With these facts before you, it remains only for you to consider how far you agree with me in the conclusion I have come to, and which I have no hesitation in expressing--that I think you will be safest, in the peculiar case of the first ship, in the hands of the parties who have had most experience, and that Messrs. Maudslay are those persons. Their price is, I think, moderate. This report was read by Mr. Brunel at a meeting of the Board, summoned at his request; the Directors adopted his advice, and accepted the offer of Messrs. Maudslay & Field, of Lambeth.[119] The ‘Great Western,’ for so the ship was called, had not been long commenced when a somewhat celebrated controversy arose, in which the correctness of Mr. Brunel’s views was questioned by the late Dr. Dionysius Lardner. The circumstances which led to this discussion were as follows:-- The British Association for the Advancement of Science held its sixth meeting at Bristol in August 1836; and, as Dr. Lardner was announced to lecture on Transatlantic Steam Navigation, great interest was felt in Bristol on the occasion. After some postponement, he delivered his lecture on August 25, to a crowded meeting of the Mechanical Section. The proceedings of the Association unfortunately do not give any report of Dr. Lardner’s observations; but, as in his latest work on the subject[120] he speaks in commendatory terms of the report given in the ‘Times’ newspaper, that account may be relied on as correct. In the ‘Times’ of August 27, 1836, it is stated that in the course of his lecture Dr. Lardner said,-- Let them take a vessel of 1,600 tons, provided with 400 horse-power engines. They must take 2⅓ tons for each horse-power, the vessel must have 1,348 tons of coal, and to that add 400 tons, and the vessel must carry a burden of 1,748 tons. He thought it would be a waste of time, under all the circumstances, to say much more to convince them of the inexpediency of attempting a direct voyage to New York, for in this case 2,080 miles was the longest run a steamer could encounter: at the end of that distance she would require a relay of coals. There is no detailed report remaining of the animated discussion which followed the lecture, and in which Mr. Brunel took part. He exposed several errors in Dr. Lardner’s calculations, but failed to produce any effect upon the majority of those present, who were powerfully impressed by the lecturer’s dogmatic assertions. Those assertions seem to have had a wide circulation beyond the walls of the lecture-room; and if Dr. Lardner’s arguments were sound, and if transatlantic steamers ought to have taken their departure from ‘the most western shore of the British Isles,’ the enthusiastic advocate of a railway scheme in Ireland might well exclaim,--