TRIUMPH OF STEAM NAVIGATION. 



575 



the wharves to view the unwonted spectacle. The Sirius was a 

 vessel of seven hundred tons and three hundred and twenty 

 horse-power, and had previously plied between Liverpool and 

 Cork. She had left the latter port on the 4th of April, and 

 had therefore been nineteen days upon the passage. The Great 

 Western was a new ship : she was of thirteen hundred and forty 

 tons ; her extreme length was two hundred and thirty-six feet ; 

 her depth of hold, twenty-three feet ; breadth of beam, thirty- 

 five feet ; diameter of wheels, twenty-eight feet ; length of 

 paddle-boards, ten feet ; diameter of cylinder, six feet ; length 

 of stroke, seven feet. She had four boilers, and could carry 

 eight hundred tons of coal, — sufficient for twenty-six days' con- 

 sumption. She had left Bristol on the 8th of April, and had 

 accomplished the voyage in fifteen days and five hours. Her 

 mean daily rate was two hundred and forty miles, or nine 

 miles an hour, with unfavorable weather and strong head-winds. 

 She was expected to stop either at the Azores or at Halifax, 

 but succeeded in making the passage direct. She consumed 

 but four hundred and fifty tons of coal out of six hundred. 

 This event was looked upon by all as an earnest of the complete 

 triumph of ocean steam-navigation ; and the Great Western is 

 regarded by the people of the two countries as the pioneer ship 

 among the many noble vessels that have plied upon the great 

 Atlantic ferry. The Britannia — the first vessel of the Cunard 

 line to cross the ocean — arrived at Boston on the 18th of July, 

 1840, after a passage of fourteen days and eight hours. 



In this same year, (1838,) the United States' Exploring Ex- 

 pedition, — consisting of the Vincennes, a sloop-of-war of twenty 

 guns, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, commander-in-chief ; the 

 Peacock, eighteen-gun sloop-of-war, William L. Hudson, com- 

 manding; the Porpoise, ten-gun brig; the Relief, exploring 

 vessel ; and the schooners Flying-Fish and Sea-Gull, — sailed 

 from Hampton Roads. Its objects were to explore the Southern 

 and Pacific Oceans; to ascertain, if possible, the situation of 



