Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/513

 FREE-TRADE BARQUE.—E. W. COOKE, R.A.

As sailing vessels of this description, in which we may include all classes, from the Indiaman to

feet to a beam of thirty-one feet, and twenty-two feet depth of hold. Such was the popular prejudice even then among British shipowners against any material increase in the length. The impression had prevailed for centuries that a long ship must be weak, and a narrow one dangerous, from her "liability to capsize;" and no amount of argument would convince the old school of shipowners to the contrary. At last the author, anxious to practically test this question, built in 1853, contrary to the advice of numerous well-meaning friends, an iron sailing ship, which in length measured close upon seven times the width of her beam. Such a "monstrous" deviation from "established rules," and that, too, in a "tin kettle," the name by which the comparatively few iron ships then built were familiarly known, created]*
 * [Footnote: *portionate dimensions, for the length was only one hundred and forty-five