A BRITISH SHIPBUILDING TRIUMPH.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 4, 30 September 1907, Page 4

A BRITISH SHIPBUILDING TRIUMPH.

It if! always pleasant and stimulating to hear of a new speed " record " when the "record" is made by '' our side," and especially when it is concerned with ocean travel. Upon land the limits of necessary velocity were reached ions' ago. Nobody really desires to travel anywhere at a greater pace than can be furnished by modern locomotives, but everybody has wished that there were less disparity between the speed of the fastest liner and of the ordinary express train. The fine performances of the Lusitania have, accordingly, a. much greater interest than the most sensational performance of the largest and newest motorcar. But there is more in the rapid transatlantic passages of the new Cunarder than a broken record. While the British Navy has for a century been widening the gulf between itself and its nearest rival, the mercantile marine of Great Britain has been driftiug further and further away from a corresponding pre-

eminence. The percentage of Britisli-born seamen lias been decreasing in the fleets of Britain's commerce; the tonnage balance has been setting in favour of the other nations; the cry has gone up that the best boilers and machinery are more and more certainly being found in foreign bottoms. These have for years been the themes of persistently dismal writing, and it is,'therefore, reassuring to discover that British shipbuilders have not fallen into decay, but have, oh the contrary, demonstrated that marine architecture and engineering are nowhere better practised than in Great Britain. On her first voyage from Queenstown to Sandy Hook the Lusitania beat the existing land-to-land record by five hours fortyfour minutes, and crossed the Atlantic at an average speed of 2-3.01 knots in spite of the handicap of two days' fog. It is true that some of the great German liners have just surpassed these figures ou other transatlantic routes, but on a first voyage a sea-captain will keep within, the limits of what he is confident his 'ship can do. It is reported that the captain of this great steamer is confident that she can steam 2G| knots, and this is not an unreasonable boast for a vessel that lias already covered a measured mile at 25.G knots per hour. One most satisfactory, circumstance of the success of the Lusitania is the fact that she was the outcome of Government interest in the creation of a high standard of ocean transport. Like her sister ship, the Mauretania, she was constructed with a view to use as a commerce destroyer or transport in case of war with a maritime Power. With that object the British Government advanced the Cunard Company a loan of' £2,600,000 at 2J per cent., and promised a yearly subsidy' of £150,000. It is difficult to imagine how money could be better spent than in placing the British mercantile marine on an equality of supremacy with the British Navy. In the deep satisfaction derivable from the "Lusitauia's achievement, the excitementover the America Cup, which is, wo observe, beginning to stir, seems almost a triumph of irrelevance.