After an old painting.
And there was one other peculiarity to which Stockton, who commanded her, called attention with pride: “To economise room, and that the ship may be better ventilated, curtains of American manufactured linen are substituted for the usual wooden bulkheads.”
Twelve-inch Wrought-iron Gun—the Mate to the “Peacemaker,” which Burst on the Princeton.
(The carriage is a mortar carriage from Porter’s mortar fleet at New Orleans.)
From a photograph of the original at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
As a steamship the Princeton was a very great success, but the art of forging was not then sufficiently advanced to warrant the manufacture of any but cast-iron guns. On a trial trip made from Washington in 1844, one of the great forged guns burst, killing and wounding a number of gentlemen, including the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Navy, with several ladies who had been invited to go on the trip. Stockton had boasted that “the numerical force of other navies, so long boasted, may be set at naught, and the rights of the smallest as well as the greatest nations may once more be respected.” And the boast would have been almost justified but for the failure of the wrought-iron gun.
U. S. Ironclad Steamship Roanoke.
(The first turreted frigate in the United States, 1863.)