A few other merchant ships were built and fitted with the screw; the Princess Royal at Newcastle in 1840, the Margaret and Senator at Hull, and the Great Northern at Londonderry, in 1841.
The Lords of the Admiralty made slow progress in adapting the screw for the Royal Navy.

Sir William Symonds, the surveyor and principal designer of Her Majesty's ships, was opposed to all new projects.

He hated steam power, and was utterly opposed to iron ships.

He speaks of them in his journal as "monstrous."[7] So long as he remained in office everything was done in a perfunctory way.

A small vessel named the Bee was built at Chatham in 1841, and fitted with both paddles and the screw for the purposes of experiment.