At the time this book came out Mississippi River engineer James B Eads had a steamboat wrecking recovery boat named 'Submarine Boat Number 7'. It had a tall, massive skeletal set of timbering towering over the twin hulled catamaran layout and these had many, many bracing cables to interlock the timbers. Because of these cables it was soon nicknamed 'The Harp of a Thousand Strings.'
This catamaran was later converted into the river ironclad 'USS Benton' and One of her pilots was Horace Bixby, the river mentor of Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain.
Lewis Carroll appeared in print for the first time in this book.
