ATLANTIC STEAMERS.

Inangahua Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1317, 31 October 1883, Page 4

ATLANTIC STEAMERS.

The New York correspondent of a contemporary writes : — I The summer oxodus to Europe has this year been larger than ever, and the steamships have been making a series of extraordinarily fast passages. Several trips have been made from j Queenstown to new York in less than J seven days, and many more in a few hours over the week. The new 8500--ton steamer of the Anchor line, the City of Rome, has been enough of a success to force the oth«r lines to order several similar^, ships. The i Cunard : Company next year will have three vessels of; .the same colossal size. The City of RoraeY however^ is admitted to be a : finaneial failure. When she is full — and she carries 400 -first-cabin passengers — she only Just pays' ex-» penses. She burns 26(1: tons of coal a day, and has a force of ,120 fireman. Passengers report, too, thatsjieisby no means a comfortable craft to sail in. Tin. propeller, urged with 'terrific force, makes the entire fabric vibrate; and at rfr^ht the beams creak and groan in a manner distressing alike fo themselves and the passengers. It is plain also that the larger the steamer the greater the liability to accident, and the poorer the chances of escaping the /jonsequeuces. The Borne can only

make two mi es an hour under sail, I and in a heavy gale, without the use of her engines, would be almost absolutely helpless. The Aurania, of the Cunard line, 8400 tons, on her first trip out, broke the connecting rod of the cylinders, atid the machinery, released from control, tore itself to pieces in a few seconds, and made ; necessary repairs which will cost i nearly £ 100,000 — rone-fourth the value , of the ship — and will take at least six j months. Conservative engineers begin j to say thai there is a limit to the size I of a steamer — say about 6000 tons^and that any advance beyond that ; means great great danger, without any adequate compensating advantages. There, is one abuse in the Atlantic steamer trade, however, which demands immediate attention — the overcrowd ing of 1 emigrants in the steerage. Some ships with a capacity of only 4000 tons have brought no less than 1100 steerage passengers on a. single trip, besides 120 first and second cabin passengers, and a crew of 200. The 10 boats carried would accomorrodate at' the utmost only 400 person's j and while it may be admitted that hi most cases of disaster boats are useless, stijl in some instances, such % asHa fire iji calm weather or a collision, with proper means of escape, everybody mighi be saved. If not, why^are boats carried at all? And if the: law requires that they shall be carried, surely it ought to require further^ that enough be carried to accommodate all the passengers. In imagination we can easily see the-horrors that'; would ensue upon a disaster in mid- Atlantic, when people realised that only one in three could .be saved — a grim! tight for life .on the doomed vessel, the women and children abandoned, the decks wet with blood. Only the most stringent legislation, i however, could* force the steamship coxcpanies : to lessen the num'eroi , their ' Human 'cargo', for it is upon the i steerage passengers that they makj • their r teM»est profit, c „ .