78 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



the least of the advantages which the new system of ocean tran- 

 sit offers is the shortness of the time and the small amount of 

 capital required to put it into operation at every seaport in the 

 kingdom. For instance, 2 steamers, fitted with means for the 

 most luxurious accommodation of passengers, in vessels of great 

 size, and having sufficient engine power to cross the Channel in 

 60 to 65 minutes, and fully adequate to carry the entire pas- 

 senger traffic, could be put on the station within 8 or 9 months 

 from the date of order, at a cost not exceeding 130,000. The 

 commercial advantages of such a system, as compared with those 

 proposals which would require some 8,000,000 or 10,000,000 

 sterling, and several years to execute, will be readily appre- 

 ciated by the public, the more so as my system will be subjected 

 to the test of actual trial before a shilling need be expended by 

 the public upon it. The proposed new system does not contem- 

 plate the employment of ships that shall be motionless except in 

 the direction of their course ; for the waves would strike on such 

 a vessel as on a rock, and dash themselves over her as they some- 

 times leap the Eddystone. It does not attempt to arrive at the 

 end desired simply by construction of ships or rafts of vast size, 

 for it is well known that the largest ships that have ever been 

 built roll frightfully in the Channel in bad weather ; nor is it by 

 any new and untried external form of the vessel, involving new 

 problems in navigation ; on the contrary, my system in no way 

 whatever interferes with the external form or with the sailing 

 qualities and safety of the vessel, the whole difference being in 

 the internal arrangements of the ship, and is based on the well- 

 known law that all bodies which revolve or roll, in so doing, 

 move about a centre where there is no motion, and all beams that 

 vibrate move also about a centre, from which point the distance 

 moved through by any part of the beam is as the distance from 

 this central point. Now, therefore, if we make the centres, 

 about which the vessel pitches and rolls, coincident with the axes 

 on which the saloon is suspended by suitable mechanism, and 

 provided with a heavy counterbalance weight beneath the centre 

 of gravity, the tendency of this weight will be at all times to 

 keep the saloon poised on the centre of the vessel's motion, and 

 therefore free from pitching or rolling, its floor remaining always 

 quiet and horizontal, while the vessel itself may be pitching and 

 rolling about the centre of suspension. The most convenient 

 form for such a saloon is circular, surmounted by a large dome, 

 lighted at the top with glass. It is proposed to make this circular 

 saloon of 50 feet in diameter, and 28 feet in height internally, 

 having a gallery extending entirely around its interior at about 

 9 feet from the floor. A continuous couch around this gallery 

 would accommodate 60 persons, while about 70 others would find 

 a similar accommodation below, independently of the large space 

 afforded by the floor of the saloon. This large and lofty apart- 

 ment, although much smaller, would present somewhat the gen- 

 eral appearance of the new reading-room at the British Museum. 

 It would be supplied with plenty of cool, fresh air from below, 

 which would pass off through the glass louvres in the dome. 



