Mr. Cramp had long been emulous, some Englishman might say envious, of the wonderful career of Sir William Armstrong and of his marvellous success in securing foreign contracts. On one occasion, returning from a visit to Elswick with a party from the British Institution of Naval Architects, of which he is a member, Mr. Cramp remarked that “Armstrong and his establishment had ceased to be ship-builders in the ordinary acceptation of the term and had become navy-builders. They do not trouble themselves,” he said, “with isolated ships; to all intents and purposes they undertake to build whole navies in bulk for ambitious maritime states in South America and Asia.” At the time of the visit referred to, with exceptions hardly worth mention, the navies of Brazil, Argentine Republic, Chile, Japan, and China had been built, engined, armed, armored, munitioned, equipped, and outfitted at Elswick; and every ship was ready for battle when she finally sailed from Armstrong’s works. In addition to this, Elswick had done a great deal of work for European states, having, at one time or another, contributed in some degree to every European navy, great or small, except those of France and Russia. To a man of Mr. Cramp’s untiring aspiration and restless ambition, this was a spectacle not to be supinely endured. He therefore determined to see what could be done, and he selected what seemed to him the most promising directions of effort,—Russia and Japan. In dealing with the Russians he had initial advantages. The first was that Russia never had a war-ship, except the nondescript “Livadia,” built in England, though she had been a liberal patron of English engine-builders. The second point of advantage was that in 1878-79 a considerable volume of work had been done by Cramp for the Russian navy, involving conversion of three large merchant steamships into auxiliary cruisers and the construction of one small cruiser. The history of this interesting event, an event of international importance, is as follows: In the early part of the year 1878 the North German Lloyd steamer “Cimbria” appeared at Bar Harbor with about sixty Russian officers and about eight hundred men. Their presence at that place created a great sensation. Visitors thronged there; and the officers were entertained at Bangor and also in the neighboring towns. The common sailors, however, who were allowed to go ashore about one hundred and fifty at a time, were cruelly disappointed. They would go along the streets searching for vodka in vain. The Maine law, which was in full force, was something beyond their comprehension. “There is everything in the world here but vodka,” they would say to one another, and even to their officers, when they returned to their ship from shore liberty.