=354. Transportation by sailing vessels and steamers.=—Steam has won for itself, in the course of the century, the commanding place in sea transportation as well as in land transportation. The struggle with competitors has lasted longer and the victory has been less complete. Steam navigation, however, offers such advantages in sureness, safety, speed, and cost, that sailing vessels have been forced out of some of the most important branches of commerce, and must content themselves with what the steamers leave them. Reference to the table at the opening of the preceding chapter will enable the student to follow the development of the means of transportation by sea in the course of the century, and to observe the growth in importance of the steamer. In explanation of the figures of carrying-power it should be said that a steamer is regarded as having three or four times the efficiency of a sailing vessel of equal tonnage; such an estimate is, of course, a mere approximation, and, indeed, the figures of tonnage, especially in the earlier part of the century, are themselves very uncertain. =355. Development of sailing vessels.=—European sailing vessels at the opening of the century followed substantially the clumsy lines of the old East Indiamen. The chief credit for the improvement of wooden vessels is due to the Americans, whose clipper ships, marvels of grace and speed, were without rivals in their day. The clipper _Dreadnought_ made the passage from New York to Queenstown in less than ten days, and in 1846 the American _Tornado_, starting from England with an early steamer of the Cunard line, reached America before her. The _Great Republic_, an American four-masted clipper, was of 3,400 tons and was the largest sailing vessel in the world; British ships of this period rarely exceeded a thousand tons in register.