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: | seventy thousands in the 1830’s, the close of the 1840’s witnessing the ad- mission to the United States of immi- grants at the rate of about 300,000 per annum. The packet lines made a very good thing of this ever increasing flow of emigrants from the old countries. Such passengers were only too glad to purchase any sort of transporta- tion at a moderate fare, just so they would be conveyed to the land of promise. As might be expected, the companies embarked them in maxi- mum numbers, and with very little concern in the matter of the com- fort and well-being of these, their most profitable customers, except as occasional legislation compelled them to. Up to the latter 1830’s the Amer- ican packets had the transatlantic field to themselves. The British had not seen their way to enter with sailing packets of their own; another flag was not to appear until late in 1848, when a line of German packets commenced running. British Enter With Steam Now however the British thought they saw a way of getting a foothold in the trade, not with sailing packets indeed, but with steam packets. Steam navigation had been devel- oping steadily as a commercial propo- sition ever since Robert Fulton’s con- vincing demonstrations on the Hud- son, but for a number of years it was not to rise above the river, coastal, and cross-channel stages. Several Atlantic passages had been achieved by steam vessels, but mere- ly in such an incidental manner as the airplane and airship flights so far accomplished across the ocean in our own years. But in 1838 regular steam packet service across the Atlantic was in- augurated by the British, and by no less than three companies. True, all three fell by the wayside again in the course of a decade. But a fourth, that began operations in 1840, was destined to prosper; the Cunard Nl” deems cease” samaniances xcanmmnnsenaneanecitll 8° Europa—Turbine Geared—Four Screws—North German Lloyd ' sengers. line in fact is at present engaged in the construction of the biggest ship ever projected. During the 1840’s the sailing pack- ets, themselves advancing in design, were altogether able to maintain their supremacy against the pioneer steamers. But in the course of time the sustained speed and regularity of the latter told, so that at the turn of the decade the leadership definite- ly passed from sail to steam. Steam Gains in Favor The Americans themselves now went in strongly for steamships, though not at all discarding the sail- ing packets. In the early 1850’s it came to pass that the American and British companies, on both sides backed by substantial government subsidies, contested for the favor of the transatlantic passenger in the fiercest. rivalry of the sort that has ever taken place. And the ships en- gaged were no longer crude experi- ments, but finished products. As between sailing packets, for whom their occasional fourteen-day passages were considered exception- ally fast work, and the new steam- ships, of which there were now quite a few that could regularly cross the Atlantic in from ten to thirteen days, it is not hard to see which way the higher-class passenger traffic drifted. None of these subsidized lines of fast mail steamers provided accom- modation thereon for emigrant pas- Expensive as it was to op- erate such ships in those days of wasteful low-pressure single-expan- sion engines, it is strange that such a profitable phase of the business should deliberately have been omitted from consideration. But so it was. Still enjoying the lion’s share of the emigrant traffic, then, the sail- ing packets were able to do quite well for some years to come. In the course of the 1850’s how- ever, there were established various lines of slower steamers, which, be- sides catering to cabin passengers, were not at all backward about cae ranana sa anipnse AF AUTRES! MARINE REvIEw—ZJune, 1931 striking out into the emigrant field. Notable among these were the Inman line (British), succeeding an earlier American sailing packet enterprise, the Hamburg-American Co. being in fact that German sailing packet line of the late 1840’s already referred to but which in 1856 changed to steam, and the North German Lloyd, a new- ly organized concern which brought out its first transatlantic steamers in 1858. Though it was the era of that most famous of all sailing packets, the DREADNOUGHT, the twilight of that type of Atlantic liner at last set in the latter 1850’s in consequence of this invasion of the emigrant business by the steamships. By the middle 1860’s the sailing packet had ceased to be a factor of any importance on the Western ocean. During the earlier 1850’s immigra- tion to the United States had risen to over 400,000 per annum. Subse- quently it declined however to less than a third of that figure, due to business depression in those years. And in the earlier 1860’s it was still further discouraged by the Civil war, dropping to about 72,000 in 1862, the lowest in more than a quarter of a century. After the war it immedi- ately returned to the 300,000 level, working up to 400,000 in 1872 and 450,000 in 1878. Volume of Traffic Increases It was in the latter 1860’s that the transatlantic trade may safely be as- sumed definitely to have passed all others in volume of traffic. Of pas- senger steamship lines alone there were aS many as eight big concerns —the Cunard, Inman, Allan, Nation- al, and Guion lines, all British, the Hamburg-American Co. and North German Lloyd, both German, and the French General Transatlantic Co. Then there were some lesser com- panies, such as the Anchor line, just developing its transatlantic service, and a few short-lived affairs. Some of the above, as for instance the two (Continued on Page 64) __Made Westward Crossing in 4 Days, 17 Hours, 6 Minutes 29