As a steam collier the _Q.E.D._ can scarcely have been a success or her engines would not have been taken out of her. Probably the first real steamer to which the title can be applied was the _John Bowes_, built at Messrs. Palmer’s yard, formerly in the possession of Mr. Cootes. Messrs. Palmer Brothers and Co. established the fifth yard on the Tyne for iron shipbuilding purposes and the _John Bowes_ was their first vessel. Two steam colliers of a sort had already been built on the Mersey, but they were little better than steam barges. This, the first seagoing steam collier with a screw propeller, was 167 feet over all, 25 feet 7 inches beam, 15 feet 6 inches depth, and of 270 tons register. The firm started in 1851, and about this period the working of the new Midland coalfields began seriously to affect the sale of north country coal, which had hitherto been conveyed to London in small collier brigs. It now became imperative in the interests of colliery owners to devise some means by which the staple produce of the district could be conveyed to the metropolis expeditiously and regularly. Sir (then Mr.) Charles Palmer, who was connected with several large collieries in Northumberland and Durham, therefore designed the _John Bowes_ with a carrying capacity of 650 tons, and capable of steaming nine miles an hour. She was launched on June 30, 1852. The experiment proved a complete success, and to it may be attributed the important development of iron shipbuilding on the north-east coast which afterwards took place. The _John Bowes_ was the forerunner of a long list of screw colliers, and was speedily followed by the _William Hutt_, the _Countess of Strathmore_, and numerous vessels of a similar type.