DEVELOPMENTS IN STEAMSHIPS.
THE announcement that Liverpool has adopted a supplemental dock program involving an expenditure of $20,000,000, and that docks are to be built capable of accommodating steamships of 900 feet and over, says the New York Christian Advocate, implies that the limit of length in ocean steamship construction has not yet been reached. Since the Savannah made her trip across in 1819, to the present, the length of the ocean steamship has increased about fivefold. The Savannah was 145 feet long, and the Oceanic, now building, is 705 feet long. Twenty years ago the longest steamer in the transatlantic service was the City of Berlin, 520 feet; the City of Rome, which came out in 1881, was 600 feet long, and her length was not surpassed until the Campania came out in 1893, and brought the record up to 620 feet. Then came the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse last year with her 649 feet, and the Oceanic brings up the list with her length of 705 feet. At this rate of increase it is not unlikely that the 900-foot ship will be berthed in the new docks of Liverpool within the next ten years. The development in length has been coincident with that of speed. It took the Savannah twenty-nine days and eleven hours to make the run from Savannah to Liverpool in 1819, altho it must be remembered that steam was used only a small part of that time. But it took the Great Western fifteen days to make the run from Bristol to New York in 1838, her average speed being 8.2 knots per hour. The records of the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse are astonishing compared to these. But the marvelous performances of the latter ship, with her hourly average of twenty-three knots, is sure to be surpassed when the turbine principle of propulsion has been adopted in the construction of marine engines. It is claimed that a speed of from thirty-five to forty miles an hour will be developed.