It is curious how the channel service of a steamship line presents difficulties and problems of its own no less than those demanded by the ownership of ocean-going steamships. Obviously the short-voyage ship is limited as to size. What she has to accomplish must be done quickly. Not only must she get out of one harbour and into the other with the greatest economy of time, but she must get up her full speed at once. Then, again, owing to the demands of the passengers for special comfort a great strain is put on the patience of those responsible, as well as on the designer of the ship. Cross-channel steamers which have a fairly long night passage require a good deal of their limited space to be usurped by extra state-room accommodation, and the modern demand for single-berthed cabins means rather more than the average passenger realises. The figures work out something as follows in the case of a four-berthed room the measurement of the space occupied comes to about seven-eighths of a ton per passenger. In the single-berthed cabin it becomes nearly two and a quarter tons per passenger. All this means that the ship has less available space for earning her living, since fewer passengers and less cargo can thus be carried. Again, the passenger is spoiled nowadays. If a line has turbines and wireless telegraphy, submarine bells, the latest conceivable luxury, speed and other virtues, he is sufficiently well informed to appreciate these things to the disadvantage of another service, scarcely less efficient, but perhaps a little less advanced in accordance with the very latest inventions and improvements. An old ship that has done years of good service and earned a reputation for punctuality and reliability has to be scrapped before her time just because a rival service has held out the tempting bait of the latest steamship features. On the other hand, there was room for an approach to be made towards more satisfactory conditions. The short crossings on some of the cross-channel steamers were in the past no unmixed joy. The bad sea-boats which some of these proved themselves to be, driven at a speed that made them vibrate from stem to stern, wet and generally uncomfortable, badly ventilated and equally inefficiently lighted, they certainly belonged to the days that are past. What the future has in store this deponent knoweth not; but if the internal combustion engine should ever become sufficiently popular for big ships, certainly in no service is it likely to be more suitable than in the cross-channel voyages, where speed is a vital consideration. But economy is equally to be taken into account, if steamers are still to be regarded as commercial, dividend-earning concerns, and not exclusively as objects for the exercise of sentiment. We have, owing to the influences at work everywhere, come to regard the virtue of speed as excelling everything else. Whether this is deserving of all-powerful merit, or whether in