“Fully appreciating all that was involved in the question from his stand-point and what he considered of paramount importance,—the necessity of the Technical School for Naval Officials—I was prepared for the question, and determined that my answer should be apropos; and that I would not permit myself and my profession to be disparaged, knowing that in Russia and on the Continent generally there were no great private shipyards, and that if a naval architect or ship-builder there did not graduate from a technical school, he was practically nowhere at that time. Trained as I was in Philadelphia in a first-class shipyard, surrounded by others of the same kind and in close contact with New York, which city occupied the head and front of the ship-building profession in the world, I felt myself doubly armed and more than confident when my answer came promptly after the question. “I said: ‘Your Imperial Highness! when I graduated from my father’s shipyard as a naval architect and ship-builder, there were no schools of naval architecture. I belong to that race which created them!’ “This unexpected answer, and the gravity of my manner, astonished for an instant the Grand Duke, who glanced at Captain Semetschkin, and rising to his feet he bowed profoundly to me and sat down. “The history of the ‘Livadia’ is well known,—encountering a storm in the Bay of Biscay she was somewhat battered up under the bottom forward. On account of her peculiar shape and light draught she did not respond quickly to the motions of a head sea; when her bow was lifted clear of the water, the following seas would strike the bottom very severely before she would come down. “After serving at Sebastopol somewhat under a cloud, she was laid up; the propeller engines were ultimately put in three new gun-boats.”