A CENTURY OF STEAM NAVIGATION.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 12935, 15 October 1907, Page 6

A CENTURY OF STEAM NAVIGATION.

The remarkable success of the Lusitania's first voyage across tho Atlantic must dissipate all doubts as to tho suitability of the turbine engine for great steemors. That such doubts did exist up to the time of tlie Lusitania's trial trip, is clear from tho comments on the results of that test. The turbine was chosen, we aro reminded, because it was believed to bo the only engine capable of exertine the requisite power in tho spaco available for the machinery, but there was some uncertainty whether tlie enormous power that was desired could bo developed. The fact that the great ship during the 2000 miles of her trial voyage, maintained a speed of 25.4 knots per hour, which was considerably over the contract speed, is regarded as justifying the confidence placed in the turbine by its advocates. It is claimed by an engineering correspondent of ''The Times'' that no other great invention has proceeded from the laboratory stage to such an important position in the engineering world in such a short space of time. For it is only twenty-five years since the turbine waa introduced in the shape of a tiny model, which fully deserves its p!ac% in, tho South Kensington Museum, and tho date may yet become historic is witnessing the birth of an invention which may Drove to be

one of the most important developments of marino engineering in modern days. Wo say "modern days' advisedly. Yet onJy a century separates tho Lusitauia from Robert Fulton's grotesque little pioneer steamboat, tho Clermont. Tho differenc* between the two is almost as wide as that between the Clermont and the Indian canoe or tho Roman galley, and at a timo when the latest and greatest of Atlantio liners has apparently embarked on a career of record-breaking, it is interesting to look back at its piogenitors. One cannot hope to deal with the matter with any degree of detail, hut leaving on ono side the numerous experiments of one sort and ! another which may havo had some effect in turning men's thoughts towards the use of steam as a propelling power for boats, one may look at what was being done in this direction considerably more than a century ago. Inventiveness was then, as now, an American characteristic, and it is noteworthy that one John Fitch, of Connecticut, was tho first American, and probably the first man in tho world, to move a vessel by steam power. In 1786 a skiff which he had equipped with an engiuo and three paddles on each side made a successful trip on tho Delaware river. A man. named Rumsoy, in tho two succeeding years, Tan a vessel on tho Potomac at a speed of fully four miles an hour, but in this case hydraulic propulsion was adopted, a pump drawing water in at the bow and ejecting it at the stern. At tho time this experiment was made an Edinburgh banker was driving a pleasure boat by means of steam at five miles an hour on a small lake in Dumfriesshire, this beiug the beginning of a series of experiments that cost the banker £30,C00 and left matters little advanced. In tho meantime the indefatigable Fitcli was attaining speeds of six and eight miles an hour with successive steamboats, ono of which was actually employed in running, at a loss, a passenger and freight service on tho Delaware for a few months. Despite, or perhaps because of, his enthusiastic labours in tho cause of 6team navigation Fitch died in poverty and disappointment in 1798. In that year an American named! Livingstone had) obtained an exclusive concession for navigating the waters of New York State by steamboats, but he seems to have done little until, while acting as American Minister in Paris, ho mot Robert Fulton, a fellow-countryman, and a man of leisure, with a turn for mechanics, who had been devoting himself to the problem of steam propulsion. Livingstone found the money and Fulton the brains, and the two made a number of experiments on the Seine. Fulton visited Great Britain, and noted what Lord Dundas of Kerse was doing with a tugboat on the Forth and Clyde Canal, and then having ordered an engine in England, ho went back to tho States, to become, as it turned out, the pioneer of the steam service of that country. In 1807 his new steamboat, the Clermont, was launched on the East River, and in August that year—just a hundred years, within a few days, before the Lusitania's trial trip—the. Clermont made her first voyage from New York to Albany and back, a distance of 300 miles. The speed was only five miles an hour, but a beginning had! been made, and henceforward l steam naviga- | tion was a recognised means of transport. A few days later a Colonel Stevens, who in 1804 had actually built a 6teamer with twin screws and a water-tube boiler, launched a boat which steamed' from New York to Philadelphia, and thus earned the honour of being tho first of its kind to traverse tho open sea. Siaco then marino engineering has grown and developed, until in place of the tiny river steamboats, travelling fivo miles an hour we have _ gigantic liner covering 617 miles in twenty-four hours. "Ho would bo a rash man who would say that the limit had yet been reached, or that tho next century will not see developments as wonderful as those which havo occurred 6inco the pioneer steamboat first took tho water.