It was a heterogeneous collection, a nautical curiosity shop, that they got together--deep-water ships, inland-water steamers, ferryboats, and harbor tugs. The inspecting officers were compelled by stress of need to accept about everything that would float and carry a gun. And, singular as it may seem at first thought to those who in these days ride on them, the double-ended ferryboats made very successful naval ships. It was the Fulton ferryboat _Somerset_ that captured the blockade-runner _Circassian_ off Havana--a prize that yielded $315,371.39 to her captors. Nor was that her only service. Being well built to stand the hard knocks of their ordinary service, the ferryboats were easily fitted with heavy guns and served well in battering down alongshore forts. By the 1st of December, 1861, the government had purchased 137 vessels, of which, however, fifty-eight were sailing vessels; and it may as well be told here as elsewhere that 418 vessels were purchased during the war, of which 313 were steamers. Meantime the department started the work of building ships. Congress authorized seven sloops-of-war, and the department laid down eight, of which four were built to the lines of the sloops of 1858 in order to save time; and it is worth noting that the _Kearsarge_ was among the four. The eight were begun immediately, and six more were laid down before the end of the year. Without waiting for an appropriation, the department contracted with private shipyards for the building of twenty-three heavily armed screw gunboats. And this contract is worth more space than the mere statement of the fact, for it draws attention to the importance of the private shipbuilder as a factor in the sea power of a nation. Even in the War of 1812, when wooden sailing ships were the sole evidence of sea power, the private shipbuilder was of essential importance. It was a private shipbuilder from New York, Mr. Noah Brown, who sent Perry’s victorious squadron afloat on Lake Erie, and it was the private shipbuilder who gave the Americans the supremacy that they enjoyed from time to time on Lake Ontario. Without private yards amply equipped for the construction of the best warships afloat, no nation can have a sea power adequate for the protection of its honor and the preservation of peace. These twenty-three gunboats mounted from four to five guns each, of which one was an eleven-inch smooth-bore. They were wooden boats, of course, and they were known as the ninety-day fleet because some of them were in commission within three months from the signing of the contract. [Illustration: Garrett J. Pendergrast.] The fact that they were so quickly built is also worth considering in connection with the fact that ships relatively as efficient as they were could not now be built in less than a year. The day of a ninety-day fleet passed when steel was substituted for wood.