Second. Our urgent want of this class of vessels to recover our fortresses, repel blockades, and reopen our Southern ports, without wearisome sieges, costly both in blood and treasure.
Third. Our inability to command our customary supplies of durable timber.
Fourth. The abundance of iron, unrivalled in any part of the world.
Fifth. The durability of the ships constructed from iron. If well manned and piloted, they will seldom need repairs; and instead of failing, as many ships do in the sixth year, and requiring vast expenditures to discharge and dismantle them for the renewal of the decaying timber, plank, copper, and other materials, often amounting in the aggregate to more than their original cost, the mail-clad steamers built of American iron will outlive successive races of wooden steamships. The iron such a navy would require will put many idle hands in motion, which would otherwise be unproductive during war,—the miners of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, the colliers of Ohio and Pennsylvania, the mariners of the Lakes, the navigators of canals, and the operatives of railways, down to the brawny smiths who fashion the metal into shapes,—until their combined efforts launch it upon the deep, and send it forth to
"dare the very elements to strife."
How much better would it be to create such an iron navy than to expend million after million on wooden walls that must soon perish by decay or the shells of the enemy, or to lavish three or four millions upon the conversion of our superannuated ships-of-the-line into steamships! These, when converted, will still retain their age and constant tendency to decay, their models long since abandoned, their original design, height of decks, and other proportions adapted to the eighteen- and twenty-four-pounders formerly in use, which are now giving place to Dahlgren and rifled cannon carrying balls of sixty-four to one hundred pounds weight. Such an expenditure would be like an essay to convert a Yankee shingle-palace, such as Irving described half a century ago, into a modern villa, and reminds one of a proposition made to an assembly some twenty centuries since, which still has its significance.
An orator had proposed to convert an old politician into a general; but a citizen moved an amendment to convert donkeys into horses, and when the possibility of doing so was questioned, argued that the horses were necessary for the war, and that his measure was as feasible as the other.
To prepare our nation for war, let us select the Enfield rifle, the Colt revolver, the rifled and cast-steel cannon, the mail-clad steamer, and not resort to flint arrow-heads and tomahawks, or to any other fossil remains of antiquity. The policy of creating an iron navy has been repeatedly urged of late in the foreign journals. It has also been advocated with signal ability by Donald McKay of Boston, one of our most eminent naval constructors, who, after building the Great Republic, the Flying Cloud, and a fleet of other celebrated clippers, has visited the dockyards of France and England, examined their mail-clad ships upon the stocks and those already finished. Although himself accustomed to work on wood, and a candidate for employment as builder of some of our wooden gun-boats, with great frankness as well as boldness he urges the construction of mail-clad steamers. We trust Congress will no longer neglect so important a means of protecting our national prosperity.
PARTING HYMN.
"Dundee."