Even the glory, such as it may be, of building the biggest ship of the time is now well within the grasp of the United States.  At this writing, indeed, the biggest ship is the “Celtic,” British built, and of 20,000 tons.  But the distinction is only briefly for her, for at New London, Connecticut, two ponderous iron fabrics are rising on the ways that presently shall take form as ocean steamships of 25,000 tons each, to fly the American flag, and to ply between Seattle and China.  These great ships afford new illustrations of more than one point already made in this chapter.  To begin with they are, of course, not constructed for any individual owner.  Time was that the farmer with land sloping down to New London would put in his spare time building a staunch schooner of 200 tons, man her with his neighbors, and engage for himself in the world’s carrying trade.  It is rather different now.  The Northern Pacific railroad directors concluded that their railroad could not be developed to its fullest earning capacity without some way of carrying to the markets of the far East the agricultural products gathered up along its line.  As the tendency of the times is toward gathering all branches of a business under one control, they determined to not rely upon independent shipowners, but to build their own vessels.  That meant the immediate letting of a contract for $5,000,000 worth of ship construction, and that in turn meant that there was a profit to somebody in starting an entirely new shipyard to do the work.  So, suddenly, one of the sleepiest little towns in New England, Groton, opposite New London, was turned into a ship-building port.  The two great Northern Pacific ships will be launched about the time this book is published, but the yard by that time will have become a permanent addition to the ship-building enterprises of the United States.  So, too, all along the Atlantic coast, we find ancient shipyards where, in the very earliest colonial days, wooden vessels were built, adapting themselves to the construction of the new steel steamships.

How wonderful is the contrast between the twentieth century, steel, triple-screw, 25,000-ton, electric-lighted, 25-knot steamship, and Winthrop’s little “Blessing of the Bay,” or Fulton’s “Clermont,” or even the ships of the Collins line—­floating palaces as they were called at the time!  Time has made commonplace the proportions of the “Great Eastern,” the marine marvel not only of her age, but of the forty years that succeeded her breaking-up as impracticable on account of size.  She was 19,000 tons, 690 feet long, and built with both paddle-wheels and a screw.  The “Celtic” is 700 feet long, 20,000 tons, with twin screws.  The one was too big to be commercially valuable, the other has held the record for size only for a year, being already outclassed by the Northern Pacific 25,000-ton monsters.  That one was a failure, the other a success, is almost wholly due to the improvements in engines, which effect economy of space both in the engine-room and in the coal bunkers.  It is, by the way, rather a curious illustration of the growing luxury of life, and of ocean travel, that the first voyage of this enormous ship was made as a yacht, carrying a party of pleasure-seekers, with not a pound of cargo, through the show places of the Mediterranean.