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The business assumed such proportions that half the shipyards in England were engaged in turning out fast steamers to engage in it. At first it was the custom to send goods in regular ocean-steamers from England to the blockaded port; but this was soon abandoned, as the risk of capture on the long run across the Atlantic was too great.
Indeed, some narrow-minded and ungenerous writers have asserted that they were the first totally ignoring the prior claim of the Savannah. From that period ocean-steamers began to run frequently across the Atlantic. They now do so regularly, as well as to nearly all other parts of the world.
The appearance of one of these towering river transports as she comes sailing down the turbid stream of the great Father of Waters, laden to the water's edge with brown bales of cotton, and emitting from her lofty, red crowned smoke-stacks dense clouds of pitchy black smoke, is most wonderful. Unlike ocean-steamers, the river-steamer carries her load upon her deck.
As the great ocean-steamers take in their stores of coal and provision, day and night, for weeks previous to their sailing; so, by insensible influences, Christ is ever anticipating the strain and stress of coming circumstance, passing in words which are spirit and life, though they may stand in their heavy packing-cases in the hold, until we are driven to unpack, examine, and use their contents.
Further on, between the piers and the low warehouses, could be seen a long row of serious-looking ocean-steamers, whose iron lungs emitted little clouds of steam as the cranes fed their huge bodies with nice little morsels. The two men had seen this picture hundreds of times, but were impressed once again by its grandeur. "Taney," said Harrison, "isn't that the most beautiful city in the world?
That's how I happen to know something about an engine; and I have been on board of all sorts of steamers with Paul, for the purpose of studying the engines, from a launch up to the biggest ocean-steamers." "Did you take any lessons of the cook on board of the Bellevite, Christy?" asked Percy, laughing.
Our own country did not follow the lead until 1838, when the good people of New York were thrown into a state of excitement by the arrival of two steamers, the Sirius and the Great Western, from England. So long a time had elapsed since the voyage of the Savannah that men had well-nigh forgotten it, and were disposed to regard these vessels as the first ocean-steamers.
I have seen a "school" of porpoises in the Pacific swimming for hours alongside one of our fleetest ocean-steamers, darting a few yards ahead now and then, as if by mere volition, cutting their way through the water with the directness of an arrow. The porpoise is playful at times, and his favorite game is a sort of leap-frog.
A good many bots got carried away from the schooners, and one dory with two men from Boothbay was picked up by one of these ocean-steamers bound in for New York, and that's the way the yarn got told. They'd been withaout food and water for three days, and were abaout givin' up; but the steamer-folks tuck 'em in and steamed for port.
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