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 ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF MENTAL
HEALTH LAW

Mental health law is a rapidly evolving area of practice and research, with growing global
dimensions. This work reflects the increasing importance of this field, critically discussing
key issues of controversy and debate, and providing up-to-date analysis of cutting-edge
developments in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Australia.
This is a timely moment for this book to appear. The United Nations Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) sought to transform the landscape in which mental
health law is developed and implemented. This Convention, along with other developments,
has, to varying degrees, informed sweeping legislative reforms in many countries around the
world. These and other developments are discussed here. Contributors come from a wide
range of countries and a variety of academic backgrounds including ethics, law, philosophy,
psychiatry, and psychology. Some contributions are also informed by lived experience,
whether in person or as family members. The result is a rich, polyphonic, and sometimes
discordant account of what mental health law is and what it might be.
The Handbook is aimed at mental health scholars and practitioners as well as students
of law, human rights, disability studies, and psychiatry, and campaigners and law- and
policy-makers.

Brendan D. Kelly is Professor of Psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

Mary Donnelly is Professor of Law at University College Cork, Ireland.

 ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOKS IN LAW

About the Series

Routledge Handbooks in Law present state-of-the-art surveys of important and emerging
topics in Law and Legal Studies, providing accessible yet thorough assessments of key fields,
themes and recent developments in research.
All chapters for each volume are specially commissioned, and written by leading and
emerging scholars in the field. Carefully edited and organized, Routledge Handbooks in Law
provide indispensable reference tools for students and researchers seeking a comprehensive
overview of new and exciting topics in the relevant subject areas. They are also valuable
teaching resources as accompaniments to textbooks, anthologies, and research-orientated
publications.

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF COMMERCIAL SPACE LAW

Edited by Lesley-Jane Smith, Ingo Baumann and Dr. Susan Wintermuth

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF MENTAL HEALTH LAW

Edited by Brendan D. Kelly and Mary Donnelly

For more details, visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbooks-in-Law/book-

series/RHL
ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF
MENTAL HEALTH LAW

Edited by Brendan D. Kelly and Mary Donnelly

 Designed cover image: DrAfter123
First published 2024
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2024 selection and editorial matter, Brendan D. Kelly and Mary
Donnelly; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Brendan D. Kelly and Mary Donnelly to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
With the exception of Chapter 36, no part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Chapter 36 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access
from the individual product page at www​.routledge​.com. It has been made
available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No
Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Funded by Australian Research Council and University of Melbourne.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kelly, Brendan (Lawyer), editor. | Donnelly, Mary (Law teacher),
editor.
Title: Routledge handbook of mental health law/edited by Brendan
D. Kelly and Mary Donnelly.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon [UK]; New York, NY: Routledge, 2023. |
Series: Routledge handbooks in law | Includes bibliographical references
and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2023022224 | ISBN 9781032128375 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781032128405 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003226413 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Mental health laws. | Insanity (Law) | Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities and Optional Protocol (2007 March 30)
Classification: LCC K640 .R68 2023 |
DDC 344.04/4–dc23/eng/20230724
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023022224
ISBN: 978-1-032-12837-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-12840-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-22641-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003226413
Typeset in Galliard
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
The Open Access version of chapter 36 was funded by Australian Research
Council and University of Melbourne.
 CONTENTS

List of contributors x
List of figures xiii
List of tables xiv

Introduction to Routledge Handbook of Mental Health Law 1

Mary Donnelly and Brendan D. Kelly

PART 1
Background and context 15

1 History and development of mental health law 17

Brendan D. Kelly

2 Independent mental health monitoring: Evaluating the Care Quality

Commission in England’s approach to regulation, rights, and risks 34
Judy Laing

3 The relationship between ethics and law in mental healthcare 55

Louise Campbell

PART 2
European and international standards 81

4 The European Court’s incremental approach to the protection of

liberty, dignity and autonomy 83
Anna Nilsson

 v
 Contents

5 The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with

Disabilities and mental health laws: Requirements and responses 101
Suzanne Doyle Guilloud

6 Responses to the World Health Organization’s QualityRights initiative 124

Richard M. Duffy

PART 3
Specific groups 147

7 Children’s mental health care: Decision-making and human rights 149

Camilla Parker

8 People with learning disability: Scotland and beyond 166

Jill Stavert

9 Mental health laws and older adults 179

Penelope Weller

10 Abuse, neglect, and adult safeguarding in the context of mental health

and disability 193
Laura Pritchard-Jones

11 The use of trans-related diagnoses in health care and legal gender

recognition: From disease- to identity-based models 212
Pieter Cannoot and Sarah Schoentjes

12 Personality disorder in mental health law and criminal law 233

Ailbhe O’Loughlin

PART 4
Forensic psychiatry and criminal law 253

13 Mental illness and criminal law: Irreconcilable bedfellows? 255

Jill Peay

14 The principles of forensic psychology and criminal law—an American

perspective272
Eric Y. Drogin

15 Mental capacity in forensic psychiatry in a comparative context 285

Stefano Ferracuti and Giovanna Parmigiani

vi
 Contents

16 Capturing mental health issues in international criminal law and justice:

The input of the International Criminal Court 306
Caroline Fournet

PART 5
Issues, controversies, challenges 325

17 Decision-making capacity in mental health law 327

Alex Ruck Keene and Katherine Reidy

18 Risk of harm and involuntary psychiatric treatment 342

Matthew Large, Sascha Callaghan and Christopher James Ryan

19 Compulsory community treatment: Is it the least restrictive alternative? 356

John Dawson

20 Socio-economic inclusion and mental health law 371

Terry Carney

21 The right to mental health care in mental health legislation 384

Brendan D. Kelly

22 Mental health, discrimination and employment law 403

Mark Bell

23 Family in mental health law: Responding to relationality 421

Mary Donnelly

24 Consenting for prevention: The ethics of ambivalent choice in

psychiatric genomics 438
Camillia Kong

PART 6
Developments in specific regions and jurisdictions 457

25 Change or improvement? Mental health law reform in Africa 459

Heléne Combrinck

26 Mental health law and practice in Ghana: An examination of the

implementation of Act 846 477
Lily Kpobi, Charlotte Kwakye-Nuako, and Leveana Gyimah

vii
 Contents

27 Regulating mental health care in South Africa: Assessing the right to

legal capacity and the right to the highest attainable standard of health
in South African law and policy 493
Elizabeth Kamundia and Ilze Grobbelaar-du Plessis

28 Untapped potential of China’s mental health law reform 511

Bo Chen

29 Colonization, history and the evolution of mental health legislation in

India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh 527
Sangeeta Dey and Graham Mellsop

30 India’s Mental Healthcare Act, 2017: A promise for transformation

and radical change 540
Arjun Kapoor and Manisha Shastri

31 An alternative to mental health law: The Mental Capacity Act

(Northern Ireland) 2016 556
Gavin Davidson

32 Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Peru: The relationship of mental

health law and legal capacity 571
Pablo Marshall

33 Mental health policies in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking South

American countries 587
Carla Aparecida Arena Ventura

PART 7
Future directions 615

34 Interdisciplinary collaboration in the mental health sector: The role of

the law 617
Bernadette McSherry

35 The Mental Health and Justice project: Reflections on strong

interdisciplinarity629
Gareth Owen

36 ‘Digitising the Mental Health Act’: Are we facing the app-ification and
platformisation of coercion in mental health services? 645
Piers Gooding

viii
 Contents

37 Mental health law: A global future?665

Jean V. McHale

38 The future of mental health law: Abolition or reform? 685

Kay Wilson

39 The future of mental health law: The need for deeper examination and
broader scope 704
Tania L. Gergel

Index727

ix
 CONTRIBUTORS

Mark Bell, Regius Professor of Laws, School of Law, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
Sascha Callaghan, Senior Lecturer, Sydney Law School, University of Sydney, Australia.
Louise Campbell, Lecturer in Medical Ethics and Law, School of Medicine, University of
Galway, Ireland.
Pieter Cannoot, Assistant Professor of Law and Diversity, Ghent University, Belgium.
Terry Carney, Emeritus Professor, Sydney Law School, University of Sydney, Australia.
Bo Chen, Lecturer, School of Law, Minjiang University, Fuzhou, China.
Heléne Combrinck, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, North-West University, South
Africa.
Gavin Davidson, Professor of Social Care, School of Social Sciences, Education and Social
Work, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland.
John Dawson, Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Otago, New Zealand.
Sangeeta Dey, Consultant Psychiatrist, Mental Health Services for Older People, Waikato,
Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand.
Mary Donnelly, Professor of Law, School of Law, Arás na Laoi, University College Cork,
Ireland.
Eric Y. Drogin, Affiliated Lead of Psycholegal Studies, Psychiatry, Law, and Society
Program, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Department of
Psychiatry, USA.
Richard M. Duffy, Consultant Perinatal Psychiatrist, Specialist Perinatal Mental Health
Service, Rotunda Hospital, Dublin; Consultant Liaison Psychiatrist, Mater Misericordiae
University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland.

x 
 Contributors

Stefano Ferracuti, Full Professor of Forensic Psychopathology, Department of Human

Neuroscience, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.
Caroline Fournet, Professor of Law, Law School, University of Exeter, UK.
Tania L. Gergel, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Psychological Studies, The Institute
of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, UK.
Piers Gooding, Associate Professor, La Trobe Law School, Melbourne, Australia.
Ilze Grobbelaar-du Plessis, Associate Professor, Department of Public Law, University of
Pretoria, South Africa.
Suzanne Doyle Guilloud, Independent Researcher.
Leveana Gyimah, Lecturer/Psychiatrist, Pantang Hospital, Mental Health Authority,
Ministry of Health, Ghana.
Elizabeth Kamundia, Assistant Director, Research, Advocacy and Outreach Directorate,
Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, Kenya.
Arjun Kapoor, Programme Manager and Research Fellow, Centre for Mental Health Law
and Policy, Indian Law Society, India.
Alex Ruck Keene, Barrister, 39 Essex Chambers, London and Visiting Professor, King’s
College London, UK.
Brendan D. Kelly, Professor of Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Trinity College
Dublin, Trinity Centre for Health Sciences, Tallaght University Hospital, Ireland.
Camillia Kong, Senior Lecturer and Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences Fellow,
School of Law, Queen Mary University of London, UK.
Lily Kpobi, Research Fellow/Psychologist, Regional Institute for Population Studies,
University of Ghana, Ghana.
Charlotte Kwakye-Nuako, Lecturer/Lawyer, Department of Forensic Science, University
of Cape Coast, Ghana.
Judy Laing, Professor of Mental Health Law, Rights, and Policy, University of Bristol Law
School, UK.
Matthew Large, Conjoint Professor, Discipline of Psychiatry and Mental Health, University
of New South Wales, Australia.
Pablo Marshall, Associate Professor of Law, School of Law, Universidad Austral de Chile,
Chile.
Jean V. McHale, Professor of Healthcare Law, Centre for Health Law Science and Policy,
University of Birmingham, UK.
Bernadette McSherry, Emeritus Professor of Law, Melbourne Law School, University of
Melbourne, Australia.
Graham Mellsop, Emeritus Professor, University of Auckland, New Zealand.

xi
 Contributors

Anna Nilsson, Associate Lecturer in Health Law, Faculty of Law, Lund University, Sweden.
Ailbhe O’Loughlin, Senior Lecturer in Law, York Law School, University of York, UK.
Gareth Owen, Reader/Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology
and Neuroscience, Department of Psychological Medicine, King’s College London, UK.
Camilla Parker, Legal & Policy Consultant, Just Equality, UK.
Giovanna Parmigiani, Reseach Fellow/Psychiatrist, Department of Human Neuroscience,
Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy.
Jill Peay, Emeritus Professor of Law, London School of Economics and Political Science,
UK.
Laura Pritchard-Jones, Senior Lecturer, School of Law, Keele University, UK.
Katherine Reidy, Registrar in Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Trinity College Dublin,
Trinity Centre for Health Sciences; Linn Dara Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services,
Cherry Orchard Hospital, Dublin, Ireland.
Christopher James Ryan, Conjoint Associate Professor, University of Sydney and University
of New South Wales, Australia.
Sarah Schoentjes, FWO (Flanders Research Foundation) PhD Research Fellow, Ghent
University, Belgium
Manisha Shastri, Research Associate, Centre for Mental Health Law and Policy, Indian Law
Society, India
Jill Stavert, Professor of Mental Health and Capacity Law; Director, Centre for Mental
Health and Capacity Law; Lead, Centre for Mental Health Practice, Policy and Law Research,
School of Health and Social Care, Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland.
Carla Aparecida Arena Ventura, Full Professor, University of São Paulo at Ribeirão Preto
College of Nursing, Brazil.
Penelope Weller, Professor of Law, Graduate School of Business and Law, College of
Business and Law, RMIT University, Australia.
Kay Wilson, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Melbourne Law School, University of
Melbourne, Australia.

xii
 FIGURES

10.1 Key adult safeguarding legislation in England 197

15.1 Capacity to consent to treatment 286
15.2 Variables that influence decisional capacity 287
15.3 Criteria for involuntary hospitalization in European countries 289
15.4 Decisional capacity: clinical and forensic dimensions 295
18.1 Number of people (false positives) needed to detain one person (true
positive) with a future harmful act determined by an excellent risk
assessment tool with a sensitivity and specificity of 75% 351
35.1 Scheme for Mental Health and Justice project policy lab on reform
of the Mental Health Act 636

 xiii
 TABLES

6.1 Tools created by the World Health Organization’s

QualityRights initiative 125
6.2 The World Health Organization’s QualityRights assessment themes,
standards and criteria 128
6.3 Research carried out using the World Health Organization’s
QualityRights material 136
15.1 Selected instruments to assess decisional capacity to consent
to treatment 288
15.2 Selected instruments to assess decisional capacity to consent to research 288
15.3 Selected instruments to assess decisional capacity to stand trial 292
15.4 Selected instruments to assess criminal responsibility 293
15.5 Selected instruments to assess financial capacity 297
18.1 Contingency table generated by risk assessment and outcome 346
32.1 Relevant legal reforms in selected Latin American jurisdictions 572
32.2 List of acronyms (for Chapter 32) 575
32.3 Safeguards for involuntary hospitalisation in Argentina and Chile 582
33.1 Documents selected by country on the theme “Mental health
legislation, regulations and implementation guides” (World Health
Organization MiNDbank [More Inclusiveness Needed in Disability
and Development] platform) 590
33.2 Documents by categories (World Health Organization MiNDbank
[More Inclusiveness Needed in Disability and Development] platform) 600

xiv 
Other documents randomly have
different content
 During the War of 1812 a number of Chesapeake Bay ships which
came to be called “Baltimore clippers” proved very successful as
privateers. These ships were fast, and probably the name “clipper”
had some connotation at the time suggesting speed. But these
“Baltimore clippers” were not, as the word was later used, clipper
ships in the true sense. The Ann McKim, as I have said, was actually
the first of these.
This ship was an enlargement to scale of one of the small, fast
sailing vessels which two hundred years of ship-building experience
had taught American shipwrights to construct. The Ann McKim, then,
was a small sailing ship built by the foot, so to speak, while her
smaller counterparts had been built by the inch. Her proportions
were identical to those of the small fry that skimmed about
Chesapeake Bay. Only in size and in the elaborateness of her finish
did she differ.
Before the advent of the Ann McKim, no one seems to have
thought of building a ship of her size—she was 143 feet long—on
any lines but those which for so long had been accepted as proper
for a ship, and they were far different from the lines accepted for
small boats. But despite her originality the Ann McKim proved to be
fast.
It seems to be true that this ship did not directly affect ship
design. But in the next nine years a number of fast ships appeared,
and then John W. Griffiths, a young naval architect of New York, in a
series of lectures on the subject of ship design, laid down the basic
rules that brought into being those beautiful ships—of which there
were never more than a handful, by comparison with the other ships
of the world—that suddenly leaped into world-wide prominence.
To the uninitiated, the changes proposed by Griffiths seem
unimportant and perhaps uninteresting, for it resulted only in
sharper bows and finer lines, in the movement, farther toward the
stern, of the ship’s greatest beam, and of “hollow” water lines—that
is, the curve of the hull aft from the bow along the water line was
concave before it became convex, as it long had been for its whole
length on other ships.
The first ship to be built along these new lines, and therefore the
first clipper ship of the new order of things, was the Rainbow, which
was launched in 1845. It is interesting, too, to note that, while she
was lost—perhaps off Cape Horn—on her fifth voyage, few of the
later clippers ever broke the records she set. Griffiths, with the touch
of genius that he had, had instantly approached such perfection as
mortal man can reach.
 THE GREAT REPUBLIC
The greatest clipper ship ever built. Unfortunately,
before she made her first voyage she caught fire and had
to be sunk. She was refloated and refitted, but never
made a voyage in her original rig. When new masts were
put in her they were made smaller than the first ones.
Still she turned out to be one of the very fastest of the
clippers.

And unlike the Ann McKim, the Rainbow did affect ship design. It
is true that critics announced that these new ships would capsize
from the very weight of their spars, that they could not stand up in a
boisterous sea, that they were freakish and ridiculous. But still they
were built, and there were races out to China and back again; and
sometimes they brought to New York the news of their own arrivals
at Canton or Shanghai.
So quickly had Griffiths’s ideas of ship design taken hold that in
the four years from the launch of the Rainbow until 1849—when the
repeal of the Navigation Laws permitted foreign ships to compete for
business between Britain and her colonies and the rush to California
opened up another profitable field—a number of these new clipper
ships were making regular voyages.
The story of the first American clipper ship to carry a cargo of tea
to Britain from China is an interesting one, and I can do no better
than quote directly from Mr. Clark’s account of the voyage in “The
Clipper Ship Era.”
“The Oriental,” says Mr. Clark, “sailed on her second voyage from
New York for China, May 19, 1850 ... and was 25 days to the
equator; she passed the meridian of the Cape of Good Hope 45 days
out, Java Head 71 days out, and arrived at Hong-kong, August 8th,
81 days from New York. She was at once chartered through Russel &
Co. to load a cargo of tea from London at £6 per ton of 40 cubic
feet, while British ships were waiting for cargoes for London at £3:10
per ton of 50 cubic feet. She sailed August 28th, and beat down the
China Sea against a strong southwest monsoon in 21 days to Anjer,
arrived off the Lizard in 91 days, and was moored in the West India
Docks, London, 97 days from Hong-kong—a passage from China
never before equalled in point of speed, especially against the
southwest monsoon, and rarely surpassed since. She delivered 1,600
tons of tea, and her freight from Hong-kong amounted to £9,600 or
some $48,000. Her first cost ready for sea was $70,000. From the
date of her first sailing from New York, September 14, 1849, to her
arrival at London, December 3, 1850, the Oriental had sailed a
distance of 67,000 miles, and had, during that time, been at sea 367
days, an average in all weathers of 183 miles per day.”
 THE ARIEL, 1866
Which, with the Fiery Cross, Taeping, Serica, and
Taitsing, sailed what was, perhaps, the greatest race ever
run. After sailing 16,000 miles from Foo-Chow, China, to
London, the Ariel, Taeping, and Serica docked in London
on the same tide, the Taeping the winner by only a few
minutes. The other two were only two days behind,
although the first three took 99 days.

Such performances were not rare for these ships, and because
they were the rule, rather than the exception, the reputation of
clippers grew apace, and interest rapidly grew in their comparative
speed. Thus it was that many races were sailed, half around the
world, during which every stitch of canvas possible was carried for
every mile of the way, and captains studied winds and currents with
such care and success that well-matched ships were often in sight of
each other off and on during voyages of thousands of miles.
The development of the clipper ship was rapid, and her decline
was almost equally fast. Eight years after the Rainbow took the
water Donald McKay, an able designer and builder, launched the
Great Republic, one of the very largest sailing ships ever built. While
this ship has been surpassed in size by several later sailing ships, no
other ship ever built was designed to carry so enormous a press of
sail.
The mainmast of this great vessel was a huge “stick” 131 feet long
and 44 inches in diameter. Above this were the topmast, 76 feet
long; the topgallantmast, 28 feet long; the royalmast, 22 feet long;
and the skysailmast, 19 feet long. All of this was topped by a 12-foot
pole. The great structure of the built-up mainmast towered more
than 200 feet above her deck.
But this greatest of all sailing ships was destined never to take a
voyage with these gigantic masts and spars. Just after she had
finished loading in New York for her first voyage, a warehouse fire
ashore dropped embers in her rigging and she was so badly burned
that she was sunk in order to save what was left. Her beautiful
masts had had to be cut out of her during the fire, and when she
was finally raised and rebuilt freight rates had fallen so far that it
was not thought best to re-rig her in her original dress. A reduced
rig was installed, making possible a great reduction in the size of her
crew, but even with her reduced rig she crossed the Atlantic from
Sandy Hook to Land’s End in 13 days.
Until the Civil War broke into the peaceful development of
America, clipper ships were built in many yards, although the
introduction of iron as a ship-building material was giving Britain the
upper hand again, after the Americans had temporarily wrested it
from her. This introduction of iron in itself would have caused the
elimination of America from mid-19th Century ship-building, but the
Civil War laid a heavy hand on the young country, and American
ships largely disappeared from the sea, save along the Confederate
coast where great fleets lay in wait for fast blockade runners that
slipped out to Bermuda and the Bahamas for cargoes of European
goods to take through the blockade to the needy South.

A GLOUCESTER FISHERMAN
Such schooners as this are common in the New
England fishing fleets. They are seaworthy and fast, and
probably the men who sail them are the greatest
seamen of our time.

England, however, had once more found herself, and soon her
yards were building clipper ships that equalled the Americans—
surpassed them, some say, but more than one challenge for an
ocean race was issued by groups of Americans only to find no takers
in British shipping circles. Now and then, it is true, British ships
outsailed American. But now and then, too, Americans outsailed
their transatlantic brothers, so it is difficult to decide as to their
relative merits.
But there is no doubt of one thing—the greatest ocean race ever
sailed was one in which five British tea clippers were engaged. The
Ariel, Taeping, Fiery Cross, Taitsing, and Serica sailed from Foo-
chow, China, within two days of each other, on the 29th, 30th, and
31st of May, 1865, all bound for London. Forty-six days later the
Fiery Cross rounded the Cape of Good Hope, followed by the Ariel,
which also made that meridian in forty-six days; the Taeping in forty-
seven days; the Serica in fifty days; and the Taitsing in fifty-four
days. Through June and July they sailed, and on August 9th the
Fiery Cross and Taeping sighted each other. The ships passed the
Azores in the following order, Ariel, Taitsing, Fiery Cross, Serica, and
Taeping, all closely grouped. From there to the English Channel the
race continued, with each ship unacquainted with the position of the
others, save occasionally when their courses brought them together.
Yet on the morning of September 5th, two of these ships sighted
each other as they entered the English Channel. As they came closer
together each recognized the other—they were the Ariel and the
Taeping, which had left Foo-chow within twenty minutes of each
other more than three months before. Up the Channel they raced,
side by side, and on September 6th, these two ships, and the Serica,
which had sailed up the Channel four hours behind them, docked in
London on the same tide and all three of them within an hour and
forty-five minutes of each other, the Taeping the winner by a few
trifling minutes. Nor were they far ahead of the other two, which
docked on the 7th and 9th. Three ships had sailed 16,000 miles in
99 days, and the other two in 101. Never before or since has a long
ocean race shown such evenly matched ships.
 AN AMERICAN COASTING SCHOONER
Square-rigged ships have largely disappeared
because, among other things, their crews were large.
These schooners, which sometimes have four or five
masts, can be handled by small crews and consequently
are able to continue to vie with steam.

But the days of the clipper ships were numbered. Steam was
already making inroads, and when the Suez Canal was opened in
1869, steamships could make the voyage to the East through the
narrow waters of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, where sailing
ships were impotent to follow, in much less time than even the
clippers could round Cape Horn. And so there passed from the sea
what were probably the most beautiful of all the ships that ever
sailed its dark blue surface. Yachts there may be whose fragile lines
are just a bit more delicate, whose sails are bleached more white.
But such comparison is odious. It is as if Du Barry were compared
with Juno. Now and again a watchful eye may still see a square-
rigged ship being impudently towed about some teeming harbour by
some officious tug, and occasionally a fortunate voyager may see
one with her sails set as she harnesses the wind to take her half
across the world. But the romantic days of sail have gone. The
voyages from London to China around Good Hope, from New York to
San Francisco around the Horn—they are things long past. Steam
and a ditch through the sandhills of Suez did it. And now another
ditch through the hills of Panama has double-locked the door, and
sail is gone.
But hold! Sail is nearly gone, and yet it is here!
No more do fleets of monster ships with towering masts spread
square sail after square sail to the honest winds of heaven. They, it
is true, have almost disappeared, and what is left is not to be
compared with what is gone. Yet in these days of steam and coal, of
grimy stokers and machines called ships, there still remains, to
gladden the eye of the white-haired men who sailed the clipper ships
a half a century and more ago, a type of sailing ship that has proved
to be so handy, so capable and efficient, that all the machines of a
machine-mad world have not been able to drive them from the sea.
These are the schooners and the other craft whose sails, based on
those old Dutch vessels that first used the jib, are of a different
design.
The clipper ships and their predecessors were “square-rigged”
ships. A schooner is a “fore-and-aft” rigged ship, and to-day the
“fore-and-aft” rig is the only rig in common use.
It will have been seen, from this account, that the development of
sails was slow. Century followed century and ships progressed but
little. Even the most rapid period of development covered the four
centuries, from 1450 to 1850, so that, while fore-and-aft sails have
reached their present stage more rapidly than square-rigged ships,
still the story is one that covers centuries.
I have already told of the origin in Holland of the jib, which
seemed to grow out of the lateen sail. It was from that beginning
that the “fore-and-aft” rig developed.
The narrow waterways of the low countries demanded a type of
sail that could be handled more easily and could sail closer to the
wind than the square sail could. This the fore-and-aft sail did, and so
it filled an important need. I have not the space, in what remains of
this chapter, to trace its growth in all its detail. Furthermore, E. Keble
Chatterton has done so admirably in “The Story of the Fore-and-Aft
Rig.”
Let it suffice to say that the growth has been more a perfection
than a series of revolutionary changes. At first the rig was crude.
The sails were laced to the masts, for hoops sliding on the mast and
to which the sail is made fast, while now almost universal, were then
unknown. A boom was used to spread the foot of the sail, but not
until the famous yacht America crossed the Atlantic and won the cup
that still is held in America as the greatest racing trophy in the world
was the foot of the sail laced to the boom.
Many times I have sat at the wheel of the America as she lies in
the basin of the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, her masts
denuded of the pile of canvas that drove her to that famous victory,
and thought of her and of the little group of men whose careful
thought resulted in her triumph. Such men as those, in the
thousands of years through which ships have grown, have been the
men who have made possible the growth of the dugout canoe with
its sail of skin into the Great Republics and the Americas and, later,
the Majestics. Such men as those have aided greatly in the advance
of civilization.
I have space here for but one more thing. The Dutch, as I have
said, were responsible for the origin of the fore-and-aft rig, and
Europeans largely developed the yawl, the ketch, the brig, and
several other forms that use fore-and-aft sails. But schooners are the
most numerous of these and they originated, as their name did, in a
New England shipyard. The story is an old one and well known, but I
shall include it here, for it is the only case of which I know in which
a new ship form together with its name appeared so abruptly.
It was in Gloucester, Massachusetts, that port now famous for the
ablest schooners that sail the seas, that the schooner originated. In
1713 an ingenious builder built a boat and placed in her two masts
bearing fore-and-aft sails. For a head sail he spread that triangular
canvas now so common, but this was the first time that these sails,
all long familiar, had been arranged according to the now common
plan.
She left the stocks and floated lightly on the water, and an
interested spectator cried, “Look! See how she scoons!”
The owner must have been a man of wit as well as originality for
he replied: “Very well. A scooner let her be.” And schooner she still
is, but in the two centuries since that time her form has impressed
itself on many thousand ships, and the port that gave her birth has
gained a reputation that is world-wide as the port of the ablest
schooners and the ablest sailors that ever graced the great expanse
of ocean.
 CHAPTER IV
THE DEVELOPMENT OF STEAMSHIPS

F ROM the day a really successful steam-driven vessel first moved

herself awkwardly in the water until the Majestic slid from her
German ways was not much more than a hundred years. But that
hundred years shows more of progress in the development of ships
than the preceding thousand. So breathlessly rapid has been the
development of steamships that there are men still alive who
remember them as frail experimental craft upon which little
dependence could be placed. “Sail,” said the citizen of a hundred
years ago, “is a dependable mode of propulsion. Steam is a
ridiculous power, or at best a dangerous and highly experimental
one.”
“Steam,” says the “landlubber” of to-day, “is satisfactory for me.
Sailing is a foolhardy business.”
And neither the century-old viewpoint nor the new one is entirely
right.

Steam was vaguely recognized as a source of power even in early

Egyptian history, and several times before the birth of Watt
inconsequential experiments were made with it.
There is a story, not now accepted as true, of one Blasco de
Garay, who in 1543 experimented at Barcelona, Spain, with a boat
propelled by steam. It was not for another 100 years, however, that
steam was practically applied. But as early as 1690 it is known that
Thomas Savery and Denis Papin proposed the use of steam as an
aid to navigation. Papin even built a model boat in which a crude
steam engine was installed. A man named Newcomen seems to have
been the builder of the engines used in these and other early
experiments. One engine built by this experimenter was used in
1736 in a boat built by Jonathan Hulls in England.
That great American, Benjamin Franklin, whose genius touched
such a diversity of subjects, saw, as early as 1775, that paddle-
wheels were inefficient machines, and called attention to the fact,
suggesting that an engine be devised to draw a column of water in
at the bow, to project it forcibly astern in order to give the ship
headway. This method was tried but before much success had been
attained, all engines being of such low power, the screw propeller
had been perfected and the water-jet system was dropped, although
in 1782 James Rumsey built a boat of this type on the Potomac. In
France a steamboat built by the Marquis de Jouffroy is said to have
been operated in 1783. This boat was 150 feet long and ran with
some degree of success for about a year and a half. Jouffroy has
sometimes been given credit for the invention of the steamboat. In
1788 a small vessel of strange design was driven at four or five miles
an hour by William Symington in Scotland. This boat was built at the
expense of a Scotch banker named Patrick Miller. Two years before
this John Fitch, a New Englander, built a fairly successful steamboat
that was propelled by steam-driven oars. Symington’s experiments
were continued and another boat that made seven miles an hour
was running in 1789. Still more successful was another of
Symington’s boats, the Charlotte Dundas, when, in 1802, she towed
two loaded vessels, totalling nearly one hundred and fifty tons at
three and one-half miles an hour for a score of miles in the Forth
and Clyde Canal. The project was abandoned, however, because of
the effect of the agitated water on the banks of the canal. The
Dundas was, of course, driven by a paddle-wheel. Symington
continued his efforts but was unfortunately handicapped financially,
and when Lord Bridgewater, his next backer, died, he withdrew from
the field, reduced to poverty.
 THE CHARLOTTE DUNDAS
Before the Clermont was built, this boat had operated
successfully on the Forth and Clyde Canal in Scotland. The
objection to her was that she stirred the water up so that
she injured the banks of the canal.

But all of these were merely preparatory to the first steamboat

that is to be accepted as a thoroughly practical affair. In 1807, after
several years of travel in Europe where he inspected all the steam
engines of which he could learn, and where he experimented with a
steamboat of his own design on the Seine, Robert Fulton built the
Clermont in New York. Her engine, or at least the major part of it,
was built in England and shipped to New York where it was installed
in the first definitely successful steamboat ever built. The Clermont
was 133 feet long and 18 feet wide, and made the run from New
York to Albany, a distance of about one hundred and fifty miles, in
thirty-two hours.
But the Clermont had a greater task in the breaking down of
prejudice than ever she had in propelling herself through the smooth
waters of the Hudson on her round trips between New York and
Albany.
The first steamer to make an ocean voyage was a boat named the
Phœnix, built in 1809. She was driven under her own power from
Hoboken, New Jersey, on the Hudson River, opposite New York City,
to Philadelphia.
So rapid was the increase in the number of steamboats that by
1814 a contributor to the columns of the Gentlemen’s Magazine
wrote that “most of the principal rivers in North America are
navigated by steamboats. One of them passes 2,000 miles on the
great river Mississippi in twenty-one days, at the rate of five miles an
hour against the descending current,” which, if true, tells a dramatic
story of the rapid development of this new apparatus.
During the next decade a number of boats and small ships were
built, in the hulls of which steam engines were placed, and on the
masts of which the ever-present sails were spread to guard against
what were, evidently, the inevitable breakdowns. But another step in
the development of steamships was to be made. Up to 1818 steam-
driven ships had been used only on inland or on coastal waters. But
in that year a 380-ton full-rigged ship was built in New York City and
was equipped with paddle-wheels operated by a steam engine of
seventy-two horse power. (Some say this engine developed ninety
horse power but the measurement of the power of engines was then
at best an inaccurate science.)
After a number of trials, this ship, which was named the
Savannah, crossed the Atlantic in 1819 taking twenty-five days from
Savannah, Georgia, to Liverpool. The passage attracted much
attention, even though the ship had been under power for only a
part of the time. This did not prove, however, that her engines were
not capable of more extended operation. They were stopped for the
excellent reason that the fuel ran out. While this voyage created
widespread interest it also suggested to the wits of the day the
necessity for a fleet of sailing ships to accompany the steamers of
the future in order to keep them supplied with fuel.
Later, when the Savannah returned to America, her engines were
removed, but she had served a useful turn, and she is accepted as
the first steam-driven ship to cross the Atlantic.
With this mark to shoot at, the progress of steamships became
more rapid, although for sixty years most of them that were
intended for deep-sea work carried masts and spars from which sails
could be spread.
 ROBERT FULTON’S CLERMONT
The first completely successful steamboat ever built. Others
built before the Clermont were made to go, but this ship carried
passengers for years.

Confidence in steam grew slowly, and with reason, for the engines
were anything but reliable, safety appliances were unknown or
inadequately understood, and steam-driven vessels often broke
down, or worse still, blew up. So common was this latter happening
that an advertisement that appeared in an American paper enlarged
upon it. The notice went on to say that there had been much talk
about the explosions that had taken place on the vessel that was
being advertised but that that was no cause for alarm for “not a
passenger has been injured.”
 The engines were single-cylinder affairs, with their parts, more
often than not, improperly designed and imperfectly machined. Good
lubricants were unknown and proper lubrication was almost
impossible, with the result that parts wore out and shrieked dismally
at their treatment. The boilers were crudely made of iron, riveted
together by hand, so that leaking seams were, apparently, the rule,
when any pressure was generated. Pressure gauges were long in
coming and the safety valves worked so imperfectly that the
engineer’s first notice of any excess pressure was often the bursting
of a steam pipe, the further widening of a leaking seam, or, worse
still, the sudden, and sometimes tragic, eruption of the whole boiler.
Then, too, another trouble affected the boilers. They were, more
often than not, unprotected from the weather, and, their design
being of the simplest, it was difficult, when the temperature was
low, to get up enough pressure to operate the crude engines. They
burned wood, at first, and ate cords of it, so that frequent stops
were necessary in order to secure more fuel. There were no
condensers, and so steamboats that sailed on salt water often ran
out of fresh water for their boilers. Furthermore, good insulation had
not been developed, and occasionally, when the perverse machines
seemed ideally happy, when the cylinder energetically turned the
awkward paddle-wheels with a will, to the tune of creaking bearings,
clanking joints, and hissing steam, the whole vessel was thrown into
a furor, the engine was stopped, the passengers and crew were
forced to turn to in an effort to save the ship from some fire or
other, started by a red-hot fire box, or a burning ember from the
funnel.
 THE SAVANNAH
The first steamship to cross the Atlantic.

Such were the difficulties that the pioneer steamboat-men had to

face, and it speaks well for their patience and nerve that they hung
on until improvement after improvement turned those dangerous
and imperfect machines of theirs into the safe and almost flawless
examples of mechanical artistry that now propel so many thousands
of hulls in every part of the world.
In 1820 the General Steam Navigation Company was formed in
England, and this, the first steamship company, may be considered,
properly enough, a highly important influence in the development of
steamships, for the merchant ships of the world are almost
exclusively in the hands of lines of greater or lesser strength, and it
is these lines that make possible the building and operation, and
consequently the perfection, of such vessels.
In the next few years a number of steamships were built in
America, in Great Britain, and on the continent, and in 1825 a 470-
ton ship—the Enterprise—made a voyage from England to India,
11,450 miles, around Good Hope, in 103 days during but 39 days of
which she was under sail exclusively. This accomplishment, together
with others less spectacular, added impetus to the growing
popularity of steam, and by 1830 Lloyd’s Register listed 100
steamers, and there were others, particularly in America, not
included in that list. The Register published in 1841 announced that
in 1839, 720 steamers were owned in England, Scotland, and
Ireland.
In the ’thirties steam navigation went ahead by leaps and bounds,
and before the ’forties came, a steam-driven vessel—the Great
Western—had crossed the Atlantic in 15 days, which was well under
the fastest time for sailing ships of her day, and only 2 days over the
fastest crossing ever made by a sailing ship. The Red Jacket, a
clipper, crossed in 1854 from Sandy Hook to Rock Light in 13 days, 1
hour.
But with the rapid increase of steamships arose a condition due to
the change in economic conditions and the widening power of Great
Britain that was of the greatest value in the development of shipping
and consequently of steamships.
Steam had been applied to machinery on land no less than to the
propulsion of ships. Factories sprang up, railroads slowly spread their
tentacles over Great Britain, the continent, and the American
seaboard, and commerce consequently became more rapid. Goods
were shipped in ever-increasing amounts, and the widening field of
business called men here and there who formerly had done what
overseas business they had had through the captains of ships, or
through supercargoes and agents.
 THE GREAT BRITAIN
An awkward and unsuccessful ship. She proved,
however, when she was wrecked, that for ship
construction iron is stronger than wood, and proved,
too, that double bottoms, bulkheads, and bilge keels,
which were new departures when she was built, were
most desirable in ships of her size.

Great Britain, in addition to, or perhaps because of, her growing

power as a centre of manufacture and shipping, thrust out her long
arms to India and China, to Australia and New Zealand. The growth
of the population at home and the opportunities for colonists in
America, in Australia, and other parts of the world, resulted, almost
for the first time, in the construction of ships intended solely for the
purpose of carrying passengers and mails. A large travelling public
was, for the first time in history, beginning to appear.
In the ’forties, therefore, began a division of ships into two major
classes—carriers of freight and carriers of passengers. Sailing ships
were still greatly more numerous than steamships and, as a matter
of fact, the finer sailing ships were still considered the aristocrats of
the sea. But as steam engines were perfected, and particularly after
the screw propeller was invented by Colonel John Stevens, an
American, early in the 19th Century, and perfected by F. P. Smith, an
Englishman, and John Ericson, the Scandinavian-American,
steamships increased in power, in speed, in reliability, and
consequently in popularity.
This period saw the beginning of a number of new steamship
lines, some of which, notably the Cunard and the Royal Mail, are still
in existence, although they are now operated on a scale that could
never have been imagined even by their forward-looking founders.
And now, as if for the purpose of aiding this great increase in the
efficiency and size of steamships, came another development,
without which the leviathans of to-day would be impossible, and but
for which the beautiful clipper ships which were brought so close to
perfection in the middle of the 19th Century might still be supreme
upon the seas, or at least might still be able to hold their own
against their steam-driven sisters.
It was the rolling mill, a thing prosaic enough to-day, that made
possible the great increase in the size and strength of ships. The
rolling mill and the screw propeller are still the basic improvements
that have led to the building of most of the ships on the high seas
to-day.
The first suggestion of the use of iron plates for the building of
ships was received with withering sarcasm. How could ships be built
of iron when everyone knows that iron will sink? But even in the face
of such criticism ships were built, and they were not only built—they
were launched and they floated.
 THE GREAT EASTERN
A ship that was built half a century too early. This huge
vessel, built in 1857, was designed to make the voyage
from England to Australia without refuelling. She never
made the voyage to Australia, but was used to lay the
Atlantic cable. She was ahead of her time, for engines had
not developed to the point where she could be properly
propelled.

So far as I can learn the first boat to be built of iron was launched
in 1777 on the Foss river in Yorkshire. Later several lighters for canal
work were built, one in particular being constructed near
Birmingham in 1787. Less spectacular, but still highly important, was
the introduction of iron for special uses in wooden vessels. This later
grew into what came to be known as “composite” construction. The
year 1818 is sometimes given as a definite date for the recognition
of iron as an accepted ship-building material because in that year a
lighter named the Vulcan was built in the vicinity of Glasgow, but it is
known that several iron hulls were built prior to that time. An iron
steamboat named the Aaron Manby, after her builder, was operated
for twenty years on the Seine after being built in England in 1821.
She crossed the English Channel under her own power and made
the trip from London to Paris. Still, however, there were many
doubters, and not for more than twenty years was an iron ship of
large size built. In 1843 the Great Britain, a ship of 3,600 tons, was
built of iron, and this vessel was a notable step in the advancing art
of ship-building. She was 322 feet long, 50 feet 6 inches broad, and
was equipped to carry 260 passengers and more than a thousand
tons of freight—surely no mean vessel, even to-day.
This ship, as a matter of fact, proved a highly important affair, for
she proved many things to the wiseacres of the day. I am indebted
to E. Keble Chatterton, author of “The Mercantile Marine,” for his
valuable story of her building and her adventures.
So great and so unusual was this ship that, according to Mr.
Chatterton, no contractor could be found who was willing to
construct her. Consequently, the Great Western Steamship Company
constructed her itself.
She turned out, says Mr. Chatterton, to be “an awkward, ill-fated
monstrosity,” but despite the fact that she did not prove that the
combination of screw propeller and iron construction were
successful, she did prove, after she ran ashore on the coast of
Ireland, where she remained for eleven months exposed to the
weather, before she was refloated, that an iron hull could withstand
far more strenuous strains than any wooden hull could hold up
under.
This ship, furthermore, was divided into watertight compartments
and was equipped with bilge keels, which are accepted to-day as an
excellent method for lessening a ship’s rolling.
 By the time the American Civil War broke out in 1861, steam had
made such definite strides that there were few to question its
supremacy over sail.
The navies of both the North and the South were, except for a few
out-of-date ships, exclusively steam driven. Then, in 1862, the
Cunard Line built the Scotia, a 3,300-ton iron steamer, driven by
paddle-wheels. She had seven watertight compartments and a
double bottom, the value of these having been proved by the
unfortunate Great Britain, and she crossed the Atlantic in eight days
and twenty-two hours—a record not to be ignored even to-day with
the records of the Mauretania and the Leviathan before us. Many
ships on transatlantic routes to-day cannot equal that record, and for
the first time the outstanding records of the fast sailing ships were
finally and completely outclassed.
But before the Scotia slid from her ways the Great Eastern was
launched. So great was she and so unusual that she created a furor
in the shipping world that even yet has not entirely subsided.
The idea of building so great a ship originated because of the
desire to carry a large passenger list and a great cargo from England
to Australia without having to coal on the way. This desire led to the
designing of a ship of truly huge proportions. She was driven both
by paddle-wheels and by a screw propeller, and was 679 feet 6
inches long, 82 feet 8 inches beam, and her tonnage was 18,900—
dimensions that were not surpassed until 1905 when the White Star
Line launched the Baltic. She was under construction for four years,
being launched in 1858.
So huge was the Great Eastern that her engines, which were of
only 3,000 horse power, were inadequate, and she never proved to
be a real success, financially or mechanically, although her hull
proved to be staunch enough, despite the little past experience her
designers and her builders could profit by in her construction.
This great ship was equipped with six masts, each capable of
carrying sail, five funnels, two paddle-wheels, and a propeller. She
never voyaged to Australia, but she did cross the Atlantic, and from
1865 to 1873 she was used for laying the first Atlantic cable. In 1888
she was beached and broken up. She, however, was ahead of her
day. Engines had not developed to the point where ships of her size
could be properly powered, and she merely stands for the courage
and inventiveness of the mid-Victorian ship-builders who dared to
undertake so vast and so new a task.
With the exception of the Great Eastern, however, ships increased
only gradually in size, and their increases in speed were
approximately parallel to their growing tonnage. The Great Eastern
was an attempt—an unsuccessful attempt—to leap ahead half a
century. But the semi-failure of this ship did not retard the growth of
ships. Perhaps, even, it aided that growth.
And now again a new development puts in its appearance in the
world of ships—a less spectacular one than the introduction of
steam, less spectacular even than the introduction of iron, but
important, nevertheless. In the ’seventies steel was first introduced
as a serious competitor to iron for the construction of ships. Its
greater strength and its comparative lightness were its principle
claims to superiority, but so important are those that while the Allan
liner Buenos Ayrean, launched in 1879, was the first steel sea-going
ship, to-day every merchant ship (with exceptions hardly worthy of
mention) is built of steel.
About this same time the White Star Line organized its
transatlantic service, and in 1870 a 420-foot liner (carrying sails in
addition to her engines, as was still the rule) was launched and put
into service in the North Atlantic. The White Star Line had previously
owned a fleet of clipper ships, but when trade between Britain and
the United States increased so enormously and the trade became
profitable the White Star owners decided to enter it. This first White
Star liner, the Oceanic, may, perhaps, be called the first of the
transatlantic greyhound fleet, for in her, for the first time, there were
really great concessions made with the comfort of the passengers in
mind, and from her time until to-day new and improved liners have
been launched in ever-increasing numbers. In 1881 the Cunarder
Servia, the greatest of her kind save only the Great Eastern, was put
in service. This 515-foot, 7,300-ton ship was a marvel of mechanical
perfection in her day and lowered the transatlantic record to seven
days, one hour, and thirty-eight minutes.

THE STEAMSHIP OCEANIC

This ship may be said to be the first of the transatlantic
liners, for in her, for the first time, great concessions were
made for the comfort and convenience of the passengers.

One of the greatest reasons for the increased speed of these new
ships was the introduction of the compound engine. It was in 1854
that John Elder, a Briton, adapted the compound engine to marine
uses. This improvement, by utilizing more thoroughly the expansive
power of steam, increased at one stroke the power developed by
engines without increasing the supply of steam. The principle of the
compound engine is simple. Steam escaping from the single cylinder
of a simple steam engine still retains a part of its pressure—that is, a
part of its power to expand. As it is largely the expansion of the
steam that forces the piston from one end of the cylinder to the
other this means that a part of the useful force of the steam is
wasted in the average single-cylinder engine. A compound engine,
however, utilizes this power by leading the steam from the exhaust
port of the first cylinder to the inlet port of another and much larger
cylinder. Here the steam, now occupying more space, is used again
to operate another piston connected to the same crankshaft. There
is often still a third cylinder, and in some cases a fourth, in each of
which some of the remaining power of the steam is utilized. The
gradual increase of steam pressure in the better boilers that were
being built also aided the development of these compound engines.
In 1854, for instance, 42 pounds pressure per square inch was
seldom exceeded, while in 1882, 125 pounds was a pressure
occasionally reached.
With the development of compound engines and boilers capable
of more pressure the screw propeller became even more efficient,
and gradually the paddle-wheel disappeared from the deep sea.
Furthermore, the compound engine, by its more economic power,
made it possible for the steamer to compete with the sailing ship in
the carrying of cargoes, even on long voyages, and so began the
rapid growth of the cargo steamers that now have practically driven
sailing ships from the sea.
And now comes a division of this subject of steamships—a division
that later led to subdivision after subdivision, but which I shall treat
in two major parts: steamers equipped to carry passengers, and
steamers not so equipped.
The passenger steamers have gone through an amazingly rapid
growth since 1888, and have developed along many lines, but it was
in that year that the first twinscrew steamers of large dimensions
were put in service. The Inman liners City of New York and City of
Paris were the first large ships to be so equipped. This double
system of propulsion eliminated the necessity for sails on liners, and
from that time on the masts of ocean liners have deteriorated to
mere supports for derricks and signal spars. By this time, too, all the
larger steamers were being fitted with steam steering gears. This
important (and now almost universal) appliance was first installed on
the Inman liner City of Brussels in 1869.
And now, in the late ’eighties and early ’nineties, came the
forerunners of the long list of ships that have grown into the finest
fleet of express steamers to be found on any of the Seven Seas.
Great Britain and the United States were primarily interested in this
trade, but the other nations of northern Europe also had a part to
play, and even Austria-Hungary and Italy entered the competition.
But the United States gradually grew to depend more and more on
the ships of other nations until finally the American Line with its
handful of ships was almost the only serious American contender for
the profits of the rapidly growing passenger business that had
developed.
But into this furious competition a new nation thrust itself.
Germany had become a power—a forceful, dominating power—as
was proved in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and 1871. And she
saw that her “place in the sun” could only be gained by venturing on
the sea. Government aid to shipping and an enthusiastic demand on
the part of the people for increased tonnage resulted in the building
up of a merchant marine that for size and speed, for energy and
enterprise became, shortly, second to none but Britain, and in some
aspects exceeded even that great sea power.
Britain, it is interesting to note, had built up a fleet of merchant
ships that was predominantly composed of freight ships. Germany,
on the other hand, built up a fleet dominated in numbers by her
liners.
Of the dozen or so principal German lines that dominated her
entire merchant marine, the Hamburg-American Line was the most
important, and the North German Lloyd was second. At the outbreak