Pen and Pencil Sketches of Shipping and Craft All Round the World (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Pen and Pencil Sketches of Shipping and Craft All Round the World The Victorian period of the present century is characterised by rapid evolution. The Red Indian is rapidly falling back before the white man and the march of intellect. The brown fibre and mat sails of the craft in savage countries are being supplanted by our well-beloved white canvas, and already is our faithful old servant the picturesque canvas driven out by the more powerful yet controllable motor steam. Even the snow-white sails of our beautiful Britannia's, Ailsas, and Valkyries have to give way to pole-master steam yachts, in spite of the misery of the dreadful coaling. How much we owe to canvas! How well it served our early discoverers in their little ships, those pioneers of England's future glory on the high seas, Columbus, Magellan, Drake, Frobisher, Cook, Anson! The canvas period was a grand period in England's history, recalling glorious deeds of courage, daring, and patriotism, when our navy was opening up the great highway for the development of commerce. What associations were recalled when the British fleet sailed for the Russian waters! What a grand sight were the 50-gun frigates or 120-gun line-of battle ships under a crowd of canvas, every stitch set and drawing, with wide-spreading studding sails on both sides, or the noble teak-built East Indiaman in full sail, or a China tea clipper cracking on in the Trades. These are now bygones, and replaced by wonders of modern science, such as our Atlantic greyhounds the Campania or the steamers of the Orient line, to say nothing of those features of this age, our grim signal-masted ironclads or torpedo destroyers, of which the British Navy is now composed, and of which every Englishman must be proud. The opening of the Suez Canal tolled the knell of parting canvas and opened the back-door of Eastern Europe to receive the rich products oi India and China direct, instead of coming by long sea voyages in the stately ships of our merchant princes round the Cape of Good Hope, or in our celebrated China tea clippers, which were real racers. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.