Although these two lines of regular steam communication between Liverpool and the river Clyde, and between London and Edinburgh, were now successfully established and proved of considerable importance in the encouragement of steam navigation elsewhere, some years elapsed before those rapid strides were made in its adaptation as a propelling power which have rendered it one of the wonders of the present age. Indeed, this power would probably never have made such an extraordinary advance had iron not been adopted instead of wood for the construction of our ships. Hitherto throughout all ages, timber alone had been used in ship-building. The forests of Lebanon had supplied the naval architects of Tyre with their materials; Italy cultivated her woods with unusual care so that sufficient trees might be grown for the timber-planking and masts of ships for its once powerful maritime republics; and in our own time how often have we heard fears expressed that Great Britain would not be able to continue the supply of sufficient oak for her royal dockyards, much less for her merchant fleets? Yet, when shrewd, far-seeing men, no farther back than the year 1830, talked about substituting iron for the “ribs” of a ship instead of “timber,” and iron plates for “planking” instead of oak, what, a howl of derision the public raised. “‘Who ever heard of iron floating?’ they derisively inquired,” says Lindsay. “It is true they might have seen old tin kettles float on every pool of water before their doors almost any day of their lives—nay, floating even more buoyantly than their discarded wooden coal-boxes, but such common-place instructors were beneath their notice. Timber-built ships had from time immemorial been in use in every nation and on every sea, and had bravely battled with the storm from the days of Noah, and were these, they sneeringly asked, to be supplanted by a material which in itself would naturally sink? Such was the reasoning of the period; and, indeed, the best of the arguments against the use of iron rested on scarcely more solid foundation.”(31)