CHAPTER II.

EARLY YEARS OF STEAM NAVIGATION.

The _Accommodation_—The _Savannah_—_Enterprise_ —_Royal William_—_Liverpool_—_Sirius_ and _Great Western_—_Great Britain_ and _Great Eastern_—The Brunels—The screw propeller.

Two years after the _Clermont_ had commenced to ply on the Hudson, and three years before the _Comet_ had disturbed the waters of the Clyde, the first steamboat appeared on the St. Lawrence. The _Accommodation_, built by the Hon. John Molson, of Montreal, made her maiden trip to Quebec on November 3rd, 1809, carrying ten passengers, in thirty-six hours’ running time. In accordance with the usual custom, which continued for many years, she anchored at night, so that the whole time occupied in the voyage was sixty-six hours. If she ascended the St. Mary’s current, she was towed up by oxen. The length of this vessel was eighty-five feet over all, her breadth sixteen feet, her engine was of six horse-power, and her speed five miles an hour. The _Accommodation_ was built at the back of the Molson’s Brewery, and was launched broadside on. Her engine was made by Boulton & Watt, of Birmingham, England. The fare from Montreal to Quebec by this vessel was £2 10s.; children, half price; “servants with _birth_ (_sic_), £1 13s. 4d.; without _birth_, £1 5s.” The Quebec _Mercury_, announcing her arrival, remarked: “She is incessantly crowded with visitors. This steamboat receives her impulse from an open-spoked perpendicular wheel on each side, without any circular band or rim. To the end of each double spoke is fixed a square board which enters the water, and by the rotatory motion of the wheels acts like a paddle. No wind or tide can stop her.”

_The Savannah._—In the year 1818 there was built in New York, by Messrs. Crocker and Pickett, a full-rigged sailing ship of about 350 tons, named the _Savannah_. She was intended to be used as a sailing packet between New York and Havre, but before she was completed she was purchased by William Scarborough & Co., a shipping firm in Savannah, who fitted her up with a steam-engine of 90 horse-power, placed on deck, and a pair of paddle-wheels enclosed with canvas coverings, so constructed that they could be folded up and taken on deck in stormy weather, and that tedious operation seems to have been gone through pretty frequently in the course of her first voyages. Her maiden trip from New York to Savannah occupied 8 days, 15 hours. She left Savannah for Liverpool under steam, May 22nd, 1819, and arrived in the Mersey, “with all sail set,” on June 20th, making the run in twenty-nine and a half days. The whole time that the engine was at work during the voyage is said to have been only eighty hours. “She hove to off the bar, waiting for the tide to rise, at 5 p.m. shipped her wheels”—so the record of the period runs—“furled her sails and steamed up the river, with American banners flying, the docks being lined with thousands of people, who greeted her arrival with cheers.” From Liverpool, the _Savannah_ sailed up the Baltic to Stockholm and St. Petersburg. On her return voyage, on account of stormy weather, the engine was scarcely used at all until the pilot came aboard off Savannah, when the sails were furled, and with the flood-tide she steamed into port. After several voyages of a similar kind, the machinery was removed and she plied for some time as a sailing packet between New York and Savannah, and was eventually wrecked on Long Island in 1822.

Shortly after this the British Government offered a prize of £10,000 to the party who should first make a successful voyage by steam power to India. The prize was won by Captain Johnston, who sailed from England on August 16th, 1825, in the _Enterprise_, of 500 tons and 240 horse-power,[7] and reached Calcutta on the 7th of December. The distance run was 13,700 miles, and the time occupied 113 days, during ten of which the ship was at anchor. She ran under steam sixty-four days and consumed 580 chaldrons of coal, the rest of the voyage being under sail.

Eight years followed without any further attempts in the direction of ocean steam navigation. There seemed to be nothing in these costly experiments that would induce capitalists to invest their money in steamships. Sailing vessels had crossed the Atlantic in much less than thirty days, and had made the voyage to India in less time than the _Enterprise_ took to do it. It would not pay! and had not scientific men and practical engineers pronounced the idea of transatlantic steamships as Utopian and utterly impracticable? “No vessel could be constructed,” they said, “that could carry enough coal to take her across the Atlantic by steam power alone.” Some of these unbelievers lived to see the day when large ocean steamers not only carry enough coal to take them from Liverpool to New York, but actually enough for the return voyage also.

THE “ROYAL WILLIAM.”

The _Savannah_ and _Enterprise_ were admittedly nothing more than sailing ships with auxiliary steam power. In the archives of the National Museum at Washington there is to be found the full history and log of the _Savannah_, which proves conclusively that she was not entitled to be called the pioneer of transatlantic steam navigation. That the honour belongs to the _Royal William_, built at Quebec and engined at Montreal, has been clearly proven. The evidence in support of this claim is embodied in a report of the Secretary of State of Canada for the year ended December 31st, 1894. From this it appears that the _Royal William_ was designed by Mr. James Goudie, Marine Architect of Quebec, and that she was launched from the shipyard of Messrs. Campbell and Black at Cape Cove, Quebec, April 29th, 1831, in presence of Lord Aylmer, the Governor-General, and a vast concourse of people, Lady Aylmer naming the vessel with the usual ceremonies after the reigning monarch, William IV. She was towed to Montreal, where her engines of 200 horse-power were fitted by Messrs. Bennett and Henderson. She steamed back to Quebec in the beginning of August. She was built for the Quebec and Halifax Steam Navigation Company, incorporated by Act of Parliament, March 31st, 1831. This company comprised 235 persons whose names appear in the Act, among them being the three brothers, Samuel, Henry and Joseph Cunard. Samuel, the founder of the Cunard Line, was a frequent visitor at the Quebec shipyard, and carefully noted down all the information he could get from the builders.

This historic vessel was registered No. 2 in the port of Quebec. She was rigged as a three-masted schooner, of 363-60/94 tons burthen, with a standing bowsprit and square stern. Her length was 160 feet; breadth, taken above the main wales, 44 feet; depth of hold, 17 feet 9 inches; and width, between the paddle-boxes, 28 feet. She cost about £16,000. The _Royal William_, commanded by Captain J. Jones, R.N., sailed from Quebec for Halifax, August 24th, 1831, with twenty cabin passengers, seventy steerage, and a good freight. She arrived on the 31st—six and a half days from Quebec. Several voyages were made that year to Halifax and the Gulf ports. Next year, owing to the prevalence of cholera, trade was at a standstill, and there was nothing for the new steamship to do. She was accordingly sold by Sheriff Gugy, at the church door, in the parish of Sorel, for £5,000. In April, 1833, she was placed under the command of Captain John Macdougall, a native of Oban, Scotland. During May she towed vessels from Grosse Isle, and in June sailed for the lower ports, Halifax and Boston, reaching the latter place on the 17th—the first British steamer to enter that port. On her return to Quebec, her owners decided to send her to London to be sold. She sailed August 5th, arrived at Pictou on the 8th, and sailed thence on the 18th, with seven passengers, a box of stuffed birds, one box and one trunk, some household furniture, 254 chaldrons of coal, and a crew of thirty-six men. The voyage to Cowes, Isle of Wight, was made in nineteen and a half days. She was deeply laden with her coal, had very rough weather, and had to run with one engine for ten days. A short time having been spent at Cowes, painting the ship, etc., “she steamed up to Gravesend in fine style—the first vessel to cross the Atlantic propelled by the motive power of steam alone.”

The _Royal William_ was sold in London for £10,000, and was chartered to the Portuguese Government as a transport. In 1834 she was sold to the Spanish Government, and named the _Isabel Segunda_, and while in this service was the first war-steamer to fire a hostile shot. In 1837 she was sent to Bordeaux, France, for repairs, but, her timbers being badly decayed, her machinery was transferred to a new vessel of the same name, while she herself terminated her brilliant career as a hulk.[8]

Another steamer bearing the name _Royal William_ was despatched from Liverpool to New York, by the Transatlantic Steamship Company, in 1838. This was a vessel of 617 tons, and 276 horse-power—the first to make the westward voyage from Liverpool, and the first passenger steamer to cross the sea. After a few voyages of doubtful success, this steamer was degraded into a coal-hulk, and a much larger and faster vessel took her place. This was the _Liverpool_—built expressly for the Atlantic trade, with luxurious fittings for seventy or eighty first-class passengers. She was a fine ship, of 1,150 tons burthen, and 468 horse-power. She sailed from Liverpool, October 20th, 1838, but had to put back to Queenstown on the 30th; sailing thence on November 6th, she reached New York on the 23rd. After several voyages, averaging seventeen days out and fifteen days home, she was sold to the Peninsular and Oriental Company, and was finally wrecked off Cape Finisterre in 1846.

In 1839 the late Sir Hugh Allan and several other Canadians made an adventurous voyage in the _Liverpool_. Sailing from New York, December 4th, they had a succession of gales up to the 28th, when they were scarcely half-way across the Atlantic. The chief engineer then reported that unless things mended they would run short of coal. The chief steward at the same time expressed grave doubts as to his provisions holding out. A consultation having been held, it was resolved to change their course for the Azores. They reached Fayal just as the last shovelful of coal was thrown on the fires. Four days were spent on the Island, during which time the passengers were treated to a round of festivities. On arriving at Liverpool, they learned that the ship had been given up as lost—not having been heard of since she sailed from New York thirty-nine days before.

THE “SIRIUS” AND “GREAT WESTERN.”

The departure of these steamships from England to America in 1838 marks an important epoch in the history of steam navigation, inasmuch as the practicability of establishing a regular transatlantic steam service was now for the first time to be clearly demonstrated. As the _Sirius_ made only one round voyage, there is little to be said about her beyond admiring the pluck of her owners. She was a small vessel of about 700 tons and 320 horse-power, built at Leith for the St. George Steam-packet Company, and had plied successfully for some time between London and Cork. She was chartered by the then newly formed “British and American Steam Navigation Company,” of which the famous ship-builder, Laird, of Birkenhead, was the leading spirit. The _Sirius_ was despatched from London for New York, _via_ Cork, whence she sailed on April 4th, with ninety-four passengers. She arrived in New York on the 22nd, after a successful voyage of seventeen clear days, being commanded by Lieut. Roberts, R.N., who was afterwards lost at sea with the ill-fated SS. _President_, in 1841. The return voyage was made in about the same number of days as the outward trip.

The _Great Western_, designed and built by Mr. William Patterson at Bristol, for the Great Western Steamship Company, sailed from Bristol, April 8th, 1838, in command of Lieut. James Hoskin, R.N., and reached New York on the 23rd, making the run in fifteen days with a consumption of 655 tons of coal and realizing an average speed of a little over eight knots an hour. She returned to Bristol in somewhat less than fifteen days. A fine ship she was, of 1,340 tons and 440 horse-power, 212 feet long, and 35½ feet beam. Her best run between New York and Bristol was made in 12½ days,[9] a remarkable record for that time. Altogether she was admitted to be a distinct success. She was sold in 1847 for £25,000, after which she sailed regularly for ten years to the West Indies. In the meantime the owners of the _Sirius_ had built a much larger boat, the _British Queen_, which made her maiden voyage from Portsmouth in 1839. After making a number of voyages to New York this fine ship was sold to the Belgians in 1841, chiefly owing to the collapse of the company occasioned by the loss of a sister-ship, the _President_, which sailed from New York, March 11th of that year, and was never afterwards heard of.

THE “GREAT BRITAIN” AND “GREAT EASTERN.”

The _Great Britain_, designed by Brunel, and built at Bristol by Mr. Patterson, was the first iron steamship of large dimensions. She was very large for her time, being 322 feet long, 48 feet wide, and 31½ feet deep; her tonnage was 3,270 tons, and her engines 1,500 horse-power. As originally rigged she had six masts; she had a six-bladed screw-propeller, 15½ feet in diameter, which made 18 revolutions per minute, giving her a maximum speed of twelve knots an hour. A very handsome model, of prodigious strength, and a fine sea-boat was the _Great Britain_. She commenced plying to New York, July 26th, 1845, and was a pronounced success. On the 22nd of September, 1846, on her outward voyage, she was stranded on the Irish coast, and became deeply embedded in the sands of Dundrum Bay, where she lay all winter, exposed to violent storms; but she withstood the strain, was raised from her watery grave, was refitted and placed on the Australian route, where she sailed successfully until 1882, when her machinery was taken out and she closed her remarkable career as a full-rigged sailing ship, when nearly fifty years old! and was finally used as a coal-hulk at the Falkland Islands, where her remains are still to be seen.

_The Great Eastern._—The British Government having in 1853 advertised for tenders to carry the mails to India and Australia, a number of wealthy and scientific men formed themselves into a company called the Eastern Steam Navigation Company, with a capital of £1,200,000, and sent in a tender, but it was not accepted.[10] The company, however, resolved to build a fleet of steamers, of which the _Great Eastern_ was to be the first. Mr. Brunel, who had designed the _Great Britain_, was selected as the architect, and Mr. Scott Russell, as the builder of the pioneer ship. The proposal suited Mr. Brunel’s sanguine temperament, and he recommended the building of a monster iron steamship, that should eclipse all previous efforts in marine architecture, a vessel that should run, say, to Ceylon at an average speed of fifteen knots, and carry coal enough to take her out and home again. From Ceylon smaller boats would continue the service to India and Australia. The embodiment of Mr. Brunel’s magnificent conception was the _Great Eastern_, skilfully wrought out, but destined to prove a gigantic failure.

This extraordinary ship was commenced at Millwall on the Thames, in May, 1854, and was completed in 1857, at a cost of nearly £5,000,000. When ready for launching, her estimated weight was some 12,000 tons. As no such load had ever before slid down the ways of a shipyard, every precaution and appliance that skill could suggest were brought into requisition. She was to be hauled down, broadside on, by an elaborate arrangement of chains and stationary engines; but when the critical moment arrived the ponderous mammoth would not budge, and it cost something like £600,000 and constant labour for three months before she reached her destined element. The _Great Eastern_ was 692 feet long, 83 feet in width, and 58½ feet deep. She was reckoned at 22,500 tons burthen. Her four engines were collectively of 11,000 indicated horse-power. She was fitted up in grand style to accommodate 4,800 passengers. As a troop-ship she could carry comfortably an army of 10,000 men in addition to her own crew of 400. She was provided with both paddle-wheels and a screw-propeller. The wheels were fifty feet in diameter, making twelve revolutions per minute; the four-bladed screw was twenty-four feet in diameter, adapted for forty-five revolutions per minute. Her estimated speed was fifteen knots, but her best average never exceeded twelve knots. Her first voyage from Southampton to New York was made in 10 days and 21 hours; the highest speed by the log was fourteen and a half knots, and the greatest day’s run three hundred and thirty-three knots. Her arrival in New York, June 27th, 1860, created a great sensation. Fort Hamilton saluted her with a discharge of fourteen guns—the first instance of a merchant vessel being thus honoured in America. She returned home _via_ Halifax, making the run thence to Milford Haven in 10 days and 4 hours. In May, 1861, she made another voyage to New York, carrying one hundred passengers, but with no improvement in her speed. On her return to Liverpool she was chartered by the British Government to bring out troops to Canada. She arrived at Quebec, July 6th, 1861, with 2,528 soldiers and forty civilians, and during her stay there was visited by large crowds of people. Leaving Quebec, August 6th, she reached Liverpool on the 15th. A couple more voyages to New York, and her career as a passenger ship was ended. She had been singularly unfortunate. Her first commander, Captain Harrison, was drowned in the Solent by the upsetting of a small boat. On her trial trip, by the bursting of a steam jacket, six of her crew were killed and the ship was badly damaged. She had broken her rudder in mid-ocean, and lay for days a helpless mass in the trough of the sea during a gale of wind, rolling frightfully. Worse than all, she had got on the rocks entering New York harbour, with serious damage to her hull. The momentous question arose, What was to be done with her?

This leviathan of the deep was finally fitted up as a “cable ship,” and for a short time did good service in that line. In 1865 she had laid the second Atlantic cable to within a few hundred miles of Newfoundland, when it snapped and disappeared in 1,950 fathoms of water. Next year the _Great Eastern_ not only was the means of laying a new cable successfully, but was the means of picking up the lost one—a remarkable feat of seamanship and electrical skill. After laying several other cables the big ship was tied up, never to go again. She was eventually sold for £16,000 and broken up, a somewhat tragic ending for such a triumph of engineering skill. But who can tell how much the successful “liner” of to-day owes to the failure of the _Great Eastern_? She came out ahead of time, and when the intricate art of managing successfully the details of an ocean steamship had yet to be learned.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel, born at Portsmouth in 1806, was the son of Sir Mark I. Brunel, a French engineer, who attained celebrity as the architect of the Thames Tunnel, and other important works, in which he was assisted by his son, who also became famous as the Engineer-in-Chief of the Great Western Railroad, in the construction of which he adopted the broad gauge (7 feet), against the remonstrances of Stephenson and other railway authorities, and which was eventually changed to what has become the national gauge (4 feet, 8½ inches), at enormous expense. Mr. Brunel died in 1859. It was his misfortune to have landed on this planet about fifty years too soon.

THE SCREW-PROPELLER.

Most people fail to find much resemblance, if any at all, between that comparatively small-looking two or three-bladed thing that drives the steamship through the water at the rate of twenty miles an hour, and what is commonly known as a screw; but the discrepancy is easy of explanation. Archimedes, who is credited with the invention of the screw as a mechanical lever, little dreamed of the uses to which it was to be turned two thousand years later. He is said to have employed the screw in launching a large ship, pushing it into the water as is now done by hydraulic appliances. By changing his fulcrum and making the screw a part of the ship, the modern engineer has only reversed the mode of applying propelling power; the principle is the same. The effect produced by the screw in propelling a ship will be best understood by supposing an ordinary screw of large dimensions to be revolving rapidly in a trough full of water. It would then send the water away from it with great force; but as action and reaction are equal it would be itself, at the same time, urged in the opposite direction with exactly the same degree of force. If we suppose it, then, to be fixed in a ship, the ship will be pushed forward with the same force that is exerted by the screw in pushing back against the water. If the screw is made to revolve in the opposite direction, the converse of this takes place, and the ship is pushed backwards by the reaction of the screw.[11] The idea has long occupied the attention of inventive genius. As far back as 1746, at least, the capabilities of the screw as a motive power for ships have been tested by experiments. In 1770 James Watt, who had so much to do with perfecting the steam-engine, suggested the use of screw-propellers. In 1815 Trevethick took out a patent for one. Woodcroft did the same in 1826; but it was not until ten years later that its utility was successfully demonstrated.

In 1836 Captain John Ericsson, a Swede, then residing in London, and Mr. T. P. Smith, of the same place, almost simultaneously had each small boats built for the purpose of testing the screw. Ericsson’s boat, named the _Francis B. Ogden_, was 45 feet long and 8 feet beam, and was fitted with two screw-propellers attached to the same shaft. The first experiment made on the Thames was successful beyond all expectation, for he towed the Admiralty barge, with a number of their Lordships on board, from Somerset House to Blackwall and back, at the rate of ten miles an hour. Smith’s boat was equally successful, the immediate result being the formation of a joint stock company, called the Screwship Propeller Company, who bought out Mr. Smith’s patent and proceeded to build the _Archimedes_, a vessel of 237 tons, and 80 horse-power. Smith’s original propeller was a genuine screw, with two whole turns of the thread, made to revolve rapidly under water in the dead-wood of the vessel’s run. In the meantime, about 1838, Mr. James Lowe obtained a patent for an important modification of the elongated screw-propeller. This consisted in making use of curved blades, each a portion of a curve, which, if continued, would form a complete screw. The “pitch of the screw ” being the whole length along the spindle shaft of one complete turn of the screw, if fully developed, it was found that by reducing the pitch to a segment of the screw and increasing the diameter, the propeller could be reduced to more convenient dimensions.

The success of the _Archimedes_ at length induced the Admiralty to make trial of the screw in the Royal Navy. The first _Rattler_ was built in 1841, and fitted with a screw-propeller. In 1842 the United States Government made a similar experiment with the _Princeton_, and in the following year the French Government built the screw war-ship, _Pomone_.[12] In each case the verdict was favourable to the introduction of the screw in preference to the paddle-wheel. The second _Rattler_, of 880 tons and 496 horse-power, was built and fitted with a screw-propeller, and attained a speed of 9¼ knots on her trial trip, September 5th, 1851. That settled the question in so far as the Royal Navy was concerned. In the mercantile marine the _Great Britain_ was the first ship of large dimensions in which the screw was adopted. For many years there continued to be a strong prejudice against it, though it was destined eventually to entirely supersede the paddle on the ocean.

In order to prevent the screw “racing,” which often occurs in heavy weather, to the discomfort of passengers and the annoyance of engineers, a system of raising and lowering the propeller has been tried somewhat extensively in the navy and also in the mercantile service, but it has been practically abandoned since the twin screws have come into general use, by which the difficulty alluded to has been largely overcome.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] “Our Ocean Railways,” p. 69.

[8] Sufficient importance was attached to this matter to cause the two Houses of Parliament, in Ottawa, to order a brass tablet, commemorative of the event, to be placed in the corridor of the Library of Parliament. The tablet, of which a facsimile is presented in our frontispiece, was unveiled with fitting ceremony by His Excellency the Governor-General, on the occasion of the opening of the Colonial Conference, June 28th, 1894.—_Vide_: “The Journals of the Colonial Conference” (_Appendix_); “Journal of the House of Commons,” 1894; “Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada.”

[9] Others say 10½ days.

[10] Fry’s “History of Steam Navigation,” p. 182.

[11] Encyclopedia Britannica, 8th Ed., Vol. xx, p. 657.

[12] “Our Ocean Railways,” p. 75.