Recently an American Company have with great spirit sent forth from their own country, a line of steamers to trade between Philadelphia and Liverpool.[266] They consist at present of the _Pennsylvania_, _Illinois_, _Ohio_, and _Indiana_, each of about 3100 tons gross, or about 2000 tons nett register; they are all built of iron, on the Delaware (U.S.), and are fitted with screw-propellers. The _Pennsylvania_, launched 1873, cost, according to the statement of her owners, “ready for sea, about 600,000 dollars” (120,000_l._); who add that, “if built on the Clyde of as good materials, the saving would have been trifling.” In any attempt, however, to estimate the cost of a steamship I may state, for the information of non-nautical readers, that the outlay on one vessel, even of a similar grade or class, when built for the conveyance of passengers as well as cargo, gives but an imperfect idea of the cost of another vessel, of the same tonnage but not so appropriated. If we take simply the hull, the power of the engines, and the ordinary outfit for a sea-going ship of a particular class, the comparative cost of constructing such a vessel in different countries, or even at different ports in any one country, may be easily ascertained, but, in a passenger-ship so much depends on the quality of the outfit and furnishing, and, especially, on the cabin accommodation, varying as these do almost as much as from a cottage to a palace, I should certainly mislead my readers were I to attempt to supply a comparative cost of passenger-ships built in America and in England. [Sidenote: Pennsylvania Company, 1873.] The vessels of this line are each 355 feet in length, with 43 feet beam, and 33 feet depth of hold. They have each accommodation for 76 first class, and for 800 intermediate and steerage passengers. The actual steam-power of each of these vessels is given as “2800 horse-power indicated,” but this furnishes, as I have before stated, but a vague idea of the nominal power on which the cost is based, as the actual power depends on the dimensions of the engines, the mean pressure on the piston, and the speed with which the engines move. On the other hand, nominal horse-power is fixed by certain arbitrary rules.