But though the Admiralty hesitated, others did not. Probably the first steam-driven ship of war which ever went to sea, though not the first mechanically propelled war vessel--the Far East, as we have seen, ante-dating us in this matter by a couple of centuries--was the _Rising Star_. She was certainly the first to traverse the waters of the Atlantic from north to south, and the first steam warship to round Cape Horn and pass into the Pacific. The _Rising Star_ was a remarkable ship in many ways. She was built at Rotherhithe for the tenth Earl of Dundonald when, as Lord Cochrane, he was engaged by the Chilian Government to create and take command of the Chilian navy, and stipulated that a steamship should be built as the best means of neutralising the difference between the Chilian and Spanish naval forces. The _Rising Star_ was really taken out by Major the Hon. William Cochrane. Owing to various vexatious delays in construction, she did not reach completion in time to permit of her arrival in time to participate in the war, the energetic Admiral Cochrane having, in the meantime, disposed of the Spanish fleet with his customary thoroughness. The ship was begun at Kier’s yard in 1820, and arrived at Valparaiso in April, 1822. How she was propelled is a matter of conjecture. At one stage of her career she had paddles of some sort, and also paddle-wheels, but when she finally left England a different system altogether appears to have been adopted, which seems to have been an application of the jet method, by which the ship is propelled by forcing out of streams of water through apertures in the hull below the water level. The _Rising Star_ is shown in a contemporary engraving of her to have been a full-rigged ship, without royals, and carrying, besides the ordinary square sails of her rig, peculiarly shaped square-headed staysails between the masts. This vessel has been referred to in several books as the _Rising Sun_; it is as well that the error be corrected and her right name given. The statement that the _Rising Sun_ went to Chili for Lord Cochrane in 1818 is erroneous, though often made both in this country and in America.