Transatlantic: Samuel Cunard, Isambard Brunel, and the Great Atlantic Steamships

I haven't quite read the entire book yet, and I don't have time right now to write a comprehensive review, but I did want to say that this book is a great read and would be appreciated by anyone with the slightest interest in ships. It is also very impressively researched - Fox's in-depth research puts many so-called specialist historians to shame. I am almost ashamed of the fact that I only paid a dollar for a new copy of this book, which is far less than I've paid for many history books that aren't a fraction as entertaining or informative as this one. I see you can still get it for scarcely more than a buck secondhand and it's an absolute steal at that price, and indeed very good value for the hardback even at full price.

Stephen Fox, the author, has done a masterful job in writing this well-researched book. His writing is lucid, engaging, and informative. Equally deft in vividly portraying personalities, describing technical challenges, and relating real-world business problems, Fox's history of the Atlantic steamship industry is guaranteed to please. The book is as much an economic history as it is a social history. Fox starts the book by describing a typical sailing ship journey across the Atlantic in the early 1800's. A typical voyage is fraught with seasickness, stench, wetness, cold, monotony, and grave danger. But as the burgeoning populations of Europe seek a safety valve to America, the era of steamships and great steamship captains arrives. The book follows pioneering visionaries and their steamship lines; such as Samuel Cunard, Edward Collins, Isambard Kingdom Brunel (Great Western), William Inman, Thomas Ismay (White Star), Clement Griscom (American Steamship), Albert Ballin (Hamburg-American), and Hermann Meier (North German Lloyd). Fox gives us a short personal history for each captain and his role in shaping his line. Fox also goes on to describe the most important technical innovations the Atlantic steamship industry took up (paddle wheels, reciprocating steam engines, condensers, steam turbines, and screw propellers being the most significant) and the renowned contractors that produced these masterpieces of Victorian engineering. But success was never guaranteed. Shipwrecks could, and did happen, with consequent loss of life, money, and prestige. Further, poor -and economically unrestrained - engineering could produce titanic boondoggles such as the 'Great Eastern' steamship. Finally, the book has a great social element in describing life at sea for both passengers and crew. Passengers in the first half of this great era often freely rubbed shoulders amongst people of all classes - something unusual in highly stratified Victorian society. Fox compares the steamship as both a town (with all its diverse citizenry and occupations) as well as a functional building (with toilets, dining rooms, bedrooms, libraries, etc.). He finishes by closely detailing two of the last great steamships - Lusitania and Mauretania. This is a really fascinating history with colorful characters and difficult engineering challenges. It has some great photos of these now vanished maritime colossae. I highly recommend this book.

As the hours tick away on your transatlantic flight, noisy, cramped, and boring, you may want to remember the way they used to do it, by steam. Charles Dickens took one of the new-fangled Cunard steamers from England to Boston in 1842, and wrote a funny, famous article about how it was noisy, cramped, and boring. It was bad enough that on the return trip, he took the slow traditional sailing packet. Dickens's account is evaluated in _Transatlantic: Samuel Cunard, Isambard Brunel, and the Great Atlantic Steamships_ (HarperCollins) by Stephen Fox. It isn't surprising that with Fox's love of his subject (and his prodigious research) he has found that Dickens exaggerated for literary effect. Even so, the Industrial Revolution, finally applied to transatlantic travel, did bring more comfort to travelers, as well as much more speed. Fox has deliberately confined himself to the period from the birth of steam at sea to the climax, the _Mauretania_, the "greatest steamship ever built," launched in 1907. His history covers only in part the social whirl of cruising, which has been handled many times before. _Transatlantic_, a big book, covers in detail the changes wrought by engineering and the men who made them happen.The changes were enormous. Sail gave way to steam via paddlewheels and then to propellers. Piston steam engines became turbines. Wooden ships became iron and then steel. Everything went faster, and the fascination for speed drove the innovation. The administrators of the passenger lines always virtuously denied having anything to do with racing, but everyone knew what ship was the current record-holder. The Owners of the lines denied involvement in races because speed was the enemy of safety. Originally, however, it was thought that the safest way to get through fog or nighttime gloom, even in an area threatened by icebergs, was to put on full speed and thus get out of there quickly. There were plenty of colossal disasters at sea, and many readers will find these the most interesting parts of this volume. Most surprising is how there was so little chivalry in these Victorian times. For instance, the 1854 sinking of the _Arctic_, a masterpiece of design from the United States Collins Line, occurred after it was rammed by another steamer in the Grand Banks. As the ship went down, there was chaos unrelieved by heroism; one fireman said, "It was every man for himself, and no more attention was paid to the captain than to any other man on board. Life was as sweet to us as to others." The not-full lifeboats discouraged further embarkations at gunpoint. 40% of the crew survived, and only 8% of the passengers. "Women and children first" was unheard of or unheeded; all the survivors were men.Speed and safety were paramount for the owners, but the passengers remembered comfort, which also increased during the period. The upper class passengers could count on ten course meals and plenty to drink; a good deal of the crossing must

This new book is a massive history of American and British steamship travel on the North Atlantic, covering the period between 1820 and 1910. It focuses on the changing styles and engineering advancements that were made in these two countries over the decades, as well as on the powerful men whose rivalries drove the industry forward. The book highlights the entrepreneurs who built the ocean liner companies, but gives equal insight into the engineering specialists who made the rapid advancement in steamship technology possible. It is a story about men, and about machines, and the ever increasing demand for speed that drove both to their limits, and sometimes beyond. The ships covered begin with the first vessel made expressly for an ocean crossing voyage, Isambard Brunel's daring steam driven, paddle wheeler Great Western in 1838. The story follows the advancements made through the decades as ships came and went bringing fame or, sometimes, folly, and ends with the innovative, turbine powered, Cunard liner Mauretania around 1910.It is one of the most readable books on the subject to see print in quite a while. The text is interesting and informative, with a fluid, breezy style that reads as smoothly as a good novel. The introduction sets the scene of what is to come with Britannia's triumphant entrance into Boston harbor. The author then steps back with a short but detailed look at the Atlantic passenger traffic dominated by the American sailing packets just before the advent of steam. As he does throughout the book, Fox captures the experience of the sailing ships to perfection, buttressing his wonderful descriptions with excerpts from first hand accounts.After this brief introductory chapter about sail, the book plunges into the heart of its subject matter, the ever increasing role and final dominance that the maritime steam engine played in transatlantic travel. The coverage of the many steamship lines, along with their respective achievements and flaws, is expansive, if somewhat erratic. Some of the more important lines don't get the attention they deserve. The importance of the White Star Line to the industry seems particularly lacking.It's not just a book about steamship companies, though. It is a story of shipbuilding firms as well, and the engineers whose genius made the mechanical march of progress possible. The engineering works in Scotland, South Britain and Ireland are where the author focuses his attention for this aspect of the tale. He covers in detail the intense rivalries that existed between the shipbuilders, which could be just as fierce as amongst the shipping magnates. Entrepreneurs and engineers were critical in equal measure to the success of the ocean greyhounds, and rarely has a book so wonderfully interwoven the contributions both groups made to the advancement of Atlantic steamship travel.As mentioned above, this book does restrict its focus to American and British companies, with some of the German innovation enterin

Bought this AFTER I bought the history of the White Star line. This is much more appealing, from the paper to the pictures, a quality work. The writing style is lively and easy to read. This book traces the history of transatlantic travel from the days of the sailing packet to the height of the glory of the first Mauretania. An entertaining and enlightening must read for the ocean liner or transportation buff.