By that year, however, the hard driven Yankee packets had a new competitor to face in the Atlantic. So late as 1835 a cross Atlantic steamer service had been declared a physical impossi bility; but only three years later the "Great Western" and three other British ships made the passage to America under steam, and, in 1840, the British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (now the Cunard S.S. Co.), having secured a mail contract, began a regular fortnightly service, with four paddle steamers of about 1,15o tons.
From this date the sailing vessel was doomed, but few, at the time, could read the warning aright. The early steamers were too extravagant in their fuel consumption to be used for general trade or on very long voyages, and even in the mail services they required to be lavishly subsidized. The competition of steam in the ocean trades was so restricted that it had little or no in fluence on the last great development of the sailing vessel, due to the great gold discoveries of the mid-19th century. In their haste to be first at the diggings during the great Californian gold rush of 1849-56. people were ready to pay high for a quick passage. A demand arose for fast ships with large passenger accommodation, and the American builders responded to it by producing the finest sailing ships that had yet been seen. These Californian clippers, like "Flying Cloud" and "Andrew Jackson," were big ships for their day, with fine lines and a great spread of canvas, and there was nothing afloat that could live with them in strong winds. When the discovery of gold in Australia caused a rush of emi grants to Melbourne in 1851-56, it was from the American ship yards that British owners procured the big Australian clippers such as "Marco Polo" and "Lightning." Navigation Laws Repealed.—Meanwhile Great Britain was moving towards free trade, and the final repeal of the navigation laws, in 1849, exposed British shipping, for the first time, to un restricted competition in every sea. The arrival of the American clipper "Oriental," with the season's first teas from China, stung British ship-owners into an acknowledgment of the palpable in feriority of their own vessels, and a stern determination to take up the challenge.
This new-born zeal for efficiency found an echo in parliament, and the repeal of the navigation laws was closely followed by the passing of the Mercantile Marine Act in 185o and the first Mer chant Shipping Act in 1854. These laws, the parents of much sub
sequent legislation, were the first serious attempts to provide for the safety of life and goods at sea, and gave power to the Board of Trade to enforce reasonable standards of construction and equipment in the ships, and of competence and discipline in masters, officers and crews. Incidentally, the obsolete tonnage laws were superseded by a rational method of measurement.
Thus encouraged, and spurred on by competition, British ship owners rapidly renewed their fleets. In particular, they put into the China trade a series of beautiful little clippers, specially con structed to take advantage of every puff of wind in the light and baffling airs of the tropics. Probably no voyages have ever excited so much sporting interest as the annual race home with the new season's teas, especially that of 1866, when "Ariel," "Taeping" and "Serica" left Foochow on the same day and docked in London within a few hours of each other, 99 days out.
The California and China clippers represent the apogee of the sailing vessel ; but every year the menace of steam became more insistent. The "Great Britain" (1843) was the first screw steamer to cross the Atlantic. In 1858 Brunel's monster, the "Great Eastern," was launched. Measuring 18,914 tons gross, she was a failure commercially, but as an indication of possible develop ment she was a portent. While she was still on the stocks, the compound engine was invented, which permitted great economy of fuel, and made long voyages under steam a commercial pos sibility. It was first applied to long distance steamers in 1865, by the original Holt liners, which astonished the world by a non stop run of 8,5oo miles from Liverpool to Mauritius. The real death-blow to the sailing-vessel, however, was the opening of the Suez canal in 1869, which not only shortened the steamer's passage to India and the Far East, but lowered her costs, by giv ing her a route studded with bunker depots at comparatively short intervals. Against such competition the sailing vessel could not live, at least in trades where speed was a greater object than cost, and the later tea clippers, such as the famous "Cutty Sark" and "Thermopylae," passed into the Australian wool trade, where the steamer derived less advantage from the Suez route.