On the other hand, we have mentioned that the screw has its drawbacks owing to the possibility of its suffering injury. It was therefore decided that this could be avoided by placing it in a tunnel some distance forward of the stern, and thus protected against all likely damage. (A similar method is also employed in the steam fire-boats which are used by the London Fire Brigade on the Thames, and are summoned whenever a river-side warehouse or factory gets ablaze.) If reference is made to the illustration on page 257, this tunnel will be discernible. In order to leave nothing to chance a water-tight hatch is placed in the cock-pit floor just over the propeller, through which any pieces of sea-weed, rope, or other undesirable matter can easily be removed without having to beach the craft first. These little ships measure about 50 feet long, and about 15 feet wide; they are driven by direct-acting, compound, surface-condensing engines, which give to them a speed of about nine knots.

In certain parts of the world where the rivers are shallow, either at their banks or in mid-stream, steam navigation is only possible by means of “stern-wheelers.” Such instances occur on the West Coast of Africa, and also in America. In general idea, though not in detail, this method is a reversion to the antiquated ship already discussed in Hulls’ idea for a tow-boat. The stern of these steamships to which we are referring is not ended in the same continuous straight line, but is raised slightly upwards at an angle so that the paddle-wheel is able to revolve freely without requiring such a draught of water as otherwise it would have needed if placed on the ship’s side in the usual manner. This will be seen on examining the stern of the Inez Clarke, illustrated opposite this page. This stern-wheeler was built as far back as 1879, but the points on which we are insisting are here well demonstrated. The draught of the ship, notwithstanding the weight of her engines, was only 15 inches, so that she was enabled to go into the very shallowest water, where even a bottle could float. Nevertheless her stern-wheel was sufficiently powerful to send her along at 15 miles per hour. Her measurements are 130 feet long, and 28 feet wide. Steamboats possessing a similar principle to that exhibited in the Inez Clarke, but much different in the arrangement, are to-day in use on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, being used as tugs to tow along a large fleet of flat-boats containing coal. As much as fifty to sixty thousand tons are taken in tow at one time.

To North America, with its fine long rivers, the steamboat has been, as Fulton in his foresight prophesied it would be, a highly useful institution. To the European mind the vast possibilities of the mighty Mississippi come as a shock when fully realised. To quote the very first sentence in one of the most popular books which that most popular writer, Mark Twain, ever wrote, “The Mississippi is well worth reading about”; so, also, we might add, are its steamboats, but in our limited space we can only barely indicate some of their essential features. The illustration facing page 258 shows a couple of these, the Natchez and the Eclipse, racing against each other along this great river by the light of the moon at midnight. The first thing that strikes the attention is the enormous height to which the decks of these steamboats are raised. The pilot-house is higher still, and will be recognised as about midway between the water-line and the top of the long, lanky funnels. Even to Mark Twain the height seemed to be terrific. “When I stood in her pilot-house,” says the author of “Life on the Mississippi,” “I was so far above the water that I seemed to be perched on a mountain; and her decks stretched so far away, fore and aft, below me, that I wondered how I could ever have considered the little Paul Jones a large craft. When I looked down her long, gilded saloon, it was like gazing through a splendid tunnel.... The boiler deck—i.e. the second storey of the boat, so to speak—was as spacious as a church, it seemed to me; so with the forecastle; and there was no pitiful handful of deck-hands, firemen, and roustabouts down there, but a whole battalion of men. The fires were fiercely glaring from a long row of furnaces, and over them were eight huge boilers.”

The accompanying picture, which is taken from a lithograph printed in 1855, shows two of the finest contemporary Mississippi steamboats. The Eclipse was propelled by a high-pressure engine with a single cylinder, the paddle-wheels being 40 feet wide. Her two boilers were placed forward about 3½ feet above the deck, having internal return tubes, such as we discussed at an earlier stage. The waste gases returned through the tubes and escaped through the funnels, which rose 50 feet above the hurricane deck. This ship only drew 5 feet, and measured 360 feet long and 42 feet wide, whilst the hull was 8 feet deep. For fuel, rosin and pitch pine as well as coal were used. Mark Twain has left us some details of the keenness with which these and similar Mississippi steamboats used to race.

“In the olden times,” he wrote, “whenever two fast boats started out on a race, with a big crowd of people looking on, it was inspiriting to hear the crews sing, especially if the time were night-fall, and the forecastle lit up with the red glare of the torch-baskets. Racing was royal fun. The public always had the idea that racing was dangerous; whereas the opposite was the case.... No engineer was ever sleepy or careless when his heart was in a race. He was constantly on the alert, trying gauge-cocks and watching things. The dangerous place was on slow, plodding boats, where the engineers drowsed around and allowed chips to get into the ‘doctor,’ and shut off the water supply from the boilers. In the ‘flush times’ of steam-boating, a race between two notorious fleet steamers was an event of vast importance.... Every encumbrance that added weight, or exposed a resisting surface to wind or water, was removed.... When the Eclipse and the A. L. Shotwell ran their great race many years ago, it was said that pains were taken to scrape the gilding off the fanciful device which hung between the Eclipse’s chimneys and that for one trip the captain left off his kid gloves and had his head shaved. But I always doubted these things.”

In 1870 the Natchez ran from New Orleans to Natchez, a distance of 268 miles, in seventeen days seventeen hours. The most famous race of all, and one that created national interest, was that in the year 1870, between the Robert E. Lee and the Natchez, from New Orleans to St. Louis, a distance of 1,218 miles. The former covered the journey in three days eighteen hours fourteen minutes, the latter in three days twenty-one hours fifty-eight minutes, but the officers of the Natchez claimed seven hours for having had to stop through fog, and repairs to the machinery.

But let us pass further North. The Hudson has, since the time of Fulton, been famous for its steam-craft, and the impetus which necessarily followed after the success of the Clermont, and her successors, has not yet ceased to exist. As representative of the Hudson River type of boats in vogue during the ’sixties, the model of the steamer Empire facing page 258 is not without interest, since it shows, the half-way transition between the Clermont and the ultra-modern built-up ship as in the illustration facing page 262. Like her other sisters, the Empire, it will be seen, has a very light draught, and a characteristic feature of the development of the North American passenger side-wheel steamer is here to be noted in embryo, and as pushed to its furthest limits, in the case of the Commonwealth. I am calling attention to the manner in which the American custom extends the steamship’s sponsons or “guards” (as they are called). In a British paddle-wheel steamer, such as one finds employed on passenger or tug service, the sponsons are quite short. (This can easily be seen by reference to the Dromedary opposite page 240.) But the American fashion is to allow these not to end suddenly, but gradually fine off at bow and stern so that the deck is carried well out-board. Forward is the pilot house, the passenger accommodation being provided in the centre of the “guard” deck and upper deck. The length of this vessel was 336 feet, whilst the breadth of the hull proper was 28 feet, though including “guards” 61 feet. In many of the Hudson steamers the strange sight is still seen of the use of the old walking-beam which penetrates through the top of the deck. As we have already discussed this elsewhere, it is scarcely necessary here to refer to it further, but the sectional model illustrated opposite this page will show quite clearly this principle.

One of the best known steamship companies in the United States is the Fall River Line, belonging to the New England Navigation Company. The Fall River Line runs from New York to Boston, and their vessels are of exceptional interest as being propelled by paddle-wheels notwithstanding that their size is in some cases of from four to six thousand tons. Characteristic, too, is the extent to which the decks tier aloft and spread out beyond the hull of the ship. Among their fleet may be reckoned the Priscilla, Puritan, and Providence, vessels which vary in length from over, to just under, 400 feet, with a beam of about 50 feet, but including “guards” about another 30 feet. Opposite this page will be seen the Commonwealth, the flagship of this celebrated fleet, and the most modern. Instead of the paddle-boxes rising to a great height, they are absorbed by the excessive amount of top-hamper. To such an extent, also, has the widest beam of the ship been pushed that the paddle-wheels are scarcely discernible, being quite underneath the “guards,” instead of projecting from the hull. The Commonwealth plies between New York and Boston via Newport and the Fall River, and is the largest and most magnificent steamship built for service on inland waters. Some idea of her value may be gathered when we remark that she cost £400,000 to build. It will be seen that she has been given a high bow, for the reason that she must be a good sea-boat, since part of her route is exposed to the Atlantic. She is 456 feet long, 96 feet wide (reckoning in the “guards”), and has sleeping accommodation for two thousand people. This voyage is performed in about twelve hours, mostly by night, from New York to the Fall River, and the retention of the paddle-wheel gives an absence of vibration, and enables the nerve-wrecked citizen to sleep as peacefully as on shore. The Commonwealth is steady in a sea-way, and has pushed the cult of luxury just about as far as it can go, whilst yet retaining any of the accustomed characteristics of the ship. Practically these craft are remarkably up-to-date hotels moved by a pair of paddle-wheels. Replete with their barber’s shops, cafés, libraries, saloons, orchestra, galleries, stairways, dining-rooms, spacious bedrooms, kitchens, and other features too numerous to mention, they are representative afloat of the prevailing passion ashore for luxury and personal comfort. The Commonwealth, like her sisters of the same fleet, is built of steel, and for greater safety she has seven bulkheads, which extend to the main deck, and are so installed that no carelessness can leave the doors open. Her hull is double and the space between the bottoms is divided into numerous water-tight compartments, whilst collision bulkheads are also placed at each side of the steamer at the “guards.” Her speed is twenty-two knots per hour, which is obtained by compound engines, with two high-pressure cylinders. The paddle-wheels are of the feathering type, with curved steel buckets, and in addition to the usual steam pumps, there is a large pump for use on the fire-sprinkler system which covers the whole interior of the ship. The ship has a powerful search-light, and an electric lift to the kitchen. In case both her steam-steering and hand-gear should get out of order the ship can be steered by independent auxiliary gear attached direct to the rudder stock.

Having regard to the fact that it was North America which played so prominent a part in the history and introduction of the steamship, it is by no means unfitting that that country should also have developed the paddle-wheel steamboat to an extent that is entirely unknown in Great Britain. The difference in types is partly owing to the difference in tastes and habits between the two peoples, but also owing to the contrast in geographical arrangement. We in England have nothing comparable with the Hudson, for instance, and its fine, long sweep of navigable water; nor with the vast American Great Lakes, which, in a unique manner, have held out a special kind of encouragement to the steamship. As carriers not merely of cargoes, but also of passengers, especially during the tourist seasons, the steamships on the Great Lakes have attained the character rather analogous to the ocean liner than to the inland steamboat. The spirit of luxury is not concealed in these Lake liners, and some idea of one of the two-funnelled passenger steamboats now plying on the Great Lakes of America may be seen in the illustration facing this page of the City of Cleveland. The two characteristics already noted in the case of the Hudson and the Fall River steamships will here be noticed still further. We refer to the extent of the added decks, and to the increased beam which is given to the ship by means of the “guards.”

But perhaps the most extraordinary looking American steamship is the well-known “whale-back” which is in use on the Great Lakes as a cargo-carrier. Practically speaking she is just a whale-like steel tank with an engine and propeller at the stern. Anything but comely in appearance, she is something of the American counterpart of the British turret-ship, but with one difference. The American type has no turret, but is just a long curved box with two comparatively small erections at bow and stern respectively, as will be seen by examining the photograph of one of these vessels reproduced opposite page 264. But the design of these Lake steamers is to carry the largest amount of cargo with the lowest registered tonnage, and this object is attained with satisfactory results, for there is scarcely any space at all in the ships but is thus employed.

And with this we may bring our chapter to an end. We have now seen the rise, the gradual growth, and the specialisation of the steamship in many ways, and in many different localities whenever employed as a commercial money-earning concern. But the steamship, like the sailing ship, is not exclusively employed either for commerce or for war. With the latter kind of ships we have in the present volume no concern; but with regard to the development of the steam yacht we shall now have something to say.