A port broadside view of the U.S. steam frigate ‘Niagara’. A two-masted dinghy sails to the right of the image. On the left are the dimensions, and tonnage and details of the engine on the right. Coloured lithograph.
The ‘Niagara’ assisted ‘Agamemnon’ when she laid the Atlantic cable in 1858. Frank M. Bennet (‘Steam Navy of the United States’, pp. 141-42) states that when ‘Niagara’, ‘Roanoke’ and ‘Colorado’ were completed they were the superiors of any war vessels then possessed by any nation in the world. Their design was copied by other nations. In Britain their construction was imitated in the build of ‘Orlando’ and ‘Mersey’. Although classed as a frigate, ‘Niagara’ was in fact a large sloop-of-war (ibid., p. 151).