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; but she was now placed in our hands to be lengthened 39 feet, as well as to have an iron deck added, both of which greatly improved her.