TRAVEL 100 YEARS AGO

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 April 1938, Page 3

TRAVEL 100 YEARS AGO

5 )- ■ 1 s STARVING PEOPLE LN SHIPS. i '■> ' LONDON, March 17. 1 'Hardships of Transatlantic crossv ihgs iu the middle of last century were compared with modern time ' schedules, in an illuminating speech ' yesterday by Sir Percy Bates, chair- ’ man of the Canard-White Star Line. ! He was speaking at the opening of * an exhibition at the Science Museum, South Kensington, held to celebrate " “One Hundred Y'ears of Transatlantic ; Steam Navigation.” 1 Nearly 20 years after the first ! Transatlantic crossings under con- * tinuous steam power, one sailing ship, the Switzerland, took 110 days for .’ the voyage from Liverpool to New 'York. The American-owned Dread--1 iiounght about the same period made ' a crossing in nine, days seventeen ‘minutes. What, steam had done, said Sir ‘ Percy, was to regularise the time of i the passage, and no one has. benefited ' more from the progress than the third class passengers who had been the main users' of the Transatlantic ferry. Between September 9 and October 21. 1853, be said, 16 sailing ships arrived \at 'New York from Europe. Of the 1 6,418 persons they’ carried 331 died oil the voyage. A hundred years ago third class passengers were not provided with food by the companies. They were given water, a place, to ! sleep—which was very hard am® included no bedclothes —and a fire to ieook such food' its they themselves might bring. If the voyage was. unusually long, they practically starved in the last few days. ' x I The exhibition was opened, by Cap-1 tain Euan Wallace, M.P., Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade. Lord Stonehaven, president of the In- i stitution of Naval Architects 1 , and Col. E. E. B. Mackintosh, director of the Science Museum, also spoke on the changes in Transatlantic crossings. Sir John Thornycroft subsequently took the chair at a lecture, on the earliest Transatlantic steamers. 1