Modern German ship-building, like her other industries, dates only from the close of the Franco-Prussian War, and the birth of a united Empire. At the same time wood had already given way to iron, and a new era had begun in the making of ships. Great Britain possessed the exclusive confidence of shipping owners, and, speaking generally, if Germany wanted a large ocean carrier built, she had to send her order across the North Sea, although steadily and gradually her national shipbuilding yards were growing up. But her designers and shipwrights lacked the knowledge which the British, through long years of experience, possessed. Since, however, the Germans were determined to engage in overseas trade, they had to obtain steamships, and these were made frequently on the Clyde, where so many other fine ships had first been seen. [Illustration: THE “KAISER WILHELM DER GROSSE” (1897). _From a Photograph. By Permission of the Norddeutscher Lloyd Co._] But from the early ’eighties a new order of things began, and the Norddeutscher Lloyd commissioned a German firm to build the first Imperial mail steamers, which were also the first passenger steamers of large dimensions that the new Empire had yet constructed. Up till then Germany had built only two large passenger steamers, the displacement of each not exceeding 3,500 tons. The first German express steamer for the Norddeutscher Lloyd Company had been the _Elbe_, which was built at Glasgow, and began service in 1881, her tonnage being 4,510. During the ’eighties, spurred on by the competition which British steamships were arousing, the Germans endeavoured to build for themselves vessels of considerable proportions and send them on their long voyages. It is when we come to the ’nineties that we find the North German Lloyd Company entirely reorganising its fleet, scrapping the older-fashioned members, and, incited by the success which the _Campania_ and _Lucania_ had obtained, determined to produce from German yards such an express steamer as should surpass both of the Cunard vessels. In 1897, therefore, was built by the Stettin Vulcan Company the famous _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_--of which a striking illustration will be seen facing this page. She was longer, wider, deeper and of greater displacement than the _Campania_, but her horse-power was inferior to the Cunarder’s by 2,000. Nevertheless, the German outstripped the performances of the _Campania_ and _Lucania_ by attaining a mean speed of 22·81 knots, although her designed speed had only been 22·5 knots, and thus for the first time in the history of the steamship, the “blue ribbon” of the Atlantic passed over to Germany. Like the Cunard ships, the _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_ was installed with two sets of triple-expansion engines, and it had been expressly agreed between the Norddeutscher Company on the one hand, and the Vulcan Company on the other, that the ship was first to run a trial trip across the