These violent differences and resentments have long since been composed, and Sir William Symonds has been accorded the position due to him in the history of naval architecture. His opponents, those who had resented his appointment as against the best interests of the service, rejoiced that he had freed ship design from the traditional restrictions under which it had stagnated; his chief admirers were led in the course of time to agree in the desirability of having as Surveyor a man thoroughly grounded in the scientific principles underlying the motion of bodies through water, their stability in water, and all the forces acting on a ship at sea. In the year 1821 Lieutenant Symonds, while holding an appointment at Malta, had designed and built for himself a yacht which he called _Nancy Dawson_. Yachting had at this date become a national sport, and the interest of influential patrons in sailing matches was already acting as a stimulus to the study of ship form. The chief cause of the beneficial reaction from the indifference of former generations, says his biographer, was the establishment of the Yacht Club, after the peace of 1815, and the interest which men of rank and fortune henceforth took in shipbuilding, and in procuring the best native models.[35] So great was the success of the _Nancy Dawson_, that (in his own words) he was led to believe that he had hit upon a secret in naval architecture; while experiments on other sailing boats seemed to confirm him in his principles. Great breadth of beam and extraordinary sharpness--in fact, what was described as “a peg-top section”--were the characteristic features of his system, with a careful attention to stowage, the stand of the masts, and the cut and setting of the sails. “Upon this most slender basis was the whole fabric of Sir William’s subsequent career built. The yacht gained him the notice of noblemen and others, then followed a pamphlet on naval architecture (in which the defects of existing ships were pointed out, and great breadth of beam and rise of floor advocated); then came a promise from the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Melville, that he should build a sloop of war on his plans, which he did, the vessel being called the _Columbine_ (promotion intervening); then further patronage from the Duke of Portland and the Duke of Clarence, the latter of whom, when he became Lord High Admiral, ordered him to lay down a 40-gun frigate (promotion again intervening); then the building of the _Pantaloon_, 10-gun brig, for the Duke of Portland, from whom the Admiralty purchased her; then the patronage of that most mischievous civilian First Lord, Sir J. Graham; then the order for the _Vernon_, 50-gun frigate; and then, in ’32, the Surveyorship of the Navy.”[36]