Thanks to the fact that nowadays more and more books are digitized we are able to read books that are some times for decades no longer available for the public for several reasons. That's quite a pity while these books contains useful information while the archives are destroyed, incomplete or nor accessible.
The author of the article was a certain D.B.B.
p. 93: “The Chòw Phya P’rak’lang Minister for Foreign affairs, subsequently promoted to Somdet Ong-yai, was then absent at Chantaboon fortifying the place against the incursions of the Cochin Chinese. And his eldest son, then known as Looáng Nai-Sit, and now Prime Minister of Siam, was with his father finishing the first square rigged vessel ever constructed in the kingdom. This was named Ariel, and still maintains her identity as a Brig though scarcely a piece of her original is remaining. That young stripling of Young Siam had then on the stocks three other vessels of much larger dimensions, which were finished a year or two subsequently, and were I think named respectively Victory, Success, and Caledonia. Those works were the first to introduce that man of wonderful energy to public life; and a befitting beginning it was for the career of expansion and glory for Siam, which was then in its incipiency. That was the commencement of the great change which has since taken place in Siamese shipping, now displaying itself in a fleet of more than one hundred square rigged merchant vessels, most of them of medium size and of the best model, and merchant, war and pleasure steamers more than twenty in number, now plying her rivers and bringing Singapore and China much nearer to Bangkok than the year of my arrival in Siam.”
Source
American Missionary Association. The Bangkok calendar for the year of our Lord 1862, corresponding to the Siamese Civil Era 1222-3. Bangkok, 1862.
