Weekend March 13-14, 2021 – THE SHIPPING BUSINESS WENT FROM STEERAGE TO THE RITZ

By admin

The Roosevelt Island Historical Society and the New York Public Library are proud to host author Richard Panchyk and his presentation of his book “Abandoned Queens”.

TUESDAY, MARCH 16TH, 7 P.M. VIA ZOOM Click below to register:

https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2021/03/16/abandoned-queens

CONFIRMATION AND LINK WILL BE SENT PRIOR TO EVENT

There are many places in New York City’s borough of Queens where traces of the past linger, haunting reminders of the way things used to be, sometimes hidden and sometimes in plain sight. In this presentation, author Richard Panchyk takes us on a journey through his book Abandoned Queens, through a variety of fascinating abandoned places in Queens, including the chilling Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, the meandering remains of the country’s first modern highway, and a defunct airport reclaimed by wilderness. Because Queens is so densely populated, these abandoned places usually coexist adjacent to living, thriving locations, making for an often eerie and beautiful juxtaposition of old and new, used and unused. From an eerie old railroad line in Forest Hills to a destroyed neighborhood in the Rockaways, the poignant images in this book are filled with context and history.

310th Edition

WEEKEND EDITION

MARCH 13-14,  2021

CROSSING THE ATLANTIC, PART 2

BY  STEPHEN BLANK

CROSSING THE ATLANTIC, PART 2

Stephen Blank

The first part of this tale concluded with the beginning of the great era of Atlantic liners. Soon engines would be more powerful, screw propellers would replace sidewheels and sleek steel hulls would enable ships to grow to unimaginable size, speed and grandeur.

American companies, centered in New York, dominated the early Atlantic passenger trade. American packets first created regular scheduled crossings; American clipper ships were the fastest, most elegant and most technologically advanced in the world fleet; Americans had pioneered the use of steam in ship propulsion, and the first steamship to cross the Atlantic (more or less) was the American Savannah. But soon, America would drop out of this competition and the Atlantic passenger trade would be dominated by British, German and other European vessels.

Welcome aboard, friends, and hear how this happened.

Immigrants

Crossing was dangerous, particularly for the growing number of emigrants heading west across the Atlantic. Worst were the “Irish coffin ships” that carried people escaping the Famine. Crowded and disease-ridden, with poor access to food and water, many did not complete the voyage. Owners of coffin ships provided as little food, water and living space as was legally possible. In 1847, during the Famine, 7,000 Irish emigrants died of typhus on the way to America. Another 10,000 died soon after arriving in quarantine areas in the US.  Coffin ships were the cheapest way to cross the Atlantic, but mortality rates of 30% were common. It was said that sharks could be seen following the ships, because so many bodies were thrown overboard.

When steam replaced sail, steerage passage wasn’t more comfortable, but it was faster. In 1852 steamships began to bring emigrants to America that could transport 450 at a time from Liverpool to New York. The fare of six guineas a head was double that charged by sailing ships. However, it was much faster and by the 1870s the journey across the Atlantic was only taking two weeks.

Technological change

Technology changed rapidly. Iron hulls were stronger and could support larger engines. Ship size increased dramatically, particularly those created by the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Brunel, known for his innovative bridges and tunnels, built three great steamships, each marking a technological leap forward. A great leap was taken in 1858 with the launching of the Great Eastern, with a length of 692 feet, more than twice that of any other ship. It displaced 32,160 tons, was driven by a propeller and two paddle wheels, as well as auxiliary sails, and its iron hull set a standard for most subsequent liners. The Great Eastern could carry nearly 4,000 passengers.  But the Company failed to win a British government mail contract (losing out to Cunard) and the Great Eastern was just too large in the shipping market of the 1860s.

 The Great Eastern, iron steamship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel; lithograph by T.G. Dutton, 1859. Courtesy of the Science Museum, London

Larger ships with more powerful engines could move faster. Speed and increasing comfort appealed greatly to growing market of first-class passengers, who were willing to pay premium fares for a fast voyage. At the same time, larger ships had more room in steerage. Steerage, or third-class, passengers provided the basic income that allowed the lines to thrive. Steerage passengers paid low fares, and they received very little in return in terms of shipboard comfort. Indeed, because steamships were faster, ship owners sold little more than bed space in steerage, leaving emigrants to bring their own food, bedding, and other necessities. The first company to seize the emigration opportunity was the Liverpool-based Inman Line, which began by specializing in the steerage trade, but Cunard, White Star and others soon made the adjustment, increasing their steerage capacity and improving its amenities.

Competition

Efforts by Americans to compete in the Atlantic market were not successful. One exception was the Collins Line, which in 1847 owned the four finest ships afloat. The federal government paid Collins a million dollars a year to carry mail and make better time than the Cunards. The Collins ships were widely advertised as models of comfort and beauty and foreshadowed the elegance which was soon identified with ocean travel. They made better time than their English rivals, averaging crossings in ten to eleven days, while the Cunarders could not do better than twelve. But the enormous expense of speed ruined the line.

U S M Steam Ship Arctic. Collins Line
Royal Greenwich Museum

Other reasons help explain the American lost dominance in this industry. During the Civil War, Confederate raiders (constructed in Britain) sank Union ships or drove them to operate under other registries. Also, attention in the US was increasingly focused on opening the West and on railroads rather than steamships. Finally, the bottom line in the industry was bringing immigrants to the US. Immigrants who chose to return (about a third did), found nickel-and-dime fares in now empty foreign steerage. The US went from being the world’s largest merchant marine power to merely an importing shipping nation.

If a company’s bread and butter came from steerage, glamour and prestige came from speed and ship’s image. Each new ship on the North Atlantic run boasted a higher standard of luxury. For the wealthy, these ships offered ever-grander decorative public rooms, finer food and more spacious staterooms with the most modern conveniences-including private bathrooms with hot and cold running water, electric light and steam and heat.

But the Brits didn’t own the industry.

Parts of the next paragraphs are lifted from Robert Ballarad’s Lost Liners: From the Titanic to the Andrea Doria the Ocean Floor Reveals Its Greatest Lost Ships. To say that the Germans invented the twentieth-century luxury liner might be overstating the case, but they surely combined the existing strands of liner evolution to bring it into being. In the late 1890s their ships rapidly overtook the British in terms of size and speed. Two aggressive German companies, Norddeutscher Lloyd and Hamburg-Amerika, themselves fierce rivals, left a greater imprint on shipboard style than on marine engineering. They were the first to turn over the artistic control for designing a passenger liner’s interiors to a single architect/designer.

Hamburg-Amerika’s managing director, Albert Ballin, decreed that comfort and luxury, not speed, would be his watchwords. On a stopover in London, he dined at the Carlton Hotel’s new Ritz-Carlton Grill. Here he encountered not only the lavish haute cuisine of Auguste Escoffier but also the tasteful interiors of a French architect Charles Mewès. Ballin was so smitten by the combination that he determined his next ship would contain a floating version of the Ritz-Carlton Grill, an à la carte alternative-at an additional price-to the first-class dining room. Here was a golden carrot to attract the cream of the Edwardian beau monde. He sought out Mewès and offered him the commission to design the interiors of the Amerika. Then he approached César Ritz and asked him to oversee the restaurant. The two Frenchmen accepted, and a fruitful, enduring partnership was born.

Mewès’s Amerika became a floating grand hotel par excellence. So popular was her Ritz-Carlton Restaurant on the ship’s maiden voyage in the fall of 1905 that Ballin immediately ordered its kitchen doubled in size. But the marvel of a first-class à la carte restaurant, decorated in the classic style of Louis XVI, where one could dine superbly and intimately, was only half the story. On the Amerika, Mewès “was given the opportunity to achieve some kind of total design harmony,” according to liner historian John Maxtone-Graham, “implementing a scheme of uniform decoration in all the public rooms throughout the ship.” Aft of the restaurant, one entered an elegant lounge in the eighteenth-century style of Robert Adam. The airy Palm Court, with its blooming flowers, potted palms, and white rattan furniture, was also inspired by Louis XVI.

Uploaded by: Ballins Dampfer Welt, Sep 10, 2015

Amerika, which immediately became the most fashionable ship on the North Atlantic, set the stage for the heyday of liner grand luxe. Mewès went on to design the interiors of the Amerika’s sister ship, Kaiserin Auguste Viktoria, and then the three Hamburg-Amerika giants of the Imperator class that outsized even White Star’s famous, doomed Titanic.
In this competitive climate, both White Star and Cunard realized that to maintain their share of the Atlantic passenger trade, they would have to build new ships of unprecedented size and luxury. The age of the Atlantic superliner had truly begun.
Alas, I had intended to do this one in two parts, but I see it will take three. Please don’t run to the lifeboats yet. I hope you will remain on board for the Third Sailing.

Stephen Blank
RIHS
March 8, 2021

WEEKEND PHOTO

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FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT  STATUE IN RIVERSIDE PARK

BY SCULPTOR PENELOPE JENCKS

M. FRANKS, SUSAN RODETIS, STEVE BESSENOFF, GLORIA HERMAN, 
LISA FERNANDEZ, HARA REISER, THOM HEYER  &  ARON EISENPREISS GOT IT 

Sources

Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c)

• https://spartacus-educational.com/USAEjourney.htm#:~:text=In%20the%20early%2019th%20century,often%20run%20short%20of%20provisions
• https://www.britannica.com/technology/ship/The-Atlantic-Ferry
• https://www.thoughtco.com/isambard-kingdom-brunels-great-steamships-1774004
• https://www.pbs.org/lostliners/ocean.html

FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD

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