A STEAM PROPELLER. 



547 



by a bulwark, which affords safe quarters : she is rigged with 

 two stout masts, each of which supports a large lateen yard 

 and sails: she has two bowsprits and jibs, and four rudders, one 

 at each extremity of each boat, so that she can be steered with 

 either end foremost: her machinery is calculated for the addi- 

 tion of an engine which will discharge an immense column of 

 water, which it is intended to throw upon the decks and through 

 the port-holes of an enemy and thereby deluge her armament 

 and ammunition. If in addition to all this we suppose her to 

 be furnished, according to Mr. Fulton's intention, with hundred- 

 pound Columbiads, two suspended from each bow so as to dis- 

 charge a ball of that size into an enemy's ship ten or twelve feet 

 below her water-line, it must be allowed that she has the ap- 

 pearance, at least, of being the most formidable engine for war- 

 fare that human ingenuity has contrived." 



Such was the first step towards the establishment of a steam- 

 navy. Forty years afterwards, George Steers built the pro- 

 peller-frigate Niagara ; and the reader, by comparing the two 

 vessels, will have an adequate idea of the immense strides 

 made in naval mechanics and engineering during the lapse of 

 less than half a century. In Europe the size and qualities of 

 the Fulton the First were at the time ludicrously exaggerated, 

 as will be seen from the following passage from a Scotch treatise 

 on steamships. After magnifying her proportions threefold, 

 the author continues: — "The thickness of her sides is thirteen 

 feet of alternate oak plank and cork wood : she carries forty- 

 four guns, four of which are hundred-pounders ; quarter- 

 deck and forecastle guns, forty-four-pounders ; and, further to 

 annoy an enemy attempting to board, can discharge one hun- 

 dred gallons of boiling water in a minute, and, by mechanism, 

 brandishes three hundred cutlasses with the utmost regularity 

 over her gunwales, works also an equal number of heavy iron 

 spikes of great length, darting them from her sides with pro- 

 digious force and withdrawing them every quarter of a minute!" 



