"My friends in New York make no doubt of the practicability nor of the success of such an undertaking," he wrote to a director of the London and Edinburgh Steam Packet Company, "and have assured me that they will build two steam vessels suited to the object in view," provided English capitalists would build two more for use in the same line. Mr. Smith's letter was written to invite the directors of the company to join in the enterprise, and to charter to him one of their steamers for a demonstration trip, to New York. The directors replied with a cold refusal. Smith, however, tried elsewhere, and when his plans were presented in the newspapers, the professional humorists gave much attention to the "Yankee" innovator. In 1836 a noted scientist of the period, Dr. Lardner, in a lecture at Liverpool, declared that any effort to make direct passages from New York to Liverpool would prove "perfectly chimerical, and they might as well talk of making the direct voyage from New York or Liverpool to the moon." When this lecture was reported in the papers, a number of steamship men showed by arguments drawn from the experience of the coasters that Lardner was wrong, but even with their assistance Smith made two vain efforts to organize a company. But in July, 1836, when the books were again opened, enough shares were taken to enable the company to build a good ship which in time proved successful. But because there were long delays in getting this vessel afloat, Smith's company chartered the steamer _Sirius_, a packet plying between London and Cork, for a voyage to New York. The _Sirius_ was of about the size of a large sailing packet of the day. She measured 700 tons and had engines of 320 horse-power. On April 4, 1838, she left Cork for New York. In the meantime, I. K. Brunel, who was then chief engineer of the Great Western Railroad, had become convinced of the feasibility of transatlantic steam navigation, and with a few associates he had built at Bristol a ship named the _Great Western_, especially for traffic between Bristol (the end of the Great Western Railroad) and New York. This ship was 212 feet long by 35 wide and 23 deep. She registered at 1340 tons. She was provided with side-lever engines of 440 horse-power, the cylinders being 73½ inches in diameter by 7 feet stroke. As it happened, the _Great Western_ left Bristol for New York on April 7, and transatlantic steam navigation was thereby begun with a race. The _Sirius_ arrived first, anchoring off the Battery, New York, early in the morning on April 23. The excitement in the city was extraordinary, and the water about the ship was soon covered with small boats carrying people for a look at her. And then at about 11 o'clock, when the throngs around the _Sirius_ were densest, a lookout announced another steamship in sight down below, when the crowd began to shout:-- "The _Great Western_! The _Great Western_!" It was she, and in the middle of the afternoon she anchored off Pike Street.