From sail to steam

The transition from sail to steam during the 19th Century generated a great revolution in shipping. The port of Gibraltar benefited from this change. In the museum we have the logs of the port of Gibraltar which recorded many details about shipping. Below, we present a chart of the time taken for merchant ships to travel from Liverpool to Gibraltar.

The graph is very revealing and indicates that steam brought two big changes in transport. One was speed. While sailing ships couls take anything between 16 and 24 days to complete the journey, the equivalent trip was performed in 7 to 9 days with steam. But the graph also shows that the journey time was more consistent with steam, thus making it more reliable. One way of quantifying history!

The graph reveals one more thing - the transition to steam, despite its advantages, was not abrupt. In 1850 many ships arriving in Gibraltar were sailing ships.