Late modern time-space compression - Time-Space Compression: Historical Geographies - page 107

Between 1838 and 1912, the average speed of steamships rose by 350 percent,
a feat made possible by engines that were 200 times more powerful, given the
great increase in the size of the vessels and the exponential increases needed
in fuel to attain higher velocities (Talbot 1912). German ships of the late
nineteenth century, for example, which were designed to demonstrate that
country's technical pro fired by 112 furnaces, devour-

ing a ton of coal every three minutes. Ships such as the Lusitania used
93,600,000 gallons of water every 24 hours. Intense competition among
steamship lines, fueled not only by the lure of pro

fi ciency, had 16 boilers fi

t but by personal rivalries
of their owners, led to steady increases in speed across the Atlantic. By 1881,
the Inman Line brought out the City of Rome , which made the trip—which
ranged between 2,700 and 2,813 miles, depending on the precise route—in six
days, 21 hours. The Guion Line countered with the Alaska , the “Greyhound
of the Atlantic,” which made the journey in 6¾ days; the Cunard's Oregon
further reduced it to six days, ten hours (Talbot 1912). By 1900, the Kaiser
Wilhelm made the crossing in

fi

ve days, seven hours. By the 1890s, the screw
propeller replaced the paddle wheel and the period of crossing dropped to a
mere

fi

fi five days. Heimann, in an oft-cited passage, argued in 1839:

We have seen the power of steam suddenly dry up the great Atlantic
ocean to less than half its breadth.... Our communication with India
has received the same blessing. The Indian Ocean is not only in

nitely
smaller than it used to be, but the Indian mail, under the guidance of
steam, has been granted almost a miraculous passage through the waters
of the Red Sea. The Mediterranean, which is now only a week from us,
has before our eyes shrunk into a lake; our British and Irish channels are
scarcely broader than the old Firth of Forth; the Rhine, the Danube, the
Thames, the Medway, the Ganges etc., have contracted their streams to
in

fi

nitely less than half their lengths and breadths, and the great lakes of
the world are rapidly drying into ponds!

fi

(Quoted in Talbot 1912:166)

Table 4.3 Transatlantic steamship crossing
times, 1838-1900

Year Ship Days, hours

1838 Sirius 17,0

1852 Russia 8,12

1873 City of Rome 7,18

1877 Britannia 7,10

1881 City of Rome 6,21

1882 Oregon 6,10

1892 Umbria 5,22

1900 Kaiser Wilhelm 5,7

Source: Talbot 1912.