In the summer of 1838 the Atlantic Ocean was crossed for the first time by vessels exclusively propelled by steam-power. These pioneers were the _Sirius_ and the _Great Western_--the former built for another class of voyages, and afterward lost on the station between Cork and London; the latter built expressly for Atlantic navigation, and which has ever since been more or less employed in traversing that ocean. Other ships followed: the _British Queen_, afterward sold to the Belgian government; the _Great Liverpool_, subsequently altered and placed on the line between Southampton and Alexandria; and the _President_, lost, no man knows how or where, in the year 1841. Then came what is called "Cunard's Line," consisting of a number of majestic steam-ships built in the Clyde, to carry passengers and mails between Liverpool in Europe, and Halifax, Boston, and New York in America; a service they have performed with the most marvelous regularity. The only great misfortune that has befallen this line has been the loss of one of the vessels, the _Columbia_, which, in nautical phrase, "broke her back" on some rocks on the American shore of the Atlantic. Then came the _Great Britain_, the greatest of them all, differing from the others in two respects--first, in being built of iron instead of wood; and second, in being propelled by the Archimedean screw instead of by the old paddle-wheels; and, alas! she has differed from them all in a third respect, inasmuch as neither the same good-luck attended her as in general fell to the lot of the ships of the Cunard Line, nor the same irretrievable bad fortune as was met by the _President_ and the _Columbia_; for, after having made several voyages very successfully, she, to the amazement of all mankind, very quietly went ashore in Dundrum Bay, on the east coast of Ireland, from whence, after spending a most uncomfortable winter, she was brought back to Liverpool, and now lies in the Bramley-Moore Dock there, like a huge mass of iron suffering under premature rust. But all this time these ocean steamers that periodically brought to New York passengers and intelligence from Europe were British built. They had been constructed in the Avon, the Mersey, and the Clyde, the greater number having been launched in the same waters as first received Henry Bell's little _Comet_. Why did America not embark in such enterprise? As regards steam navigation, Fulton was before Bell; New York before Glasgow; the _Fulton's Folly_ before the _Cornet_; and was "The greatest nation In all creation" to be outdone in the field of enterprise by the old Britishers? American pride said "No;" American instinct said "No;" and, above all, American capitalists said "No!" Keels were laid down in New York; the shipbuilders' yards became unusually active; and the stately timbers of majestic ships gradually rose before the admiring gaze of the citizens of the great republic.