The use of iron instead of wood as the primary material of ships' hulls began in the 1830s; the first "warship" with an iron hull was the gunboat "Nemesis", built by Jonathan Laird of Birkenhead for the East India Company in 1839. There followed, also from Laird, the first full-blown warships with metal hulls, the 1842 steam frigates "Guadalupe" and "Moctezuma" for the Mexican navy. But a thin iron skin, while not being susceptible to fire or lethal splintering like wood, was not the same thing as providing iron "armor" calculated to stop enemy gunfire.