The _Winans_ cigar ship, as her name indicates, was shaped like a huge cigar. Messrs. Winans began experimenting in the ’fifties at Baltimore with a view to ascertaining the amount of water-friction sustained by surfaces of differing smoothness at various speeds, the relative resistance of proportions and speeds, and whether any advantages were to be gained from spindle-shaped vessels as compared with ordinary vessels. These experiments resulted in the launching in October 1858 at Ferry Bay, Baltimore, of a spindle- or cigar-shaped vessel having about its middle a ring bearing flanges set at an angle calculated to strike the water and propel the vessel. She had four powerful engines placed amidships, and rudders at both ends measuring 4 feet by 3 feet. She was 16 feet in diameter at the widest part and 180 feet long, and it was expected she would cross the Atlantic in four days; she belied those expectations. The owners stated that she was designed “to obtain greater safety, despatch, uniformity, certainty of action, as well as economy of exportation by sea.” They believed that “by discarding sails entirely, and all the necessary appendages, and building the vessel of iron, having reference to the use of steam alone, these most desirable ends may be even still more fully attained than by vessels using both sails and steam.” They continue: “The vessel we are now constructing has no keel, no cutwater, no blunt bow standing up above the water-line to receive blows from the heaving sea, no flat deck to hold or bulwark to retain the water; neither masts, spars, nor rigging.” The plan and position of the propelling wheel were supposed to be such that its minimum hold of the water would be much greater in proportion to tonnage than the maximum hold of the propelling wheel or wheels in ordinary steamers. The engines were high pressure with a cut-off variable from one-sixth to full stroke; combined, they were to exert threefold more power in proportion to displacement of water than those of the most powerful steam-packets then built. Her boilers were of the locomotive type, consuming 30 tons of coal in twenty-four hours, the smoke, &c., being carried away by two funnels. She was divided into several water-tight compartments. With 200 tons of coal on board she was to displace about 350 tons of water, and accommodate about twenty first-class passengers and the United States mail, with room to spare for small valuable packages, specie, &c. The same principles and properties which were to adapt the vessel to high average speed were claimed to be also adapted to the cheap, safe and sure transportation of freight as compared with vessels using sails only or sails and steam combined. There was a railed-in space on her upper surface for the deck.