Fifth Avenue | Page 9

trip in about twenty-three days and the return trip in about
forty days. The record was held by the "Canada," of the Black Ball line,
which had made the outward run in fifteen days and eighteen hours.
That time was reduced later by the "Amazon." The first steamer to
cross the Atlantic was the American ship "Savannah." She made the
trial trip from New York to Savannah in April, 1819, and in the
following month her owners decided to send her overseas. The time of
her passage was twenty-six days, eight under steam and eighteen under
sail. Stephen Rogers, her navigator, in a letter to the New London
"Gazette," wrote that the "Savannah" was first sighted from the
telegraph station at Cape Clear, on the southern coast of Ireland, which
reported her as being on fire, and a king's cutter was sent to her relief.
"But great was their wonder at their inability to come up with a ship
under bare poles. After several shots had been fired from the cutter the
engine was stopped, and the surprise of the cutter's crew at the mistake
they had made, as well as their curiosity to see the strange Yankee craft,
can be easily imagined." From Liverpool the "Savannah" proceeded to
St. Petersburg, stopping at Stockholm, and on her return she left St.
Petersburg on October 10th, arriving at Savannah November 30th. But
the prestige that the journey had won did not compensate for the heavy
expense. Her boilers, engines, and paddles were removed, and she was
placed on the Savannah route as a packet ship, being finally wrecked on
the Long Island coast. The successful establishment of steam as a
means of conveying a vessel across the Atlantic did not come until the
spring of 1838, when, on the same day, April 23rd, two ships from
England reached New York. They were the "Sirius," which had sailed

from Cork, Ireland, April 4th, and the "Great Western," which had left
Bristol April 8th. The following year marked the founding of the
Cunard Line.
About the same time began the famous Clippers, which carried
triumphantly the American flag to every corner of the Seven Seas.
They were at first small, swift vessels of from six hundred to nine
hundred tons, and designed for the China tea trade. Later came the
"Challenge," of two thousand tons, and the "Invincible," of two
thousand one hundred and fifty tons. "That clipper epoch," said a writer
in "Harper's Magazine" for January, 1884, "was an epoch to be proud
of; and we were proud of it. The New York newspapers abounded in
such headlines as these: 'Quickest Trip on Record,' 'Shortest Passage to
San Francisco,' 'Unparalleled Speed,' 'Quickest Voyage Yet,' 'A Clipper
as is a Clipper,' 'Extraordinary Dispatch,' 'The Quickest Voyage to
China,' 'The Contest of the Clippers,' 'Great Passage from San
Francisco,' 'Race Round the World.'" Runs of three hundred and even
three hundred and thirty miles a day were not uncommon feats of those
clipper ships, a rate of speed far surpassing the achievement of the
steam-propelled vessels of the period.
When Charles Dickens first came to New York, in 1842, it was after a
transatlantic journey that had landed him at Boston. There is extant a
picture of the cabin that he occupied on the "Britannia" on the trip
across that throws an interesting light on the limitations and
inconveniences to which early Fifth Avenue was subjected when it
visited the old world. Leaving Boston on a February afternoon, Dickens
proceeded by rail to Worcester. The next morning another train carried
him to Springfield. The next stop was Hartford, a distance of only
twenty-five miles. But at that time of the year, Dickens records, the
roads were so bad that the journey would probably have occupied ten
or twelve hours. So progress was accomplished by means of the waters
of the Connecticut River, in a boat that the Englishman described as so
many feet short, and so many feet narrow, with a cabin apparently for a
certain celebrated dwarf of the period, yet somehow containing the
ubiquitous American rocking chair. Going from Hartford to New
Haven consumed three hours of train travel; and, rising early after a

night's rest, Dickens went on board the Sound packet bound for New
York. That was the first American steamboat of any size that he had
seen, and he wrote that, to an Englishman, it was less like a steamboat
than a huge floating bath, and that its cabin, to his unaccustomed eyes,
seemed about as long as the Burlington Arcade. From the deck of this
packet he first viewed Hell's Gate, the Hog's Back, the Frying Pan, and
other notorious localities attractive to readers of the Diedrich
Knickerbocker History. When, later, Dickens left New York for
Philadelphia, he wrote of