The advance of engineering and science, the amount of valuable data which had been obtained during these years of steam propulsion, had already brought steamship building to be no rule-of-thumb method, but a highly technical art. About the middle of the century, John Scott Russell, for instance, made some valuable researches regarding the resistance of a ship’s hull passing through the water, and in 1860 Sir Edward Harland, founder of the famous Belfast yard of Harland & Wolff, introduced steamers into the Mediterranean with a length of ten times their beam. This novel idea was so successful that when he came to build the White Star steamships he carried out that same idea, which was yet another important influence in the evolution of the modern Atlantic liner. But even in 1852 a tremendous improvement was seen in the hull of the _Victoria_, which was built of iron to the design of Brunel & Scott Russell for the Australian Royal Mail Steam Navigation Company. She was designed to embody the wave-line theory and for a speed of ten knots, and instead of the clumsy, ponderous hulls, you find in the _Victoria_ smoothness, gracefulness and sweet lines. It is therefore not altogether surprising that she won the £500 prize offered by the Colonies for the fastest voyage to Australia, her time from Gravesend to Adelaide being sixty days, including two days’ delay at St. Vincent. She was propelled by a two-bladed screw. Thus in the fewest possible years a remarkable change had come over the Mercantile Marine, and though the old die-hards—those fine artists of the marlin-spike—still heartily despised every kind of steamship, yet others could see well enough that an entirely new order of things had begun owing to the advance in engineering. The ship, as in regard to other creatures, had to advance with the times. The first settlement in Australia had taken place as far back as 1788, and now required better lines of communication. So, too, with the East and the great strides which North and South America were making. Pioneers, emigrants, business men were exercising a pressure which could be met only in bigger and faster ships. Thanks to the peace and prosperity of the mid-Victorian era, new ideas were emerging. Gone were the days of monopolies and worn-out rules: the last trace of mediævalism in shipping had been severed, and men were thinking out freely and unfettered the problems of transport. [Illustration: [_By courtesy Messrs. T. H. Parker._ THE FAMOUS “GREAT EASTERN.” Also known as the “Leviathan.” Length 680 ft., beam 83 ft.; beam across paddle-boxes 120 ft.; depth (deck to keel) 58ft.; 22,500 tons; draught (laden) 30 ft.; paddle engines 1,200 horse-power; screw engines 1,800 horse-power. Accommodation for 4,000 passengers.]