It was not until 1852 that the Cunard Company were so thoroughly convinced of the capabilities of either iron ship-building or the screw propeller as to give both a trial. Four iron screw steamers were then built, and these were the first owned by this line which were fitted with accommodation for emigrants. The next year six more iron screw steamers were added, and connection formed with the chief ports of the Mediterranean; and when the Crimean War broke out a number of the Cunard ships were employed as transports. But from one reason and another the screw propeller had not found general favour among passengers. The vibration it caused, its unpleasant “racing” in bad weather, and the new motion as compared to that of the old paddle-wheel, allied to the usual obstinate temperament, showed that the earlier type had still to be retained for a while. Following on the medieval custom, the stern of these early steamships was still regarded as the place of honour, and the saloon passengers were accordingly placed abaft the machinery, which was amidships. Thus placed, the traveller was doubtfully privileged, for the close proximity of the propeller made life on shipboard exceedingly trying to the nerves, and there were many who, having voyaged in the old ocean-going sailing ships, looked back with mixed feelings to the longer but less nerve-racking journeys. The strain on the early screw engine was very considerable when the vessel was pitching fore and aft into the Atlantic seas. Being of comparatively small size, its movements in such circumstances were far more lively than in a modern, lengthy liner, which is able to stretch over a longer span. Consequently, as the bow came down into the sea and the stern rose out, the propeller was much more prone to race wildly, and the gearing, such as we saw in the engines of the Great Britain, was not infrequently unable to endure the terrible strain to which it was put. It was for this reason that the screw engines were afterwards made direct-acting.

The Cunard Company decided to build their next ship of iron, but with paddle-wheels. This was the Persia, launched in 1856, a vessel of 3,300 tons burthen, with accommodation for 250 passengers. But she was even surpassed by the Scotia, which was built in 1862, and is interesting as being the last and the finest paddle-ship which was ever made for their Atlantic service. An illustration of this vessel will be found opposite page 130. She was fitted with the greatest luxury of the time, to carry 275 cabin passengers, had seven water-tight compartments, and a double bottom, so that even if she should have had the bad luck to run ashore she would still most probably be able to endure. Nowadays most steamships are fitted with this excellent arrangement, which was first adopted in the Great Eastern, through the ingenuity of Brunel, to which we shall refer presently. But the Scotia turned out to be also a fast boat, and materially altered the time spent in crossing the Atlantic; she lowered the record to just two hours under the nine days. Her engines were of the familiar side-lever type, and were the finest examples of their kind that were ever made. The cylinders were 100 feet in diameter, and steam at 20 lb. pressure was supplied by eight boilers with forty furnaces, the speed attained being 13½ knots per hour; her daily coal consumption was 159 tons. She could carry 1,800 tons of coal, and was exceedingly strongly constructed. We can obtain some idea of those paddle-wheels shown in the illustration when we remark that they were no less than 40 feet in diameter. She was afterwards turned into a “telegraph” ship for use in cable-laying, and her paddles changed for twin screws. It was not until about 1896 that her water-tight bulkheads were put to practical use; for as the result of an explosion on board of vapour from spirit her bow was blown out of her, and the water began to rush in. Her collision bulkhead was also damaged, but happily the second bulkhead saved the ship from foundering.

Turning our attention away from the North Atlantic for a while, we shall be able to see that steamships on other routes were now fast passing from the olden types, when designers and builders were working with only a minimum of data on which to base their achievements. We have already referred to the highly important knowledge which was gradually being obtained concerning the relations between the hull of a ship and the water in which she is floated. One of the greatest authorities on this subject about the middle of the last century was John Scott Russell, who worked out a theory regarding the resistance of the ship passing through the water. He it was who contended that the hull should only move the water out of the way sufficiently to allow the widest section of the ship to pass through, and to do this in such a manner as should cause the least amount of friction and disturbance of the water, so that, when the ship was gone by, the particles of water should be restored to their original quietude. It is important to bear in mind that the design of a ship must be made with regard to the speed which it is intended to get out of her. Thus, it is now a well-known principle that to give a ship highly powerful engines so that she is forced beyond her proper speed only makes the waves diverge from the sides and waste themselves instead of travelling with the vessel and giving it a forward impetus.

The model of the hull in the illustration facing page 134 represents the steamship Victoria, which was built in 1852 of iron, and designed by those two great geniuses Brunel and Scott Russell for the Australian Royal Mail Steam Navigation Company. Even the least practised eye on looking at her lines can see that she possessed speed, and it was this ship that gained the £500 prize offered by the Colonies for the fastest voyage to Australia, her time from Gravesend to Adelaide being sixty days, including two days’ delay at St. Vincent. The Victoria was designed as embodying the wave-line theory and for a speed of ten knots. It is not necessary to examine this model many moments before one realises how unmistakably the clumsy, ponderous hulls so characteristic of earlier years were now being replaced by sweet, graceful, non-resisting features. The hull of the Victoria was separated into a dozen water-tight compartments and displaced 3,000 tons, her length being 261 feet, with a breadth of 38 feet, or approximately seven beams to the length. She had a two-bladed screw, and when this was not in use, and the Victoria proceeded under sail-power alone, the propeller was fixed vertically. Thus arranged, the ship could sail 5½ knots, but it is interesting to remark that when the screw was allowed to revolve freely the speed of the ship was increased another couple of knots.

It was in this ship that a type of engine was fitted to which, so far, we have not referred. This was the oscillating kind, and was destined to become pretty well universal in paddle-ships, though not without serious opposition at one time. This type had been patented as far back as 1827, by Joseph Maudslay, and in the Aaron Manby, already mentioned, the machinery was of an oscillating nature, for which Manby had obtained a patent in 1821, but even farther back still—in 1785—William Murdoch had proposed the use of oscillating cylinders. It is only fair to Maudslay to say that he had independently worked out this arrangement, and so afforded yet another instance of the possibility, which I have enunciated before, of different inventors working at the same set of problems and bringing about a similar method of solution. In the accompanying illustration is shown Maudslay’s original oscillating engine. In this type the cylinders, instead of being fixed, oscillate, and the necessity of the connecting rod is dispensed with, for the cylinder is placed immediately underneath the crank shaft, as a reference to the illustration will show. Each cylinder is mounted on trunnions in the same manner as a cannon, being placed at a point about the middle of the cylinder’s length, so that it can swing, or oscillate, in such a way as to correspond with the arc which the crank makes in its movement. Thus there are both weight and valuable space saved. In the instance before us the condenser is placed between the two cylinders; the central trunnions communicate with the condenser, and the outside trunnions with the steam pipe. But Maudslay’s engines did not at that time find the appreciation which had been hoped for, and it was not until 1838, when they were re-introduced by John Penn, that they received their full favour. We shall return to the oscillating type when we come to consider the Great Eastern. But we may remark that the interesting steamship illustrated opposite page 130 was also provided with the oscillating pattern. This is the packet steamer Pacific, which was built in 1853 for the Mediterranean service, and is another example of a vessel constructed on the wave-line system. She was built of iron, and had nine water-tight compartments.

The Pacific was interesting in another feature, in that she generated her steam in four tubular boilers, each of which had five furnaces. Briefly the evolution of the boiler had been on this wise: As originally fitted in the Clermont and Comet it was simply a water-tank set in brickwork, and was nearly full of water, with the fire outside, or, to use the expression generally employed, “externally fired.” In those days the pressure of the steam was not greater than the pressure of the air, which we saw to be 15 lb. to the square inch. Then came a modification of this in which the furnace was placed inside the boiler, the advantage being that, with the water all round, the latter could be the more readily heated. This developed into the marine “box” boiler, with internal flat-sided flues and furnaces. This type continued to be fairly universal until about 1845, but the utmost pressure of steam which these were capable of enduring was not above 35 lb. or thereabouts. But tubes instead of the flat flues began to be introduced about the year 1850, owing to the suggestion of the Earl of Dundonald, and these were to be of about double the diameter of those which had been common to locomotives for the previous twenty years. The pressure was soon raised considerably, but there was a strong prejudice against using high pressures at sea, and the idea was not encouraged.

In the same year that the Pacific took the water was launched the Himalaya, of which a beautiful little model is here illustrated. She was built for the P. and O. Line. This fine ship-rigged steamship was constructed of iron at Blackwall in 1853, and in the following year was bought by the British Government and steamed away from Plymouth with soldiers for the Crimea. She was of 4,690 tons displacement, and in that year made a record run from Gibraltar at an average speed of 13½ knots. Originally she had been built for carrying both cargo and passengers, but now she is, or was, ending her sphere of usefulness as a coal hulk at Devonport. Her coal “endurance”—she could carry 1,200 tons—made her a valuable asset, and her six water-tight bulkheads rendered her still more efficient. As will be seen from the illustration, she had a single propeller, and this was driven by yet another type of engine, which we have now to consider. We refer to the vertical trunk engine. We shall be able to understand this better if we examine the illustration facing page 132, which reproduces a drawing of a similar type of engines installed in the P. and O. Candia, built a year later than the Himalaya. In the trunk engine the piston-rod was done away with, so that the connecting rod is attached directly to the piston within a trunk or tube. This trunk passes through a steam-tight stuffing-box in the cylinder cover, and is made wide enough to allow of the lateral vibrations of the connecting rod inside. As long as steam pressures did not exceed 35 lb. this proved to be satisfactory; but the friction of the stuffing-boxes when they became of large dimensions was a serious drawback. The Candia, for which these engines were made, was a screw ship, and the cylinders were placed in a fore-and-aft position. By means of this type of engine, employing trunks, the height required was greatly lessened, and it was not necessary, as will have been noticed was essential in the case of the Great Britain’s engines, that part of them should come up through the deck. Thus, the trunk type meant a saving of valuable space. Between the cylinders were arranged the condensers, which were of the jet type. We may stop to remind the reader that the condenser had been the invention of Watt, who had improved on the Newcomen engine not merely by covering over the top of the cylinder, but by condensing the exhausted steam in a separate vessel, called a condenser. This condensation he brought about by means of a jet of cold water, and the same principle was still employed in the Candia. Condensation having taken place, the water thus formed, together with any air which has got in, is then drawn off by the air-pumps, which will be seen in the illustration to be worked from an intermediate crank. It will be remarked on glancing at the left of the picture that the Candia’s crank shaft was connected with the propeller shaft by means of spur gearing, which doubled the speed of the screw, and so of the ship, but yet allowed the actual engines to run comparatively slowly. This toothed wheel idea was a better method than that employed in the Great Britain’s engines, though it was only just one stage better. There was a rooted objection in the early days of the screw to running the engines at a great speed, and thus it was only by some such means of gearing that the propeller was made to revolve quickly. In the course of time, when a wider experience and knowledge of engineering matters had been obtained, the gearing was done away with and the engines became direct-acting, and so there ensued far less friction, an absence of complication, and less expense caused by gearing. At the same time the power obtained by the newer method became more direct.

A customary apparatus nowadays adopted for steamships is the surface condenser, and in the effort to increase the steam pressures this has been a potent factor. But it had already been tried by Watt, by David Napier, and re-introduced by Samuel Hall in 1831. The surface condenser consists of a number of brass tubes about three quarters of an inch in diameter, through which a stream of cold water circulates. This necessarily keeps the pipes cool, and thus condenses the exhaust steam which is thrown on to them from the cylinder; it is practically a kind of tubular boiler. Instead of the jet, as in the older form of condenser, it is the outside of the pipes which performs the office, and the air-pump does its work as before. The condensed steam is now available for feeding the boiler, and after being filtered the feed pump draws it into a heater and thence it is led into the boiler once more. If the reader will now turn to the illustration facing page 132 once more, he will see in the right hand of the picture that in the Candia the feed and bilge pumps were worked by small beams from an eccentric.

By being able to use this water for the boilers a great economy was effected, but in some of the P. and O. liners the boilers suffered rather badly, since an injurious chemical action was set up owing to the continuous return of the same water backwards and forwards from the condenser. Nowadays the problems connected with the condenser have been fully mastered, and the advantage of being able to use distilled water is obvious; for one of the surest and quickest methods of bringing about ruin is to use sea-water for the boiler, over which it will lay a thick crust of salt.

The third illustration facing page 134 is interesting as representative of a type of coasting steamer introduced about the year 1855. She shows very well the simplest form of an iron ship propelled with a screw, and evinces sufficient resemblance to the dying sailing ship before the steamer had taken on a distinctive character of her own. In a word, here is the steamship not in her crudity, as in the case of the Clermont, but certainly in her elementary form without any of those extra decks and houses which were still to come, and which to-day give such distinct personality to the steamship. It will be seen that she is just a flush-decked vessel, with a central protection amidships for her engines and boilers. There is no forecastle, no poop, and in the development of type she stands at the beginning. She was built for the North Sea trade, and in bad weather must have been a singularly wet boat. She was only of 677 tons gross register, and the absence of any shelter would, when steaming to windward in a bad sea, cause her to be swept from end to end. Similarly, her stern being equally unprotected by either poop or quarter deck, she would be at the mercy of a bad following sea. It was not surprising that this elementary type soon gave way to those modifications that we shall see hereafter. In design of her body this present model illustrates again Scott Russell’s system of obtaining a capacious ship combined with the qualities of slipping through the water with the minimum of resistance. This will be especially noticeable by regarding the long straight middle body. She was propelled by oscillating engines, and a two-bladed screw, having also sails on her three masts.

And so we come to that famous monstrosity and wonder of her decade the Great Eastern, some idea of whose appearance will be obtainable from a model of her, illustrated herewith. Here again will be found a repetition of a curious rig with the half-dozen masts, of which the second and third carried yards and square-sails, and the others the usual fore-and-aft sails set on the gaffs here seen. Although she carried one triangular headsail, yet this was a staysail, and it is significant that in this notable ship we find the disappearance of the bowsprit, a change that is so characteristic of the modern liner. Much more than either the Great Western or the Great Britain this epoch-making monster stands for something altogether distinctive in the evolution of the steamship. Frankly, in spite of her virtues, she was a creature born out of due time. Historically, she exhibits in no uncertain manner the extraordinary and almost incredible speed at which the development of the steamship had progressed in fifty years, during which period designers, ship-builders, and engineers had to feel their way in the most cautious manner. No ship was built with such a length as hers until the White Star Oceanic in 1899; no vessel ever had such a beam until the coming of the Mauretania and Lusitania, and even they only exceed the Great Eastern’s extreme width by a mere five feet. But it is half a century since the latter was built, when all the experience that we possess now was not yet obtained.

Originally she had been named the Leviathan, and her beginning happened as follows: Already the fact had come to be appreciated that there was a superior advantage in a large steamer compared with a ship of smaller size when voyages of considerable distances were contemplated, and that, as already pointed out on a previous page, length of hull, other things being equal, makes for speed. In designing the Great Eastern with an extreme length of 692 feet she spanned over so large a number of wave-lengths that the possibility of pitching was very decidedly reduced. But even in smooth water length still means speed, and to take the case of a rowing “eight” and compare it with a single “sculler,” we find that this law is well exemplified. Without pursuing so interesting a point beyond our limitations of subject, we might remark that quite recently an expert took the trouble to work out data obtained from the performances respectively of a Leander “eight” and a “sculler” as observed at a Henley Regatta. Although the displacement of the eight-oared craft works out at about 240 pounds per rowing man, or including the coxswain at about 217 pounds, whilst the sculler only displaces 208 lb., yet for all that the speed of the longer boat was found to be greater in the proportion as 9.75 knots are to 8.12 knots, and this, bear in mind, while the eight is carrying a ninth man who contributes nothing to the speed of the craft. We mention this as a simple example of that important fact of the superiority of length in ship-making, an importance that is now exhibited so clearly in the enormous lengths of the latest liners.

Brunel, who had already broken steamship records by his previous daring essays, suggested to the Eastern Navigation Company the building of such a ship as would be able to carry an unheard-of number of passengers, a very large amount of cargo, and at the same time be capable of steaming all the way to Australia without having to coal on the voyage. These virtues, together with her speed of fifteen knots, would, it was thought, enable her to attract such a large amount of business that she would handsomely repay her owners. The contract was eventually given to Scott Russell’s firm, who were entrusted with the building of the ship, together with the paddle-wheel engines. The screw engines were made by Messrs. James Watt and Co., so that three of the names most prominently connected with the history of the steamship were especially associated with the construction of this leviathan. Brunel was assisted in the designing by Scott Russell, and the latter’s wave-line principle was followed. The building of the ship began on the 1st of May, 1854, and on the last day of January, 1858, she was sent into the water at Millwall. But this was not done without some difficulty. The first attempt to launch this enormous mass of 12,000 tons was unsuccessful. Her weight was resting on a couple of gigantic cradles which were to slide down an incline to the water; but they only moved a few feet and then stopped. Finally, three months after the first effort, she was slowly persuaded into the water, side-ways, by hydraulic machinery. Instead of running her on the route for which she had been built, where her exceptional abilities might have been utilised, she was put to compete with the steamships already running on the Atlantic, for which short voyage she was not specially suitable, and financially she spelt ruin all round. First, the attempts to launch her, and the ensuing delay cost £120,000 and the company, unable to bear the expense, was wound up. Then the new company which bought her for £160,000 were ill-advised to employ her in the American trade, for neither as a passenger ship nor as a cargo carrier could she be made to pay her way. Subsequently she was used in laying the Atlantic cable, and was handed over to the ship-breakers in 1888, who brought her career to an end during the next couple of years.

The Great Eastern was, in accordance with Brunel’s idea, propelled by both paddle-wheels and a screw. An illustration is here given of a model of her paddle-engines, which were of the oscillating type. It will be borne in mind that the leading advantages of this type lay in the fact of their comparative lightness in weight, and their economy as regards space. If the reader will just glance at the illustration which faces page 138 of the Great Eastern’s longitudinal section, he will be able to see what little room these engines actually needed. It will be noticed in her paddle-engines that each of two cylinders drove a crank, the cylinders being placed vertically but at an inclined angle. Each paddle-wheel could, if desired, be driven separately. The condensers were of the jet type, and there were two air-pumps, which were driven by a single crank in the middle of the paddle shaft. The paddle-wheels were tremendous, weighing ninety tons each, and measuring fifty-six feet in diameter. But the Great Eastern amply proved how unsuitable the paddle-wheel was for ocean work. Every time the big monster rolled in a bad sea a great strain was put on the machinery; these vast projections, too, offered not merely increased windage and accentuated the ship’s general unwieldiness, but afforded a fine target for the Atlantic waves to smash against. Once the Great Eastern, during a gale in the year 1861, suffered pretty badly in this respect, when the paddle-wheels were destroyed. She was afterwards fitted with wheels five feet smaller in diameter, and of greater strength.

In the next illustration will be seen a model of her screw engines, whose position in the ship will be found on referring again to the longitudinal section. These were, it will be noticed, no longer of that early type which needed gearing, but worked directly, the cylinders being placed horizontally. The number of cylinders was four, each of which had two piston-rods, and steam was supplied by half a dozen double-ended tubular boilers of the rectangular or “box” type. For the benefit of the non-technical reader we may explain that the object seen in the foreground of the picture, extending from the centre to the right-hand side, is what is commonly called the “link motion gear,” which is employed for reversing the engines when it is required to send the ship astern. This controls the slide valves which allow the steam to enter the cylinders. The principle of the link motion is just this: two eccentrics are placed side by side on the shaft, but opposite to each other. Each of them is connected by a rod to one end of the “link,” which is curved in shape. In this illustration it will be easily recognised at the right-hand side in the front. Now, as the link is moved up or down, so it controls the eccentric. If it is lowered, for instance, then one eccentric only is working the valve, but if the link is raised the other eccentric will control the valve, and so the latter will work in the opposite direction to which it did before. Thus, by using one eccentric, steam enters the cylinder at one end first, while if the other eccentric is employed steam will enter first at the other. Thus it becomes possible to make the engine turn in whichever direction is desired by regulating the end of the cylinder by which the steam shall first enter.

The Great Eastern’s propeller had four blades, and an interesting arrangement was adopted so that when the ship was proceeding by means of her paddles, sails, or both, the screw propeller was kept revolving by means of two auxiliary engines in order that the speed of the ship through the water might not be diminished by the drag of the screw. Actual results showed that this ship could do her fifteen knots with screw and paddles, but her average speed was one knot less. Under screw alone she could do nine; under paddle power alone she did seven and a quarter. It will thus be noticed that when using both paddles and screw she ought to have done better, and this failing is explained by asserting that the paddle-wheels and the screw caused a resistance too great for their respective engines.

The construction of this ship calls for more space than we can here devote thereto, but some of the important features may be enumerated. She was of great strength longitudinally, and from the keel to the water-line her hull was double. The longitudinal bulkheads extended to the topmost deck, and materially added to her strength, while the inner skin just mentioned not merely gave added strength, but was an extension of the double-bottom idea, and so increased her chances in case of collision. Furthermore, the space between the two skins was available for water ballast, so as to preserve the trim of the ship as she neared the end of her voyage, and her coal bunkers were becoming lightened. Transversely, also, the ship was divided by iron bulkheads into water-tight compartments in addition to the longitudinal ones. The iron plates out of which the ship’s skin was made varied from a half to three-quarters of an inch thick. The Great Eastern was able to give the world a very convincing proof of the utility of the double bottom, for she had the bad luck to run on a rock, and although more than a hundred feet of her outer hull was afterwards found to be damaged, yet she was able to complete her voyage without the water getting through into her hull proper.

For steering so large a vessel as the Great Eastern the usual type of steering-wheel would clearly have entailed the expenditure of very considerable physical effort; so, for the first time, was introduced in this ship a steam steering gear, an example that is nowadays followed by almost all steamers of any size, including even excursion boats. This arrangement necessitates the use of a miniature steam engine, the two cylinders working cranks, and the shaft causing the drum containing the steering chain to revolve. Any movement of the steering wheel admits steam, and as soon as the steersman ceases to turn his wheel so quickly does the little engine cease to work.

We have no desire to try the patience of the reader by presenting a mass of statistics, but those who delight in comparisons may be interested to learn how the Great Eastern would appear if put alongside the Mauretania. The latter displaces 40,000 tons, the Great Eastern displaced 32,000. The big Cunarder is 790 feet long, between perpendiculars, while the Great Eastern was 680 feet. The latter possessed a combined horse-power—paddle and screw engines—of 11,600, while the Cunarder has 70,000. And so we could continue. But now that we have seen to what unheard-of limits the steamship had shown herself capable of reaching by the end of the sixth decade in the nineteenth century—how she had, step by step, grown from moderation to exaggeration—let us now examine her progress during the next twenty years, in which she passed through her transition period.