sure but two
thousand tons and to draw but sixteen feet of water,--a class admirably
adapted to the sea-ports and requirements of the United States. And
singular as it may appear, by some coincidence at a moment when our
country requires this class of steamers, the enterprise of Boston is
completing two iron steamers whose dimensions and draught of water
conform to the recommendation of the British Commissioners,--steamers
which are nearly ready for launching, but which, if they can receive,
before they leave the stocks, additional plates of iron, would doubtless
prove the most useful and efficient mail-clad vessels which have yet
been constructed.

The stranger who would inspect these beautiful vessels may seat himself
at almost any hour of the day in the cars at the foot of Summer Street,
and in twenty minutes find himself at a point a little north of the
Perkins Asylum for the Blind. A walk of five minutes more will bring him
to a secluded yard sloping gently towards the water, where he will find
extensive offices, and two large buildings which cover the vessels upon
the stocks.

As he approaches these structures, he will notice many plates of
superior iron from the rolling-mills of Baltimore, combining the
toughness and strength and other excellences of the best Pennsylvania
iron; he will notice, too, immense ribs and beams of iron, and hear the
incessant din of hammers riveting the sides and boilers.

Under each of these sheds he will find an iron steamship, two hundred
and seventy-five feet in length by twenty-three in depth, exquisitely
proportioned; he will be struck by the fine entrance and run. The
extreme sharpness of the stem and stern, combined with great capacity,
seems to answer every requirement; and he will be surprised to learn
that the draught of these steamers is but sixteen feet when deeply
laden, and that their engines of thirteen hundred horse-power are
expected to give them a speed of fifteen knots per hour. When they reach
their destined element and have received their lading, the height from
the water-line to the deck will be but seven feet; hence it is apparent
that a belt of iron plates carried around them of eight feet four inches
in height would protect them from the deck to a point sixteen inches
below the water-line, or from the bottom of the deck-beams to a point
two feet below the water-line.

The iron plates which form the sides of these ships range in thickness
from one inch belo