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2 MARINE REVIEW. [August 1, A BRIEF HISTORY OF OCEAN PASSENGER SHIPS. BY LAWRENCE IRWELL. It is the general opinion of marine engineers that the present speed of the ocean greyhound will not be materially increased by the present method of propulsion. The prevailing type of engines has about reached its highest efficiency commercially considered. The ratio of cost to speed beyond the present limit is absolutely prohibitive. The Deutschland, therefore, logging at 24 knots per hour--for that is what she recently did on the southerly course--represents the practical maximum. The Deutschland's fastest trip to Plymouth was five days, seven hours and five minutes, but this was on the northerly course. The Kaiser Wilhelm II, now building for the rival North German Lloyd line, may add a frac- tion of a knot to this speed, but it will not materially alter the total. The type has apparently reached its limit. Any material advancement of speed must come through some radical departure in the employment of steam. The tendency of the time is towards the construction of vessels of mod- erate speed and great carrying capacity. The Campania, Lucania, Kaiser Wilhelm. der Grosse and the Deutschland are the highest types of racers. Each of them can make over 22 knots. The Oceanic was the first to represent the new tendency. She is reasonably fast, logging 20 knots, but is commodious. The Celtic, which satled for New York on Friday last, is the largest vessel ever constructed in the world and is the latest and best evidence of the new idea. She is a 17-knot vessel, but. her cargo capacity is immense. Indeed she can house and feed the population of a city and carry besides an immense quantity of cargo. The ocean liner has been so developed that its schedule is adhered to with the accuracy of a railway train. The elements make no difference. Summer and winter, through heat and cold, through the worst weather imaginable, the steamship keeps her time. The old Etruria of the Cunard line has en- countered gales of inconceivable fury and yet has never varied one hour from her schedule. The submission of the ocean to the mind of man is one of the marvels of progress. The idea of ocean navigation, like many other modern developments of engineering enterprise, occupied the minds of men mrany years before it became commercially practicable. River steamers ploughed the Mis- sissippi, the Clyde and the St. Lawrence, and coasting steamers "ran" 'both in the old world and in the new, long before any ventured to cross the Atlantic. The first steam vessel which achieved this memorable feat was the Savannah, which was dispatched in 1819 from Savannah to Liver- pool, and made the voyage in twenty-five days. In 1825 the Enterprise, a little steamer only 122 ft. in length, made the trip from Calcutta. to London in 113 days, ten of which were spent in stoppages. In 1833, four- teen years after the Savannah's voyage, a second. vessel, the Royal William, crossed the Atlantic, this time from Quebee to London, in about forty days. Not until 1838 did the first passenger steamer make an outward trip from Liverpool to New York. She was followed in the same year by the Liverpool, which made several passages, averaging seventeen days out and fifteen on the return trip to England. As these vessels were owned in the United States the honor of demonstrating the practicability of Atlantic steam navigation rests with the great republic. The first English-owned steamer that crossed the Atlantic was the Sirius of 703 tons, which left Queenstown April 5, 1838, for New York, arriv- ing there 18% days later. The famous Great Western left Bristol, Eng- land, on the 8th of the same month, and reached New York on April 23, a few hours after the Sirius. FIRST LOOKED UPON AS CHIMERICAL. The achievements of these vessels demonstrated beyond doubt the practicability of ocean steam navigation., Their performances elicited quite as much interest and wonder then' as do the feats of the latest "flyers" of today. Yet during the year 1838, in which the steamships commenced their careers, Dr. Dionysius Lardner, a competent English physicist, said at the Royal Institution at Liverpool that "the project which is announced in the newspapers of making a voyage directly from New York to Liverpool is perfectly chimerical, and we might as well talk of making a voyage from New York to the moon." Even after the prac- ticability of ocean navigation had been demonstrated, its commercial suc- cess was not assured. The clipper ships were to the pioneer steamships what the stage coaches had been to the early railways. One of these clippers, the Great Republic, of course an American, a four-master of 3,400 tons, once covered the distance between New York and the Scilly isles in thirteen days. Some few of the sailing clippers actually raced the early steam vessels leaving port with and arriving before them. In 1846 a sailing clipper--the Tornado of the Niagara line--arrived in New York before a Cunard steamer which had started with her reached Boston. The performances of American clippers and the splendid traditions in the art of ship building may perhaps to some slight extent explain the suc- cessive victories of American yachts in the competition for the interna- tional cup. But although fast sailing ships strove very hard to hold their own against their unpopular rivals, the contest was unequal, for while the clippers embodied the last and highest efforts of the ship builders, the steamships--contemporaries--were but the crude first fruits of the labors of the marine engineer. The greatest public interest has always followed the development of the Atlantic passenger vessels. Competition on this crowded highway has been keener than on the less frequented routes, and the ships that travel over it have naturally led the van of progress. There are, as yet, no steamers in the world so huge as those which cross the Atlantic; no engines so powerful; no floating populations so great. These vessels are the monarchs of the sea, and the history of their growth is typical. of that of the great ocean ships all the world over. It is desirable, there- fore, first to epitomize the story of the Atlantic service, the commercial success of which was largely due to the late Mr. Samuel Cunard, who had long cherished a dream of making ocean travel as regular as that by rail. Mr. Cunard was a Quaker, residing at Halifax, N. = and had indulged this idea for some years before the date when the voyages of the Sirius and Great Western, though commercially unsuccessful, had demonstrated the possibility of ocean steam navigation. When in 1839 the British admiralty issued circulars inviting tenders for a steamship mail service, Mr. Cunard, who had already acquired considerable experience in carrying mail between Boston, Newfoundland and Bermuda, determined - days, or one-half that generally occupied by the sailing vessels. -trips were made. even then in eleven days and a few hours, while others to undertake the contract. Through the influence of Mr. Burns, a ship- ping merchant, and others in Glasgow and Liverpool, a capital of £270,- 000 was subscribed, and a seven-years' contract with the admiralty was secured, stipulating for a fortnightly service between Liverpool and Hali- fax and Boston, at a subsidy of £60,000 per annum. From that year (1839) aes the beginning of the Atlantic steam mail service and of the Cunard ine. BEGINNING OF THE ATLANTIC STEAM MAIL SERVICE. Four steamers were built by Mr.:€unard's company. The first of these, the Britannia, was launched on Feb. 5, 1840, and sailed for the United States on July 4, a Friday; and although this day is looked upon by sailors as an unlucky one, yet it proved far otherwise in the case of this ship and of the company of which she was the pioneer. The advent of these steamships was a remarkable event in the history of the Atlantic, and one of international interest. When Mr. Cunard arrived at Boston on the Britannia he received within twenty-four hours over 1,800 invita- tions to dinner. When in the winter of 1844 the vessel was frozen up in Boston harbor, the citizens: went to the enormous labor and expense of cutting her out, so that the mails might not be delayed. Although this involved cutting a canal through seven miles of ice, ranging from 2 to 6 ft. in thickness, at a cost of $20,000, the people of Boston refused to be reimbursed by the United States mail department. These early Cunard- ers were built of wood and propelled by paddles, and they carried first- class passengers only, of whom 115 could be accommodated, though there were seldom as many as 100 on board on a trip. Poor Irish emigrants, and also many people of moderate means, were compelled to travel by sailing clippers, because the steamship fares--30 to 35 guineas (about $155 to $180)--were as high as they now are on some of the finest "grey- hounds" in the service. The time occupied by the passages varied much more widely than it does at present. The average was about ae ome occupfed sixteen and seventeen days. ~The early vessels of the Cunard line maintained a steady lead, which has never been permanently. lost by the company during the sixty years of its history, Year by year additions were made to its fleet, with increase -in capacity and power, but with the rentention nevertheless for a long time of the old. models--the wooden hulls, the paddles, and Napier's famous side lever engines. The initiative of 1840 was a bold one, but when success seemed assured rivals entered into the field. The pro- -prietors of the Great Western built Brunel's Great Britain, a vessel which but for an accident might have proved a formidable competitor. She was much longer.and more powerful than any other steamer then afloat, being 322 ft. long and of 3,270 tons, was constructed of iron, eleven years before that material was adopted by the Cunard company, and was the first vessel of that class fitted with a screw. But like the Great Eastern subsequently. she was born before her time. Placed on the Atlantic service in 1845, she ended her connection with it fourteen months later by being wrecked in Dundrum bay on the Irish coast. Floated eleven months later, she had a chequered career, and was not long ago still in service--as a coal hulk. With her accident all serious competition from the port of Bristol ceased. The first great rivalry with the Cunarders came from an American company--the Collins line--which began its career in 1849. Then fol- lowed for a few years a race of giants. Advantage had been taken in building the Collins' vessels of the experience of their rivals. The com- pany was, in addition, subsidized by congress. Their ships gained a speed over the Cunarders by a few hours on the voyage, and in addition freights were cut down by nearly one-half. The American company lost heavily in its attempt to regain the prestige which had been wrested by steam from the clippers, for the Cunard company having a strong financial position, soon built more powerful vessels--the Arabia and the Persia-- the latter bringing the passage down to between nine and ten days. At last, in 1858, the unequal contest came to an end through the withdrawal of the Collins line. Besides having sunk large sums of money, this com- pany had unfortunately lost two vessels--the Arctic, which was run down by the Vesta in 1854, with terrible loss of life; and the Pacific, of which nothing was ever heard after she sailed from Liverpool on June 29, 1856, with 240 persons on board. ' From these losses. and disasters the company never recovered, and their rivals retained their leading position in the Atlantic trade. The Collins company left one permanent legacy--the barber's shop--which was unknown on Atlantic liners until introduced on their vessels. INMAN LINE SERVICE ON THE ATLANTIC. In 1850, some time before the disappearance of this ill-fated company, the Inman line--now the International Navigation Co.--commenced its career. It is curious that, although a regular Atlantic steam service had then existed for ten years, Mr. Inman was the first to perceive the advan- tage of an emigrant service from Great Britain to the United States, and his ships were the first which were built to accommodate second-class and steerage passengers, for whom no provision had previously been made by any other line. The experiment proved so remunerative that. three years later, it was followed by the Cunard company. At the present time all Atlantic liners, with a very few exceptions, carry more emigrants from Europe to the United States than saloon passengers. Iron as a building material, and the screw in the place of paddles, were also first successfully employed on the Atlantic by the Inman company, for the unfortunate Great Britain, it must be remembered, had fallen early out of the running. Steam steering gear was first adopted by the Inman com- pany on the City of Brussels in 1869, and this also was the first vessel which reduced the Atlantic voyage to less than eight days. The Inman proved a more formidable rival to the Cunard steamers than the Collins line had been. But the rivalry between the Cunard and Inman vessels was never so bitter as that with the Collins company, and there was--as we now know--plenty of room for each concern, in view of the rapidly increasing volume of Atlantic trade. The ocean "tramps," designed solely for slow transit of freight, now became greatly developed in capacity; and as a result of their competition for freights, the passenger