5-knot steamship, and
Winthrop's little "Blessing of the Bay," or Fulton's "Clermont," or even
the ships of the Collins line--floating palaces as they were called at the
time! Time has made commonplace the proportions of the "Great Eastern,"
the marine marvel not only of her age, but of the forty years that
succeeded her breaking-up as impracticable on account of size. She was
19,000 tons, 690 feet long, and built with both paddle-wheels and a screw.
The "Celtic" is 700 feet long, 20,000 tons, with twin screws. The one was
too big to be commercially valuable, the other has held the record for
size only for a year, being already outclassed by the Northern Pacific
25,000-ton monsters. That one was a failure, the other a success, is
almost wholly due to the improvements in engines, which effect economy of
space both in the engine-room and in the coal bunkers. It is, by the way,
rather a curious illustration of the growing luxury of life, and of ocean
travel, that the first voyage of this enormous ship was made as a yacht,
carrying a party of pleasure-seekers, with not a pound of cargo, through
the show places of the Mediterranean.

It will be interesting to chronicle here some of the characteristics of
the most modern of ocean steamships, and to show by the use of some
figures, the enormous proportions to which their business has attained.
For this purpose it will be necessary to use figures drawn from the
records of foreign lines, and from such vessels as the "Deutschland" and
the "Celtic," although the purpose of this book is to tell the story of
the American merchant marine. But the figures given will be approximately
correct for the great American ships now building, while there are not at
present in service any American passenger ships which are fairly
representative of the twentieth century liner.

The "Celtic," for example, will carry 3,294 persons, of whom 2,859 will be
passengers. That is, it could furnish comfortable accommodations, heated
and lighted, with ample food for all the students in Harvard University,
or the University of Michigan, or Columbia University, or all in Amherst,
Dartmouth, Cornell, and Williams combined. If stood on end she would
almost attain the height of the Washington monument placed on the roof of
the Capitol at Washington. She has nine decks, and a few years ago, if
converted into a shore edifice, might fairly have been reckoned in the
"skyscraper" class. Her speed, as she was built pr