in it was a skeleton of a man incased in armor and surrounded with oars and other things belonging to the ship, from which the age of the ship was ascertained to be about 900 years. It was decided that this must have been the kind

of craft in which Leif Ericsson made his voyage to the North American continent nearly 1,000 years ago (A. D. 985). This Viking ship was reproduced, and the reproduction equipped as nearly as possible like the original, manned, and sent to the United States, unaccompanied by any other vessel.

STEAMSHIPS.

The employment of steam as motive power is by no means a modern idea. The possibilities of steam were known to the ancients; its applications were described' by Hero, 130 B. C. Roger Bacon, in the fourteenth century, made some experiments and the following remarkable prophecy: "We will be able to construct machines which will propel large ships with greater speed than a whole garrison of rowers and which will only need one pilot to direct them." Blasco de Garay constructed a rude. steamboat at Barcelona, in 1543. Later, a steamboat was built by Dennis Papin, in Germany, who navigated it safely down the Fulda as long ago as 1707. It was of sufficient importance to arouse the superstitious dread or conservative opposition of the sailors or bargemen, who destroyed it; and even the memory of it was lost for threequarters of a century. Many others gave their attention to the subject, but Jonathan Hulls, of Liverpool, appears to have been the first to reduce the marine steam engine to actual practice. In 1737 he published a pamphlet describing his stern-wheel boat, accompanying it with an engraving which is yet in existence, and from which it would appear that it was capable of towing a large vessel. In 1775, Perrier, a Frenchman, as was also Papin, built an experimental steam vessel at Paris. Eight years later, in 1783, De Jouffroy took up the idea that had been evolved by Papin and Perrier, and built a steamer which did good service for some time on the Saône.

On September 27, 1785, Fitch submitted to the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, a drawing and description of a machine for working a boat against a stream. by means of a steam engine, and, on December 2, presented a copy of the model and drawing to the society. He made

several experiments with a stern paddle wheel, a screw propeller, the endless chain, and the side-wheels, and finally adopted the plan of rowing the boat by oars or paddles on the sides, to be moved by cranks worked by machinery, which he tried on a skiff with the steam engine, and on the 27th of July, 1786, he made a public trial of it on the Delaware river, which is said to have been the first boat successfully propelled by steam in America. Fitch's first boat for carrying passengers was completed in 1788, and satisfied the most skeptical of the practicability of his inventions. This boat was 60 feet long, 8 feet beam, and worked with oars or paddles placed at the stern and pushed against the water; the engine having a 12-inch cylinder. In July, 1788, she made a trip from Philadelphia to Burlington, some 20 miles, the longest trip ever made by any steamboat up to that time; and on the 12th of October following, she took 30 passengers from Philadelphia to Burlington in 3 hours and 10 minutes, which was at the rate of over six miles an hour. Fitch made still further improvements, and two years later completed another boat which proved a complete success. A day was appointed for a public experiment, which was made over a measured mile. Every precaution was taken before witnesses, the experiment declared to be fairly made, and the boat was found to go at the rate of eight miles an hour, or one mile in seven and a half minutes. Lack of means prevented him from prosecuting his labors, though he was firmly convinced of the importance of steam as a motive power in navigation. Shortly before his death, he wrote: "The time will come when all our great lakes, rivers and oceans will be navigated by vessels propelled by steam; some more powerful man will get fame and riches from my invention, but nobody will believe that poor John Fitch can do anything worthy of attention."

In 1788, Symington's patent engine was fitted to one of the experimental boats of Patrick Miller, of Dalswinton, a wealthy gentleman who had experimented in naval architecture and the propulsion of small vessels by means of paddle wheels driven by manual labor. A successful experiment in steam navigation was performed on Dals

winton Loch, the little boat attaining a speed of something like four miles an hour. The experiment was repeated on a larger scale in 1789 on the Forth and Clyde Canal, the engine used being Symington's patent, with ratchet wheels and chains, for converting the reciprocating motion of the pistons into rotary motion, on the same principle as adopted in the Dalswinton experiment, but on a larger scale. Neither of these vessels was of any practical value, however, beyond having demonstrated to England that a steam engine could be safely applied to propel a vessel; and after the 1789 experiment, Mr. Miller unfortunately abandoned steam navigation altogether. Symington found a worthy patron in 1801, in Lord Dundas, of Kerse, near Grangemouth. Under his patronage he produced the Charlotte Dundas, designed for towing vessels on the canal, in order to do away with horses for that purpose; and this vessel was at work on the Forth and Clyde Canal from 1801 to 1813. In this vessel Symington abandoned his old style of engine, and adopted the crank and connecting rod for producing rotary motion of the paddle wheel. The Charlotte Dundas was built at Grangemouth, by Alexander Hart, in 1801. She was 56 feet long, 18 feet beam, and 8 feet depth. She had a paddle wheel at the stern. The cylinder, which was 22 inches diameter by 4 feet stroke, lay horizontally on the deck, and the piston rod was coupled direct, by a connecting rod, to a crank upon the paddle shaft. This vessel attained a speed of about 6 or 7 miles an hour upon the canal, and towed upon one occasion two fully laden sloops-the Active and Euphemia-each about 70 tons burden, from Wynford to Port Dundas, a distance of 19.5 miles, in six hours against a strong headwind. The wash from the paddle wheel, however, had a tendency to destroy the banks of the canal, and Symington was interdicted from using his steam vessel on the Forth and Clyde Canal. Previous to this interdict the Duke of Bridgewater, having heard of the success of Symington's steamer, gave him an order for eight similar boats for the Bridgewater Canal; but unfortunately for Symington, on the very day on which he received the notice of interdict from the manager of the Forth and Clyde Canal, he also received the intelli

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