But we have digressed from the period before us. If the East India trade was a monopoly, commerce with the West Indies was unfettered by any such condition. Not unnaturally, therefore, competition was keen on this route, and as a result a number of excellent cargo-carrying ships were built, able to endure the trying conditions of the Atlantic without being deficient in the virtue of speed. The illustration in Fig. 72, taken from a print dated 1820, in the British Museum, will give some idea of the appearance of a contemporary West Indiaman. Gradually the similarity between purely mercantile and exclusively naval ships was disappearing, and we shall see presently how this gulf was widened still further. Sir Robert Seppings was succeeded by Captain Sir William Symonds, R.N., who was Surveyor to the Royal Navy from 1832 to 1847, years full of importance in the history of the sailing ship. We have referred more than once to the slavish copying of French models which had been a feature of our naval architecture. This was now to end. Just as before, and many times after, England had shown herself to possess a genius not so much for inventiveness as for improving on the ideas of others, so now she began to design and build vessels that could not be surpassed even by the French themselves. During Symonds’ _régime_ the golden age of the wooden walls of England was reached. It was he who was responsible for the design of such ships as the _Vernon_ (fifty guns), the _Queen_, and about one hundred and eighty others. Seaworthiness combined with speed were their outstanding virtues, and these he obtained by improving their underwater lines and making them less heavy and clumsy.[110] Internally the ships were constructed so as to provide more room and air. Symonds completed the work of Seppings in getting rid of the mediæval stern which had lingered with certain modifications for so long a period. Instead of the circular, he gave his ships an elliptical stern, and devised a system whereby not only were the different spars of one ship interchangeable, but the spars of different ships and different classes of ships. There is a very fine large model of his _Queen_ in the Greenwich Museum which has been rigged with the greatest regard to accuracy in every possible detail, so perhaps in studying her we shall get as good an example of Symonds’ ships as we can desire. Built in 1839, this 110-gun ship had a tonnage of 3104. Her length was 204 feet 2½ inches, her breadth 60 feet 0½ inch, her depth 23 feet 9 inches, and she carried a crew of 900. She had been laid down as early as 1833, and her name had originally been the _Royal Frederick_, but after the accession of Queen Victoria she was named _Queen_ at her launching. Later, in 1859, she was given the addition of a screw propeller.