Although it is true that in Fulton’s _Clermont_ the beam was placed below the piston-rod, yet that was entirely owing to English influence, as represented in Boulton and Watt, who had manufactured this engine, or at any rate a good many of its parts. It is now that the dividing line comes between the two types, English and American. “From this primitive form,” says Admiral Preble, in his volume already quoted, “the two nations diverged in opposite directions--the Americans navigating rivers, with speed the principal object, kept the cylinder upon deck and lengthened the stroke of the piston: the English, on the other hand, having the deep navigation of stormy seas as their more important object, shortened the cylinder in order that the piston-rod might work entirely under deck, while Fulton’s working (walking) beam was retained.” From the engine, in fact, which Boulton and Watt had constructed at Soho for Fulton, by far the majority of the engines for the earliest steamboats took their pattern. And if to the Americans belongs the credit of having so thoroughly and so quickly developed the steamboat navigation of large rivers, it is the British, as we shall see shortly, who have been the pioneers of ocean navigation in steamships. The upper illustration facing page 90, which has been taken from a contemporary engraving, is worthy of notice as being the first steamer actually built in Germany. She represents rather a retrogression than an advance in the story of the steamship, for she was following still on those lines which had been in mind when Miller’s double-hulled ship and the _Charlotte Dundas_ were launched. This vessel, the _Prinzessin Charlotte_, was built by John Rubie at Pichelsdorf in 1816, for service on the Elbe, Havel and Spree. As will be seen from the illustration, her paddle-wheel was placed amidships and covered in. She was driven by an engine possessing 14 horse-power and made by J. B. Humphreys. Her long, lanky smoke-stack is supported by numerous stays, while her double-rudders, though still preserving the helms as used in contemporary sailing ships, are moved by means of a steering wheel. Clumsy and beamy, she is inferior in design to the _Comet_, and would no doubt have needed all the help of her twin-rudders to get her round some of the narrow reaches of the river. In the adoption and employment of the steering wheel neither the _Prinzessin Charlotte_ nor the _Clermont_ was the pioneer of this more modern method, its evolution having come about on this wise: as the tillers became heavier when the size of ships increased and the pull on them became greater, some sort of lanyard was first attached to them so as to get a purchase and divide the strain; otherwise the steersman would not have been able to control the ship. We see this as far back as the times of the Egyptian sailing ships. In medieval times and even in the seventeenth century the big, full-rigged ships were still steered by a helm in