Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: on a journey which passengers, paying the same low fare, can now perform in a little more than four hours. CHAPTER III STEAM NAVIGATION Once the art of navigation had been mastered and the regular trade routes established, the matter of speed was allowed to take care of itself, and even in quite modern times the rate at which ships traveled was an arbitrary one and not of a progressive character. Marco Polo in the twelfth century doubtless traveled as fast as Drake and Raleigh; and the early voyages undertaken by the East India Company to India do not seem to have been materially improved upon by their service in the era of Warren Hastings. Rapid transit was occasionally made, even in the old days; and as the eighteenth century wore on and speed came to be more and more considered in commercial circles, regular efforts were made by rival interests to economize time and lessen the number of days and hours en route. But it was not until steam was applied to navigation that speed became a certainty, and, therefore, a necessity of marine traffic, and it One voyage, Hastings's return from Calcutta to Plymouth in 1785, was thought remarkable for speed It was done in (our months and a half. o X grew possible to establish a regular ocean timetable. Yet to demonstrate that even with sailing ships our ancestors did not avail themselves of the utmost advantage, there was the memorable annual ocean race of 15,000 miles run by the China tea-ships within living memory. The London tea-brokers, in order to get the new crop into the market as quickly as possible, used to offer a prize of £500 to the officers and crew of the first tea-laden ship which reached the Thames. In 1866 nine such sailing ships left Foochow between May 2gth and June 6th, not very long, ranging from 68...