I know you got soul: machines with that certain something (6 page)

Still, the
Great Western
made the voyage in just fifteen days – the fastest ever crossing from England to America.

‘Yesssss,’ cried the world. Mankind has triumphed on land and now we have conquered the waves too. The age of the steamship is among us. We are invincible.

But we weren’t. A company set up to rival Great Western built a ship called the
President
. Brunel thought it a lumbering mess and he was proved right, because it took a pathetic sixteen days to reach New York. On the way back things were even worse, because it simply never arrived.
The ship, with 110 souls on board, just disappeared. Then there was the
Pacific
, which went missing with the loss of 186 lives.

This was a perennial problem back then and it had nothing to do with the Bermuda Triangle. There were no radios, no search-and-rescue helicopters and no radar. Ships had scheduled departure times, but because of the weather no one knew for sure when they’d arrive. Relatives waited and waited at quaysides, hoping to spot a telltale smudge of smoke on the horizon. Newspapers carried daily reports of vessels that had failed to dock. But nothing was ever heard of them again, and this meant no one knew just how terrifying it must have been to be aboard a liner that was going down in freezing seas, thousands of miles from land.

They got some idea, though, in 1854, when the steamship
Arctic
with 281 passengers on board – including many women and children – charged at full speed through a fog bank on the Grand Banks. She smashed head-on into a French steamer called the
Vesta
.

To begin with things went well. The chief engineer switched his pumps over to draw water from the bilges instead of the sea, thus turning the
engine into an enormous pump. But it wasn’t enormous enough and the ship began to go down by the nose. The crew threw the heavy anchor and chains overboard and the passengers were ordered to the back, to try to counterbalance the weight of the water.

Desperately, the crew tried to patch the holes in the wooden hull with mattresses and pillows but can you imagine that – using a pillow to keep the Atlantic Ocean at bay? Knowing his lifeboats could only take 40 of the 434 people on board, and thinking the
Vesta
would sink also, the captain ordered full steam ahead hoping to make land, which was 60 miles away.

Almost immediately the
Artic
ran over a lifeboat from the
Vesta
, killing all the occupants but one, and then all hell broke loose. Down in the bowels of the ship the stokers and engineers could see perfectly well that this race for the shore was a battle they were going to lose. They could see how fast the water was rising and downed tools.

Now we’ve all seen
Titanic
, in which the crew kept order as women and children were loaded into the lifeboats. It wasn’t like that on the
Arctic
. The crew, an angry knife-wielding mob, went berserk, charging onto the deck and refusing to
obey the captain’s orders. The chief engineer, with nine of his men, seized one lifeboat and made off with food, water and cigars. It was every man for himself and only the fittest would survive. People were making rafts out of anything they could find, but before they were finished the rafts were stolen by the mob.

Of the 153 crew on board 61 were rescued, including the captain. But only 23 of the 231 passengers came out of the ordeal alive.

As news of the disaster spread people were horrified at the extraordinary antics of the crew and the appalling loss of life. Suddenly everyone had documentary proof that death on a sinking ship was one of the worst imaginable. The panic and the sense of total desperation. The knowledge that you and your children were going to die, painfully, and that there was absolutely nothing you could do about it. And then came the
Atlantic
.

The
Atlantic
was a stunning ship, but unfortunately her captain was a stunning drunk. He thought he had enough coal on board for the outbound voyage, but sadly it wasn’t South Wales coal, which burned well and slowly. The Welsh were on strike at the time, so instead he’d
loaded up with fast-burning Lancashire coal. As the mighty ship approached the fearsome Grand Banks the chief engineer announced that they might run out.

The captain didn’t want to be late to New York so he ordered the engines up to full speed, reckoning he could make Halifax, refuel and still be on time in the Big Apple.

Unfortunately he didn’t really know where he was, and he wasn’t prepared to stop and take soundings. And so he was probably as surprised as anyone when, on a completely clear night, he hit Canada doing twelve knots.

This was right at the height of mass European emigration to America. And as a result there were 1,000 people on board.

Within six minutes the ship had pretty much sunk and many had taken to the masts, where they clung, being battered by the freezing winds and even more freezing waves. Some of the crew reckoned they could make land and attempted to get a line to a rock 40 yards away. They managed it, and 200 people crawled to what they thought was safety.

But so severe was the weather that only a handful ever got from the rock to the shore. The rest
simply froze to death before local fishermen were able to row out in the morning. It’s estimated that 585 people were killed that night and, as with the
Arctic
disaster, the crew fared much better than the passengers – 94 of the 146 on board survived.

Then you have the
City of Glasgow
. Unusually, it caught fire, incinerating most of the lifeboats before they could be launched. And some of those that were winched to the sea were chopped to pieces by the still spinning prop. The death toll from that one was 471.

I’m surprised, frankly, that when the
Titanic
went down the world didn’t simply shrug. ‘Tch, there goes another one.’

Maybe the accident became etched on the national consciousness because, for once, the crew behaved like gentlemen and didn’t trample on women’s heads to get to the lifeboats. Or maybe it’s because the
Titanic
had been described as being unsinkable. Or maybe it’s because the ship was on its maiden voyage. Or perhaps it had something to do with the sheer numbers. I mean, 1,200 dead, that’s phenomenal.

I think, though, the main reason why the
Titanic
disaster is remembered, while most of the
others aren’t, is that it went down in the twentieth century. And by then ocean travel had changed from being a hazardous and uncomfortable experience into the single most luxurious event in a man’s life.

At the beginning of the steamship era there were three distinct ways of getting across the Atlantic. You had the ultra-luxurious American ships from the Collins line, and the cheap and cheerful ships for immigrants from the Inman line. In between there was Cunard, who were only interested in being sensible. It is remarkable that in the torrent of death that befell ocean travel in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Cunard didn’t lose a single passenger.

And they can hardly be blamed for their first casualties in 1915. Because it wasn’t carelessness that killed them, or bad management. It was a German torpedo that slammed into their ship, the
Lusitania
; 1,201 died.

As time wore on other steamship operators came along and as a result the oceans turned into a racetrack where civic and national pride were at stake. Every ship that slithered down its ramps, dripping champagne, had to be faster and more luxurious than the one that went before. The
Germans had to beat the Americans. The French had to beat the British. And the British, led by Cunard, had to beat everyone.

Although the companies that operated these leviathans would never admit to racing one another – they didn’t want the public to think they were being reckless – there is no doubt that liners did line up for full-bore crossings, often racing at full pelt side by side for days on end.

On deck passengers would bet on which ship would win and shout insults if theirs started to pull ahead. There was a particularly epic duel between the
City of New York
and the
Teutonic
with both ships crossing the line in New York, after a 3,000-mile race, just nine minutes apart.

This rivalry and racing ended, however, with Cunard’s
Mauretania
. Sister to the
Lusitania
, it was 600 feet long, fitted with four propellers and could carry 2,165 passengers at speeds that simply blew everything else into the middle of last week. She could average, on a normal crossing of the Atlantic, an incredible 25 knots.

Do not think that the
Titanic
was trying for a record when it ploughed into that iceberg because, quite simply, it wouldn’t have stood a chance. The 10,500-horsepower
Mauretania
set a transatlantic
record in 1902 and it wasn’t beaten for another 22 years.

The White Star Line’s
Titanic
was only trying to prove it wasn’t
that
slow when it hit the berg and proved it wasn’t
that
well designed either.

The
Mauretania
was not only fast and vast, and not only built with Cunard’s eye for detail, but also beautiful. And more than this, she was kitted out in a blizzard of grace and panache. There were Adam fireplaces and wood panelling with bronze and crystal chandeliers. There were references to Louis XVI and the first-class cabins were littered with the finest Georgian furniture. In the main lounge fluted mahogany columns supported the beamed ceiling, and on the floor only the finest silk carpets would do. Imagine the Palace of Versailles at sea, then double the size and double the luxury and you’re still not halfway there.

There was technology too, and not just in the engine room. The lavatories, for instance, had door-operated valves, so they flushed every time someone entered or left the room. The lifts, to save weight, were made from a new type of metal called aluminium. There was even a fully equipped hospital.

It was the
Mauretania
that set the tone for the
liners that flew across the Atlantic in the post-war years. The
Normandie
, the
France
, the
United States
and the
Queen Mary
. You could even argue that the
Mauretania
gave rise to the cruise ships that ply the Med and the Caribbean today. Yes, plastic has replaced the wood panelling and turbines have replaced the boilers, but the idea is still the same. The last word in luxury. The best food. The quietest engines. And the greatest possible speed.

Today the
Mauretania
is long gone, although her luxurious innards were rescued and now line the bar area of a nightclub in Bristol.

Some say the Cunard flagship was just the greatest liner ever but, not wishing to be cussed, I’m not so sure. I think that accolade rests with Brunel’s follow-up to the
Great Western
. The SS
Great Britain
.

In its day the wooden
Great Western
had been something of a success, and its owners asked Brunel for a sister ship. Naturally, they thought it would be pretty much the same. Maybe the coal stores could be moved from the stem and the stern to somewhere nearer the boilers, and maybe something could be done about the roll that made passengers so sick. But broadly, they didn’t want
to deviate too much from what was a well-proven vessel.

They were reckoning without the ambition of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Wood, he figured, was completely wrong for what was actually a machine. Steam trains were not made from elm and nor were the tracks fashioned from oak. So, he decided that his new ship would have an iron hull.

Then, when work was well underway, he saw a propeller-driven boat put-putting around Bristol harbour and thought, ‘Hang on a minute; if a prop can work in coastal waters, why can’t it work in the ocean?’ So, much to his paymasters’ despair, he threw away the designs for the paddle wheels and started again with a screw.

He’d been the first with ocean-going steam power. Now he was going to be first with a continent-hopping iron hull and first with a prop. No ship had ever been the subject of such intense scrutiny. Every nut and bolt was pored over by the press and Prince Albert came to the launching ceremony, where he spent two hours touring the innards, scarcely able to believe his eyes.

In wooden ships of the time the beams and the supports were great chunks of oak. But in the
Great Britain
there were slender beams of iron. You only have to look at the roof of Paddington Station to see how delicate Brunel could be. But then you only had to look at the propeller shaft to see he could play heavy metal with the best of them. It was 130 feet long and weighed a whopping 36 tons.

And it wasn’t just the technology that impressed; it was the sheer size. This thing was 50 per cent longer and three times roomier than the wooden Cunard rivals. It was far and away the biggest man-made moving object the world had ever seen.

Brunel’s rivals were surprisingly joyful as the ship took shape in Bristol, because they felt the diminutive wonderbrain had bitten off more than he could chew with this one. With barely contained glee they waited for the whole project to be a disaster. And they didn’t have to wait long.

First of all, with a cruising speed of nine knots, she turned out to be slower than Cunard’s wooden paddle steamers, and because there were no paddle boxes on either side she did roll badly in heavy seas. Nothing could be done about this, but alterations were made to her prop in a bid to increase the speed. Obviously they weren’t a success,
because on her second trip to the States three blades simply fell off.

It was repaired in America, but on the return leg it fell to pieces again. And so she arrived in Liverpool, after a miserably slow twenty-day crossing, under sail. By this stage the season was over, so she was laid up for the winter, a technical and financial failure.

In those dark, cold days Brunel toiled with the prop, spending more and more money on new designs, and desperately tried to think of ways to stop the disconcerting roll. But the tide of public opinion was turning against him. One magazine, which had loved the ship when it was being built, said it was ‘leviathanism which was wholly uncalled for’. Some even questioned Brunel’s engineering ability. Yeah right. What did they expect? That you could just pop a brand-new idea into the water and off it would go.