1838 - Crossing the Atlantic Ocean under Steam

Two steamships - SS in short -, Sirius and Great Western, simultaneously cross the Atlantic Ocean from Cork in Ireland for the first, from Bristol in England for the second, to New York, in 18½ and 15½ days respectively, the second departing 4 days after the first and arriving the day after, that is on the 23rd of April while Sirius arrived on the 22nd. Sirius has transported 45 passengers, Great Western only seven.

¤ Great Eastern caught fire in her machinery during her trials which belayed her maiden trip and deterred registered passengers from boarding.

Sirius also achieves to be the first arrived on the eastbound travel from New York to Falmouth on the 19th of May, ahead of Great Western by three days.

Sirius, 178-foot long and 25½-foot broad, a brigantine as for the sail plan, displays a gross tonnage of 700 tons. She has not been built for the purpose of crossing ocean but for the line between London and Cork, and she has been pushed to her limits of endurance, arriving almost short of fuel despite a large overload of coal at her departure. She has been designed for steaming 3,000 miles at 6½ knots and has achieved to steam 3,500 miles at 8 knots thanks to extra fuel and to machinery extra power.

¤ She arrives with 15 tons of coal left. Rumours circulate about the crew burning pieces of furniture and of rigging to complete the journey. A tale, colourful though. Yet the travel back has wisely been shortened by 300 miles.

She was built last year by Messrs Robert Menzies & Sons, shipbuilders at Leith in the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh, and fitted with a 500hp steam engine by Messrs Wingate & Co, on behalf of the St George Steam Packet Co. She has been chartered for two voyages by the British & American Steam Navigation company, established in 1835, to occupy the market niche before the commissioning of their own Atlantic liner Royal Victoria, just renamed British Queen for the obvious reason of her ascension to the throne, delayed by the bankrupt of her engine maker, Claud Girdwood. For British & American, Sirius’ feat is a lucky strike which opens the line with great stir.

On her own, Great Western, 1350 tons, 235-foot long, 57½-foot broad across the paddle wheels, a four-masted barquentine as for the sail plan, has been purposefully built for crossing the ocean and she carries an ample stock of fuel accordingly. She has steamed in an easy way for her maiden trip.

She has been designed by already famous Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a bold and talented engineer aged 32, already in the public eye for the Great Western Railway, hence ship’s name as she is considered as an extension of it. She has been built by Messrs William Patterson Shipbuilders in Bristol, and fitted with a 750hp machinery composed of two side-lever steam engines by Messrs Maudslay, Sons & Field, on behalf of the Great Western Steamship company founded in 1836. She is able to steam at nine or even ten knots a full fortnight long.

¤ As everybody knows, the average duration of the travel westbound for a sailing packet ship is a bit over 40 days, 35 at best, but it may extend to 50 or even 60 days under adverse conditions – which legitimates the steamship as providing both a standardised and fast travel.

¤ The travel eastbound lasts a bit less than 30 days as it is downwind in general. It is worth noticing that Giovanni Caboto (†1499), better known as John Cabot, reached Newfoundland from Bristol in 35 days in 1497 with the small 50-ton caravel Matthew. It is said that he went back in 17 days only but there is some uncertainty about the day of his departure. Well, even if he sailed back in 20 days, this already was a genuine feat. The Columbia of the Black Ball line achieved a 15-day travel in 1830.

¤ Curiously, the travel of Royal William six years ago, in 1833, crossing the Atlantic ocean under steam and sail, but one day without steaming for the purpose of cleaning the boiler, has not been celebrated as a premiere. Built in Quebec, she was a large 1370-ton ship, 160-foot long and 44-foot broad. For lack of business on the line she was meant to, that is the line between Quebec and New England, it was decided to sell it in Great-Britain which explains the travel across the ocean in some twenty days, which was not meant to being a demonstration, but simply a plain trip.

¤ We have no explanation why the crew stopped the machinery. As everybody knows, the boiler naturally concentrates salt by evaporation of steam. Moreover the jet condenser adds some salt water to the steam leaving the engine after working. Currently the stokers flush out salt from the boiler through regular purges without turning down the boiler.

¤ Depending on the position at sea, water contains between 2 and 3.5% of its mass in salt - calcium chloride, calcium sulphate, magnesium sulphate are the three major constituents. Each horsepower requires about 30 pounds of steam an hour at the low pressure currently used in our engines, which is around 8 psi above the atmosphere. A 500-hp engine therefore requires 15,000 pounds of steam an hour, which concentrate between 300 and 500 pounds of salt in the boiler every hour, between 7,200 and 12,000 every day - say 3 to 5 tons. Extraction of salt at the bottom of the boiler is, as everybody can see, a regular procedure, mandatory to maintain efficiency, to avoid corrosion by chlorides, and to prevent destructive priming of salt droplets onto the cylinders of the engine. Almost half the quantity of water transformed in steam must be added to refill the boiler, and must be drained to sustain salinity under three times natural sea salinity.

It is interesting to notice that common sense, represented by Mr Dionysius Lardner, a polymath of great influence through his books and his lectures, aged 45, has been completely mistaken in a controversy he has had with Brunel : as the project was unveiled, he spoke out that there was a limit in size, in fuel capacity so in range for a steamship, thus the Great Western project was chimeric and would fail. Well, the Great Western’s feat proves out that Brunel has been right, and Lardner wrong. Brunel has understood that, for a given form, ship capacity of carrying cargo, engine and fuel varies as the cube of its length while its resistance to movement varies as its square. In other terms, size facilitates higher speed, longer range, and lower transportation cost – the right combination for transoceanic trade. The genuine problem that thwarts size lies in the stiffness of ship structure, which Brunel has rightly thought he could overcome through iron-straps reinforcing wood bracing.

__________

IN RETROSPECT FROM TODAY

NOTE A - About fastness and regularity of Great Western.

In 1838 Great Western reaches nine knots on average on her third travel westbound in June, and ten knots on average on her third travel eastbound. She also demonstrates that she can carry out three round trips in four months. This is convincing enough for the Admiralty which contemplates to rely on such steamers for the service of mail – a decision finally made in 1839 but awarded to a challenger, Samuel Cunard, 52 years old.

Great Western sailed 45 round transatlantic trips during her career until 1846. She made a record westbound trip at 9½ knots in 1839 and another at 10 knots in 1843, and a record eastbound trip at 11 knots in 1842.

In 1844, her initial large flue boilers are replaced by two tubular ones. The first ones weighed almost half a ton per hp, fifty percents in metal, fifty percents for water. The weight is divided by more than a factor two with the tubular ones, seventy percents in metal, thirty percents for water. The new tubular boilers are said to be tubular because smoke is re-injected within the boiler to heat water through smoke pipes before being finally exhausted through the funnel. beyond the weight economy, tere is a coal economy as the new boiler supplies three pounds of steam against two for the same pound of coal.

NOTE B - About Sirius.

She does another round turn before returning to her owners for the service on the Irish sea. She will wreck in fog in 1847.

__________

SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Helen Doe – The First Atlantic Liner – London, 2017