Читать книгу A Merchant Fleet at War онлайн

11 страница из 14

Embarkation: “Are we downhearted?”

Transport in Southampton Water: Colonials’ first view of “Blighty”

Perhaps the next most important era began with the invention in 1869 of compound engines, and in 1870 the Batavia and Parthia were fitted with these, and proved extremely successful, maintaining good speeds, with a reduced consumption of fuel. The Company was now sailing one vessel under contract with the General Post Office every week from Liverpool to New York, calling at Queenstown, and from New York to Liverpool, also calling at the South Irish port, and receiving a certain subsidy for so doing. They were also maintaining services between Liverpool and the principal ports in the Mediterranean, Adriatic, Levant, Bosphorus, and Black Sea, and between Liverpool and Havre. In 1881 the first steel vessel, the Servia, was built for the Cunard Company. This was the most powerful as well as the largest ship, with the exception of the famous Great Eastern, that the world had then seen. She was followed in 1884 by the Etruria and Umbria, the former of which in August, 1885, set up the record for speed from Queenstown to New York, the journey being accomplished in 6 days 6 hours and 36 minutes. In the meantime, research work, in the construction of marine engines had been continued, and Dr. Price had invented the triple expansion engine, which effected further considerable economies in the consumption of fuel; and these were fitted by the Cunard Company into the two great twin-screw vessels, the Campania and Lucania, built in 1893. With the Campania we shall deal again, as she performed valuable services in the late war, and it is interesting to note that it was on board the Lucania in 1901 that Mr. Marconi carried out certain important experiments in wireless telegraphy, this vessel being the first, under the Cunard management, to be fitted with a wireless installation.