and it has been
generally adopted. This form not only serves to give stability, but
also increases the carrying power without lessening the speed.

While Sailor Jack and our many commercial rivals stood aghast and
wondered, our friends gave us yet another order for a still longer
ship, with still the same beam and power. The vessel was named the
Persian; she was 360 feet long, 34 feet beam, 24 feet 9 inches hold.
More cargo was thus carried, at higher speed. It was only a further
development of the fish form of structure. Venice was an important port
to call at. The channel was difficult to navigate, and the Venetian
class (270 feet long) was supposed to be the extreme length that could
be handled here. But what with the straight stem,--by cutting the
forefoot away, and by the introduction of powerful steering-gear,
worked amidships,--the captain was able to navigate the Persian, 90
feet longer than the Venetian, with much less anxiety and inconvenience.

Until the building of the Persian, we had taken great pride in the
modelling and finish of the old style of cutwater and figurehead, with
bowsprit and jib-boom; but in urging the advantages of greater length
of hull, we were met by the fact of its being simply impossible in
certain docks to swing vessels of any greater length than those already
constructed. Not to be beaten, we proposed to do away with all these
overhanging encumbrances, and to adopt a perpendicular stem. In this
way the hull might be made so much longer; and this was, I believe, the
first occasion of its being adopted in this country in the case of an
ocean steamer; though the once celebrated Collins Line of paddle
steamers had, I believe, such stems. The iron decks, iron bulwarks,
and iron rails, were all found very serviceable in our later vessels,
there being no leaking, no caulking of deck-planks or waterways, nor
any consequent damaging of cargo. Having found it impossible to
combine satisfactorily wood with iron, each being so differently
affected by temperature and moisture, I secured some of these novelties
of construction in a patent, by which filling in the spaces between
frames, &c., with Portland cement, instead of chocks of wood, and
covering the iron plates with cement and tiles, came into practice, and
this has since come into very general use.

The Tiber, already referred to, was 235 feet in length when first
constructed by Read, of Glasgow, and was then thought too long; bu