Cross-section of the Great Western.

In 1809 the first steamboat, the Accommodation, was seen on the St. Lawrence, and in 1811 the first (built at Pittsburgh) appeared on the Mississippi. A year after this the Comet, already alluded to, was put upon the Clyde by Henry Bell. She was only 40 feet long on the keel, and 10 broad, with 2 small paddle-wheels on each side, driven by a gearing which geared into a wheel on the axle of each set of paddle-wheels. Her original engines are still in existence, and are deposited in the Museum at South Kensington, where they were set up by the same engineer (Mr. John Robertson) who placed them in the Comet.

Fulton also has the honor of being the first to design and build a war steamer, which for her time was a most remarkable production, and by far the largest steam vessel built before 1838. She was a fitting monument to the genius of the man who unfortunately did not live to see her completion and successful trials.

The Demologos, or Fulton the First, was laid down June 20, 1814, and launched October 29th of the same year. Her dimensions were: length, 150 feet; breadth, 56 feet; depth, 20 feet; water-wheel, 16 feet diameter, length of bucket 14 feet, dip 4 feet; engine, 48-inch cylinder, 5 feet stroke; boiler length 22 feet, breadth 12 feet, and depth 8 feet; tonnage, 2,475."

The commissioners appointed to examine her say in their report:

"She is a structure resting upon two boats, keels separated from end to end by a canal 15 feet wide and 66 feet long. One boat contains the caldrons of copper to prepare her steam. The vast cylinder of iron, with its piston,

levers, and wheels, occupies a part of its fellow; the great water-wheel revolves in the space between them; the main or gun deck supporting her armament is protected by a bulwark four feet ten inches thick of solid timber. is pierced by 30 port-holes, to enable as many 32-pounders to fire red-hot balls. She is rigged with 2 short masts, each of which supports a large lateen yard and sails. She has 2 bowsprits and jibs, and 4 rudders, 2 at each extremity of the boat, so that she can be steered with either end foremost. Her machinery is calculated for the addition of an engine which will discharge an immense column of water, which it is intended to throw upon the decks and through the ports of an enemy." She was also intended to carry 4 100-pounders.

She made her first trial on June 1, 1815, and on the Fourth of July she steamed outside of Sandy Hook and back, a distance of 53 miles, in 8 hours and 20 minutes. She was then supposably light, as it is stated that she was again tried September 11, 1815, with 26 of her guns on board, and ammunition and stores to bring her down to nearly 11 feet draught. She steamed from 4 to 5 miles an hour, Fulton having only promised 3, and may certainly be considered to have been a success. was never commissioned, but was used as a receiving ship at New York until June 4, 1829, when she accidentally blew up.

She

The general slowness with which men in the early part of the century received the idea of the mighty changes impending may be recognized when we look over the few publications connected with navigation then published. Mind seemed to move more slowly in those days; communication was tedious and difficult. Edinburgh was as far from London in length of time taken for the journey as is now New York from New Orleans; few papers were published; there were no scientific journals of value; no great associations of men given to meeting and discussing scientific questions excepting the few ponderous societies which dealt more in abstract questions than in the daily advances of the mechanical world.

It was thus that the steam vessel came slowly to the front, and that it took more than a third of the whole time which has elapsed since Fulton's successful effort to convince men that it might be possible to carry on traffic by steam across the Atlantic. Dr. Lardner is almost chiefly remembered by his famous unwillingness to grant the possibility of steaming directly from Liverpool to New York; and by his remark, "As to the project, however, which was announced in the newspapers, of making the voyage directly from New York to Liverpool, it was, he had no hesitation in saying, perfectly chimerical, and that they might as well talk of making a voyage from New York or Liverpool to the moon."* He strongly urged dividing the transit by using Ireland as one of the intermediate steps, and going thence to Newfoundland. He curiously limited the size of ships which might be used, and their coal-carrying powers. Though a philosopher, he did not seem to grasp that if the steamship had grown to what it was in 1835 from the small beginnings of 1807 it might

eral state of mind when in 1836 the Great Western Steamship Company was formed, from which really dates transatlantic traffic.

A slight retrospect is necessary to enable us to understand the status of steam at the time. Little really had been done beyond the establishment of coast, river, and lake navigation in the United States and coastwise traffic in Great Britain; a few small vessels had been built for the British navy. In 1825 the Enterprise (122 feet length of keel and 27 feet beam) had gone to Calcutta from London in 113 days, 10 of which had been spent in stoppages; and steam mail communication with India was about being definitely established when the keel of the Great Western was laid.

Up to this time America had undergone much the greater development, both in number of steam vessels and tonnage.

In 1829 our enrolled tonnage was 54,037 tons, or rather more than twice that of the United Kingdom. Charleston and Savannah had regular steam communication with our northern ports.

-the largest was the President, of 615 tons, built in 1829. Liverpool had at this date 41 steamers; the largest was of 559 tons, 4 others exceeded 200 tons, and all the others were much smaller. London had 169, of which the largest was the British Queen, just built, of 1,053 tons; the next largest was of 497 tons. Glasgow and Belfast had been in regular steam communication since 1818; Glasgow and Liverpool, London and Leith, since 1822. The first ferry-boat on the Mersey, it may be noted, the Etna, 63 feet long, with a paddle-wheel in the centre, began her trips in 1816.

In 1819 the Atlantic was first crossed by a ship using steam. This was the Savannah, of 380 tons, launched at Corlear's Hook, New York, August 22, 1818.*

deck when not in use, her shaft also having a joint for that purpose. She left Savannah on the 26th of May, and reached Liverpool in 25 days, using steam 18 days. The log-book, still preserved, notes several times taking the wheels in on deck in thirty minutes.

In August she left Liverpool for Cronstadt. An effort was made to sell her to Russia, which failed. She sailed for Savannah, touching at Copenhagen and Arendal, and arrived in 53 days. Her machinery later was taken out, and she resumed her original. character as a sailing-packet, and ended her days by being wrecked on the south coast of Long Island.

But steam power had by 1830 grown large enough to strike out more boldly. The Savannah's effort was an attempt in which steam was only an auxiliary, and

Or more than four times what is consumed to-day in moderately economical ships. In other words, to steam at her present rate across the Atlantic the Umbria would need to start with something like 6,000 tons of coal on board were her consumption per indicated horse-power equal to that of the best sea practice of that date, which could hardly have been under 6 pounds per indicated horse-power per hour.

This may be said to have been the status of affairs when, in 1836, under the influence of Brunel's bold genius, the Great Western Steamship Company was founded as an off-shoot of the Great Western Railway, whose terminus was then Bristol. Brunel wished to know why the line should not extend itself to New York, and the result of his suggestion was the formation of the steamship company and the laying down at Bristol of their first ship, the Great Western (see pages 517 and 518).

She was of unprecedented size, determined on by Brunel as being necessary for the requisite power and coal-carrying capacity. The following were her principal dimensions: Length over all, 236 ft.; length between perpendiculars, 212 ft.; length of keel, 205 ft.; breadth, 35 ft. 4 in.; depth of hold, 23 ft. 2 in.; draught of water, 16 ft. 8 in.; length of engine-room, 72 ft.; tonnage by measurement, 1,340 tons; displacement at load-draught, 2,300 tons.

Diameter of

Dimensions of engines cylinders, 731⁄2 in.; length of stroke, 7 ft.; weight of engines, wheels, etc., 310 tons; number of boilers, 4; weight of boilers, 90 tons; weight of water in boilers, 80 tons; diameter of wheel, 28 ft., 9 in.; width of floats, 10 ft.

Her engines (side-lever) were built by the great firm of Maudslay & Field, who had been for some time one of the most notable marine-engine building firms of the period in Great Britain. They had, up to 1836, built 66 engines for steamers; the first being in 1815, when they built those of the Richmond, of 17 horsepower. The indicated power of the Great Western was 750; and a notable measure of the stride which steam has taken in the half-century since they undertook this contract is that to-day they have in construction twin-screw engines from which they have guaranteed to produce 19,500 horse-power, but from which they expect to obtain 24,000. These are to drive a great armor-clad, which has six times the displacement of the Great Western and will have twice her ordinary speed.

The Great Western was launched on