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Show HOW TO BUILD OUR NAVY. <br><br> By surpassing speed our ships could break and force blockades, rapidly cross the sea, overtake or capture the ships of the adversary, and choose their own position in battle. The strength and buoyancy of steel, and its present cheapness, adapt it to our purposes; it must be the material for our new navy. Steel is superseding iron. In the rivalry between guns and plates of iron, the gun has been the victor, and guns weighing thirty-eight tons, throwing shells weighing nearly half a ton, have already been set afloat, and some of them in gun-boats. <br><br> Instead of embarking $2,500,000 in one venture in a gigantic iron clad, England is now constructing vessels of one fifth that cost, and arming them with heavy cannon. <br><br> The steel clad Iris is such a vessel. She combines a fine model with steel walls, and the compound engine which saves forty per cent in the coal consumed; she thus with great economy combines speed with a heavy armament, and sufficient space for men, stores, and fuel. Let us, after choosing such a model as the Iris, build our first steel-clad upon the lines and in the molds of the Iris, and if possible, make our contracts with those who built her. We should thus obtain a ship 300 feet in length between perpendiculars, 46 feet wide, combining a speed seventeen miles an hour with a draught of but twenty feet. Let this be the basis for our steel-clads. But how is such a ship to be armored without impairing her speed? And how can she be qualified to meet the iron-clads of Europe? The Iris carries 700 tons of coal, but she is rigged as a bark, is fast under canvas, and economizes fuel by the use of a compound engine; and to give her armor, we may dispense with 200 tons of fuel, as she will rely principally on her sails, except when pursuing or eluding her enemy, or when going into action. Thus saving 200 tons of dead-weight, we may apply to her bow and her stern 200 tons of steel armor of four inches in thickness, extending back from her bow and forward from her stern fifty to sixty feet, and covering the curved portion of her stem and stern. Thus may we protect her both forward and aft, by a belt of steel armor four feet above and four feet below her load line. The Iris is armed with ten cannon of six tons each, and the weight of those for each broadside is thirty tons. Let us dispense with six of them, and substitute one gun of thirty-eight tons on a platform near the armored bow, and another of eighteen tons near the armored stern. As these guns are to revolve, we thus double the weight of a broadside, and greatly increase its effect, and when she attacks or retires she will present a sharp bow, or run to the foe covered steel, which by its strength and curvature will deflect the shells of its largest adversary at the distance it may choose for its encounter. Let us add to this ship a beak of steel which, when driven at a speed of seventeen miles per hour will sink any adversary. To this armament we may add two light Gatling guns to keep off boats or boarders. We may thus increase the armament of the frigate with adding more than twenty tons to the dead-weight, and this may be saved either in whole or in part in the weight of crew, stores and water by reducing the number of her guns, as her large guns may be worked by hydraulic power. But it may well be asked how are her sides are to be armored. England, by adopting the turret system, or by building a fortress in the center of iron-clads, has secured the machinery, but has left both bow and stern exposed to the enemy; and in the naval engagement at Liesa one vessel thus undefended at the bow was sent to the bottom by the shell of her adversary. Can we add armor to the ship without affecting her speed? Let us profit by an experiment recently made in England, by which it has been determined that a coal-bunker filled with coal a few feet in width is impervious to the largest shell in use. Let such bunker be constructed on each side of the ship,, eight feet wide, and four feet above and four feet below the load line of the ship, extending from the armor of the bow to the armor of the stern; let it cross the ship at the point where it reaches the armor; let it be made of half-inch plates of steel, and divided into two compartments; and let one of these compartments be kept full as a safeguard and reserve for any encounter. We have thus armored the ship, doubled her armament, and preserved her speed. The Iris has cost $450,000, and it is safe to estimate the changes we propose would not increase her cost to more than $600,000. With $5,000,000 a year for four years to come, we might build twenty such steel-clad frigates, twenty more of two-thirds their size, or 2,000 tons each and twenty gun-boats like those sent from England to China. Let us add to them twenty torpedo vessels like those of England and France, making twenty miles an hour, and we shall have made a good beginning for our new navy, and have made a reasonable provision for the exigencies of the future. - E. H. Derdt, in Harper's Magazine. |