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166 Telescope conventional round shot were so extensive that iron was felt to be inferior to wood since it splintered on impact and more important, did not tend to close a hole made in it as the more elastic wood did. For several years, until armor was more effectively used and tested, it was felt in informed naval circles that iron, although indestructable under normal usage, was only appropriate in a naval vessel such as a cutter or gunboat whose primary mission did not require absorbing punishment. United States Secretary of State Upshor, who was to die in an explosion during a gunnery demonstration aboard the U.S.S. PRINCETON a year later, was sensitive to these views and naval thought in general. In addition, he was particularly concerned by the construction of three new warships by the British on the Canadian shores of the Great Lakes, jeopardizing the agreements of 1817 concerning limitations of arms on the Great Lakes. The construction of a warship on the Great Lakes was also favorably received by the Secretary of State as an opportunity to spend money on the steel industry west of the Alleghenies. Accordingly, in May 1842, the contract was given to Stackhouse and Tomlinson of Pittsburgh for the engines and the hull, which was designed by Samuel Hartt. The plates were of 3/8 inch iron made by the charcoal process then in use, and were pounded into forms with hand mauls while still orange-hot to get the curve laid off from the designer's lines. Two direct action engines with 36-inch cylinders and 8-foot stroke drove paddle wheels twenty feet in diameter. The newness of iron construction caused the designers to treat it like wood so that the ribs were heavy and the plates were laid over them like planks, but the hull remained tight during a hundred years of service and was much lighter than a comparable one of wood. Both the hull and the engines were set up in Pittsburgh and tested before being dismantled for the trip to Erie. No railroads connected the cities in those days so that the heaviest parts were sent via canal barge. At Erie, the assembly progressed steadily through 1843, and on 4 December an attempt was made to launch her; this attempt failed however, and according to local tradition the MICHIGAN launched herself during the night. The newspaper accounts give a less romantic explanation by stating that the bow was raised more on the ways the next day and the ship then slid smoothly into Lake Erie. The tonnage at launching was 582, and the dimensions were: length, 167 feet; beam, 27 feet; beam Including the paddle boxes, 40 feet; and draft, 10 feet. She was an extremely handsome ship, with the long sweep of her barkentine rig and the clean entrance of her bow; an early photograph shows her hull painted black with white trim at the strakes and gilded scrollwork on the billet head. Particularly imposing were large gold eagle figures which contrasted with the black sides of the paddle boxes. In the summer of 1844 sk© made her trial runs, logging 10 knots, and then visited Chicago where the news of her construction had caused a sensation. She had also caused a sensation of a different kind among the British in Canada, and after an exchange of diplomatic notes, both sides agreed to reduce the armament on the lakes to one gun for each country. The MICHIGAN had been commissioned with six guns, but upon orders from the Secretary of the Navy Mason, she reduced her batteries to one 32-pounder carronade. In the years before the Civil War, she patrolled the lake borders. It Is claimed that the MICHIGAN picked up a wounded French Canadian trapper, Alexis St. Martin, and took him to the army surgeon at Mackinac Island, Dr. William Beaumont, who was able to trace the actions of digestion through the hole in his abdomen and wrote his famous