Exposed as they must be, it has been a wise policy to afford to these
important interests protection with our ships of war distributed in the
great highways of trade throughout the world. For more than thirty years
appropriations have been made and annually expended for the gradual
increase of our naval forces. In peace our Navy performs the important
duty of protecting our commerce, and in the event of war will be, as it
has been, a most efficient means of defense.

The successful use of steam navigation on the ocean has been followed by
the introduction of war steamers in great and increasing numbers into
the navies of the principal maritime powers of the world. A due regard
to our own safety and to an efficient protection to our large and
increasing commerce demands a corresponding increase on our part. No
country has greater facilities for the construction of vessels of this
description than ours, or can promise itself greater advantages from
their employment. They are admirably adapted to the protection of our
commerce, to the rapid transmission of intelligence, and to the coast
defense. In pursuance of the wise policy of a gradual increase of our
Navy, large supplies of live-oak timber and other materials for
shipbuilding have been collected and are now under shelter and in a
state of good preservation, while iron steamers can be built with great
facility in various parts of the Union. The use of iron as a material,
especially in the construction of steamers which can enter with safety
many of the harbors along our coast now inaccessible to vessels of
greater draft, and the practicability of constructing them in the
interior, strongly recommend that liberal appropriations should be made
for this important object. Whatever may have been our policy in the
earlier stages of the Government, when the nation was in its infancy,
our shipping interests and commerce comparatively small, our resources
limited, our population sparse and scarcely extending beyond the limits