The evolution from Fulton's little Clermont and seven miles an hour to the sixteen thousand ton ocean liner that averages twenty-seven miles an hour from continent to continent.
Man, in the beginning of his works, is a modest creature -- no more ambitious, perhaps, than the polyp that strives obscurely, yet in the end erects a vast monument to its toil and perseverance. Consider man's miracles upon the sea, and then look back into the lost ages when the first timorous navigator dared the waters in his coracle. A skin or a sheet of bark shaped and fixed upon wooden hoops -- in this he ventured forth, appalled, no doubt, at his vast undertaking, and with no imagination of what he had brought forth for future ages to develop. But, nevertheless, in this vague shape began the wonders that now walk the deep.
From the tiny coracle to the sixteen thousand ton twin screw Atlantic liner is a leap that demands aid to the imagination. So is the leap from the one dead coral creature to the atoll or the wooded island. Almost as great is the jump from the deep-sea packet of the beginning of the century to the steamship that today shuttles between Sandy Hook and the Fastnet or the Lizard in something less than six days. Ages by ages, the atoll slowly rose towards the surface; and once its form lifted above the waters, every element conspired to enlarge and to beautify the fabric. So it was with the ship. Ages after ages, it developed slowly -- then came steam!
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