Today you rush to the airport, get on a plane, occasionally look out of the window and a few hours later the plane lands in New York. How convenient – and what a pity that the days of crossing the Atlantic by ship are long gone. But time can be turned back. To travel across the Atlantic at full steam, one could, for example, turn to the new book of the same name by master illustrator and storyteller David Macaulay.
In 1957, at the age of ten, Macaulay immigrated with his family from England to the United States
It allows the readers to dive deep into the fascinating world of steam engines and ocean liners and the development of a “double hull” of a ship. And it also tells a personal story of the car.
In 1957, at the age of ten, Macaulay and his family moved from England to the USA – on the SS United States, at the time the largest and fastest steamship in the world. The journey from Southampton to New York took five days. At that time, little David was only interested in the Empire State Building, only later was his interest in shipping awakened. Well, “sixty years later,” as he writes on his homepage, comes the rest of the story.
Macaulay also brings all his skills as an architect, illustrator and graphic artist to bear on this book. He was famous and awarded for “The thick mammoth book of technology” and “They built a cathedral” – with the principle of making technically demanding connections from history and the present clearly understandable without neglecting the complexity. So you can learn a lot from Macaulay, often in an amusing way, and you can linger on some pages for a very, very long time to delve into the details.
In this book, Macaulay recounts, along with his childhood story, that of SS United States designer William Francis Gibbs and the history of the steam engine. “Crossing on time”, as the book is called in the English original, begins in the 17th century with the invention of new types of propulsion and comes via the steam engine improver James Watt to the competition, which decorates the ship with the “Blue Ribbon” for the fastest Atlantic crossing could be.
The real star of this visually stunning story is the SS United States. The design and construction “takes” 70 pages until the maiden voyage. All of this is illustrated with architectural sections and detailed drawings – including countless technical terms such as shaft bracket, bilge keel and port anchor – in precise and loving detail work. The highlight is a center section that can be folded out on four sides, which literally unfolds the Atlantic liner in all its glory.
Not every child will immediately understand the principle of the steam engine (many adults probably won’t either) or the details of the fire protection concept of a large ship. But everyone will understand the fascination that physics and technology can have on people. Nice that David Macaulay made it onto the SS United States, a year later the long-haul flights between Europe and the USA began. (from 10 years and adults)
David Macaulay: Full steam ahead across the Atlantic. Steam engines, fast ships and a journey to the new world. Translated from the English by Margot Wilhelmi. Gerstenberg 2021. 128 pages, 24 euros.