“She promises fair to meet our most sanguine expectations, and I do not despair in being able to navigate in her from one extreme of our coast to the other. Her buoyancy astonishes every one, she now draws only eight feet three inches water, and her draft will only be ten feet with all her guns, machinery, stores, and crew, on board. The ease with which she can now be towed with a single steamboat, renders it certain that her velocity will be sufficiently great to answer every purpose, and the manner it is intended to secure her machinery from the gunner’s shot, leaves no apprehension for its safety. I shall use every exertion to prepare her for immediate service; her guns will soon be mounted, and I am assured by Mr. Fulton, that her machinery will be in operation in about six weeks.”
On the twenty-first of November, the Steam Frigate was moved from the wharf of Messrs. Browns, in the East River, to the works of Robert Fulton, on the North River, to receive her machinery, which operation was performed by fastening the steamboat “Car of Neptune,” to her larboard, and the steamboat “Fulton,” to her starboard side; they towed her through the water from three and a-half to four miles per hour.
The dimensions of the “Fulton the First” were:—
Length, one hundred and fifty-six feet.
Breadth, fifty-six feet.
Depth, twenty feet.
Water-wheel, sixteen feet diameter.
Length of bucket, fourteen feet.
Dip, four feet.