A Memorable Anniversary.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 28, 10 July 1902, Page 20

A Memorable Anniversary.

Sixty-two years on Friday last— on the 4th of July, 1840 — the little wooden paddle-wheel hieamer Britannia (snye the Melbourne Advocate") left Liverpool for Boston, which bhe safe'y reached a fortnight later. She was the first steamer that ever crossed the Atlantic Ocein, and she was the first of that great Cunard line which for more than a generation wps able to make the proud boaist that it had n<jv« r lost a. passenger's life. What manner of boat she vai is amusingly de^-oibed by Chail s Di'-kecs in the first chapter of his ' Ameroan Notf«.' He staited on the 3rd January, 1842, and he tells hid rt aders : 'I shall never forget the amazement with which I opened the door of the s ate-room on bewrd the Britannia packet, 1200 tons burdt n — reperved, as I saw by the card, for Charles Dickens and lady.' He hi's vQ in a very few words the fittings of this ' preposterous box,' as he calls it, ' the thin mattress' on '»n inaccessible shelf,' and the door that would not have admitted their two portmauteaux even if there had been anywhere to pat them whe n they were inside. Steadily and swiftly the Cunard line crept on, now leading the Wr-y with the best and biggest papsenger bhips afloat, now stimulating rival companies to out-do its latest achievement, but always holding it* own eminent station, until now it calmly fares the great Pierpont Morgan combination, with which it will have no connection whatever. A^ an earnest, of the class of competition to which it will subject that organisation, ithascoitracted for the building of two more Atlantic line rs, which will be equipped with turbine engines of 47,000 and 50,000 horse-power, and made 2 1 knots an hour contract t<me. Aa the speed of the Britannia was 8J knots per hour, as nearly as possible ten English lnileo, and her engines only indicated 74 horse-power, the advance made by ths pioneer company is taeily estimated. The Cunard Steamship Company has long had notahle competitors. The White fctar Line, the Hamburg- American, and the North German Lloyd's dispute with Lei for pre-eminence in Bize of ships, in the number of passengers accommodated, and in the speed with which passages are made The traveller w.io is kept a week on shipboard in the Atlantic now considers himself ill-used ; and no wonder, since a few hours over five days has ci me to be rtcognis d as the correct thing. The length of the vessels < mploytd has incn ased from the 215 feet of the Britannia to the 706 fct of the Kaiser Wilhelm 11., the tonnage ban rucn to 18.000 toup, aiid the numbtr of paasengeri aocommodati d from the i) 0 carried by the 'packet' that took Charles Dickens and 'y.U'g Lord Muljrave ' — afterwards the Marejuis of Xorinariby— 'iniong them to the 285'J which the Celtic of the White Star in c a"comuiod )t\ s. Bat the growth of the traffic i-i not greater after all tlun the growth of the population it serves. In IXIO the United Kingdom contained about 28 millions of people, the United States less, and sll Germany not so many. Now Germany has 58 millions, the United States 76 millions, and Great Britain 40 still left, after Fending away vast populations to America, Canada, and Australia. And partly because of that increase in population, and partly by the development of the instinct of travel which has followed upon its progress in speed and in safety, people think less of a journo-y b 'tween London and Boston or New York than they formerly did of a trip to the north or Edinburgh. Indeed when it is recollectid that while the British coasting trade was still dependent upon sailing yes-els, a fortnight's detention in Yarmouth roa'is was not an infrequent concomitant of a sea journey from London to Leith, the wonder is that anyone ever tried to travel at all, and certainly a great deal of courage and endurance were required of the voyagtr.