P. 40: “… we delivered our letters to the Consul, who very civilly accompanied us to the dock-yard and introduced us to the captain. Here we saw, on the stocks, the Pennsylvania, a three-decker, which is said by the Americans to be the largest ship in the world. But I believe her scantling to be very nearly the same as that of our Nelson. There were not more than twenty people employed about her; but every thing was in readiness, so that on an emergency she could soon be launched.
p. 41: The Pennsylvania has a round stern, and mounts 135 guns, including those on her gangways. There was also a round-sterned sixty-gun frigate on the stocks. I was struck by the remarkable circumstance of her having a trough of rocksalt running fore and aft her kelson, and learned that this application was supposed to possess a chymical property of preserving the wood from decay. She was built on the model of the unfinished frigate at Washington, and appeared to be nearly completed. There were no small vessels building. The extent of this yard is less than that of Washington. The ships are obliged to take in their guns and stores below the town, on account of the bar, where there is only a depth of ten feet at low water. I saw the tanks intended for the frigate, which were made to form a perfect platform; the wing tanks being fitted to the shape of the vessel. Very few people are employed in this yard, as the ships remain on the stocks until required for service. A mistaken notion has gone abroad as to the Americans calling such ships as the Penn-
p. 42: sylvania, seventy-fours, which at first sight, and to one unacquainted with the reason, bears the appearance of intentional deception. But this is explained by the peculiar wording of the Act of Congress, by which a fund was voted for the gradual increase of the American Navy. In it the largest vessels were described as seventy-fours; but great latitude being allowed to the Commissioners of the Navy, they built them on a much more extended scale. The only official mode of registering these is as seventy-fours, but for all purposes of comparison, they must be classed according to the guns which they actually carry, and in this light they are considered by all liberal Americans.”
Source
Fred. Fitzgerald de Roos. Personal narrative of travels in the United States and Canada in 1826. London, 1827.
