When Steam Was New Tins magnificent volume is ostensibly merely
a catalogue to the Macpherson Collection of prints of " mail and passenger steamships of the nineteenth century." Many of the prints are themselves very beautifully reproduced and there is an interesting introduction by Mr. Macpherson on steamship print collecting. But the book is of interest to people who never mean to buy a print of a steamship in their lives, for the catalogue gives lengthy and well written " biographies " of all the ships illustrated in the prints, and these biographies make delightful reading. They give one a sense of the romantic era of the early steamships and of the tremendous enterprise and adventure of the individuals and companies who designed and built these early steamers—often largely as acts of faith and incurring quite as many failures, as successes. And the failures often ruined them utterly.
This' age was that of the great British-American rivalry, of the Collins Line, the early Cunard, the early White Star, and that magnificent failure, the ' Great Eastern,' and of a dozen Other strange and little known enterpriss. One is amazed on looking through" these "biographies." to see tt enormously high percentage of these steamers which came to grief.
The ' Great Eastern,' it will be remembered, was built on the Thames between 1853 and 1855. She had a gross tonnage of 18,914 tons, and her dimensions were not exceeded till 1899. She was of extraordinary and eccentric design as there was no experience of vessels of her size at that date. She proved perfectly seaworthy but her purchasers (the company which built her went bankrupt) put her on the New York—London service, for which she was ill-fitted (she was made for the Eastern trade) and she lost money steadily, proving too expensive to run. Her means of propulsion were triple. She had both steam and sail, and her steam was a combination of paddle and screw.
The ' City of Paris ' has a remarkable story. This ship, which was launched at Glasgow in October, 1888, was one of the last efforts of the once famous Inman Line to recover its position as the premier company of the North Atlantic service. She was one of the crack ships of her day. She was 10,000 tons, and could steam at 21 knots. In 1893, after the Inman Company had become chiefly American, she was transferred to American registry. She twice suffered serious accidents, one by the breaking of her propeller shaft, and the other by the smashing of her rudder. After the rudder had been smashed, however, she managed to continue her passage steering herself by her two screws without loss of time. In 1898 she was commissioned by the United States Navy for the war against Spain and proved one of the most useful ships in the blockade, on account of her ability to keep the sea for long periods without putting in for coaling. After the war she was kept on the cruiser list with a heavy armament of captured Spanish guns. In 1900 she was completely modernized by Messrs. Harland and Wolff at Belfast and renamed ' Philadelphia.' All through the early years of the War she was a popular passenger carrier and was packed for every voyage on account of her neutrality. During 1917 she became an armed transport under the name of Harrisburg' and was employed on trooping. In 1920 she had a fire on board, and rammed a whale in mid-Atlantic. After this she was sold to an Italian immigrant company and crossed the Atlantic with a crew in a state of mutiny, and was set on fire by them four times. On her arrival at Naples she was stripped by the mutinous seamen and finally sold there to pay the debts of her owners. She was taken to Genoa to be broken up, but was again nearly destroyed by fire on the way.
Of the plates in the book, we are inclined to agree with the author of the preface that the most beautiful is the aquatint of the ` Victoria ' of Hull. As he writes
She gives an air of complete restfulness, and I like the old gentleman on the paddle box in his top hat and frock coat. He little imagines that a frivolous generation will allude to him as a ` comic bird,' and to his brand-new ship as an ` old box.' One wonders in what particular style the lads of the next century will allude to our present day leviathans."
This is a book both for the print lover and the steamship enthusiast.
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