Steam across the water
A look at the early history of boats powered by steam
A During the 1600s, very early in the development of steam engines, inventive spirits like the Frenchman Denis Papin dreamed of – and experimented with – boats driven by steam, rather than by the wind or human effort, but many decades passed before those visions became reality.
B Englishman Jonathan Hulls took out patents on a steamboat in 1736, but it was to be driven by a Newcomen engine, which was heavy and therefore inefficient, and would never be a success. In 1763, William Henry, an American, put a Watt steam engine in a boat, but it sank. Nearly 20 years later, in the 1780s, a steam-powered paddle-wheeler managed to last fifteen minutes against the current on the River Saone in France, but lacked the endurance for longer trips. Developments elsewhere included a boat driven by a steam-powered water-jet and able to do six kilometres per hour. However, all these steamboats were either too slow or too expensive to run. For example, American John Fitch successfully trialled his first steamboat in 1787, but although he tried a number of designs and solved many technical challenges – one of his boats could even travel at 13 km/h – he could never convince sceptics that steamboats would pay.
C The 19th century came before real success could be claimed. In Scotland in 1802, Lord Dundas launched the steamboat Charlotte Dundas, which was driven by a paddle wheel and had an improved engine designed by William Symington. Barges, some weighing as much as 70 tonnes, were towed by this steamboat 30 kilometres along the Forth and Clyde Canal to Glasgow, Scotland’s second city. Soon after, success came to American Robert Fulton, whose countrymen called him ‘the father of the steamboat’. Inspired by news of the Charlotte Dundas, Fulton ran steamboat trials on the River Seine, in an attempt to attract French support for his submarine Nautilus. He later imported a Boulton-Watt steam engine and built a boat to use it in. In 1807, the Clermont began a scheduled passenger steamboat service between New York and Albany, 250 kilometres up the Hudson River, taking 30 hours for the trip. Within a few years, steamers were running on the St Lawrence River in Canada and would soon appear on other rivers and lakes, including the Mississippi River, a most famous venue for the paddle-wheelers.
D Back in Scotland, Fulton’s ideas inspired Henry Bell, who launched his Comet in 1812 on the Clyde between Glasgow and Greenock. Inside a decade, dozens of steamboats were to be seen on the rivers, lochs and canals of Scotland, carrying cargo and occasionally passengers. The age of steamboats had come.
E Once steamboats were carrying passengers and industrial goods along the inland waterways and sheltered coastlines of Europe, North America and elsewhere, the challenge became to send steamboats onto the open ocean, such as across the Atlantic Ocean, between Europe and the US. Travelling under steam power alone would require engines to use less coal so the ship could stay at sea for several weeks. In order to provide a reliable service, it was also necessary to replace paddle wheels as a source of power with something less affected by the rolling of the ship.
F Without waiting for such breakthroughs, crossings under a combination of steam and sail got underway in 1819 with the American ship Savannah. A regular service took another two decades and introduced the famous name of Cunard. Securing the British government contract for the mail service across the Atlantic, Samuel Cunard established a shipping line in 1840, soon carrying passengers as well, and offering guaranteed sailing dates. Cunard’s first ships used a sail-steam combination, but the era of the passenger liner, using steam alone, was getting close.
G When it came to building the ships, the versatile British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel set the pace. Brunel, brilliant and daring, had already built the Great Western Railway. He created ever bigger ships – faster, more luxurious and comfortable for passengers. The Great Western, launched in 1838, was 70 metres long and crossed from Bristol to New York in just fifteen days. The largest paddle steamer ever built was Brunel’s Great Eastern. Ultimately too expensive to run as a passenger ship, it was leased to lay the first submarine telegraph cable from Europe to America. His 1843 Great Britain, nearly 100 metres long and luxuriously appointed, was the first ocean-going steamship made of iron, and the first to use the underwater screw propeller for powering movement in place of paddle wheels. The idea of the screw had been around since the experiments of the American John Stevens in 1803, but only in 1838 did a large steamer use one, the riverboat Archimedes built by Francis Pettit Smith. Later ships had twin screws for reliability.
H In many modern ships, steam turbines have replaced engines with pistons, with fuel oil instead of coal to fire the boilers. Diesel engines keep others moving. The largest ships afloat now would dwarf Brunel’s Great Eastern (launched in 1858); the Atlantic can be crossed in only four days. But in whatever form, the ever-evolving descendants of the original visions of Denis Papin and Robert Fulton continue to travel the seas in vast numbers.
Reclaiming the Future of the Aral Sea
A The Aral Sea gets almost all its water from the Amu and Syr rivers. Over millennia the Amu’s course has drifted away from the sea, causing it to shrink. But the lake always rebounded as the Amu shifted back again. Today heavy irrigation for crops such as cotton and rice siphons off much of the two rivers, severely cutting flow into their deltas and thus into the sea. Evaporation vastly outpaces any rainfall, snowmelt or groundwater supply, reducing water volume and raising salinity. The Soviet Union hid the sea’s demise for decades until 1985, when leader Mikhail Gorbachev revealed the great environmental and human tragedy. By the late 1980s the sea’s level had dropped so much that the water had separated into two distinct bodies: the Small Aral (north) and the Large Aral (south). By 2007 the south had split into a deep western basin, a shallow eastern basin and a small, isolated gulf. The Large Aral’s volume had dropped from 708 to only 75 cubic kilometers (km3), and salinity had risen from 14 to more than 100 grams per liter (g/l). The 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union divided the lake between newly formed Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, ending a grand Soviet plan to channel in water from distant Siberian rivers and establishing competition for the dwindling resource.
B Desiccation of the Aral Sea has wrought severe consequences. Greatly reduced river flows ended the spring floods that sustained wetlands with freshwater and enriched sediment. Fish species in the lakes dropped from 32 to 6 because of rising salinity and loss of spawning and feeding grounds (most survived in the river deltas). Commercial fisheries, which caught 40,000 metric tons of fish in 1960, were gone by the mid-1980s; more than 60,000 related jobs were lost. The most common remaining lake occupant was the Black Sea flounder, a saltwater fish introduced in the 1970s, but by 2003 it had disappeared from the southern lakes because salinity was more than 70 g/l, double that of a typical ocean. Shipping on the Aral also ceased because the water receded many kilometers from the major ports of Aralsk to the north and Moynak in the south; keeping increasingly long channels open to the cities became too costly. Groundwater levels dropped with falling lake levels, intensifying desertification.
C The receding sea has exposed and dried 54,000 square kilometers of seabed, which is choked with salt and in some places laced with pesticides and other agricultural chemicals deposited by runoff from area farming. Strong windstorms blow salt, dust and contaminants as far as 500 km. Winds from the north and northeast drive the most severe storms, seriously impacting the Amu delta to the south—the most densely settled and most economically and ecologically important area in the region. Airborne sodium bicarbonate, sodium chloride and sodium sulfate kill or retard the growth of natural vegetation and crops—a cruel irony given that irrigating those crops starves the sea. Health experts say the local population suffers from high levels of respiratory illnesses, throat and esophageal cancer, and digestive disorders caused by breathing and ingesting salt-laden air and water. Liver and kidney ailments, as well as eye problems, are common. The loss of fish has also greatly reduced dietary variety, worsening malnutrition and anemia, particularly in pregnant women.
D Returning the entire Aral Sea to its 1960s state is unrealistic. The annual inflow from the Syr and Amu rivers would have to be quadrupled from the recent average of 13 km3. The only means would be to curtail irrigation, which accounts for 92 percent of water withdrawals. Yet four of the five former Soviet republics in the Aral Sea basin (Kazakhstan is the exception) intend to expand irrigation, mainly to feed growing populations. Switching to less water-intensive crops, such as replacing cotton with winter wheat, could help, but the two primary irrigating nations, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, intend to keep cotton to earn foreign currency. The extensive irrigation canals could be greatly improved; many are simply cuts through sand, and they allow enormous quantities of water to seep away. Modernizing the entire system could save 12 km3 a year but would cost at least $16 billion. The basin states do not have the money or the political will. Kazakhstan has nonetheless tried to partially restore the northern Aral.
E We expect salinities in the Small Aral to settle at three to 14 g/l, depending on location. At these levels many more indigenous species should return, although the saltwater kambala would disappear from most places. Further restoration is possible. For example, if irrigation improvements raised the average annual inflow from the Syr to 4.5 km3, which is entirely feasible, the lake’s level could stabilize at about 47 meters. This change would bring the shoreline to within eight kilometers of Aralsk, the former major port city, close enough to allow recovery of an earlier channel that connected the city to the receding waters. The channel would give large commercial fishing vessels access to the sea, and shipping could restart. Marshlands and fish populations would improve even more because of a further reduction in salinity. Outflow to the southern lakes could also increase, helping their restoration. Such a plan would require a much longer and higher dike, as well as reconstruction of the gate facility, and it is not clear that Kazakhstan has the means or desire to pursue it. The country is, however, now discussing more modest proposals to bring water closer to Aralsk.
F The Large Aral faces a difficult future; it continues to shrink rapidly. Only a long, narrow channel connects the shallow eastern basin and the deeper western basin, and this could close altogether. If countries along the Amu make no changes, we estimate that at current rates of groundwater in and evaporation out, an isolated eastern basin would stabilize at an area of 4,300 square kilometers (km2). But it would average only 2.5 meters deep. Salinity would exceed 100 g/l, possibly reaching 200 g/l; the only creatures that could live in it would be brine shrimp and bacteria. The western basin’s fate depends on ground-water inflow, estimates for which are uncertain. Someone has noted numerous fresh-water springs on the western cliffs. The most reliable calculations indicate that the basin would settle at about 2,100 km2. The lake would still be relatively deep, reaching 37 meters in spots, but salinity would rise well above 100 g/l.
Mark Strizic: A career of an Australian photographer
Mark Strizic, who passed away in December last year, was the last representative of a remarkable generation of European emigre photographers who settled in Australia after the Second World War. Alongside Wolfgang Sievers and Henry Talbot, Strizic contributed significantly to the visual culture of his adopted country. Yet, unlike many of his contemporaries, whose reputations were largely based on industrial or commercial photography, Strizic developed a career that was unusually complex. Over a span of five decades, he explored multiple photographic styles, experimented with new printing processes, engaged in book design, produced large-scale murals, and participated actively in teaching the next generation of photographers.
After his arrival in Melbourne from Zagreb in 1950, Strizic initially studied science, but soon turned to photography. From the mid-1950s he began to establish himself, not only through individual works but also through collaborations. One of his most enduring achievements was his partnership with the critic and historian David Saunders, with whom he produced Melbourne: A Portrait in 1960. The book was distinctive for its use of offset printing, a relatively new process at the time, which allowed photographs and text to be integrated seamlessly on the page. Strizic, as both photographer and designer, arranged his images so that one composition flowed into the next, often leaving areas of blank space or floating lines of text to balance the spreads. The result was a visually coherent book, which also carried an ambitious cultural agenda: Saunders' text was printed in Italian and German as well as English, suggesting an international readership. The book's bright and cheerful cover, designed by Leonard French, contributed to its appeal. In 1961 it was awarded Book of the Year, recognition not only of the photographs themselves but of the integrated design of the whole publication.
Strizic later admitted that the idea for Melbourne: A Portrait had been shaped by his father's earlier work. His father, an architect in Zagreb, had published Light and Shade in 1955, a reflective "city book" in the European style, which contrasted sharply with the more commercial boosterism of contemporary Australian publications. Strizic deliberately sought to emulate this contemplative approach, presenting Melbourne as a modern yet cultured metropolis.
During the 1960s and 70s, Strizic continued to photograph the rapid transformation of Melbourne. His distinctive technique often involved pointing the camera directly into the sunlight, creating stark contrasts in which buildings and figures were reduced to silhouettes. Many of his images juxtapose old Victorian facades with newly constructed skyscrapers, capturing a city in the midst of radical expansion. Cars, highways and office towers dominate the frame, while human figures are frequently marginalised, squeezed into the bottom corners or overshadowed by the built environment. By the late 1970s, Strizic's vision of Melbourne had grown darker. Using experimental methods, such as printing black-and-white negatives on colour paper or duplicating them onto high-contrast lithographic film, he produced cityscapes that glowed with intense, sometimes psychedelic colours, giving Melbourne an almost hallucinatory quality.
Collaboration remained central to Strizic's career. In 1967 he worked with Sun Books, a small but ambitious publishing house, on several innovative projects. For Tim Burstall's film 2000 Weeks he created a photo-roman, a paperback-sized publication in which his stills from the film were combined with dialogue. Although the film was produced in a European art-house style and tackled existential themes, it failed at the box office, and Strizic's book met a similar fate. Nevertheless, the project demonstrated his willingness to experiment with new formats.
A more prestigious venture was Involvement (1968), a limited-edition art book edited by Andrew Grimwade. The concept was to pair Strizic's photographic portraits with paintings by the artist Clifton Pugh. The accompanying text, written by Geoffrey Dutton, sought to place the collaboration in a grand cultural framework. Yet the book was regarded as unsatisfactory, largely because of its design. Unlike Melbourne: A Portrait, Strizic did not design the volume himself, and the layout by Les Gray failed to balance the colour plates of Pugh's paintings with the black-and-white photographs. Despite this, Strizic's portraits attracted attention for their originality. He employed experimental methods such as "pushing" his 35mm film to increase contrast and grain, and often shot his sitters against dominant backgrounds or with objects intruding into the foreground. The effect was to highlight their individuality and resistance to their surroundings. His portrait of Sir Charles Moses, head of the ABC, shows him through a haze of cigar smoke, while Barry Humphries appears surrounded by eccentric antiques in his London flat. These images were exhibited in 1968 at the National Gallery of Victoria under the title Some Australian Personalities, marking the institution's first solo exhibition devoted to photography.
Strizic's collaborative spirit extended into many other areas. He documented the sculptor John Davis and the furniture designer Schulim Krimper for monographs commissioned in the 1980s, but his connection with Krimper went back to 1959. He also worked with avant-garde artists such as Asher Bilu, producing the only surviving photographic record of Bilu's interactive electronic work Sculptron (1967). This task required considerable technical skill, since Strizic had to balance the exposure for glowing cathode-ray tubes with the surrounding sculptural elements. In the field of murals, he developed large-scale photographic works using analogue processes for government buildings and corporate headquarters, sometimes combining his "photochromes" with paintings. A notable example was his collaboration with Stanislav Ostoja-Kotkowski in 1970 on a twelve-metre mural for the Ciba-Geigy building in Preston, which merged infrared photography with Strizic's experimental prints.
That same year, Strizic worked with the influential architect Robin Boyd on Living in Australia, a book which sought to articulate Boyd's design philosophy. Strizic's photography reinforced Boyd's arguments, presenting domestic architecture through dramatic diagonal compositions and sharp contrasts. The book was recently republished, confirming its continuing relevance.
In later years, Strizic combined his artistic practice with teaching in Melbourne's new photography departments during the boom of the 1970s. In 1988 he returned to his earliest negatives of Melbourne streets, staging an exhibition that highlighted his long-standing interest in the city's changing urban landscape. Since then, he has often been remembered as a nostalgic chronicler of "old Melbourne" or "disappearing Melbourne." Yet such a label oversimplifies his contribution. His career was marked by continuous experimentation, by fruitful collaborations with artists, writers and designers, and by a willingness to engage with both traditional and avant-garde practices. In this sense, he occupies a significant though sometimes under-recognised position in the development of Australian visual culture.