“Up to the present time £350,000 has been expended upon this wonderful construction, and by the time the vessel is ready for sea, this sum will have been augmented into nearly £800,000. It will, however, be understood that there is a fair capacity in the vast vessel for yielding a revenue ample enough to render the undertaking a commercial success, notwithstanding this great cost, when it is borne in mind that if the fares for a single outward or homeward passage to India or Australia for the three classes be fixed only at £65, £35, and £25 respectively, the passage-money alone for the voyage out and home would amount collectively to something beyond £300,000 if all the berths were occupied. It is an interesting fact that naval engineers fix the amount of tonnage required in a steam vessel designed for any particular voyage by a very simple standard; they consider that one ton of burden is needed for every mile to be traversed; hence it is that this vast steam-ship has been made capable of carrying 25,000 tons. It is intended to go in every voyage 25,000 miles: it is a distance equal in extent to the circumference of the world. [Illustration: CARICATURE OF THE “GREAT EASTERN,” FROM A CONTEMPORARY PRINT.] “It is estimated that this great vessel with 5000 tons of merchandise and her complement of 4400 living beings would still be able to store enough coal for her consumption during a complete circumnavigation or a voyage out and home.” The iron plates used in the construction of her hull weighed 10,000 tons and to fasten them together required three million rivets. Her length was 680 feet, breadth 82¹⁄₂ feet, depth 58 feet, and displacement 27,384 tons. The paddle-engines were of 1000 nominal horse-power and worked up to 3411; and weighed no less than 836 tons. The four cylinders weighed when finished 28 tons each, they were 74 inches in diameter and had a stroke of 14 feet. Each of the two right-angle cranks was driven by two cylinders, inclined at a mean angle of 22¹⁄₂ degrees from the vertical. Each paddle-wheel was worked by a complete double-cylinder engine and could be revolved without the other if necessary. Four double-ended tubular box boilers supplied steam for the paddle-engines at 24 lb. pressure. They were each 17¹⁄₂ feet long by 17 feet 9 inches wide, and 13 feet 9 inches high, and had forty furnaces and 4500 square feet of heating surface. Each boiler weighed fifty tons and contained about forty tons of water. Her first paddle-wheels were 56 feet in diameter, but these were damaged in some rough weather, and the next pair, only 50 feet in diameter, were much stronger and equally serviceable in the matter of speed and lasted out the ship. Her calculated speed under both screw and paddles was 15 knots and under the wheels alone seven knots. She certainly never approached the fanciful speeds predicted for her by the newspaper enthusiasts, and it is only fair to her builders and designers to say