An interesting read for those who love nautical history, ships and stories of the sea.

A thoroughly researched account of the birth of luxury passenger transportation and the battle between Cunard and Collins. I found the story richly detailed and came away with a knowledge of the steamship industry that I didnt have before. When we look at the history of passenger ship travel most books focus on ships like the Titanic and the Lusitania but Steam Titans shows us the battle for passengers and speed started 50 years before those mega ships.

An interesting history of the rise of steam power and its gradual replacement of sail, culminating in the rivalry between British-backed Cunard and American-and-secretly-British-backed Collins. There's plenty of history thrown in and cameo appearances by famous characters, along with a good wreck or two.

If you enjoy history of technology or general seafaring lore, I would recommend this book.

(Thank you to the publishers for the opportunity to review it.)

The Rise of Steam

For much of the past 250 years or so, the US and Great Britain have been technical and commercial leaders, and so it seems logical that one of the areas where competition would develop would be the ability to transport men and material across the Atlantic Ocean. From Ben Franklin worrying about mail deliveries to the Concorde SST, the two nations have always had a serious, if somewhat friendly, rivalry. In Steam Titans, William M. Fowler Jr. examines a key portion of this contest, the rise of the steam-powered ship.

=== The Good Stuff ===

* While Fowler certainly has some impressive academic credentials, fortunately he doesn’t write like a professor. The book is written in a light, somewhat informal tone that is easy to read and avoids the 30-letter words and two-page paragraphs of serious “academic” writing. The book held my interest throughout, and stimulated some thought and day-dreaming.

* The book is nominally about the rise of the steam-powered ocean-going vessel, both as a carrier of freight and passengers. But like many new technologies, steam vessels really couldn’t compete well with the existing sail technology, and so their growth becomes a story of government contracts, favorable legislation and favors from men in high places. Of course, this leads to years of intrigue, murky deals, improbable justifications and issues of “national pride”. It doesn’t take a great imagination to see the parallels in other modern businesses---Boeing and Airbus come to mind.

* The book spends a great deal of time on the efforts of several men, Edward Knight Collins, Samuel Cunard and Cornelius Vanderbilt as they battled each other for supremacy of the Atlantic steamship routes. The men had very different strategies, different levels of government support, and varying degrees of success in their endeavors.

* Fowler also points out the many present-day consequences of what seems like a 19th century story. For example, New York City is blessed with an excellent harbor. That made it very important in the 19th century, when commerce relied heavily on water transport. But New York has kept that dominance into the modern day, even when a large part of the commerce is more about the flow of data than freighters.


=== The Not-So-Good Stuff ===

* Maybe it is just my engineer side, but I would have preferred more details on the technical side of the ships and less concentration on the political machinations of mail subsidies. I understand that without being heavily subsidized, steam powered ships would have been delayed another 50 years or so, but there were some major engineering advances that provided major increases in efficiency. These got only brief mention and minimal explanation.

* Similarly, the author leaves some tantalizing dead-ends. Steamships relied on financing, and forced the development of some large financial institutions in both the United States and Great Britain. Many of these still have relevance today. I would have liked for this part of the book to have been developed further.

* Finally, portions of the book got a bit dry. Many of the great 19th century “sea-battles” were really fought on the floor and cloakrooms of Congress and Parliament. Try as you might, it is tough to make 50 years of legislative horse-trading exciting.


=== Summary ===

I enjoyed the book, and found it a nice look at how technology, commerce, government and personalities all intermixed to change the way men crossed the ocean. Fowler did a nice job of tying the story together and keeping it interesting and relevant to modern-day business. I was surprised at how long it took for steam to be truly competitive with sail technology, both on cost and speed. Also, the difference in business strategies between the various moguls involved (luxury, safety, proven technology) made the narrative more interesting.

=== Disclaimer ===

I was able to read an advance copy through the courtesy of the publisher and NetGalley.