d be propelled by steam at the rate of from three to four miles an
hour.

The English were not uninformed as to the preparations which were
making for them, nor inattentive to their progress. It is certain that
the Steam Frigate lost none of her terrors in the reports or
imaginations of the enemy. In a treatise on steam vessels, published in
Scotland at that time, the author states that he has taken great care to
procure _full_ and _accurate_ information of the Steam Frigate launched
in New York, and which he describes in the following words:--

"Length on deck, _three hundred feet_; breadth, _two hundred feet_;
thickness of her sides, _thirteen feet_ of alternate oak plank and cork
wood--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 hundred 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 pikes of great length, darting them
from her sides with prodigious force, and withdrawing them every quarter
of a minute"!!

The war having terminated before the "_Fulton the First_" was entirely
completed, she was taken to the Navy Yard, Brooklyn, and moored on the
flats abreast of that station, where she remained, and was used as a
receiving-ship until the fourth of June, eighteen hundred and
twenty-nine, when she was blown up. The following letters from Commodore
Isaac Chauncey (then Commandant of the New York Navy Yard) to the
Honorable Secretary of the Navy, informing him of the distressing event,
concludes this brief history of the _first steam vessel of war ever
built_.

* * * * *

U. S. NAVY YARD, NEW YORK,
_June 5th, 1829_.

SIR:

It becomes my painful duty to report to you a most unfortunate
occurrence which took place yesterday, at about half past two o'clock,
P. M., in the accidental blowing up of the Receiving Ship Fulton, which
killed twenty-four men and a woman, and wounded nineteen; there are also
five missing. Amongst the killed I am sorry to number Lieutenant S. M.
Brackenridge, a very fine, promising officer, and amongst the wounded
are, Lieutenants Charles F. Platt, and A. M. Mull, and Sailing-Master
Clough, the former dangerously, and the two last severely; there are
also four Midshipmen severely wounded.