[lehcyfer]

In Jacobus past stories (the part "The Winans Cigar Ships in Europe" you can read:

The wide press coverage received in London by the "Ross Winans" cigar steamer, a vessel that looked almost like a sea creature yet sported within a parlor with panelling and crystal chandeliers, seemingly caught the eye of one French author. Note the following paragraph from a work of popular fiction set in the year 1866:

"Here, Monsieur Aronnax, you have the various dimensions of the boat you are in. Its shape is that of an elongated cylinder with conical ends. It looks very much like a cigar, a design already adopted in London for constructions of the same nature. The length of the cylinder, from end to end, is exactly seventy meters, or 228.9 feet."

Trivia time here: what's the book? What's the author? The reference to cylindrical, cigar-shaped ships in London make it clear the author knew of the Winans Cigar Ships, and seems to have used them as the inspiration for the fictional boat described above. Well, at least he was partly inspired by the Winans Cigar Steamers--because the fictional ship being described (in Chapter 13, "A Few Figures") is the "Nautilus," from Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," and the Nautilus, of course, was a submarine, something the Winans boats never were.
Still, a number of scholars of both science fiction and maritime engineering have concluded that the outward description provided by Verne of the "Nautilus" was pretty much derived from the Winans Cigar Steamers. Verne, being the technophile he was, undoubtedly read all he could find about them, and probably saw the real ones, too. So while they may never have inspired an actual submarine, the Winans Cigar Steamships inspired the world's most famous fictional submarine.

And only the Winans ships had the true cigar shape with both conical ends...

The Alligator was built around the time of the proposal I've built here - it looks very interesting - maybe I'll do it someday

@rmks2000: I've made a special instrument - a stick with duct tape rolled around to the exact inside diameter of the smokestack - it helped immesurably to achieve the uniformity you comment.