Construction
Providence and Bristol were both fitted with massive 110-inch-cylinder (9 foot 2 inch) walking beam engines, the largest engines ever fitted to American vessels up to that time - larger even than the 100-inch-cylinder engine for the mammoth ironclad USS Dunderberg built at the Webb shipyard around the same time. The engines, designed by Erasmus W. Smith, were supplied by the Etna Iron Works, which had only recently installed a lathe capable of boring such huge cylinders. The lathe itself was one of the two largest machine tools in the United States, the other being a planer installed by the same company.
Work on both Bristol and Providence was delayed by a long strike, but Bristol was eventually launched in April 1866, and Providence on July 28 of the same year. Between December 1865 and December 1866 however, the Merchants Steamship Company lost three of its existing ships, all of which were uninsured, thereby bankrupting the Company. Bristol and Providence remained in an uncompleted state at the shipyard until a new company, the Narragansett Steamship Company, which was partly owned by financier Jim Fisk, bought the new vessels in early 1867 and paid for their completion.
Read more about this topic: Providence (1866)
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