which in turn stimulated demand for steamboats and steamships for Chinese service. In 1861-62 Lawrence & Foulks completed at least three screw steamers for U.S. companies operating in China: Flambeau, Kiang-Tsze and Sze-Chuen. The latter two were duly despatched to China but Flambeau was purchased by the U.S. Navy to serve as the gunboat . The company also completed a number of screw steamers for domestic American service during the war, including , D. S. Miller and John L. Hasbrouck, all for Hudson River service. After a few months on the Hudson, Isaac Smith, like Flambeau, was requisitioned by the Navy for conversion into a gunboat. All the above-mentioned screw steamers were powered by beam-propeller engines—a transitional technology that mated the old, slow-rpm beam engine with the screw propeller by mounting the engine athwartships and gearing it up (at a ratio of one to three or more) to the propeller shaft. Another newly built Lawrence & Foulks ship to be requisitioned by the Navy at this time was the small sidewheel steamer . In an attack on Mathias Point, Virginia on 27 June 1861, Thomas Freeborns commander, James H. Ward, became the first U.S. Navy officer killed in action in the war. In 1864, Lawrence & Foulks completed the Hudson River steamboat Chauncey Vibbard. Soon after entering service, the 280-foot vessel proved to be the fastest steamer on the highly competitive route from New York to Albany, making the trip in a new record time of 6 hours 42 minutes. With boilers carefully balanced to eliminate vibration, and a hull said to "cut the water as a knife blade", Chauncey Vibbard helped establish a reputation for Lawrence & Foulks as America's leading designers of high-speed watercraft. Postwar slump, 1865–70 With the end of the war in April 1865, the U.S. shipbuilding industry experienced a severe downturn. The Navy dumped more than a million tons of unwanted shipping onto the market, depressing prices and leaving shipyards with no work. High postwar prices, along with a series of bitter (and unsuccessful) strikes for the eight-hour day, helped prolong the slump to the end of the decade. The slump had a devastating effect on the New York shipbuilding industry, with most of the city's shipbuilders and marine engine manufacturers going out of business in this period. Lawrence & Foulks was one of only a handful of New York shipyards to survive the prolonged