IMPROVEMENT OF BRITISH STEAMSHIPS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3108, 14 June 1881, Page 4

IMPROVEMENT OF BRITISH STEAMSHIPS.

(Home paper, March 27.)

Emerson once remarked that if you want to interest an Englishman you have but to talk to him about horses and ships. As regards the former we are told periodically in newspapers which come from the other side of the Atlantio, or from across the Channel, or from what the Poet Laureate calls " the underworld" at the Antipodes, that the equine sceptre is departing, if it has not already departed, from these islands. As regards ships, however, the mistress of the seas may, with more confidence than ever, assert, not only that she rules the waves, but also that she rules them without a rival. Scarcely, for example, have we chronicled the birth of anew ship, which, with the exception of the Great Eastern, is said to be the largest that ever glided down the ways, before it is announced that another, and still larger vessel, is ready to be launched, and has already descended into what is frequently and erroneously called " her native element." It was but yesterday, as it were, that we spoke with pride of the Aurania, which the Cunar Company will shortly add to their noble fleet, and of the City of Rome, which the youngest of our shipbuilding yards—that at Bar-row-in-Furness— is rapidly completing for the Inman line. The Aurania, however, which was until lately regarded as the representative Cunarder, has already been lowered from her pride of place to make way for a bigger sister. On Tuesday last there was launched, at Clyde Bank, about four miles down the riyer from Glasgow, "the largest steamer that has yet been built, except the Great Eastern." The Servia, for such is the name which she received at the hands of Mrs Burns, the wife of the chairman of the Cunavd Company, has a burden of eight thousand five hundred tons, with a cargo capacity equal to carrying six thousand five hundred tons, together with eighteen hundred tons of coal and one thousand tons of water ballast. Her engines have an indicated power of ten thousand five hundred horses ; her hull is built entirely of steel, and is divided into nine water-tight compartments ; and her extreme length is five hundred and thirty feet, which is not much less than the total stretch of Berkeley square. She has five decks, and will have three masts and two funnels. In addition, she will be barque-rigged, with pole topmast and top-gallant-mast, so as to spread an enormous Burface of canvas in case of breaking her shaft and having to face tho perils of the deep without any other guiding and motive power than her sails can supply. The experience afforded recently by the Batavia was not needed to teach her owners that a steamship which breaks her shaft, or is subjected to some derangement of her machinery, irreparable at sea, ought not to be destitute of ample means and preparations for completing her voyage, with safety and comfort to her passengers, under canvas. Seeing that the Servia will have accommodation for 450 first-class passengers, and will be able in addition to carry not fewer than two thousand passengers in the steerage, it is obvious that the safety, under ali circumstances, of so many human beings, demands an amount of forethought and involves a weight of responsibility which we are happy to perceive has not escaped the attention of the owners and builders of this superb addition to tho fleet of our largest and most successful Ocean Navigation Company. In the minds of those who have attentively obserred the Transatlantic traffic during the last quarter of a century, there is in the Servia, and in other vessels of about the same proportions which have recently been built, not a little to awaken wonder. The most noticeable feature, for instance, in all those new steamships is the vast increase in the proportion borne by horse power to tonnage. It used to be the fashion to consider that the power which is clumsily defined, for want of a better standard, as that of one Lorse, was equal to drawing four and a half or five tons of burden. In their oolossal experiment, the Great Eastern, Sir Isambard Brunei and Mr Scott Russell went still further and proposed—not without considerable success—to drive their stupendous vessel at full speed through the giant waves of the Atlantic by separate engines, combining the paddle and the screw, which brought the power of one horse to bear upon fourteen tons of gross burden. The Great Eastern was a burden of twenty-two thousand five hundred tons, and the nominal power of her engines was that of one thousand horses applied to the screw and one thousand Jhorso power applied to the paddle. Practically, her dual engines worked up to a total of about sixteen hundred horses conjointly, leaving about fourteen tons of gross weight to be driven by tho power of each horse. Contrast the conditions of the Servia with those of the Great Eastern, and the marvellous difference between thenwill be apparent at a glance. The Great Eastern, of twenty-two thousand five hundred tons burden, was driven liy engines of about sixteen hundred horse-power—the Servia with a gross burden of eight, thousand five hundred tons, will have an indicated steam power of ten thousand five hundred horses. "Whether the application of such stupenduous and disproportionate steam power to a vessel will bo the plenary success that all the most experienced builders for the Transatlantic traffic anticipate has yet to bo proved ; but, inasmuch as each new marvel of marine architecture conforms more or

less to the type of the service, it may be assumed that Mr Thompson and Mr Pearce —the latter being the representative of tho famous Scotch firm of John Elder and Co. —entertain no sort of doubt on the subject;. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that the Great Eastern achieved some of tho swiftest passages that have ever been made across the Atlantic, and the opinion upon this point of Mr Scotfc Russell —the most experienced ship architect in the United Kingdom —would command considerable weight, and be received with no slight degree of attention. It has often been urged by Transatlantic passengers that in many ships we could mention the engines are so powerful as to shake their frames from stem to stern, and even to jar the passengers as they take their seats at table i when the dinner bell rings. It is notorious I that in one or two ships of comparatively recent construction it has been found necessary to strengthen tho whole structure of the vessel with new knees and braces upon their return to England from the fast round trip across the Atlantic. Be this, however, as it may, little doubt can te felt that tho contnetors of every new Transatlantic steamship are doing all that in their power lies to secure the attainment of prodigious speed. If the ten thousand horsepower of the City of Rome and the ten thousand five hundred horse power of the Servia can be worked up to anything like tho full capacity of their Tifcantic engines, it must he evident that the fabrics of the two vessels ought to be knit together with such j surpassing strength as to make tliem practically as solid as the rock of Gibraltar, j unless the passengers are to vibrate, as though they were ague-stricken, afc every j stroke of the piston. On the 10th instant another vessel—also said, in the not unfamiliar phraseology of the day, to be " the largest steel steamship afloat"—will sail from Liverpool upon her first trip. The Parisian, of the Allan Line, has a loading displacement of 10,000 tons, and is constructed to carry 150 first-class and 1,100 steerage passengers. By a novel arrangement of her bilge keels she is built with a view to mitigating that excessive rolling which is so cruelly trying to delicate passengers, and, like other vessels of the excellent line to which she belongs—a line which, by the total immunity from disaster recently enjoyed, has atoned for the long list of casualties that overtook four or lire of its vessels more than twenty years since —the Parisian, in running to Halifax, Nova Scotia, during winter, and to Quebec and Montreal during summer, will have to face more formidable perils from ice and weather upon the North Atlantic than those await- j ing-the vessels which ply throughout the year between Liverpool and Now York and back. There will be but one sentiment among Englishmen with regard to these splendid vessels, which do so much to keep the carrying trade of the world in British hands — that sentiment being a hearty aspiration for their complete and enduring success. The " mistress of the seas" is not alone represented by mailed monsters of the deep, such as the Agamemnon and the Ajax, the Devastation and the Inflexible. Every commercial passenger steamer, like the Servia and the Parisian, is built under tho inspection of the Admiralty, and with such strength of deck and of general structure as to admit of carrying heavy guns on hoard, and of being converted at a moment's notice into a ship of war. Never before in the history of civilised mankind was there a nation which could so instantly lay her hands upon an indefinite number of magnificent steam transports which, being endowed with prodigious speed, can carry troops, horses, and artillery to the most distant shores, and upon other vessels which, though built for commercial uses, can, without delay, be converted into valuable additions to the war navy of her Majesty. We are witnessing, for instance, at this moment the facilties afforded by the Grantully Castle, and by other vessels belonging to Mr Donald Currie and to the Union Steam Navigation Company for immediately transporting British troops to the Cape. Thus it will he seen that every commercial passenger steamship which is launched upon the Thames, the Clyde, the Mersey, or at Belfast and Barrow-in-Eurness contributes to that overshadowing maritime supremacy of which every " true born Briton " has such just reason to be proud.