The display, however, of British models was as complete as it could well be made. Private owners and builders, the Admiralty, and Lloyds’ Registry, united to make the collection a very complete and perfect one. Of continental European exhibits, that of the Italian Government, which sent a very splendid collection of models of its great war-ships, was the most important. Associated with it was the exhibit of the Fratelli Orlando of Leghorn, who have done much of both the public and private building of Italy. The only French exhibit was that of the Bureau Veritas, which followed the example of its English rival, Lloyds, in making a very striking and instructive show.
The only exhibits of modern war-ships were those of England and Italy, unless we except the numerous vessels built for foreign powers by English builders. The remainder of the display was chiefly connected with the strife of commerce, and in this it is likely to remain as complete and comprehensive as can be made in some time to come. It was one also in which Britain might well take pride, as, however great the United States were as pioneers or as more than equals in the beginning of the race, we have long since been distanced by our kinsmen, and we must refer, for some years at least, to Great Britain to study the principal changes in hull and machinery of the last half-century, though the great strides of the last six years, accomplished through our war-ship construction, bid fair to once more put us in our old and honorable place.
The Liverpool exhibition was the forerunner of a number of others of like character, which have culminated in the “Naval Exhibition” of 1891 in London, which, however, is more concerned with war than was its predecessor, and does not enter so fully into the details of early practice.
It is useless to draw comparisons between the value of claims of precedence in the history of steam navigation. The fact that Fulton’s efforts finally started the world to building steamboats for actual service is indisputable. All preceding cases were simply sporadic, and had none of the contagious power possessed by the experiments on the Hudson. Fulton himself had already built six steamboats before one was built elsewhere than in America. His boats, from the beginning, were of practical value, and not small experiments, the Clermont herself being 136 feet long, 18 feet broad, 7 feet deep, of 160 tons; and the diameter of her wheels was 15 feet.