These arguments drew on ancient, bitter rivalries between Glasgow and London, Scotland and England, North and South. British political and commercial power was centred in London, to the continuous irritation of the provinces. But Scotland could still claim a better educational system and an older, more eminent engineering tradition than the Thames – and the famous Scottish thrift. Clydeside builders paid lower wages and enjoyed closer, cheaper access to coal and iron than Londoners, which meant they could build steam engines less expensively. That introduced another element to the public debates: ‘the avarice or parsimoniousness of steam-boat companies,’ as one Clyde defender put it, ‘who, finding that their orders can generally be more cheaply executed by Scotch engineers than London ones, run to them, and instead of being liberal in their dealings, screw them down to contracts, not consistent either with good materials or workmanship.’ Such sharp practices, so this explanation ran, left Clyde engineers the unhappy choice of losing highstandard business or producing shoddy work at cut rates that harmed their reputations as engine builders.
The contest between the Great Western and the British Queen, overtly a race to dominate Atlantic steam, became an acrid showdown between the two main centres of British shipbuilding and marine engineering. With a lucrative market for transatlantic steamers just opening up, the outcome could have a decisive impact on the steam futures of London and Glasgow. ‘If our Scotch friends would puff their work less, and perform more, it would be more creditable to them,’ a shipping official in London suggested. After all, shipboard explosions of Glasgow boilers had caused far more deaths than accidents on London vessels; but perhaps – came the reply – that was just because the Clyde had produced so many more steamships than the Thames. ‘Let any one travel by the Thames river steamers,’ wrote a Scots enthusiast, ‘and then go and take a trip by the fleet, strong, and beautifully-built Clyde boats, and then say without prejudice which he prefers… No engineers in the world are more ably qualified for the just, cautious, and accurate execution or manufacture of marine steam-engines, than are the Scotch.’
Provincial rhetorics aside, the real-world proof of the matter lay in the ships themselves. The British Queen did replace her rival as the biggest, highest-powered steamship in the world: 275 feet long, 1863 tons, and an engine jacked up beyond its contracted size to 500 horsepower. Robert Napier sent the ship down to the Thames for final fittings before her maiden voyage; his cousin David Napier, who had moved to London, gave her a suspicious inspection. ‘They unfortunately let one of the boilers get dry while coming round, either carelessly or willingly,’ David informed Robert, hinting at possible Thamesian sabotage, ‘which has given the Cockneys another handle against Scotch engineers.’ The British Queen at last left for New York on 12 July 1839 (fifteen months after the Great Western’s maiden). Junius Smith and Macgregor Laird went along as her most interested passengers. Also aboard, and quite interested himself, was Samuel Cunard of Halifax, returning home from business in England, and by this time quite intent on developing his own steamers across the Atlantic.
Laird’s unpublished diary of the voyage, recently discovered and donated to the Merseyside Maritime Museum in Liverpool, is a doleful litany of worries and discomforts. As the ship’s main designer, he felt the burden of responsibility for her performance. At midsummer the weather should have been as favourable as the westward run ever allowed. Instead the British Queen fought unusually strong opposing winds and currents, and Laird – famous for an earlier African river expedition, but normally an armchair sailor – spent most of the trip miserably seasick. For days he could eat nothing but brown biscuit; he envied the nine or ten women who lay supine in the ladies’ cabin, quaffing six expensive bottles of champagne a day to relieve their queasiness. Hopefully overestimating the ship’s speed, a proud father ever blind to his offspring’s limitations, Laird kept losing bets on the daily run. ‘Summer passage indeed!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s hard, very hard upon me – there she goes, pitch and toss! Talk of her being large! She is a plaything on the ocean.’
Seven days out, they were still not halfway across. ‘I’ll get nervous if we don’t go faster homewards, the only comfort I have is that the ship answers [her rudder] beautifully and is as easy as any slipper, all on board are loud in her praise.’ Even the large complement of paying passengers did not please him. Laird rather disapproved of the ship’s diverse company, which included Englishmen, Americans, Frenchmen, Germans, Spaniards, Portuguese, Russians and Poles, about 120 people in all, eating and jabbering loudly in strange tongues at dinner. Miserable, lonesome, and ever worried about his ship, Laird longed for home and dry land. ‘It being my duty I came, but certainly if I could get my living in any other way, than being connected with these passenger steamers, I would most thankfully do it. I am never well, thoroughly well on board ship – I don’t care for the talk and society of people I care nothing about and who care as little for me.’ In the final days, a more favourable wind helped the ship cruise at eleven knots. The British Queen reached New York after fourteen and a half days, excellent time by sailing standards but twenty-four hours worse than the Great Western’s latest record. ‘The public will look at the time only,’ Laird knew, ‘and not to all the circumstances of the voyage.’
A fairer test came at once, as both Atlantic steamships left New York for home on the first of August. The Great Western carried 59 passengers, the British Queen 103. Sailing at the same time, by similar routes, they encountered essentially identical winds and currents; no differing ‘circumstances’ would console the loser. This first true transatlantic steamship race, between the only two vessels yet designed and built for the North Atlantic trade, was keenly followed on both sides of the ocean. After a head start of forty-five minutes, the Great Western steadily lengthened her lead for most of the voyage. On the last two days, though, the British Queen— still breaking in her machinery – closed the gap rapidly and reached Portsmouth only about two hours after the Great Western came into Bristol on 14 August. The British Queen did set a new elapsed round-trip record of thirty-two days, twelve hours. Engineers from both the Thames and Clyde could find reasons to preen themselves.
Later voyages, however, proved that Smith and Laird had built a larger but slower vessel. ‘The British Queen was a fine ship,’ noted Sam Cunard, who was paying close attention, ‘but she had not power sufficient. ’ During the 1839 season, in three round-trips she averaged seventeen days, eight hours to New York and sixteen days, fourteen hours home. (The latter figure was skewed by an extended December voyage, hobbled by machinery breakdowns, of twenty-two days, twelve hours.) The Great Western in six round-trips beat her rival’s averages by twenty hours out and three days, five hours home. With a higher ratio of horsepower to tonnage, she showed more effective power against the wind, better sailing qualities with it, and the durability necessary for regular ocean crossing. ‘Is it not reasonable to conclude,’ offered a Londoner, ‘that the engineers of the Thames must be vastly superior to those of the