lls. She was rigged to sail, with five masts
and was to be 246 feet long, 63 feet beam, and 17 feet draft; the hulls
were 16 feet apart.

This project was submitted by the King to Fredrik Henrik af Chapman, the
great Swedish naval architect, who made an adverse report. Chapman
pointed out in great detail that the weight of the armament, the
necessary hull structure, the stores, crew, ammunition, spars, sails,
rigging and gear, would greatly exceed Miller's designed displacement.
He also pointed out the prime fault of catamarans under sail--slow
turning in stays. He suggested that the speed under sail would be
disappointing. He doubted that a double-hull ship of such size could be
built strong enough to stand a heavy sea. He remarked that English
records showed that a small vessel of the catamaran type had been built
between 1680 and 1700 which had sailed well (this may have been one of
Petty's boats), and that "36 years ago" he had seen 8 miles from London,
a similar boat that had been newly built by Lord Baltimore and was about
50 feet long; this was a failure and was discarded after one trial.
Therefore, said Chapman, the Miller project was not new but rather an
old idea. Chapman's final remark is perhaps the best illustration of his
opinion of the catamaran, "Despite all this, two-hull vessels are
completely sound when the theory can be properly applied; that is in
vessels of very light weight, and of small size, with crews of one or
two men."

A "model" of such a double-hull ship--the _Experiment_, built at Leith,
Scotland, in 1786 by J. Laurie--was sent to Sweden by Miller. She was
105 feet long, 31 feet beam, and cost L3000. This vessel arrived in the
summer of 1790 and King Gustav in a letter dated July 26 ordered Col.
Michael Anckerswaerd to welcome the vessel at Stockholm. The King
presented Miller with a gold snuffbox and a painting was made of the
vessel. The _Experiment_ had five paddle wheels in tandem between her
hulls, operated by geared capstans on deck. These gave her a speed of 5
knots but caused the crew to suffer from exhaustion in a short time. The
vessel was badly strained in a storm and was finally abandoned at St.
Petersburg, Russia.[19]

[Illustration: Figure 12.]

Miller later turned to the idea of employing steam instead of manual
power and built a 25-foot double-hulled pleasure boat of iron fitted
with a steam engine built by William Symington. Also named _Experiment_,
she was an apparen