1890, Dec. 27.—British steamer Shanghai burned in China Seas; 101 lives lost.
1891, March 17.—Anchor liner Utopia in collision with British steamer Anson off Gibraltar and sunk; 574 lives lost.
1892, Jan. 13.—Steamer Namehow wrecked in China Sea; 414 lives lost.
1892, Oct. 28.—Anchor liner Romania, wrecked off Portugal; 113 lives lost.
1893, Feb. 8.—Anchor liner Trinairia, wrecked off Spain; 115 lives lost.
1894, June 25.—Steamer Norge, wrecked on Rockall Reef, in the North Atlantic; nearly 600 lives lost.
1895, Jan. 30.—German steamer Elbe sunk in collision with British steamer Crathie in North Sea; 335 lives lost.
1898, July 4.—French line steamer La Bourgogne in collision with British sailing vessel Cromartyshire; 571 lives lost.
1898, Nov. 27.—American steamer Portland, wrecked off Cape Cod, Mass.; 157 lives lost.
1901, April 1.—Turkish transport Aslam wrecked in the Red Sea; over 180 lives lost.
1902, July 21.—Steamer Primus sunk in collision with the steamer Hansa on the Lower Elbe; 112 lives lost.
1903, June 7.—French steamer Libau sunk in collision with steamer Insulerre near Marseilles; 150 lives lost.
1904, June 15. General Slocum, excursion steamboat, took fire going through Hell Gate, East River; more than 1000 lives lost.
1906, Jan. 21.—Brazilian battleship Aquidaban sunk near Rio Janeiro by an explosion of the powder magazines; 212 lives lost.
1906, Jan. 22.—American steamer Valencia lost off Cloose, Pacific Coast; 140 lives lost.
1906, Aug. 4.—Italian emigrant ship Sirio struck a rock off Cape Palos; 350 lives lost.
1906, Oct. 21.—Russian steamer Variag, on leaving Vladivostock, struck by a torpedo and sunk; 140 lives lost.
1907, Feb. 12.—American steamer Larchmond sunk in collision off Rhode Island coast; 131 lives lost.
1907, July 20.—American steamers Columbia and San Pedro collided on the Californian coast; 100 lives lost.
1907, Nov. 26.—Turkish steamer Kaptain foundered in the North Sea; 110 lives lost.
1908, March 23.—Japanese steamer Mutsu Maru sunk in collision near Hakodate; 300 lives lost.
1908, April 30.—Japanese training cruiser Matsu Shima sunk off the Pescadores owing to an explosion; 200 lives lost.
1909, Jan. 24.—Collision between the Italian steamer Florida and the White Star liner Republic, about 170 miles east of New York during a fog; a large number of lives were saved by the arrival of the steamer Baltic, which received the “C. Q. D.,” or distress signal sent up by wireless by the Republic January 22. The Republic sank while being towed; 6 lives lost.
1910, Feb. 9.—French line steamer General Chanzy off Minorca; 200 lives lost.
1911, Sept. 25.—French battleship Liberte sunk by explosion in Toulon harbor; 223 lives lost.
CHAPTER XXVI. DEVELOPMENT OF SHIPBUILDING
THE origin of travel on water dates back to a very early period in human history, men beginning with the log, the inflated skin, the dug-out canoe, and upwards through various methods of flotation; while the paddle, the oar, and finally the sail served as means of propulsion. This was for inland water travel, and many centuries passed before the navigation of the sea was dreamed of by adventurous mariners.
The paintings and sculptures of early Egypt show us boats built of sawn planks, regularly constructed and moved both by oars and sails. At a later period we read of the Phoenicians, the most daring and enterprising of ancient navigators, who braved the dangers of the open sea, and are said by Herodotus to have circumnavigated Africa as early as 604 B. C. Starting from the Red Sea, they followed the east coast, rounded the Cape, and sailed north along the west coast to the Mediterranean, reaching Egypt again in the third year of this enterprise.
The Carthaginians and Romans come next in the history of shipbuilding, confining themselves chiefly to the Mediterranean, and using oars as the principal means of propulsion. Their galleys ranged from one to five banks of oars. The Roman vessels in the first Punic war were over 100 feet long and had 300 rowers, while they carried 120 soldiers. They did not use sails until about the beginning of the fourteenth century B. C.
Portugal was the first nation to engage in voyages of discovery, using vessels of small size in these adventurous journeys. Spain, which soon became her rival in this field, built larger ships and long held the lead. Yet the ships with which Columbus made the discovery of America were of a size and character in which few sailors of the present day would care to venture far from land.
England was later in coming into the field of adventurous navigation, being surpassed not only by the Portuguese and Spanish, but by the Dutch, in ventures to far lands.
Europe long held the precedence in shipbuilding and enterprise in navigation, but the shores of America had not long been settled before the venturous colonists had ships upon the seas. The first of these was built at the mouth of the Kennebec River in Maine. This was a staunch little two-masted vessel, which was named the Virginia, supposed to have been about sixty feet long and seventeen feet in beam. Next in time came the Restless, built in 1614 or 1615 at New York, by Adrian Blok, a Dutch captain whose ships had been burned while lying at Manhattan Island. This vessel, thirty-eight feet long and of eleven feet beam, was employed for several years in exploring the Atlantic coast.
With the advent of the nineteenth century a new ideal in naval architecture arose, that of the ship moved by steam-power instead of wind-power, and fitted to combat with the seas alike in storm and calm, with little heed as to whether the wind was fair or foul. The steamship appeared, and grew in size and power until such giants of the wave as the Titanic and Olympic were set afloat. To the development of this modern class of ships our attention must now be turned.
As the reckless cowboy of the West is fast becoming a thing of the past, so is the daring seaman of fame and story. In his place is coming a class of men miscalled sailors, who never reefed a sail or coiled a cable, who do not know how to launch a life-boat or pull an oar, and in whose career we meet the ridiculous episode of the life-boats of the Titanic, where women were obliged to take the oars from their hands and row the boats. Thus has the old- time hero of the waves been transformed into one fitted to serve as a clown of the vaudeville stage.
The advent of steam navigation came early in the nineteenth century, though interesting steps in this direction were taken earlier. No sooner was the steam-engine developed than men began to speculate on it as a moving power on sea and land. Early among these were several Americans, Oliver Evans, one of the first to project steam railway travel, and James Rumsey and John Fitch, steamboat inventors of early date. There were several experimenters in Europe also, but the first to produce a practical steamboat was Robert Fulton, a native of Pennsylvania, whose successful boat; the Clermont, made its maiden trip up the Hudson in 1807. A crude affair was the Clermont, with a top speed of about seven miles an hour; but it was the dwarf from which the giant steamers of to-day have grown.
Boats of this type quickly made their way over the American rivers and before 1820 regular lines of steamboats were running between England and Ireland. In 1817 James Watt, the inventor of the practical steam- engine, crossed in a steamer from England to Belgium. But these short voyages were far surpassed by an American enterprise, that of the first ocean steamship, the Savannah, which crossed the Atlantic from Savannah to Liverpool in 1819.
Twelve years passed before this enterprise was repeated, the next steam voyage being in 1831, when the Royal William crossed from Quebec to England. She used coal for fuel, having utilized her entire hold to store enough for the voyage. The Savannah had burned pitch-pine under her engines, for in America wood was long used as fuel for steam-making purposes. As regards this matter, the problem of fuel was of leading importance, and it was seriously questioned if a ship could be built to cross the Atlantic depending solely upon steam power. Steam-
