THE CASTALIA AND THE BESSEMER.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 161, 10 December 1874, Page 3

THE CASTALIA AND THE BESSEMER.

(From the Spectator.) As we ventured to anticipate some weeks ago, it is now obvious that both the Castalia and the Bessemer will be too late, even if they succeed, to save any considerable number of the tourists of the present season from the anguish of nausea, —the Castalia being still, we believe, in Dover Harbour, waiting for a rough day to try her powers, and the Bessemer being only just launched. The latter has beeu launched at Hull, and it is said that she will be able to go througb the water at the rate of eighteen or twenty miles an hour, while Captain Dicey's Castalia can only count with certainty on about twelve. The Bessemer recognises the principle of caste, since it will only be to the passengers who pay for plnces in the balanced saloon that the motion of the waves will be so compensated as to secure them, it is hoped, from sea-sickness; while the passengers of lower caste, who cannot pay for that immunity, will afford to those who can, the additional satisfaction of a pleasurable contrast. Captain Dicey's invention, on the contrary, if it succeeds, bestows whatever it bestows on all its passengers alike, and is so in keeping with the spirit of a democratic age. England watches with impatience and almost dreads the trial of experiments so essential to her travelling children's tranquility of stomach, and consequently to their peace of mind. A failure in both cases would be a great blow.