MECHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. 73 



which the port was then blockaded. Our direct course for the anchorage at 

 the Hook, whither we were bound, lay across the cast bank, and we thus 

 had the appearance of bearing down on the cruiser. As soon as we were 

 fairly in sight, and as our smoke could well be seen by the Saturn, that ves- 

 sel was put about, a press of sail was spread, and every effort was evidently 

 made on board to obtain an offing, by standing away close hauled with a 

 strong wind from S.W. After we got quietly anchored under the Hook, the 

 Saturn resumed her station just outside of the bar. 



Although it has been said, on English authority, that Sir Thomas Hardy, 

 while occupying the Sound with a powerful squadron, and carrying his flag 

 in a seventy-four, never remained at anchor during the night, and rarely left 

 the deck except by day, in order to insure safety from Fulton's torpedoes, a 

 more certain if not more terrific mode of attack was, at the date of which I 

 speak, afloat, and nearly ready for service in the waters of New York. This 

 was the steam Battery, miscalled Frigate, Fulton. This vessel, formidable 

 enough in reality, had been represented by correspondents of English news- 

 papers as a monster of prodigious powers. An hundred guns of enormous 

 calibre were said to be enclosed in fire and bomb-proof shelters ; the upper 

 deck was reported to be defended by thousands of boarding-pikes and cut- 

 lasses wielded by steam, while showers of boiling water were ready to be 

 poured over those that might escape death from the rapidly whirling steel. 

 In reality, the vessel presented above the surface of the water the figure of 

 an oval, whose greatest length was about the same as that of an English 

 seventy-four. This was covered by a continuous spar-deck, at either extrem- 

 ity of which was mounted, on a revolving carriage, a chambered gun, capa- 

 ble of throwing a solid ball of 100 pounds, but intended, as is well known, 

 to throw shells. Beneath the spar-deck was the gun-deck, also continuous, 

 except in the middle, where space was left for the working of a large paddle- 

 wheel ; and on this gun-deck was mounted a battery of thirty-two 32-pound- 

 ers. The sides of the vessel were thickened by cork and wood, not only 

 between the guns, but as low as the water's edge, until incapable of being 

 penetrated by a 32-pound ball. Beneath the gun-deck the hull was formed 

 as if of a vessel cut in two, leaving a passage from stem to stem for water 

 to reach and to be thrown backwards from the wheel. Two rudders were 

 placed in this passage, moving on their centres. The boilers and the greater 

 part of the machinery were below the reach of shot, and even the wheels 

 could only be reached by a stray shot, passing unimpeded and in a proper 

 direction through the port-holes, until the sides of the vessel had been 

 destroyed by a long-continued battering. The central wheel, and the pecu- 

 liar rudders, had already been successfully used by Fulton in a ferry-boat. 

 This seems to have been placed on the Brooklyn ferry about the year 1811. 



My scene must -now be changed to the opposite side of the Atlantic. The 

 war with England being at an end, I took an early opportunity to visit 

 Europe, and reached England in the month of May, 1815. In July of the 

 same year, in company with some other Americans, I made a pedestrian 

 excursion to. the neighborhood of Runcorn, in Cheshire. On our return 

 through the beautiful grounds of what once was a park belonging to Lord 

 Sefton, was then laid out in sites for villas, and has since been included in 

 the town of Liverpool, we saw beneath us in the Mersey an object which 

 puzzled our English friend, but which the rest of the party knew to be a 

 steamboat. On reaching Liverpool, AVC learned that Bell, who had been put 

 forward by a Committee of Parliament, as the rival, indeed as the instructor, 



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