George Melville makes the engineering case for Columbia

The class faced substantial opposition and initially drew only one compliant bidder. Boutelle supplied political advocacy while George W. Melville could explain the mission, machinery, and technical feasibility to Congress. Cramp won both ships even after Bath Iron Works offered a lower price for Minneapolis, because Bath could not build the engines or meet the required schedule. The resulting 21,000 indicated horsepower and first-in-US-service triple-screw arrangement reveal how far the design pushed contemporary machinery. The boiler fit remains uncertain: sources disagree over whether both sisters had eight double-ended and two single-ended boilers, or whether Minneapolis had ten boilers. That unresolved detail matters because Minneapolis was the cheaper contract, making extra machinery difficult to explain.