tons, went into service as one of a quartet of such ships in 1868 and burned at sea off China six years later. But the completion of the transcontinental railway pointed the way that American energies were go ing after the Civil War. As has often been remarked , the nation turned its back on the sea; the country's rapidly growing funds and energies went to railroads to open the interior and farms and factori es to supply the burgeoning domestic market. This was by no means the story with the rest of the world, however, nor does it begin to tell the story of what oceanic trade was contributing to American growth and development in the later 1800s. The fact is that immigration into the United States, running at an average of 32,000 people yearly in the 1820s and '30s, rose steadily during the steamship era, and by the 1890s and early 1900s had reached levels of one million annually. This fantastic growth was the result of a fastdeveloping economy which absorbed raw, often foreign-speaking labor and a society which transformed that labor into productive citizens. But the sheer numbers are simply not possible without the steamship, growing in size and safety and speed throughout the period. While thi s was happening, E uropean fleets carried grain out of US East Coast ports and, as a suitable hard-kerne l vari ety was developed, from West Coast ports. Thi s gave the nation the exchange credits needed for the massive buildup of American industry that took pl ace after the Civil War-a buildup which by the outbreak of World War I, a bare fifty years later, had transformed America from what we today would call a "developing" nation into the mi ghtiest industrial machine on earth . Thi s development, of course, owed everything to American ideas and energies, and to the innovative "can-do" spirit which not only surpri sed Europeansand sometimes shocked them-but certainly saved their liberties in two wo rld wars. But, it wouldn't have been possible without the European steamship. At the center of ocean carry ing were, of course, the hi ghly indu striali zed, world-trading British. The pioneering British hi storian of these things, Adam Kirkaldy, in his epic British Shipping, Its History, Organisation and Importance (published in 1919, butwrittenin 1913at the end of the century of Pax Britannica), pointed out that British fo reign trade had grownfromÂŁ260million in value in 1855, 18
to ÂŁ1,232 million in 191 2-a fivefold growth that was at least as important to the regions the British traded with as it was to the British Isles. And these figures do not take into account the trade between other countries carried in British bottoms. Kirkaldy esti mated that one fifth of the British merchant marine was constantly engaged abroad, carrying cargoes between other countries. Reverting bac k, then , to the situation at mid-century , we find the pressure of events and opportunity producing innovative response in steamship eng ineering, particul arly in the concerted assault on the worst problem , the massive coaleating propensiti es of the early low-pressure ships. Shipping hi stori an C. Ernest Fay le, in hi s c lassic Short History of the World's Shipping Indu stry (London , 1933), cites some interesting fi gures on the over-the-hump progress between the first Cunarder, in 1840, and the fully developed Bothnia 34 years later, in 1874. The Britannia of 1840 , a big ship for her time at I , 139 gross registered tons, a wooden paddlewheeler with the conventional side- lever engine, burnt 4.7 tons of coal per hour for each horsepower delivered by her eng ines. By 1855 the Persia , of3 ,300 tons (three times the size of the Britannia), sti ll using paddle wheels but wi th an iron hull , burnt 3.3 tons of coal per hour. In 1874 theBothnia, of 4,556 tons, an iron , screw-prope ll ed ship, burnt just 2.2 tons of coal an hour, per horsepower generated . This is less than half the consumption rate of the Britannia. The actual advantage was more than double, fo r the Bothnia traveled at 13 knots totheBritannia's 8.3-a50 per cent gain-and she lifted ten times the weight of cargo, and carried ten times as many passengers. Her engines, almost fo ur times as powerful , burnt onl y about one and a half times as much coal, due to doubled fuel efficiency and shorter passages. By the time of the Bothnia, in fact, the breakthroughs had been made that enabled the steamer to graduate from the Atlantic ferry to world trade routes. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 had given the steamer a greatly shortened route to the Far East, studded with coal stations. But four years before that, in 1865, the Holt liners had revealed the possibilities opened up by the compound steam engine by making the 8,500-mile run nonstop from Liverpool to Mauritius. "From that date," observes Ernest Fayle, "the ultimate triumph of steam in the cargo as well as the passenger trade was only a question
of time." The compound engine utili zed the expansion of steam in two stages, thus getting full value out of the higher pressures that were becoming available as stronger boilers were built. Engineer Captain Smith in hi s History of Marine Engineering put the matter succinctl y. The simple expansion engi ne, working at about 20 pounds pressure, typically consumed over 4 pounds of coal per indi cated horse power, per hour. The compound engine, wo rking with steam at 60 pounds press ure, and using surface condensers rather than the old jet condense rs, red uced fuel consumption to 2 pounds per indicated horsepower, per hour, or less. Join this 50 per cent reduction with the reduced space and weight occupied by the improved machine ry, and the steamer becomes a formidable competitor in long-d istance cargo carrying as well as the premium , re latively short-di stance Atlantic ferry run . As Smith concluded, this "enabled the steam ship to become a powerful ri val of the sailing ship on the longest voyages .. .. "
The Tall Ships Depart And what was happening, then , to the fleets of wind-powered sailing ships that circled the g lobe? In 185 1, the Un ited States, with an ocean trading fleet cons isting almost entirely of sailing ships, had matched or exceeded the world freight carried by the British merchant marine, whi ch at th at point was a lso overwhelming ly of the sa iling pers uasion. Yankee innovations of ship design, and in investment theory (recogn izin g the cost of inventori es in transit as a justification for fast-sailing ships) , had beaten the world's leading sea power at its own game, if only for the moment. Yankee clippers mastered the C hin a trade to Europe, as English nav igation laws were wiped off the books in the cause of free trade. Tall-masted American wooden ships competed successfu ll y in carrying West Coast cargoes of grain aro und Cape Horn to Europe, and West Coast lumber to Australia, South Africa and East Coast coal to everywhere it was needed, and served a growing trade in kerosene (case oi l, it was called, after the wooden case in which two five-gallon cans were carried). And of course, from US port to US port, as for instance San Francisco to Hawaii , only American ships were permitted to compete. This applied also to the traditional New York-to-San Franc isco trade, which petered out in the SEA HISTORY 64, WINTER 1992-93