The use of the steam engine as a propellant had been established in the mercantile marine long before the British Admiralty led the way in the adoption of the steamship as an engine of war. There were several reasons why the decision to take the important step was not reached earlier. In the first place there was a repugnance, amounting with many persons to an unconquerable aversion, against the use of the steamship for any purposes whatever. Steamships were regarded as unsightly with their splashing paddle-wheels and their high funnels belching forth smoke, and as the steam mercantile marine had been by no means free from boiler explosions and had lost many vessels through fires caused by sparks or cinders from the furnaces, or the overheating of wood work near the flues, it was argued that the introduction of so many fresh dangers into the country’s fighting ships would only add to the perils of the sea, which were already serious and numerous enough. The navy possessed many fine wooden ships which could be handled extremely smartly under sail and presented a magnificent contrast and beautiful picture compared with the smoky steamer. The latter, it was graciously admitted, might have its uses in towing the sailing warships, but that anything further should be advocated was too subversive of all that had gone before; too revolutionary, indeed, to merit a moment’s consideration. It was in vain that the advocates of the adoption of steam propulsion urged that the steamship could carry guns, that she would be independent of wind and tide, and that she could choose her own position. These strategical advantages were simply derided. What, it was asked in reply, could a small steamship armed with such guns as she could carry, do against a battleship; or, for that matter, what could any number of armed steamships do? When it was pointed out that an armed steamship could engage with every advantage an enemy’s ship of the same size, the retort was that a battleship would never be far off. Strange though these objections seem to us in the light of subsequent events, it must be recollected that marine steam engines in those days were bulky for their power and weak for their weight, and consumed an enormous amount of coal for the energy developed, and that there was no room to spare in the fighting ships of the period; also, that the steam engine was not far removed from the experimental stage. For the first twenty-five years of the nineteenth century the Admiralty had every excuse for the maintenance of its conservative attitude.