Commodore: Tut, tut, young gentleman; we must have your opinion supposing such a case to have actually occurred.
Tatnall: Well, sir—sails all carried away, do you say, sir?
Commodore: Aye, all—every rag.
Tatnall: Anchor gone, too, sir?
Commodore: Aye; not an uncommon case.
Tatnall: No rudder, either?
Commodore: Aye, rudder unshipped. (Tatnall drops his head despondently in deep thought.) Come, sir, come; bear a hand about it! What would you do?
Tatnall (at last and desperate): Well, I’d let the infernal tub go to the devil, where she ought to go.
Commodore (joyously): Right, sir; perfectly right! That will do, sir. The clerk will note that Mr. Tatnall has passed.
A naval advisory board was appointed which, in 1881, recommended that thirty-eight armoured cruisers should be built, of which eighteen should be of steel and twenty of wood, besides several other vessels. An influential minority of the board objected to steel lest it should be imported instead of being manufactured in the United States. But in 1882 a House of Representatives committee decided upon steel, not only as the best but as the only proper material for the construction of war vessels. The committee, cautious but determined, recommended the building of two 15-knot cruisers, four 14-knot cruisers, and one steel ram. The advisory board desired five rams, but one was tried as an experiment. This was the Katahdin, and she was a failure and the experiment was never repeated. Congress in 1883 decided on two cruisers, not six, of which one should be between 5,000 and 6,000 tons displacement and have the highest attainable speed, and the other of between 4,000 and 4,300 tons displacement; and both were to have full sail power and full steam power. But as no money was voted the ships did not appear. Another naval advisory board recommended the construction of a 4,000-ton vessel and three of about 2,500 tons, all of steel, and a smaller iron despatch boat. Congress in March, 1883, adopted the programme, eliminating only one of the smaller cruisers, and this time voted an appropriation.