steamship: Oceangoing Steamships steamship Oceangoing Steamships The first ocean crossing by a steam-propelled vessel was in 1819, when the Savannah voyaged from Savannah, Ga., to Liverpool in 29 days, 11 hr. It was a full-rigged sailing ship fitted with engines and side paddlewheels; during the crossing the engines were in use for about 85 hr. The first crossing under steam power alone was made in 1838, when two British steamship companies sent rival ships to New York within a few days of each other; the Great Western made the trip in 15 days, arriving a few hours after the Sirius, which had left England 4 days before her. The first seagoing vessel to be fitted with a screw propeller was the Archimedes (1840); the Great Britain (1845) was the first large iron steamship driven by a screw propeller to cross the Atlantic. By the late 1850s the screw propeller was conceded to be superior to paddlewheels, and the steamship began to supplant the sailing ship.

In 1881 the Servia, a merchant steamer capable of crossing the Atlantic in 7 days, was the first vessel to be constructed of steel. Seven years later the Philadelphia, the first twin-screw steamship, was built at Glasgow. Sections in this article: Liner Transatlantic Crossing Times, 1833 - 1952 (in days) About Note: Liverpool / New York. Source: data from P.J. Hugill (1993) World Trade since 1431, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, p.128. Stopford, M. (2009) Maritime Economics, Third Edition, London: Routledge. Liner Transatlantic Crossing Times, 1833 - 1952 (in days) The passenger liner era roughly lasted for about 100 years; from the mid 19th century up to the mid 20th century. Its evolution can be divided in four distinct phases: Introduction. The steamship Great Western can be considered as one of the first liners, crossing the Atlantic in 15.5 days in 1838.

Early liners were made out of wood and used paddle wheels, often complemented by sails, as the main form of propulsion. Their capacity was limited to less than 200 passengers. Growth. By the 1860s the introduction of iron hulls, compound steam engines and screw propulsion led to significant reductions in crossing times to about 8-9 days. No longer limited by the technical limits of wood armatures the size of liners increased substantially with a tonnage exceeding 5,000 tons and a capacity of 1,500 passengers. The number and frequency of liner services across the Atlantic (an across the world) increased substantially. Maturity. Represents the Golden Age of the liner where those ships dominated long distance passenger movements. By the early 20th century (1907), the liner Mauretania with a capacity of 2,300 passengers was able to cross the Atlantic in 4.5 days, a record which was held for 30 years when the liner Queen Mary reduced the crossing time by half a day (4 days).

Liners reached their operational capacity of around 1,500 to 2,000 passengers and Atlantic crossing times stabilized around 5 days. They relied on quadruple screws using turbine steam engines. This also corresponded to the peak American immigration years from European countries, a process to which liners contributed substantially. Obsolescence. By the 1950s the prominence of the liner was challenged by the first regular transatlantic commercial flights. This challenge quickly asserted itself and in a decade the liners shifted from being the main support of transatlantic passenger movements to obsolescence. One of the last liners, the United States (mainly made of aluminum), held the transatlantic crossing speed record of 3.5 days in 1952. By the 1960s, air transportation has overtaken the supremacy of liners for transatlantic crossings and reference time became hours instead of days. Liner services disappeared and the surviving ships became the first cruise ships .

The usage of ships for passengers is now restricted to cruise shipping, ferries and small scale passenger craft on archipelago countries (Indonesia, the Philippines, Greece, the Caribbean) or great river systems in developing countries (Chang Jiang, Huang He, Nile and Amazon). SS Great Western - Graces Guide Grace's Guide British Industrial History Grace's Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 121,696 pages of information and 181,505 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them. SS Great Western Jump to: navigation , search SS Great Western of 1838, was an oak-hulled paddle-wheel steamship; the first purpose-built for crossing the Atlantic and the initial unit of the Great Western Steamship Co . Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel , Great Western proved satisfactory in service and was the model for all successful wooden Atlantic paddle-steamers. She was capable of making record Blue Ribband voyages as late as 1843. Great Western worked to New York for 8 years until her owners went out of business.

She was sold to the Royal Mail Steam Packet Co and was scrapped in 1856 after serving as a troop ship during the Crimean War. In 1836, Isambard Brunel, his friend Thomas Guppy and a group of Bristol investors formed the Great Western Steamship Co to build a line of steamships for the Bristol-New York route. The idea of regular scheduled transatlantic service was under discussion by several groups and the rival British and American Steam Navigation Co was established at the same time. Great Western's design sparked controversy from critics that contended that she was too big. The principle that Brunel understood was that the carrying capacity of a ship increases as the cube of its dimensions, whilst the water resistance only increases as the square of its dimensions. This meant that large ships were more fuel efficient, something very important for long voyages across the Atlantic. Great Western was an iron-strapped, wooden, side-wheel paddle steamer with four masts to hoist the auxiliary sails. The sails were not just to provide auxiliary propulsion, but were used in rough seas to keep the ship on an even keel and ensure that both paddle wheels remained in the water, driving the ship in a straight line.

The hull was built of oak by traditional methods. She was the largest steamship for one year until the British and American's British Queen went into service. Built at the shipyard of Patterson and Mercer in Bristol, Great Western was launched on 19 July 1837 and then sailed to London where she was fitted with two side-lever steam engines from the firm of Maudslay, Sons and Field , producing 750 i.h.p. between them. On 31 March 1838, Great Western sailed for Avonmouth (Bristol) to start her maiden voyage to New York. Before reaching Avonmouth, a fire broke out in the engine room. During the confusion Brunel fell 20 feet, and was injured. The fire was extinguished, and the damages to the ship were minimal, but Brunel had to be put ashore at Canvey Island. As a result of the accident, more than 50 passengers cancelled their bookings for the Bristol-New York voyage and when Great Western finally departed Avonmouth, only 7 passengers were aboard. Construction of the rival British and American's first ship was delayed, and the company chartered Sirius to beat Great Western to New York.

Sirius was a 700 GRT Irish Sea steam packet on the London - Cork route, and had part of her passenger accommodation removed to make room for extra coal bunkers. She left London three days before Great Western, refuelled at Cork, and departed for New York on 4 April. Great Western was delayed in Bristol because of the fire and did not depart until 8 April. Even with a four-day head start, Sirius only narrowly beat Great Western, arriving on 22 April. When coal ran low, the crew burned cabin furniture, spare yards and one mast, inspiring the similar sequence in Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days. Great Western arrived the following day, with 200 tons of coal still aboard. Although the term Blue Riband was not coined until years later, Sirius is often credited as the first winner at 8.03 knots. However, Sirius only held the record for a day because Great Western's voyage was faster at 8.66 knots . Great Western proved completely satisfactory in service and influenced the design of other Atlantic paddlers. Even Cunard's Britannia was a reduced version of Great Western.

During 1838-1840, Great Western averaged 16 days, 0 hours (7.95 knots) westward to New York and 13 days, 9 hours (9.55 knots) home. In 1838, the company paid a 9% dividend, but that was to be the firm's only dividend because of the expense of building the company's next ship. After the collapse of British and American, Great Western alternated between Avonmouth and Liverpool, before abandoning Avonmouth entirely in 1843. The ship remained profitable even though she lacked a running mate because of the protracted construction on Great Britain. In 1843, Great Western's receipts were GB£33,400 against expenditures of GB£25,600. The company's fortunes improved in 1845 when SS Great Britain entered service. In September 1846 Great Britain ran ashore because of a navigational error and was not expected to survive the winter. The directors suspended all sailings of Great Western and went out of business. Great Western had completed 45 crossings for her owners in eight years.

In 1847 she was sold to the Royal Mail Steam Packet Co and was used on the West Indies run. Later, after serving as a troopship in the Crimean War, in 1856 she was broken up at Castles' Yard, Millbank on the Thames. 1852 stopped work. [1] The Great Western Steamship, 1837 | GG Archives The Great Western Steamship The Great Western Steamship, 1837 The first steam vessel designed and built for the Atlantic trade was the Great Western, launched at Bristol, England, on July 19, 1837. In every particular, her building was a great departure from conventional ideas, and a decided contradiction to the prevailing authorities on marine architecture. These authorities had set forth that the best type for the coming ocean steamship should be a craft of about eight hundred tons, with engines of about two hundred horsepower. But the Great Western was as much as two hundred and twelve feet long, and had a gross tonnage of 1,340. Her engines were of four hundred horsepower, with seventy-three inch cylinders and seven feet stroke.

She was designed and built by William Patterson, of Bristol, for the Great Western Steamship Company. She arrived at New York on April 23, 1838, after a passage of fifteen days. Her best day's run was 243 knots; her average runs 208, and the hourly average for the entire voyage 8.2 knots. Her coal consumption for the passage was 655 tons. The Turbinia, a British boat in which the turbine was first successfully substituted for the ordinary marine engine. Just about the time when the Great Western passed the Hook, there also arrived the steamship Sirius. She was a much smaller craft, a hundred and seventy eight feet long; her tonnage was seven hundred and three, and her engines were of three hundred and twenty horse power. She had made the passage between Cork and the Hook in eighteen and a half days, and it had been a perilous trip that found her, near its ending, many miles off shore with a gale raging and her bunkers empty. As a desperate resort, she burned all her spars and most of her stores, and thus succeeded in making port.

The fact that there were two ocean steamships in the harbor at once set New York wild with excitement. Concern ing the event, the Courier and Enquirer of April 24, 1838, said editorially : What may be the ultimate fate of this excitement—whether or not the expenses of equipment and fuel will admit of the employment of these vessels in the ordinary packet service—we cannot pretend to form an opinion ; but of the entire feasibility of the passage of the Atlantic by steam, as far as regards safety, comfort and despatch, even in the roughest and most boisterous weather, the most skeptical must now cease to doubt. The torpedo boat Stiletto, 31 tons, 359 horsepower, built at Bristol, Rhode Island, 1888, and famous for speed in her day. One of the fastest boats on the Hudson was “The Vamoose” now owned as a yacht by Howard Gould. The torpedo boat Cushing, 105 tons, 1,720 horsepower, built at Bristol, Rhode Island, 1889. Photograph by Loeffler, Tompkinsville.

No doubt the author of that paragraph esteemed himself a bold man to set down a conviction so daring. For nine summers, the Great Western ran regularly between Bristol and New York, and was later sold to the Royal Mail Company for the West Indies service. The Sirius, after her first venture, did not attempt another voyage, but later in the year, a second Royal William entered the trade. She belonged to the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company, and was of almost exactly the same size as her Canadian namesake; but her speed was disappointing. Another steamboat of the same date, the Liverpool, owned by the Liverpool Transatlantic Steam Company, was likewise a failure from that standpoint. Arago: Steamship Arago: Steamship Up Steamship On April 23, 1838, the small British steamship ‘Sirius’ of the British & American Steam Navigation Company arrived at New York. Just a few hours later, another British ship arrived—the ‘Great Western’ of the Great Western Steam Ship Company. Thus began the era of steamship-dominated Atlantic navigation. The newspapers carried by these steamers delivered information far more quickly than those carried by sailing ships.

Typically, sailing ships made westward crossings in an average of thirty-three days; the eastward crossings took twenty-two days. The new steamships shortened the westward crossing to an average of seventeen days and the eastward crossings to fifteen days. Though the first steamships carried only a small amount of mail, the volume grew rapidly. When ‘Sirius’ departed on her return voyage to London in May 1838, she reportedly carried over 17,000 letters. The early steamships are called ‘pioneer’ steamships. Only a handful of these vessels were put into service across the Atlantic during the next few years, and almost all were British vessels. None had a contract to carry mail. That changed in 1840, when Samuel Cunard, who formed the British & North America Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, obtained a contract with the British government to carry mail. Cunard built four steamships, which made two sailings a month from Liverpool to Boston via Halifax, Nova Scotia, from spring through fall. During the winter months, they made a single voyage. Cunard’s steamship service from Liverpool replaced the government sailing packet service from Falmouth, England.

The first American contract ocean steamship service began in June 1847, carrying mail between New York and Bremerhaven, Germany, and stopping near Southampton, England, to deliver mail en route. As steamships became more numerous on both sides of the Atlantic and governments signed numerous postal conventions to regulate postal rates, greater numbers of steamships were placed under contract to carry mail. By the mid-1860s, most steamships carried government mail. Since most mail was placed on the contract vessels, non-contract steamship letters were less often seen after this. Letters carried on steamships that had no mail contract were treated as ship letters with ship letter rates, the same as those carried on sailing ships. The Cunard contract mail steamers carried letters showing the higher, packet letter rates. Two details help differentiate non-contract steamship letters from those carried on the contract vessels: the name of the vessel that carried the letter (often written on the letter as a routing instruction) and the vessel’s departure or arrival dates.

Each of the transatlantic contract mail voyages from 1840-1875 has been documented in North Atlantic Mail Sailings, 1840-1875, by Walter Hubbard and Richard F. Winter. On the covers shown in this section, the steamships that carried the letters and their transit dates are provided whenever possible. An explanation of the rates either prepaid or charged on these letters are also noted. Great Western Ocean Liner ship model GREAT WESTERN The first steamship for Atlantic crossing The steamship SS Great Western was the first steamship purposely built for the Atlantic crossing. Designed by the great railway engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, whose idea it was that steam would replace sail power on the regularly-scheduled trans-Atlantic "packet boat" services. Great Western could carry 148 passengers and displaced 2,340 tons. On her maiden run, Great Western raced the SS Sirius to New York. The Sirius had left Cork, Ireland days earlier, on April 4. The Great Western left Bristol, England, on April 8, 1838.

Though the Sirius beat the Great Western to New York, arriving on April 22, her sailors had to burn the cabin furniture, spare yards, and one mast to do it. The Great Western arrived the following day, with 200 tons of coal still aboard, and after only 15 days at sea. Great Western was subsequently awarded the Blue Riband for setting the record for trans-Atlantic travel speed at 8.66 knots, beating Sirius which clocked in at 8.03 knots. The Great Western served in the trans-Atlantic run until 1846. Later, after serving as a troopship in the Crimean War. She was broken up in a salvage yard on the lower reaches of the Thames in 1856. This Great Western model features: Small metal parts, not prefabricated plastic Plank-on-frame hull construction, not a piece of carved wood (10 lbs vs. 30 lbs that feels like a toy rather than a piece of nautical art.) Superstructure are made of numerous of individual pieces of wood glued together, not a dozen solid blocks of wood stacking on one another Windows are cutouts, not black decals, thanks to the hollow structures.

36" long $1.700 S & H is $150 Construction will be presumed one your order is placed. This model needs about 2 more months to complete. Tell a friend: The Great Atlantic Liners | GG Archives Captain's Work on an Atlantic Ocean Liner The Great Atlantic Liners Ships that are floating palaces and monstesteamers of fifty years ago, the " record holders" of today, and the racers of the future.r machines of the ocean -- The pioneer THE ocean greyhound of today, with its luxuries, its marvelous speed, its spacious quarters, its comparative stability, makes a run over to England or A Twin Screw Steamer in a Dry Dock. " the continent " a journey to be taken for its own sake. Every year people who have a short holiday spend it in taking a round trip on one of the great steamers, knowing that they will be nearly as well served as in the best hotel, and practically as safe -- for serious accidents on the Atlantic ferry are less common than hotel conflagrations on shore -- with the additional advantage of the invigorating sea air, and that exhilarating sense of movement that comes from flying through the waves.

It is almost entirely due to Americans that the Atlantic steamship has grown to its present estate from the modest beginnings of half a century ago; for of the hundred thousand cabin passengers who annually land at the New York docks, not more than twenty thousand are strangers. The rest are Americans coming home. When the Cunards opened their line between Liverpool and Boston, in 1840, they started with four ships. Today there are fourteen or fifteen steamship lines sailing out from New York alone, and something like ninety ships that carry saloon and passengers between European ports and the gateway of the New World. The first steamship to cross the ocean was an American boat, the Savannah, fitted out in New York by a Mr. Scarlborough, of Savannah, Georgia. This was in 1819. It is difficult to realize now what a venturesome undertaking the voyage seemed in those days, only a dozen years later than the Clermont's pioneer trip from New York to Albany. The doubters who had sneered at Fulton's new fangled monster were positive that the Savannah would never finish her voyage. To a certain extent their predictions were justified.

Eighteen days out, her engines burned the last of her pitch pine fuel; but she made the rest of the distance with her sails, entering the Mersey on the thirty second day. The river's banks were lined with crowds eager to see the American wonder, and the captain had to turn his vessel over to the sightseers for a week. But financially the experiment was a failure, and it was not repeated for a dozen years. Then, in 1831, the Royal William of Quebec, using both steam and sails, crossed to England, where her owners sold her to the Spanish government to be turned into a warship. The regular Atlantic steamship service dates from 1838, when two English vessels made the first race across the ocean. On the 5th of April the Sirius left Queenstown Harbor, carrying seven passengers, and bound for New York. The Great Western started after her from Bristol on the 8th, and nearly succeeded in overtaking her, both ships reaching Sandy Hook on the 23d of April. The Sirius would have had to be ignominiously towed up the bay if her captain had not been on his mettle to the extent of burning his spars and part of the cargo.

The arrival of these ships made about as much stir as the settling down of two flying machines would make today. There were long editorials in the New York newspapers over the " excitement," and it was seriously debated whether the volume of travel would ever be great enough to make such ventures profitable. Old inhabitants still talk of the day when the Great Western sailed out of the harbor, on her return voyage, with more than a hundred thousand people crowded in the Battery Park to see her off. Evidently New York curiosity has always held its present characteristics. The Great Western afterward improved her record to 12 days, 7 hours -- a great advance upon the speed of earlier boats. She was of 1,340 tons burden, and 750 Captain Cameron of the Teutonic. Captain Parsell of the Majestic. The White Star Line S. S "Teutonic." horse power -- figures regarded as remarkable at the time, puny as they look when compared to the 12,950 tons and the 30,000 horse power of the present monarch of the Atlantic, the Lucania.

The builders of the Great Western next launched a still larger ship, the Great Britain, which was wrecked on its third voyage -- a disaster that ruined its owners. The company to which the Sirius belonged was equally unlucky, being unable to survive the loss of a new steamer called the President, which left New York in March, 1841, and was not heard of again. There never was a successful steamship line until Samuel Cunard, the Halifax merchant, conceived the idea of promoting a company which should receive a handsome premium from the British government for carrying the mails. His idea was carried out through English influence, an annual subsidy of sixty thousand pounds being granted to the British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, which we know today as the Cunard Line. The Britannia, one of the four ships built to carry out the fortnightly mail contract, sailed front Liverpool on June 2, 1840, carrying the unprecedented number of ninety passengers, and the regular mail route between England and America was opened. It was the Britannia that brought Dickens here in 1842.

In 1847 American capitalists organized the famous old Collins line, to which the United States government paid nearly a million dollars a year to carry the mails and make better time than the Cunarders. The Collins ships were widely advertised as models of comfort and beauty. Their owners were the first to pay much attention to interior decoration, and to give a foretaste of the beauty of furnishing which all ocean travelers know today. They made better time, too, than their English rivals, their average passage being from ten to eleven days, while the Cunarders could not do better than twelve days. But the high rate of speed ruined the line by its enormous expense, and in 1856 the American flag disappeared from the Atlantic ferry. Captain Hains of the Campania. A curious incident in the story of ocean travel was the building of the monstrous Great Eastern, which still, forty years after her keel was laid on the Thames, remains the largest ship ever constructed. She was far too heavy for her engines, and proved a total failure as a passenger ship.

Later, she did memorable service in laying the first Atlantic cable, and went all over the world as a bearer of submarine wires, until she was bought at a bargain by a dry goods firm in Liverpool, who used her for a time as a floating bazar, and finally broke her up in 1888. About the time when the Collins company sent its ships across the ocean, another line was founded in England -- the Inman, which has now hoisted the Stars and Stripes and become the American line. But though the growth of competition led to increased attention to the comfort of passengers, accommodations were still primitive. A passenger who went to England in the early forties draws a picture of his experiences that makes us realize why our grandfathers considered a trip to Europe one of the terrors, as well as delights, of a lifetime. The state rooms were little more than closets, lit with smoky oil lamps, and provided with two berths, two feet wide, one above the other. They were situated in the after part of the ship, where the vessel's motion, and the noise of the machinery, made pandemonium in a sensitive brain, and rendered sea sickness almost inevitable.

And this misery had to be endured for ten, eleven, or twelve days. Captain McKay of the Lucania. The Cunard Line S. S. Campania. The clipper ships still continued to carry immigrants to America. It was the managers of the Inman line who first saw that room could be made for third cabin passengers on steamships, and tried the experiment with such success that the clipper disappeared from the seas. Then the White Star company built the earliest steamers modeled upon lines that have since been more or less closely followed, with the state rooms in the center of the ship. The Baltic, a White Star liner, first brought the " record " below eight days, crossing from Sandy Hook to Queenstown, in 1873, in seven days, twenty hours. From that date the contest of speed has been so keen that in twenty one years the record has been broken seventeen times. It was the Guion liner Alaska that marked an era in the struggle with time and space by bringing the voyage within a week, in 1882.

Seven years later, after the Alaska, the ill fated Oregon, the America, and the twin Cunarders Etruria and Umbria, had successively reigned and been deposed as ocean monarchs, the Paris reached another milestone by crossing in less than six days. For three years more the Paris' only rivals were her sister ship, the New York, and the pair of White Star liners, the Teutonic and Majestic. Then the Cunard company launched its latest giants -- also twin vessels -- the Campania and Lucania, and the latter now holds the record -- five days, seven hours, and twenty three minutes. This wonderful progress has been achieved in the face of repeated assertions that no further advance was practicable. It is true that each slight addition of speed involves an expense that swells in rapidly ascending ratio. To drive the Lucania and Campania through the water more swiftly than the Paris by one knot in an hour necessitated an increase of horse power from the latter's twenty thousand to the colossal figure of thirty thousand for the Cunard giants, the most tremendously powerful and costly machines ever built by the hand of man.

It seems, today, as if the limit has been quite or nearly reached, at least for the present. Captain Watkins of the Pans. Captain Jamison of the New York. The American Line S. S. New York. The newest pair of great ships -- the St. Louis and the St. Paul, now being built upon the Delaware for the American line -- are to excel all their predecessors in luxurious equipment, but not in speed. Yet it may be set down as certain that sooner or later the inventive force of human ingenuity will attain results which now seem impossible, and that the ships of some future day will be speedier than anything now afloat. The Dining Room of the New York. It is only a favored few who are ever allowed down into the pulsing, naked heart of an ocean greyhound to see how its enormous power is produced. Here the record well cared for on land. The handsomest of the state rooms are made in suites, with bed room, sitting room, and private bath. There are single and double beds, and except for their tiny dimensions, the apartments might have been lifted from one of the new hotels.

Dining rooms where music plays through dinner, libraries with the newest books and magazines, little alcoves where windows look On the Promenade Deck of the Tectonic. breaking speed is the price of torment to human beings. Whatever the luxury of the cabins, the men who drive the ship still live in an inferno, where a ton coal has to be shoveled into the red mouths of the furnaces every five minutes, day and night. The heat and darkness, the roar and rush of flame at each opening of the iron doors, the moving figures, half naked, grimy with ashes -- all this makes a scene that is like a nightmare. Not long ago a young German, who tried to work his way from Hamburg to New York in the stoke hole., was driven insane. He fled to the deck, stood for an instant cowering as if he feared he would he carried back, then sprang overboard. The life up stairs gives no hint of this throbbing tension below. Here, on the ships of the great lines, is the restful elegance that is found wherever people are out over the sea, make some of the comforts of a modern ocean voyage.

Electricity twinkles everywhere, more than a thousand electric lamps being the ordinary equipment, and fresh air is pumped through the ship by patent ventilators. One of the latest inventions is a contrivance which has been devised to keep vessels from rolling. Just behind the engine room there is a " rolling chamber." It is shaped something like a curved hourglass lying on its side across the ship. It is partly filled with water, a hundred tons being its capacity. When the steamer begins to roll, the water starts toward the side that is lowered, but the narrow neck keeps it from rushing through at once. Its momentum, however, drives the water on, even while the vessel rights itself, and the same thing occurs on the opposite roll. The weight of a hundred tons of water will do a little toward counteracting the roll of even a great liner. The officers of a ship have a great deal to do with its personality. On many of the foreign steamers you may find that your captain is a naval officer. In case of war and the pressing of his ship into the service, he would retain its command. On the French line, each member of the crew must have served for a time on a man of war.

But generally speaking, the officers are sailor men who have made many a voyage and fought their way up inch by inch. To reach the captaincy requires not only good seamanship, but proved courage and capacity, a first rate personal record, and a thorough knowledge of every part of the mechanism under the commander's control. There is no passing by on account of favoritism in these great companies. The steward's accounts of a liner like the New York, or the Lucania, or the Fürst Bismarck, makes very interesting reading. Captain Albers of the Fürst Bismarck Twenty thousand pounds of fresh beef, two thousand pounds of fish, two hundred pounds of green turtle, twelve hundred eggs, and fifteen hundred pounds of ice cream, are among the items. And it is not only the voyage which the steamship company will look after. Today you can leave New York and have your baggage checked on the dock here to any part of England, France, or Germany. When you land on the other side, special trains will whisk you to London or Paris. Such a system could not have been created a dozen years ago.

Modern inventions, the growth of the taste for luxury, and the capital and the enterprise that stand ready to supply it, have brought the Old and the New Worlds close together, and made the journey between them a delight instead of a penance. While New York has more and more established its position as the western terminus of the Atlantic ferry, on the other side of the ocean the supremacy that Liverpool long held has in recent years been challenged by other ports. A couple of years ago, after the Inman line hadbecome the American, its ships deserted the Mersey for Southampton. That is also the point at which the vessels of the two great German lines call on their way to Hamburg and Bremen; and these continental ports, and also Havre, are now of first rate importance in the commerce of the Atlantic. Captain Barends of the Augusta Victoria. The American Line S. 5, St. Louis. In the building of great steamers, too, the same tendency is noticeable. The racers of the past were launched from British yards; today Germany, France, and America are turning out their own ships.

The Normandie, twelve years ago, was the last vessel for which the Compagnie Transatlantique went to English shipwrights; its later boats have been built at Toulon and St. Nazaire. The Hamburg-American line, whose fleet is of the very largest and finest, and whose earlier steamers were British built, ordered the Fürst Bismarck and the Augusta Victoria from the Vulcan company, of Stettin. The North German Lloyd took the same course with the Spree and the Havel. And this year will be memorable for the reappearance on the Atlantic of steamers designed and constructed by Americans, when the St. Louis and the St. Paul, now nearly completed by the Cramps, of Philadelphia, shall take their places with the New York and the Paris. George Holme. The Hamburg Line S. S. Augusta Victoria. Learn more about the ships presented in this article: Steamships | Article about Steamships by The Free Dictionary Steamships | Article about Steamships by The Free Dictionary Related to Steamships: Steam boat steamship, watercraft propelled by a steam engine or a steam turbine.

Early Steam-powered Ships Marquis Claude de Jouffroy d'Abbans is generally credited with the first experimentally successful application of steam power to navigation; in 1783 his Pyroscaphe ran against the current of the Saone River for 15 min, although the boiler could not generate enough steam for extended operations. In 1787 a steamboat built by James Rumsey of Maryland was demonstrated on the Potomac River; propelled by a stream of water forced out of the stern by steam pressure, the vessel attained a speed of 4 mi (6.4 km) per hr. Rumsey received a grant to navigate the waters of New York, Maryland, and Virginia. In 1790, John Fitch, who had previously built several successful steamboats, one of which operated in 1787, built a vessel capable of 8 mi (12.9 km) per hr which plied the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Burlington, N.J. Other early American steamboat inventors were Samuel Morey, Nathan Read, and John Stevens.

In 1807, Robert Fulton launched the Clermont, 150 ft (46 m) long and powered by a Boulton and Watt steam engine. It ran from New York City to Albany (150 mi/241 km) in 32 hr and made the return trip in 30 hr. On the other side of the Atlantic, the Scotsman Henry Bell launched the Comet in 1812. Oceangoing Steamships The first ocean crossing by a steam-propelled vessel was in 1819, when the Savannah voyaged from Savannah, Ga., to Liverpool in 29 days, 11 hr. It was a full-rigged sailing ship fitted with engines and side paddlewheels; during the crossing the engines were in use for about 85 hr. The first crossing under steam power alone was made in 1838, when two British steamship companies sent rival ships to New York within a few days of each other; the Great Western made the trip in 15 days, arriving a few hours after the Sirius, which had left England 4 days before her.

The first seagoing vessel to be fitted with a screw propeller was the Archimedes (1840); the Great Britain (1845) was the first large iron steamship driven by a screw propeller to cross the Atlantic. By the late 1850s the screw propeller was conceded to be superior to paddlewheels, and the steamship began to supplant the sailing ship. In 1881 the Servia, a merchant steamer capable of crossing the Atlantic in 7 days, was the first vessel to be constructed of steel. Seven years later the Philadelphia, the first twin-screw steamship, was built at Glasgow. Era of the Ocean Liners Great liners propelled by engines of 28,000 or more horsepower began plying the Atlantic on regular schedules in the late 1800s. During the 1880s Sir Charles A. Parsons and C. G. P. de Laval developed the steam turbine, and the Turbinia, the first vessel to be driven by a turbine, was first seen in 1897. Within 10 years several turbine-driven liners were in the Atlantic service.

Although multiple cylinders were added to reciprocating engines to take full advantage of the steam's expansion, within a decade the steam turbine virtually eliminated the older reciprocating steam engine on major vessels; the great transatlantic liners, such as the Queen Mary (launched 1934), the Queen Elizabeth (1938), and the United States (1951), were all turbine-powered. In 1955 the first nuclear-powered ship, in which the heat generated by nuclear fission is used to create the necessary steam, was launched. Nuclear-powered commercial vessels like the Savannah (launched in 1958 but since laid up) proved to be uneconomical because of the high cost of nuclear-power systems and environmental concerns; however, most large naval vessels are powered by nuclear steam plants. The Demise of the Steamship Despite such innovations as turbo-electric drive, which converts steam energy into rotational power for turning the propeller shafts, commercial steamships have today given way to diesel-powered ships, which constitute 95% of new ship construction. Diesel engines provide a fuel efficiency of more than 50%, with a reliability at least equal to steam turbines.

The Queen Elizabeth 2 (1969) was originally steam-powered, but it later was refitted with turbocharged diesel engines, which supply electric power to the propeller motors. The ocean liner has been replaced by the airplane as a means of transportation; its successor at sea is the cruise ship, which travels more slowly and functions as a vacation resort afloat rather than as scheduled transportation. Bibliography See J. T. Flexner, Steamboats Come True (1944); J. H. Morrison, History of American Steam Navigation (1977); F. Talbot, Steamship Conquest of the World, 1812–1912 (1977); S. Fox, Transatlantic: Samuel Cunard, Isambard Brunel, and the Great Atlantic Steamship (2003). Steamship a self-propelled vessel driven by a steam engine or steam turbine. The steamship appeared in the early 19th century, when the manufacture of steam engines was organized. In 1807, R.

Fulton built the first river steamer, the Clermont, which made its first voyage up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany at a speed of about 5 knots (approximately 9 km/hr). The first steamship in Russia, the Elizaveta, with a 4 hp (2.8 kilowatts) engine, was built in 1815 and plied between St. Petersburg and Kronstadt. The first Atlantic crossing by a steamship was made in 1819 by the American vessel Savannah, which was equipped with a steam engine and side paddle wheels. However, the ship made a large part of its voyage under sails, which continued to be used for a long time as auxiliary propulsion on oceangoing vessels. It was not until 1838 that the British side-wheel steamship Sirius crossed the Atlantic without the use of sails. With the transition to screw propellers in the 1840’s, the seaworthiness of steamships improved substantially. By the early 20th century, propeller steamships had practically replaced sailing ships on the main sea routes. Modern steamships are equipped mainly with steam turbines. steamship

Question: In 1838, which steamship made the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, from Bristol to New York?
Answer: The Great Western