Mr. Cramp, having been a shipbuilder in Philadelphia during the period considered, spoke from personal knowledge. Of equal interest is the state of the iron trade in America at that time. The clippers that were the pride of the nation were bolted together with British iron. All the large castings used in the Collins steamers were imported from England. In his essay quoted above, Mr. Cramp had this to say on iron ship-building:-- "A short time after iron construction was introduced abroad, certain engine builders here commenced iron construction. The first one in America was built in Kensington at the boiler works of Jesse Starr, several squares from the water, and was hauled down there by a large number of horses and then launched.... The first iron steamers here were fearful specimens of naval architecture; the workmen were the boiler-makers of the works, and the vessels were looked on by these engine-builders as merely exaggerated boilers. At first they employed commonplace shipwrights to do certain woodwork that the vessel needed. The British soon began to build the entire ship complete by first-class ship-builders, and the finest specimens of war-ships and merchant ships were turned out by them. In this country iron ships were built with their engines by the boiler-makers and machinists with the most indifferent results." Said John Roach, a most noted ship-builder, in testifying before the committee of Congress that investigated the state of American shipping in 1869 (H. R. Rep. 28, 41 Cong. 2 sess.):-- "The high cost of iron, produced by the tariff upon it, was one of the principal difficulties that our commerce had to contend with.... If Congress will take off all the duties from American iron, reducing it to the price of foreign iron, then we are prepared to compete with foreign ship-builders. The labor question is misstated. We are prepared to meet that difficulty, and to ask no further legislation upon the subject." The tariff was not as high before the war as it was after, but the inability of the American ship-builder to obtain iron at home for any purpose at a living price had great influence in preventing the adoption of iron screw steamers. Of the influence of lack of experience in building sea-going steamships, something more must be said here, and leading authorities of the period shall tell the facts:-- "Hitherto our steamboats have been built for short and comparatively unstormy voyages. The navigation of the Atlantic is quite a different affair from that of the Hudson or the Erie. Now in England they have had the practical experience of thirty-six years in building _sea-going_ steamers." (_Scientific American_, October 7, 1848.) Charles H. Cramp, another noted ship-builder, when testifying before the committee of Congress mentioned above said:--