The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-06-24
MAY Be FAST OR SLOW
Best Designers Cannot Tell
What Their Ships
VIII Do.

Even the best designers never know
how their ships will turn out when
completed. They may break all rec
ords for speed or they may be so slow
as to be entirely useless-a mere waste
of money, says the Cincinnati Enquirer
Years ago two mud barges were built
at San Francisco, exactly alike, con-
structed from one design. One of them
was quite commonplace, but the other
raced every barge in the bay and beat
them all; raced every yacht on the Pa
cific coast and beat them all. She was
so fast that yachts We're built on her
lines, but turned out mere barges Tor
sloth. Nobody could see how this
craft differed from her crawling sisters
or from the yachts built to compete
with her.
In 1851 the America went to Cowes,
England, and raced for a prize cup.
She won that trophy, and with all their
efforts-the spending of vast sums of
money year after year on race after
race the British have never yet re-
covered the famous America cup. Its
history is the history of yachting: the
contests for it have concerned the two
nations more than all their political
quarrels. The rules regulating the
races have caused fierce disputes and
intense bitterness of feeling between
two peoples.
And the yacht America, which began
the trouble was as mysterious as the
Flying Dutchman. An Englishman
bought her and improved her hull,
stiffening it with knees throughout.
Everybody remembers the first mon
sters, the Devastation and Thunderer,
the earliest first class battleships with
out any sails. Never was there more
daring design, and those two ships
ought to have been a triumphant sue
cess. Yet for years the Thunderer lay
in disgrace at Gibraltar left in port by
the fleet as a mere nuisance.
Every time she went to sea she got
her boilers disabled because the ends
of the tubes insisted on leaking. Only
quite lately has she been fitted with a
new kind of ferrule to fit the tubes to
the boiler castings. And now she is out
of date.
In 1851 America began to be miser-
able because Great Britain had cap
tured the whole of her carrying trade,
while she stuck to wooden paddle
steamers. Iron was e:AEensive in this
country, and wooden ships could not
stand the strain at their tails of
screw. At last a great designer arose
who cut adrift from tradition, reduced
the masts, dispensed with the bow
spirit and made the stem straight up
and down. So he planned the Baltic,
Arctic. Pacific and Adriatic, for, after
costing $3,000,000 the four ships lost
on an average $4,000 every voyage.
That was only the beginning. for on
Sept, q, 1854, the Arctic collided with a
French steamer, and of her 26S people.
only 46 were saved. Within two years.
in 1856. the Pacific left port and dis
appeared forever. Her fate is one of
the mysteries of the Atlantic. The
company went bankrupt, we lost all
hope of contesting with England for
the trade, and now the only survivor
of this once splendid line is the Adri-
attic. a coal hulk, under an assumed
name, at Gibraltar. This American
oversee trade was killed by the freaks
of ships.
One of the most daring inventions
was destined to fame as a freak ship
This was the Great Britain. On her
first voyage GS45) she broke the At
lantic record TO New York, but on her
fifth she overran her reckoning, piled
up on the Irish coast and bankrupted
her owners. She lay ashore for a wear
without suffering the least injury, was
salva6. and became a successful pas
senger ship. Ultimately she changed
into a sailing vessel stranded again on
the Falkland islands 1850, was res
cued once more, and this, one of the
most famous ships in the world, is now
ending her life in the vocation of a coal
hulk.