transatlantic voyages, was also first iron ship built. She was the "Great
Britain," a ship of 3,000 tons, built for the Great Western Company at
Bristol, England, and intended to eclipse any ship afloat. Her hull was
well on the way to completion when her designer chanced to see the
"Archimedes," the first screw steamer built, and straightway changed his
plans to admit the use of the new method of propulsion So from 1842 may be
dated the use of both screw propellers and iron ships. We must pass
hastily over the other inventions, rapidly following each other, and all
designed to make ocean travel more swift, more safe, and more comfortable,
and to increase the profit of the shipowner. The compound engine, which
has been so developed that in place of Fulton's seven miles an hour, our
ocean steamships are driven now at a speed sometimes closely approaching
twenty-five miles an hour, seems already destined to give way to the
turbine form of engine which, applied thus far to torpedo-boats only, has
made a record of forty-four miles an hour. Iron, which stood for a
revolution in 1842, has itself given way to steel. And a new force,
subtile, swift, and powerful, has found endless application in the body of
the great ships, so that from stem to stern-post they are a network of
electric wires, bearing messages, controlling the independent engines that
swing the rudder, closing water-tight compartments at the first hint of
danger, and making the darkest places of the great hulls as light as day
at the throwing of a switch. During the period of this wonderful advance
in marine architecture ship-building in the United States languished to
the point of extinction. Yachts for millionaires who could afford to pay
heavily for the pleasure of flying the Stars and Stripes, ships of 2500 to
4000 tons for the coasting trade, in which no foreign-built vessel was
permitted to compete, and men-of-war--very few of them before 1890--kept a
few shipyards from complete obliteration. But as an industry,
ship-building, which once ranked at the head of American manufactures, had
sunk to a point of insignificance.

The present moment (1902) seems to show the American shipping interest in
the full tide of successful reestablishment. In Congress and in boards of
trade men are arguing for and against subsidies, for and against the
policy of permitting Americans to buy ships of foreign builders if they
will, and fly the American flag above them. But while