s is not all. To restore the boilers, a ship has to be torn
literally almost to pieces. All of the decks in that part must be
removed and lost; the frame of the ship cut to pieces; large and
costly timbers removed, and altogether an expense incurred that is
frightful even to the largest companies. To insure perfect safety and
to gratify the wish of the public, this is generally done long before
it is strictly necessary, and when the boilers are in a perfectly good
condition for the working purposes of ordinary speed. But precaution
and safety are among the prerequisites of the public service, and must
be attained at whatever cost. On slow auxiliary freighting steamers
this would be by no means necessary. But the extent and cost of these
repairs on steamers far exceed any thing that would be imagined. They
are supposed to be twelve per cent. per annum of the prime cost of a
vessel of ordinary speed, taking the whole ship's life together at
twelve years at the utmost. Atherton in his "Marine Engine
Construction and Classification," page 32, says of the repairs of
steam vessels doing ordinary service in Great Britain, where all such
work is done much cheaper than in this country: "By the Parliamentary
evidence of the highest authorities on this point, it appears to have
been conclusively established, that the cost of upholding steamship
machinery has of late years amounted, on the average, to about L6 per
horse power per annum, being about 12 per cent. per annum, on the
prime cost of the machinery, which annual outlay is but one of the
grand points of current expense in which steamship proprietors are
concerned." Now, if these were the repairs of the slow West-India
Royal mail steamers, which ran but 200 days in the year, and that at a
very moderate speed, and in the machine shops of England, where at
that time (previous to 1852) wages were very low, they can not be less
in this country, on rapid mail steamers, where wages and materials are
very high, and where marine engineering was then in its infancy.

There are some facts on this subject which prove the positions here
taken. The Collins steamers have been running but six years, and yet
their repairs have amounted in all to more than the prime cost of the
ships, or to about eighteen per cent. per annum. They were as well and
as strongly built originally as any ships in the world, as appears
from the report which Commodore M. C. Perry made to the Department
regarding the