Not only that ,but there was a project to build wooden copies of the Laird rams in Canada too, Whether they would have been delivered as kits ,or just the guns and armour and machinery, for wooden hulls built somewhere I have never been able to find out.
I suspect that's a later thing as the Laird Rams were only just being ordered at this time. But we do know there was plenty of wooden shipbuilding in Canada - Quebec employed between 2,000 and 4,000 workers.
When looking at the RN wooden battlefleet, people tend to forget ,or ignore that most of the ships were conversions, some not very good. I would thoroughly recommend "Battleships in Transition" by Andrew Lambert and "Before the Ironclad" by David K Brown for an understanding of both the RN and French wooden battlefleets.
In Before the Ironclad DK Brown makes the point that the British converted ships were on the whole newer and more sound than the French conversions, and that they had more guns on average as well. This is on top of the British building more new-build vessels than the French did.
These two tables make it clear that the Royal Navy had a higher proportion of new construction and of major conversions and that they carried many more guns. There is a marked difference between the two navies in the proportion of older ships, a difference which would have had a major effect on maintenance costs and on availability had not all these ships become obsolete so quickly. The NHP of the French engines tended to be greater but, as discussed in the context of Agamemnon and Napoleon, this is not a good guide. Despite the British concept of engines as an auxiliary, in practice there was little or nothing between the actual power installed. With only one or two exceptions the British engines were very reliable.
Brown , David K. Before the Ironclad: Warship Design and Development 1815-1860 (Kindle Locations 5138-5143). Seaforth Publishing. Kindle Edition.
The value of some of the older and smaller ships was questionable but they were as good as, or better than, many similar French ships.
Brown , David K. Before the Ironclad: Warship Design and Development 1815-1860 (Kindle Locations 5329-5330). Seaforth Publishing. Kindle Edition.
It's also important to notice that some of the British ships that were technically "conversions" were converted on the slipways, and were both lengthened and widened - at which point little can have been left of the original ship.
The counts are as follows for 1858:
New construction
British 18 (average age 5.8 years, average number of guns 96)
French 9 (average age 10.2 years, average number of guns 94)
Lenghtened on slip
British 22 (average age 24.4 years, average number of guns 98)
French 4 (average age 15.8 years, average number of guns 90)
Engines added only
British 18 (average age 18.3 years, average number of guns 88)
French 25 (average age 34.1 years, average number of guns 89)
Blockships
British 9 (average age 50.2 years, all 60 guns)
The British ships are biased newer and more powerful. There are forty British ships which were either built for steam or lengthened on the slipway (about 2/3 of the steam liner fleet), as opposed to 13 French (about 1/3 of the French steam liner fleet).