vessel than a steamer of equal tonnage, these advantages are more than offset by the slow average speed of the sailing ship, and the uncertainty as to the time of delivering cargo assigned to a ship whose movements depend upon winds and currents instead of upon its own propelling power. At the present time a steamer is considered to have on the average four times the efficiency (as a freight carrier) of a sailing vessel of equal tonnage. This is what enables the steamer to take traffic away from the sailing vessel, despite the disadvantages which the steamer has as regards the cost of coal, the large amount of space taken up in the steamer for coal bunkers and machinery-one fourth to one third of the hull capacity-and the somewhat larger crew required.

As will be shown in the following chapter, mechanical improvements have reduced the cost of steam power to a surprisingly low figure. This fact is illustrated by the new steamers put into service between New York and San Francisco. Some of these steamers can carry 10,000 tons of cargo and 2,500 tons of coal. They have quadruple expansion engines, with a boiler pressure of 210 pounds to the square inch; and their coal consumption, when running at nine knots an hour, is only 40 tons a day. When the Panama Canal is available for use these vessels will consume about 1,000 tons of coal in transporting 10,000 tons of freight the 5,000 miles from New York to San Francisco. In other words, it will require only one tenth of a ton, or thirty cents' worth of coal, to carry a ton of cargo 5,000 miles.

Until within a few years it was thought that the sailing vessel would always be used exclusively for certain classes of bulky goods carried over long routes; such as traffic in nitrate of soda from Chile to Europe, grain and lumber from the Pacific coast of the United States to Europe, and the trade between our Atlantic coast and

Australia; but even in the trade over these routes the steamer is competing successfully with the sailing vessel. When the Panama Canal is opened the steamer will still further narrow the sphere of the sailing vessel.

The sailing vessel will doubtless be used for some time to come, especially by the people of the United States, but the sailing vessel will probably be employed mainly for two classes of service. One of these fields of usefulness will be that part of our coasting trade that cannot readily be so organized as to be performed by regular lines of steamers. The other use to which we shall continue to put the sailing vessel will be that of performing the irregular or skirmish work of international tradesuch, for instance, as that now carried on between the Gulf ports of the United States and the river Plata. In the earlier development of such a traffic the sailing vessel is a convenient agent; but when the trade becomes larger, and the exchange of commodities between the two sections becomes regular and continuous, a line of steamers will be established, and most of the sailing vessels will be withdrawn from that service.

REFERENCES FOR FURTHER READING

66

MARVIN, W. L. The American Merchant Marine: Its History and Romance from 1620 to 1902." 1902.

HALL, HENRY. "American Navigation." 1880. HALL, HENRY. "Census of 1880. Part VIII, Miscellaneous." (The last 265 pages of this valuable report give an account of the shipbuilding industry in the United States, and contain much information regarding the evolution of the sailing vessel and the development of the hull.)

ABBOTT, W. J. American Merchant Ships and Sailors." 1902. (A volume written in a popular style.)

JOHNSON, E. R. "Report of the Isthmian Canal Commission, 1899– 1901." Appendix NN. Chapter IX. "Concerning the Use of an Isthmian Canal by Sailing Vessels."

CHAPTER III

THE HISTORY OF THE OCEAN

CARRIER-THE

STEAMSHIP

THE steamship has had a briefer but more complicated technical evolution than the sailing vessel. The main phases of the development of the present-day steel steamer may be summarized by a brief description (1) of the application of the power of propulsion, first by paddle wheels, then by the screw; (2) of the evolution of the marine engine by which the power is generated; and (3) of the change from wooden to iron and to steel hulls, and of the equipment of ships with appliances to add to the safety and comforts of travel.

The practicability of using steam power to propel ships was demonstrated by Robert Fulton in 1807, when he ran the Clermont from New York City to Albany. The use of steamboats on rivers and bays became general during the succeeding ten years, but it was thirty years after the Clermont's first trip before it was demonstrated that the steamship could be used with commercial success in the transoceanic service. As early as 1819 a sailing packet of 380 tons, the Savannah, was equipped with a ninety horse-power horizontal engine and with paddle wheels. This ship crossed the Atlantic from Savannah to Liverpool in twenty-five days, during eighteen of which she used steam power; but the next year the engine was taken out of the ship. The first vessel to cross the ocean all the way under steam was the Royal

William, which made the trip from Quebec via Nova Scotia and the Isle of Wight to London in 1833.

The first steamship built for the transatlantic service. was the Great Western, constructed for the Great Western Railway interests, and launched at Bristol, England, in 1837. Her first trip was made from Bristol to New York, April 8 to 21, 1838. The same year three other British steamers-the Royal William (No. 2), the Sirius, and the Liverpool-made trips across the Atlantic under the management of the Transatlantic Steamship Company, of Liverpool, and the success of these runs led to the establishment of a regular service. The following year the great Cunard Company was organized as the third British transatlantic steamship company. It put three steamships in operation in 1840, and its able management, aided by the Government's strong support, soon gave it the leadership of all the British companies, a rank which it still holds upon the Atlantic.

The early steamers were wooden vessels propelled by paddle wheels. The gross tonnage of the Liverpool was 1,150, of the Great Western, 1,340 tons, and the average tonnage of the first four Cunard steamers (launched in 1840) was 1,139 tons each. The ships were a little over 200 feet long, and were of about 35 feet beam. They had an average speed of 8 to 10 knots an hour, and under favorable conditions took about two weeks to make the passage from port to port. Frequently three weeks were required for the trip westward. The engines were all of the side-lever type described below; those of the Liverpool had an indicated horse power of 468, those of the Great Western 750 horse power, and the Cunarders 740. A comparison of these figures with the data given later of the measurement, speed, and engine power of the large liners of the present day, will show clearly what progress has taken place in marine architecture.

The general substitution of the screw propeller in place of paddle wheels came later than might have been expected. In 1836, John Ericsson, who subsequently achieved great fame and revolutionized naval architecture by building the Monitor, and Francis P. Smith, an English farmer working independently, each successfully applied the screw to the propulsion of ships; and in 1839, Smith's little ship, the Archimedes, of 237 tons burden and 80 horse power, made a most favorable impression, and led to the adoption of the screw on several small naval vessels, and on the large iron merchant ship the Great Britain, then building. Naval architects welcomed the screw because it was placed below the water line, and was not exposed to the fire of the enemy, as were the huge paddle wheels.

Most builders of merchant vessels continued to prefer paddle wheels until after 1850. Before that date the side-wheel steamers made better speed than the screw steamers did. This was due partly to the designs of the early screws, and also to the fact that the marine engines had been designed with reference to driving paddle wheels. The screw propeller necessitated a differently constructed engine, which builders required some time to design and supply. The Great Britain, the first large transatlantic ship to use the screw, began running in 1844. Numerous small steamers both in the United States and Europe were constructed with screw propellers before 1850; but it was after that date before the managers of the large ocean lines became convinced that the screw was preferable to the paddle wheels. The famous Collins Line, in the United States, ordered four large expensive mail steamers in 1848, and put them into service in 1850, but they were of wooden construction and had paddle wheels. The Inman Line, of Liverpool, founded in 1850, began operating screw steamers of iron con