After clearing from the Irish port, she encountered head winds, and it was only with difficulty that her commander, Lieut. R. Roberts, R.N., was able to quell a mutiny among the crew, who had made up their minds that to try and get across the North Atlantic in such a craft was pure folly. Having been seventeen days out, the _Sirius_ arrived off New York on April 22nd, and before the end of her journey had not merely consumed all her coal, at a daily average of 24 tons, but had even to burn some of her spars, so that she had got across just by the skin of her teeth. But it was her engines which had got her there and not her sails; the former were of the side-lever type to which we have just referred. The next day came in the _Great Western_, a much larger craft, that had come out of Bristol three days after the _Sirius_ had started; and in her we see the prototype of those enormous liners which go backwards and forwards across the Atlantic to-day with a regularity that is remarkable. Unlike the little _Sirius_, the _Great Western_ had been specially designed for the Atlantic by that engineering genius, Brunel, who, like his ships and his other works of wonder, was one of the most remarkable products of the last century. She was built with the intention of becoming practically an extension of the Great Western Railway across the Atlantic, and in order to be able to withstand the terrible battering of the seas, which she would have to encounter, she was specially strengthened. Here was a vessel of 1,321 tons (gross), with a length of 236 feet over all, with about half her space taken up with her boilers and engines. Now the strain of so much dead-weight in so long a ship whose beam was only 35 feet 4 inches, or about one-seventh of her length, had to be thought out and guarded against with the greatest care. And let us not forget that at this time vessels were still built of wood, and that, except in a few instances, iron had not yet been introduced. She was given strong oak ribs, placed close together, while iron was also used to some extent in fastening them. The advantage of making an ocean-going vessel long is that she is less likely to pitch in a sea, and will not dip twice in the same hollow; and if she is proportionately narrow in comparison with her length, she will also roll less than a more beamy craft. But the difficulty, so long as wood was employed, was to get sufficient longitudinal strength to endure the strains of so long a span. We shall be able to get some idea of this when we consider the behaviour of a vessel in a sea. Waves consist, so to speak, of mountains and valleys. If the waves are short and the vessel is long, then she may stretch right over some of them; but if the contrary is the condition, then, while her ’midship portion is supported by the water, her fore and aft ends are inclined to droop, so that in a very extreme case she would break in two. At any rate,