Omaha daily bee., 1906-11-25

feet deeper and has a displacsmnt Of 1000
more tons The cost Of coal. food, wages
and all the other expenses OF running the
Mauretania on a trip OF FIVE days from Liv-
crpool to New York win aggregate 100000.
The turbine steamship however 60 still h
its infancy. and 50 confident IS Alr. Parsons
OK its development that in a speculative
sori Of way. he has talked OF q forty and
oven o. nftv-kuot boat The latter would
have speed Of hfty-sercu statute miles an
hotr ~ nearly a mile a minute Such q
slip. M Parsons says would hurn such
vast amount Of coal crossing the Atlantic
that. 10 have sufloient bunker room. It
wouid needs be about fivo times the size
Of the Great Eastern. 1t would devour
5000 tons NJ coal day, or enough 70 heat
tho Hippodrome for two whole years. The
Maurotnnia will burn 1000 tons a day.
Aboard the hfty-knot flyer the New
Yorker could reach the Irish coast IN two
aud a quarter days. II In that era when
vessel Of this speed is realized the business
men Of this city make Saturday q whole
holiday Instead OF half a one, as at present
they will he able TO go from New York to
London without losing single business
hour They can take supper IN this city
Friday evening and reach the English me-
tropols I'm time for breakfast Monday morn
ing And II this kind Of n ship Is ever
used to transport troops for the American
government the United states could rush
small army OF soldiers from San Francisco
to the Philippines in little more than six
days.
First to Cross by steam.
Yet does It seem such a leap from the
twenty -fve-knot Cunarder to the fifty
knotter OF the inventors fancy, when ona
compares the tranatlantic liner Of today
with the first steamship that crossed the
ocean? Does It not seem possible that the
speed of steamships will be doubled in the
next hundred years. when within the last
sixty-eight years il has been practically
quadrupled2 The Sirius, which was the
| first vessel to cross the Atlantic by means
/ of steam, in 1888. made the trip from
Queenstown to New York in eighteen and
half days. st an average speed Of six
knots an hour The Kaiser Wilhelm H.
! has made the trip from New York to
| Plymouth at an average hourly speed Of
| 235S knots and the Deutschland, In the
/ fastest days run ever made by any ship,
| covered 60i knots in twenty-four hours, or
24.l9 knots an hour
Two circumstances attended the arrival
Of the Sirius In New York harbor on
| April %, 1898, which In the lisht of sub
seauent history were peculiarly prophetic.
First the ship ran aground while enter
ing the port. Because OF the shalIowness
Of the channel It stuck on a mud bank
until the rising tide lifted it free. Second
It had been moOred to its wharf only q
few hours and the town had barely awak-
ened to its coming and begun TO crowd
around and to stare at the prodigy, when
its glory was eclipsed by a rival ship OF
larger size and greater speed.
A Nine-HOur wonder.
AS soon as the sun shune oown on New
York the next morning after the siriu,
arrived the news OF Its presence in the
harbor spread like wildhre throughout tn,
city. And so curious was everybody L
see the strange craft that merchants anc
clerks deserted the stores, wives left thei
homes without doing "the morning chores
and children ran away from school T.
gather at Jones wharf.
For a few hours the Sirius was the su
preme ship in the new world How small
and mean seemed the sailing packets
alongside of It! The steamship had GOV
tered the distance from Queenstown {
Sandy Hook In eighteen and one-half days
, Such speed. considering the tempestuou
weather encountered, was regarded as
, record breaker. Tho sailing packet of thos
, times would have taken three weeks o
month for the trip.
In comparison with the Sirius tn
famous Clermobt, that was the woude
a OF the whole world In 1907, seemed hardl
: more than a toy. On the scales one Siriu
would have balanced four Clermonts an
In g tug of war the British boat, with 1t
engines of $40 horse power. could hav
, stood the strain OF twenty-six vessels {
: Fulton's make.
: But the glory Of the Sirius lasted onl
Z until o'clock that same afternoon. whe
: the Great Western, a larger. faster, MOI
I luxurious steamship, arrived. Then ii
:. crowds deserted Jones' wharf for PHI
u slip, where the greater vessel was moore
: The Great Western had left Bristol, Enl
lard, four days after the Sirius left Queens
town, and yet. in spite of the longer di
tance It had to travel, it had come in on
, twenty-One hours behind it's rival TT
Sirius In comparison with the --latest arr
vaP' suffered in almost every partlcuia
The Sirius was 17S feet long, the Gre
10 Western 2iO. The former was a 7OO-ton. Il
l. latter i,S40-ton, boat. The best speed
" the Sirius was 160 knots a day. that OF Il
lg Great Western 30. Moreover. the capita
of the Great Western proudly announc
III that thereafter his ship would make q
d, run across in fourteen days. ITO Euro
As IN two weeks" was an early dream of ems
neering which had at last been realized
ts TFansitOry Prestige.
u To show how transitory is the presti
of the transatlantic flyer the folloWil
Us are named, with the date that each beat I
81 record OF fits predecessor: Persia, Isl
re Scotia, 1865; City of Brussels. 1863; Bait
&c 1873; City OF Berlin, 1875; Germanic, IS
Britannia. 1871, Arizona, 1850; Alaska 1S
IL oregon. 1884; America, 1884; Etruria- IS
lr Umbria, 1857; CITY Of Paris. 1889; Majest
m 1891; Teutonic, 1891; Campanla, 1885, L
IN cania, 1893; Kaiser Wilhelm der Gros
Is 1897; Deutschland, 1900. and Kaiser W
o. helm II. 1904.
We And in this race for supremacy eve
ny mechanical factor has been deveioped
far as engineering skill would permit
OF the single enginne was followed by
no double engine so the double engine }
4i- been succeeded by the quadruple Z
re- single screw gave way 70 the twin scr
nc boat, and now, with the Mauertania,
SIC four-scrsw ship has come. Indeed,
would seem that the prophecy OF the !
ey Lord Iuverclyde, head Of the CUnard q
NY pany, would some day be reahzed-t
III the steamship OF the future would hi