Note 162 — Chapter III

So far as regards the stability of the proposed vessel, Captain Cram, who was a member of the United States’ Corps of Topographical Engineers, remarks, in the lecture on her, delivered in 1860 at Philadelphia, as follows: “She is to be a four-storey ship. Commencing at the bottom and going upwards we have the first storey, a hold, 16 feet high in the clear, with ample room for the machinery, boilers, and coals, and for a large quantity of freight besides. All this great weight of engines, boilers, coals, and dead weight freight, which is to be stowed in the very bottom of the ship, will act as ballast placed in the right position to insure stability and to relieve the ship from that dangerous topheaviness usually observed in many sea-going steamers.”