DISTRICT COLUMBIA.--No vessel has ever been built that exceeded the Great Eastern in size. Her dimensions were: Length, 680 feet, between perpendiculars, or 692 feet upper deck; breadth, 83 feet, or 118 feet over paddle-boxes: height of hull, 60 feet, or 70 feet to the top of the bulwarks. The paddle-wheels were 56 feet in diameter by 13 feet in depth, with 30 spokes in each wheel, and the coal-bunkers, to supply all the engines, could contain 14,000 tons. Her propeller-shaft was 160 feet long, with a screw propeller at one end 24 feet in diameter. She had 6 masts, carrying 7000 yards of sail, as auxiliary to the steam power: 10 cables, some of which weighed 10 tons each. She had facilities for accommodating 800 saloon passengers, 2000 second class, 1200 third class and 400 officers and crew; or 5000 might have been placed on her, if emigrants or troops. She was used for several purposes, serving as a troop ship in 1861, as a passenger vessel, and then was permanently chartered for laying the Atlantic cable, all of the passenger fittings being removed in 1867. In this she proved a success, having been used, not only for the laying of the cable named, but also for several other important lines, in the Mediterranean, in the Red Sea, across the Indian Ocean and elsewhere. Then she was laid up, and the last report concerning her was that, after being run for a short time as a coal ship, she was sold and broken up, having outlived her usefulness. The enormous expense attendant upon the maintenance of such an ocean monster proved a drawback to continued success from the day she was launched, at Millwall, England, January 31, 1858.