Among other features, it appears that she was the first warship fitted to burn anthracite coal, thus avoiding the dense volumes of black smoke which revealed all foreign war-steamers. She was the first to carry telescopic funnels that could be lowered to the level of the rail out of the way of sails, and the first to use blowers to force the draft in the furnaces. She was also the first to couple the screw directly to the engine instead having cog-wheels intervene. Her armament was also peculiar, for she was fitted with two long wrought-iron guns that threw balls about a foot in diameter, weighing 225 pounds--guns that, when fired at a target at a range of 560 yards, pierced fifty-seven inches of solid oak timber. [Illustration: The _Great Western_--One of the First Steamships to Cross the Atlantic Ocean. _After an old painting._] And there was one other peculiarity to which Stockton, who commanded her, called attention with pride: “To economise room, and that the ship may be better ventilated, curtains of _American manufactured_ linen are substituted for the usual wooden bulkheads.” [Illustration: Twelve-inch Wrought-iron Gun--the Mate to the “Peacemaker,” which Burst on the _Princeton_. (The carriage is a mortar carriage from Porter’s mortar fleet at New Orleans.) _From a photograph of the original at the Brooklyn Navy Yard._] As a steamship the _Princeton_ was a very great success, but the art of forging was not then sufficiently advanced to warrant the manufacture of any but cast-iron guns. On a trial trip made from Washington in 1844, one of the great forged guns burst, killing and wounding a number of gentlemen, including the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Navy, with several ladies who had been invited to go on the trip. Stockton had boasted that “the numerical force of other navies, so long boasted, may be set at naught, and the rights of the smallest as well as the greatest nations may once more be respected.” And the boast would have been almost justified but for the failure of the wrought-iron gun. [Illustration: U. S. Ironclad Steamship _Roanoke_. (The first turreted frigate in the United States, 1863.) _From an old lithograph._]