The City of Peking is one of the finest examples of American practice. This vessel was constructed for the Pacific Mail Company. The hull is 423 feet long, of 48 feet beam, and 38-1/2 feet deep. Accommodations are furnished for 150 cabin and 1,800 steerage passengers, and the coal-bunkers "stow" 1,500 tons of coal. The iron plates of which the sides and bottom are made are from 11/16 to one inch in thickness. The weight of iron used in construction was about 5,500,000 pounds. The machinery weighed nearly 2,000,000 pounds, with spare gear and accessory apparatus. The engines are compound, with two steam-cylinders of 51 inches and two of 88 inches diameter, and a stroke of piston of 4-1/2 feet. The condensing water is sent through the surface-condensers by circulating-pumps driven by their own engines. Ten boilers furnish steam to these engines, each having a diameter of 13 feet, a length of 13-1/2 feet, and a thickness of "shell" of 13/16 inch. Each has three furnaces, and contains 204 tubes of an outside diameter of 3-1/4 inches. All together, they have 520 square feet of grate-surface and 17,000 square feet of heating-surface. The area of cooling-surface in the condensers is 10,000 square feet. The City of Rome, a ship of later design, is 590 feet long, "over all," 52 feet beam, 52 feet deep, and measures 8,300 tons. The engines, of 8,500 horse-power, will drive the vessel 18 knots (21 miles) an hour; they have six steam-cylinders (three high and three low pressure), and are supplied with steam by 8 boilers heated by 48 furnaces. The hull is of steel, the bottom double, and the whole divided into ten compartments by transverse bulkheads. Two longitudinal bulkheads in the engine and boiler compartments add greatly to the safety of the vessel. The most successful steam-vessels in general use are these screw-steamers of transoceanic lines. Those of the transatlantic lines are now built from 350 to 550 feet long, generally propelled from 12 to 18 knots (14 to 21 miles) an hour, by engines of from 3,000 to 8,000 horse-power, consuming from 70 to 250 tons of coal a day, and crossing the Atlantic in from eight to ten days. These vessels are now invariably fitted with the compound engine and surface-condensers. One of these vessels, the Germanic, has been reported at Sandy Hook, the entrance to New York Harbor, in 7 days 11 hours 37 minutes from Queenstown--a distance, as measured by the log and by observation, of 2,830 miles. Another steamer, the Britannic, has crossed the Atlantic in 7 days 10 hours and 53 minutes. These vessels are of 5,000 tons burden, of 750 "nominal" horse-power (probably 5,000 actual). [Illustration: FIG. 144.--The Modern Steamship.]