CONCERNING THE FIRST STEAM FRIGATE
OF THE WAR OF 1812

IN   COMMON   council,   SEPTEMBER  26,   1814.

The undersigned having at the request of the Secretary
of the Navy of the United States undertaken to superin¬
tend the building and the equipment of a vessel of war to
be propelled by steam, beg leave to represent to the Cor¬
poration, that without their co-operation in procuring
money for its completion, this engine of defence, which
promises to be so serviceable in protecting the city in
the  event  of  an  attack upon  it,  must  remain  unfinished.

The pecuniary means that have been furnished by gov¬
ernment to carry on this work, amount to $95,000; $15,000
of that sum having been remitted to us in cash, and $80,000
in Treasury notes. Hitherto we have been able to pur¬
chase materials and carry on the work with the latter
description of paper, which we have been informed by
the Navy Department, is the only species of remittance that
can be made to us, and which, in the present embarrassed
state of society, is found to be inadequate to the purpose.

Unwilling to stop the progress of a work which we
deem to be so important to this country, and particularly
to this city, and having latterly found it impracticable to
carry it on without money, we applied to the banks for
aid, proposing to deposit with them Treasury notes for the
amount they might advance. On our being informed by
those institutions that they were precluded by arrangements
made among themselves, from affording us the requisite
advances unless the same should be considered as part of
a sum which they had agreed to loan to the Corporation
for the defence of the city, we applied to the Committee
of Defence to sanction the advance to be thus made to us,
but learned with regret from that Committee, that the sum
of money borrowed by the Corporation and placed at their
disposal would be absorbed by their own operations. We
then renewed our application to the banks, and were in¬
formed by Mr. Wilkes, in behalf of all those institutions
in this city, that they would increase their loan to the
Corporation to the amount of our wants if they should be
requested by the Corporation to do so. Considering that
this offer of the banks fully obviated the objection of the
Committee of Defence, we sent them a copy of Mr. Wilkes'
letter,  requesting that  they  would  authorize  the  loan  to

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