TRANSATLANTIC STEAMERS. 



were enabled to estimate calmly and dispassionately the difficulties 

 and drawbacks, as well as the advantages, of the undertaking, 

 entertained doubts which clouded the brightness of their hopes, 

 and warned the commercial word against the indulgence of too 

 sanguine anticipations, of the immediate and unqualified realisa- 

 tion of the project. They counselled caution and reserve against 

 an improvident investment of extensive capital, in schemes which 

 could still be only regarded as experimental, and which might 

 prove its grave. But the voice of remonstrance was drowned 

 amid the enthusiasm excited, by the promise of an immediate 

 practical realisation of a scheme so grand. The keel of the Great 

 Western was laid ; an assurance was given that the seasons would 

 not twice run through their changes, before she would be followed 

 by a splendid line of vessels, which should consign the packet- 

 ships to the care of the historian as " things that were." 



6. It cannot be seriously imagined, that any one who had been 

 conversant with the past history of steam-navigation, could 

 entertain the least doubt of the abstract practicability of a steam- 

 vessel making the voyage between Bristol and New York. 



A vessel having as her cargo a couple of hundred tons of coals 

 would, cceteris paribus, be as capable of crossing the Atlantic as a 

 vessel transporting the same weight of any other cargo. A 

 steam-vessel of the usual form and construction would, it is true, 

 labour under comparative disadvantages, owing to obstructions 

 presented by her paddle-wheels and paddle-boxes; but still it 

 would have been preposterous to suppose that these impediments 

 could have rendered her passage to New York impracticable. 



7. But, independently of these considerations, it was a well- 

 known fact, that, long antecedent to the epoch now adverted to, 

 the Atlantic had actually been crossed by the steamers Savannah 

 and Cura^oa. Nevertheless a statement was not only widely 

 circulated, but generally credited, that I had publicly asserted 

 that a steam voyage across the Atlantic was " a physical impos- 

 sibility!" 



Although this erroneous statement has been again and again 

 publicly contradicted through various organs of the press, it con- 

 tinues nevertheless to be repeated. I shall therefore take this 

 opportunity once more to put on record, what I really did state on 

 the occasion, on which I am reported to have affirmed that the 

 Atlantic steam voyage was a physical impossibility. 



8. Projects had been started in the year 1836 by two different 

 and opposing interests, one advocating the establishment of a line 

 of steamers to ply between the west coast of Ireland and Boston, 

 touching at Halifax ; and the other a direct line, making an un- 

 interrupted trip between Bristol and New York. In the year 



117 



