imarily for capacity is
only about seventeen knots, and to attain that she burns about 260 tons of
coal a day. The "Deutschland," which holds the ocean record for speed,
burns nearly 600 tons of coal a day, and with it carries through the seas
only 16,000 tons as against the "Celtic's" 20,000. But she is one of the
modern vessels built especially to carry passengers. In her hold, huge as
it is, there is room for only about 600 tons of cargo, and she seldom
carries more than one-sixth of that amount. One voyage of this great ship
costs about $45,000, and even at that heavy expense, she is a profit
earner, so great is the volume of transatlantic travel and so ready are
people to pay for speed and luxury. Her coal alone costs $5,000 a trip,
and the expenses of the table, laundry, etc., equal those of the most
luxurious hotel.

But will ever these great liners, these huge masses of steel, guided by
electricity and sped by steam, build up anew the race of American sailors?
Who shall say now? To-day they are manned by Scandinavians and officered,
in the main, by the seamen of the foreign nations whose flags they float.
But the American is an adaptable type. He at once attends upon changing
conditions and conquers them. He turned from the sea to the railroads when
that seemed to be the course of progress; he may retrace his steps now
that the pendulum seems to swing the other way. And if he finds under the
new regime less chance for the hardy topman, no opportunity for the shrewd
trader to a hundred ports, the gates closed to the man of small capital,
yet be sure he will conquer fate in some way. We have seen it in the armed
branch of the seafaring profession only within a few months. When the fine
old sailing frigates vanished from the seas, when the "Constitution" and
the "Hartford" became as obsolete as the caravels of Columbus, when a navy
officer found that electricity and steam were more serious problems in his
calling than sails and rigging, and a bluejacket could be with the best in
his watch without ever having learned to furl a royal, then said
everybody: "The naval profession has gone to the dogs. Its romance has
departed. Our ships should be manned from our boiler shops, and officered
from our institutions of technology. There will be no more Decaturs,
Somerses, Farraguts, Cushings." And then came on the Spanish war and the
rush of the "Oregon" around Cape Horn, the cool thrust of Dewey's fleet
into the locked water