662 EEronT — 1882. 



mails on October 2nd, 1837, and arrived at Suez on October IGtli. The mails were 

 carried across tlie desert bj^ camels, and down the Nile to Alexandria in four days, 

 wliere tliey remained until II. M.S. Volcano took them on board on November 7th. 

 At Malta on November 16th they were transferred to H.M.S. Fire/It/, and tiually 

 were landed in this country on December 4th, having been in all sixty-three days in 

 coming from Bombay to England. At the present time about eighteen days are 

 occupied in carrying the mails from Bombay via Brindisi to London. 



The town of Southampton, where we are now assembled, has always held a 

 distinguished position in connection with the development of improved communi- 

 cation with our Eastern empire. The opening of the first section of the railway 

 from London to Southampton was coincident with the establishment of steam 

 navigation via Egypt to India, and in the same year the French engineers at Cairo 

 completed their .studies for the proposed railway across the desert to Suez. 



A few months later the London public were startled by an advertisement 

 headed ' Steam to New York,' and 94 passengers were plucky enough to embark at 

 London, on April 4tli, 1838, in the Sinus, of 700 tons and 320 horse-power, for New 

 York, where they arrived on the 23rd, having performed tlie voj'age in seventeen 

 davs from London, and fifteen days from Queeustown. The Great Western sailed 

 from Bristol on April 7th, and arri^'ed at New York a few hours after the Sirius, and 

 thus was the great problem of steam navigation to America successfully solved, by 

 vessels of small size, and capable of maintaining a speed of but 8 to miles an 

 hour. I need hardly remind you that since the year 1838 the ships conducting 

 the enormous traffic between Europe and America have been of ever-increasing 

 size and speed. Thus the Britannic, built in 1874, has an extreme length of 468 

 feet, a beam of 45 feet 3 inches, a displacement of 8,500 tons, and a speed of 16 

 knots per hour; whilst the Servia, built in 1881, has an extreme length of 530 feet, 

 a beam of 52 feet, a displacement of 13,000 tons, and a .speed of 18 knots, and the 

 City of Rome, built in the same year, has a length of 600 feet, a beam of 52 feet 

 3 inches, and a displacement of 13,500 tons. Another Atlantic liner, the Alaska. 

 having a length of 500 feet, a beam of 50 feet, and a disjilacemeut of 12,000 tons, 

 attained a speed of 18i knot.s on the measured mile, and has done the distance 

 between Queenstown and New York in seven days four hours and thirty-two 

 minutes, and the return voyage in six days and twenty-two hours, a mean ocean 

 speed of, say, 17 knots per hour, or oore than double that of the first steam-vessels 

 trading to America. 



The present generation has grown so accustomed to the embodied restdts of the 

 progress of mechanical science, that it has long ceased to wonder at big ships, or at 

 any other novelty. To reali-se what has been attained it is necessary to place our- 

 selves as far as pos.sible in the position of our immediate ancestors, and to look at 

 things through their spectacles. "With this view, and to give you some scale of 

 comparison to measure the size of the present Atlantic liners by, I will quote a 

 short passage from a newspaper of September 19, 1829, where reference is made to 

 a vessel then imder construction, of about the size of one of the much-abused 

 ' cockleshells ' performing the Channel service between Dover and Calais. ' The Dutch 

 have been engaged for the last five years in constructing and equipping a steam- 

 boat of extraordinary magnitude, in order to facilitate the communication between 

 Holland and Batavia. It has four masts ; is about 250 feet long ; and has been 

 ajipropriately christened the Monster. In consequence of her great length, she 

 hung when going oft" the slips, and it was some da3's before she was fairly launched ; 

 a circumstance which gave the wits of Paris occasion to remark that their Dutch 

 neighbours were so determined to excel all other nations in the magnitude of their 

 steamboats, that they had built one so long that it was several days running oft" 

 the stocks. One of the most remarkable features of this enormous vessel is her ex- 

 treme narrowness as compared with her length ; her gi'eatest breadth of beam being 

 only about 32 feet. The great size of this vessel will bring to the recollection of 

 our readers the Columbus, which was built in the river St. Lawrence in 1824, and 

 made the passage to England in safety, but was afterwards broken up on account 

 of her unmanageable bulk. We shall not be surprised to find that a similar fate 

 awaits the Monster, and for a similar reason.' 



