Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/542

534 speed of all cargo steamers have increased remarkably. Very interesting statistics on this point were given to the British Association for the Advancement of Science last year, at Dover, by Sir William White, in the Presidential Address of Section G. We may say, without repeating details, that during the last half of the nineteenth century the breadth of the Atlantic has practically been diminished one-half.

In 1857 the Union Company contracted to carry mails in thirty-seven days to the Cape. Now the contract time is nineteen days. This again diminishes the distance by one-half. As an instance of the remarkable change which has been made in steamships within forty years, it may be mentioned that the first 'Norman' of the Union Company took forty-two days to reach the Cape, while the present 'Norman' has covered the journey in fourteen days twenty-one hours. I need not specify particularly the equivalent acceleration of speed upon other great steamship lines. All our sea distances have been shortened 50 to 60 per cent, in an identical way.

It is not too bold to predict that the Atlantic, from Queenstown to New York, will, before long, be steamed in less than four days. The question has now resolved itself simply into this—will it pay shipowners to burn so much coal as to ensure these rushing journeys before a cheaper substitute for coal is found? We know that a torpedo-destroyer has been driven through the water at the rate of forty-three miles an hour by the use of the turbo-motor instead of reciprocating engines. Consequently an enormous increase in the present speed of the great Atlantic liners is certain if the new system can be applied to large vessels. By such very swift steamers, and by the example they will set to all established and competing steamship companies, the journey to Canada and subsequently to all other parts of the Empire will be continually quickened, until predictions which would now sound extravagant will in a few years be simple every-day facts.

We must turn next to the subject of telegraphic communication especially as it relates to the British Empire.

The mazes of land-lines and of sea and ocean cables are too numerous and intricate to be described in detail. Also the general effect of this means of bringing distant people together, and its transcendent importance for political, strategic and trade purposes, need not be too much insisted upon in this place, so obvious must they be to everyone. Yet, great as has been its power and advantage in all of those directions in the past, it is certain that still greater development and still greater service to the world will follow in the future even from existing systems, not to speak of their certain and enormous possibilities of growth. In the celerity of the actual despatch of a message we need not ask for nruch improvement. Lightning speed will be probably sufficient for our go-ahead