Steam-ships : The story of their development to the present day by R. A. Fletcher

there is the fundamental difference that the sea is a highway open to all, while the land must be bought or hired of its owners; and the result of this was that inland transportation, implying a huge initial outlay on railroad construction, became the business of wealthy companies, whereas any man was free to build a steamboat and ply it where he would. The shipowner, moreover, has a further advantage in his freedom to choose his route, because he is at liberty to “follow trade”; but if, as has happened before now, the traffic of a town decreases, owing to a change in, or the disappearance of, its manufactures, the railway that serves it becomes proportionately useless. In another essential, the development of steam-transport on land and sea provides a more striking contrast. The main features of George Stephenson’s “Rocket” showed in 1830, in however crude a form as regards detail and design, the leading principles of the modern locomotive engine and boiler; but the history of the marine engine, as of the steam-ship which it propels, has been one of radical change. The earliest attempts were made, naturally enough, in the face of great opposition. Every one will remember Stephenson’s famous retort, when it was suggested to him that it would be awkward for his engine if a cow got across the rails, that “it _would_ be very awkward--for the cow”;--and at sea it was the rule for a long while to regard steam merely as auxiliary to sails, to be used in calms. While ships were still built of wood, and while the early engines consumed a great deal of fuel in proportion to the distance covered, it was impossible to carry enough coal for long voyages, and a large sail-area had still to be provided. Progress was thus retarded until, in 1843, the great engineer Brunel proved by the _Great Britain_ that the day of the wooden ship had passed; and the next ten years were marked by the substitution of iron for wood in shipbuilding. Thenceforward the story of the steam-ship progressed decade by decade. Between 1855 and 1865 paddle-wheels gave place to screw propellers, and the need for engines of a higher speed, which the adoption of the screw brought about, distinguished the following decade as that in which the “compound engine” was evolved. Put shortly, “compounding” means the using of the waste steam from one cylinder to do further work in a second cylinder. The extension of this system to “triple expansion,” whereby the exhaust steam is utilised in a third cylinder, the introduction of twin screws, and the substitution of steel for iron in hull-construction, were the chief innovations between 1875 and