PADDLE v. SCREW.

Grey River Argus, Volume IX, Issue 669, 3 May 1870, Page 2

PADDLE v. SCREW.

[PANAMA STAR AND HERALD] Much has been written in this city and elsewhere about the practice of the Pacific Mail Company and the North American Steamship Company, in using side wheels instead of screws for propelling their ships. Tho conduct of the Pacific Mail Company in constructing their new vessels, the China, Republic, Japan, and America, for the Asiatic route on the side-wheel plan, instead of following the example of the English companies running in the Indian and China Seas, has been criticised with marked severity both. hei c and in New York. President M'Lane, in his recent report, has defended the practice of his company on several grounds, one of which is, that screw steamers of great size require a rigidity of frame which cannot be obtained without the use of large quantities of iron, and that, though such vessels might be bought in England at the same money as the American' built vessels cost, American ship yards could not provide them at anything near the figure that our capacious side-wheel wood-framed vessels with single beam engines are built for. A further justification, and it seems a conclusive one, is that the largest vessels in the Pacific Mail Company can run 5000 sea knots each way, against head winds, without coaling or even stopping to ease a journal, and carry besides provisions, water and stores, amounting to 1700 tons dead weight, 1500 passengers with their baggage, and over 2000 tons of merchandise, mostly dead weight, at an average speed of 220 knots a day on an average consumption of 40 tons of coal each 24 hours. The North American Steamship Company, with a class of ships somewhat smaller than the vessels employed by the older Company in their China trade, though their equals in other respects, are running with single beam engine, large cylinder, great boiler power, aud side-wheels of greater diameter, on a consumption of coal of 25 to 28 tons a day. accordingly as they are using soft or hard coal. It is only in rare cases during severe gales that vessels of the class of the Nevada, Nebraska, or Dacotah burn coal at the rate of thirty tons a day, and yet these vessels, averaging three thousand tons each, made their voyages at an average speed of 240 knots a day, with provisions, water and storea, 800 passengers and their baggage, and 1000 tons of heavy freight, leaving port with coal for eighteen days' steaming. When the North Atlantic English screw steamship companies, or the Peninsula and Oriental Company, or the Liverpool and Aspinwall, and Panama, New Zealand, Australia lines can show similar results at equal cost, it will be time enough to discard our single walking beam engines, and large diameter side- wheel, light draught, wide guard ocean steamers, at least on the route between San Francisco and Panama. A proof of the saving may be found in the comparative rates of fares. The voyage by tbe lnman screw steamers between Liverpool and New York average twelve and ahalf days the year round. The schedule time between New York and San Francisco is twenty-two days. The fare between Liverpool and New York in the steerage is three dollars and twenty cents for each day at sea. At the same rate, with ten dollars added for the railroad fare, our companies would be entitled to eighty-four dollars forty cents compensation from each steerage passenger. It is well-known that coals caa be had in Liverpool for one-third, if not onefourth, what they are worth at San Francisco or Panama. The original outlay for English built steamers is no more, and the repairs and stores cost less by one-half, wages are lower and provisions generally arc less expensive on the Atlantic than on the Pacific. Yet fares with us do not average more than two-thirds of the rate obtained for crossing the Atlantic. At present, owing to tbe active competition, passengers are conveyed between here and New York at less than 75 cents a day, and found with wholesome food, decently cooked, attendance, and bedding.