THE FASTEST STEAMBOATS

In 1807, the first practical steamboat puffed slowly up the Hudson, while the people ranged along the banks gazed in wonder.  Even the grim walls of the Palisades must have been surprised at the strange intruder.  Robert Fulton’s Clermont was the forerunner of the fleets upon fleets of power-driven craft that have stemmed the currents of a thousand streams and parted the waves of many seas.

The Clermont took several days to go from New York to Albany, and the trip was the wonder of that time.

During the summer of 1902 a long, slim, white craft, with a single brass smokestack and a low deck-house, went gliding up the Hudson with a kind of crouching motion that suggested a cat ready to spring.  On her deck several men were standing behind the pilot-house with stop-watches in their hands.  The little craft seemed alive under their feet and quivered with eagerness to be off.  The passenger boats going in the same direction were passed in a twinkling, and the tugs and sailing vessels seemed to dwindle as houses and trees seem to shrink when viewed from the rear platform of a fast train.

Two posts, painted white and in line with each other—­one almost at the river’s edge, the other 150 feet back—­marked the starting-line of a measured mile, and were eagerly watched by the men aboard the yacht.  She sped toward the starting-line as a sprinter dashes for the tape; almost instantly the two posts were in line, the men with watches cried “Time!” and the race was on.  Then began such a struggle with Father Time as was never before seen; the wind roared in the ears of the passengers and snatched their words away almost before their lips had formed them; the water, a foam-flecked streak, dashed away from the gleaming white sides as if in terror.  As the wonderful craft sped on she seemed to settle down to her work as a good horse finds himself and gets into his stride.  Faster and faster she went, while the speed of her going swept off the black flume of smoke from her stack and trailed it behind, a dense, low-lying shadow.

“Look!” shouted one of the men into another’s ear, and raised his arm to point.  “We’re beating the train!”

[Illustration:  THE STEAM TURBINE-DRIVEN VELOX, OF THE BRITISH NAVY The fastest torpedo-boat destroyer.]

Sure enough, a passenger train running along the river’s edge, the wheels spinning round, the locomotive throwing out clouds of smoke, was dropping behind.  The train was being beaten by the boat.  Quivering, throbbing with the tremendous effort, she dashed on, the water climbing her sides and lashing to spume at her stern.

“Time!” shouted several together, as the second pair of posts came in line, marking the finish of the mile.  The word was passed to the frantically struggling firemen and engineers below, while those on deck compared watches.