Steam's Century

One hundred years ago next month a group of top-hatted Manhattanites, led by their mayor, put out from a shaky pier in the North River to cheer the arrival of the British steamer Sirius, which, with 40 passengers, had made the voyage from Ireland in 18 days. Though the U. S. ship Savannah and Canada's Royal William, both with auxiliary steam equipment, had sailed the ocean years earlier, the little 178-foot, 700-ton, paddle wheeler Sirius was greeted by the mayor as the first vessel to cross the whole Atlantic under steam power. Wooden-built for the London-Cork service, her transatlantic voyage was an experiment. In her wake next day arrived the paddle steamer Great Western, specially built for the Atlantic run, carrying 140 passengers.

All this was recalled last week in London as Britain's big, slick Science Museum staged an exhibition called "One Hundred Years of Transatlantic Steam Navigation." By models and murals visitors were shown a century's changes from wood to iron and steel; from paddle wheel to screw, to multiple screws. Last paddle wheeler left the Atlantic in 1874, the first turbine arrived 20 years later. "Grandest failure" was the 18,914-ton Great Eastern, a five-funnel combined paddle and screw steamship, 680 feet long, built in 1858. Most vessels then carried about 400 passengers. The Great Eastern accommodated 4,000-- 1,800 more than today's Queen Mary. Forty years ahead of her times, the Great Eastern never paid her way, ended her days as a cable ship. Pride of London's show was a model of the late Mauretania, which held the Atlantic speed record for 22 years, was scrapped in 1935.

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