At and about this time, and right on for some years, an enormous number of experiments were carried out between ship and ship with a view to improving the sailing qualities, and side by side with this, the question of propulsion other than by sail was first seriously considered. A certain number of small steam tugs had been added to the Navy, there being no less than twenty-two such built in the reign of George IV. Of these the largest was built in 1835. Very little reliance was placed on steam at first for any possibilities outside towing and harbour work, and a great deal of energy was expended in devices to enable ships to be moved by manual labour. In place of the “sweeps” of ancient history, paddles were fitted, and in 1829 the _Galatea_ (forty-two) frigate was thus moved at a speed of three knots in a dead calm. The _Galatea_ was commanded by Captain, afterwards Admiral Sir Charles, Napier, who so long ago as 1819 had been concerned in financing an unsuccessful attempt to run iron steamers on the Seine. The first ship in which hand paddles were tried was the _Active_, frigate. No success was met with, but Napier evolved a different system for the _Galatea_. Those of the _Active_ were worked by the capstan; Napier installed a series of winches along each side of the main deck. It took about two-thirds of the ship’s company to work them. The earliest known use of steam was as long ago as in the year 1543. The account of it was in the original records which had been preserved in the Royal Archives of Simancas, among the State Papers of the city of Catalonia, and those of the Naval Secretary of War, in the year 1543, and was extracted on the 27th August, 1825, by the keeper, who signed his name “Tomas Gonzalez.” The inventor, a naval officer named Garay, never revealed the secret of his invention, but mention is made of a “cauldron of boiling water” and “wheels of complicated movement on each side of the vessel.” He succeeded in obtaining a speed of “two leagues in three hours,” also “at least a league an hour” with his device, fitted to a 200-ton vessel named _Trinidad_.[81] Honours were bestowed on Garay, but the monarch who had patronised him, being busy with other matters, did not follow up the invention. Otherwise much naval history might have been different from what it is. In 1736, Jonathan Hulls took out a patent in England for a stern wheel. It should be remembered that at this time the question of means of propulsion other than by sail was eagerly considered, and that paddles came to be tried in the place of oars, with a view to more continuity of action. Steam ideas somewhat trended to the idea of sucking water in forward and ejecting it aft. The screw propeller also was known certainly at as early a date as the paddle.