In 1822 the steamer _New York_ began to ply between New York and Norfolk, but she was unable to compete with the sailing packets. The steamer _Patent_, that began making regular voyages between Boston and Maine ports in 1823, also failed to pay dividends. Not to add details of this kind, it may be said that while fortunes were made in steamboats plying on inland waters of the United States, almost every venture made with American steamers upon the ocean during the thirty years following the _Clermont's_ first trip on the Hudson proved unprofitable. In connection with this dismal record the story of the steamer _Home_, built for the trade between New York and Charleston, South Carolina, is instructive. Keeping in mind the fact that this steamer was designed to round Cape Hatteras, where the worst storms on the coast were known to rage, consider these facts: the _Home_ was 212 feet long by 22 wide and 12 deep. She was nearly 18 times as long as she was deep, and she was built of wood, at that. The engine, which was placed near the centre, as usual, had a cylinder 56 inches in diameter, with a stroke of 9 feet, and that is to say it was enormously heavy for a hull of such proportions. A set of iron braces was provided on each side to strengthen the hull, but on the first trip they "broke loose from their sockets on deck at their forward ends, by the elastic movement of the vessel in a heavy sea," as W. C. Redfield, a New York engineer, said in describing the vessel. Two voyages were made with no greater visible injury than the breaking, on each voyage, of the worthless braces. On November 9, 1837, as the _Home_ was bound on her third voyage, she was overtaken by a northeast gale, and shortly after passing the Hatteras shoals, it was found that the "elastic movement" of the hull, which, according to Engineer Redfield, was "necessarily and properly manifested," had opened an uncontrollable leak. The _Home_ was then driven on the beach, where she at once went to pieces. About a hundred lives were lost. It is important to note here that Engineer Redfield, in writing his defence of the _Home_ (1842), was entirely sincere. Further than that, the owners of the vessel were so confident that she was of a proper model in all respects that the only insurance they carried upon her was for a small sum to secure a creditor. From this story, and others of the kind to be found in the records, it appears that, while American designers were then building sailing ships and inland-water steamers that were highly profitable, they were astonishingly ignorant of the requirements of a steamship for deep-sea navigation.