PIONEER STEAMSHIPS

Evening Star, Issue 21503, 30 August 1933, Page 2

PIONEER STEAMSHIPS

FIRST TO CROSS ATLANTIC ROYAL WILLIAM'S HISTORY The Canadian Post Office Department, it is reported, is to issue a special stamp to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the sailing of the Royal William, The Royal William was the first ship to cross the Atlantic all the way under her own steam power. She was a Canadian vessel. She was manned by a Canadian crew, and she sailed from the Canadian port of Piotou, Nova Scotia, on August 18, 1833, arriving at Gravesend on September 11. The story is recalled by the Vancouver 1 Daily Province.’ The Royal William was built not for deep-sea voyaging, but for the coastal trade. Conscious of the importance of promoting trade between the St. Lawrence and Nova Scotia, the Legislature of Lower Canada, in 1825, offered a subsidy of £1,500 to any , person who should build and equip a steam vessel which would run in vuis trade. The subsidy went unclaimed, and in 1830 the offer was doubled. The Royal William was the result. The pioneer steamer was built at Wolfe’s Cove, Quebec, was fitted with her engines at Montreal, and made her maiden voyage from Quebec to Halifax in the summer of 1831. Three round trips were made that season, and the company which owned the new vessel saw visions of wealth. Next year, however, was the cholera year. Quebec was one of the centres of the plague, and the people of the Maritihes would have nothing to do with shipping from the St. Lawrence. The consequence was that in the spring of 833 the. Royal William was sold to satilfy a mortgage of £5,000. 1 FIRST SHOTS FROM STEAM WARSHI7. The new owners decided to send the Royal William to for sale, and this was the occaaon of her • his-tory-making voyage. 0( the trip she carried seven passengefi and a cargo of coal and spars. She tan into heavy weather off the Grand Banks and one of her engines was out.of commission for several days. Ten lays after her arrival on the Thames sip was sold and chartered to the Portujuese Government to carry troops ir Dorn Pedro’s service. \ The following year thelloyal William was sold to Spain and became a war vessel. In action again! the Carlists in San Sebastian Bay in[lß36 she fired the first shot ever fired from a steam warship. She was scrappd in the late ’forties owing to decaynk timbers. The Royal William wa not a large ship. She had a keel JOft Jong and a beam of 28ft, and was f 363 net registered tons. She was i three-masted vessel, schooner rigged, Ind, like all early steamships, was a side-wheeler. Her engines were onl; 200 horsepower. American writers have been remembered recently that the avannah, an earlier steamship, crossed the Atlantic from New York to Liverpol in twentysix days in 1819. But the savannah depended principally on he sails. The Royal William depended [holly on her engines. Her crossing as a feat of enterprise, daring, and scinanship well worth commemorating. FIRST CUNARD ALANTIC STEAMER Another story—that o the maiden Cunard trip across the itlantic—was told in tne ‘ Morning Post ’ last month. j

Ninety-three years ago,bn July 4, a small steamer left Livamol on her maiden voyage to HaTifasand Boston. She was the first Cunrd steamer. Britannia, a little ship d 1,154 tons. Beside any of the great I ers of modern times" she would hai looked almost like a tug-boat boiling on the waters of the Mersey. Br passenger list numbered only sixty-tjee. It cost as much as a swing to send

a letter to America by the Britannia, and the sender could ’ not hope to receive a reply under six weeks. But the Bailing of this steamer made history. It marked the inauguration of the first regular North Atlantic mail service and the beginning of one of the most famous steamship lines in the world, "THEN AND NOW” REFLECTIONS. People who watched the new ship pass out from the Mersey, says the 5 Morning Post,’ would have been incredulous had they heard that, ninetythree years later, the Cunard “ fleet ” oould claim a total of 410,681 tons; a figure nearly eighty-nine times greater than the total tonnage of the first four Cunard vessels. Those folks of a past age would have wondered even more, to hear that n letter could be sent to America today by the Mauretania—now the fastest British ship afloat—at a cost of three-half-pence and a reply received within a fortnight. The Cunard Company now has nine liners on the seas, including the three express ships, Aquitania, Berengaria, and Mauretania, representing altogether nearly 230,000 tons. The little Britannia is only a memory. But July 4, 1840, will remain an important date in the records of British shipping.