NAVY, UNITED STATES. 



625 



and increase the strength of armor by plating 

 more heavily at the water-line belt, and again 

 at the height of the battery, with a lower shot- 

 proof deck, as before, and shot-proof passages 

 leading from the lower protected space to that 

 of the battery or gun deck. 



Large dimensions of hull, by increasing the 

 carrying power of the ship in a more rapid 

 ratio than the resistance it meets with in mo- 

 tion, allow not only of heavy armor and arma- 

 ment, but also favor speed; so that, in a 

 general way, such dimensions must be aimed 

 at in sea-going ships. But an important in- 

 crease, on the other hand, in a vessel's effici- 

 ency may be secured, as is aimed at in the 

 Monitors, by dispensing, as far as practicable, 

 with everything but a protected hull, a bat- 

 tery and its auxiliaries, and engines for propul- 

 sion, for the needful work of ventilating and 

 pumping, and working the turret, if not of 

 serving the guns ; the latter, meanwhile, by the 

 device of the revolving turret, being reduced 

 in number and increased hi caliber and power. 

 The settling, however, of the Montauk's turret, 

 under the blows of shot from Fort McAllister, 

 and the blocking of the turrets of the Passaic 

 and Nahant, in the attack on the forts in Charles- 

 ton harbor, show that in order to secure a good 

 degree of endurance and efficiency in actual 

 combat, some important improvements are yet 

 required, and, perhaps, intimate that, with 

 small vessels of this construction, the large 

 armaments of Ime-of-battle ships will have 

 to be replaced by the large number of tur- 

 rets, and so of hulls, composing an attack- 

 ing fleet. Since the attack referred to, Capt. 

 Ericsson declares that the construction of the 

 turrets and pilothouses of the Monitors is pur- 

 posely made such as to admit of the application 

 of additional thicknesses of plating, if this (as 

 now appears to be the fact) should be proved 

 necessary ; and he implies that all the apparent 

 imperfections in the batteries, shown by that 

 contest, can be readily and completely remedied. 



Among the means which appear to promise 

 a great increase in the efficiency of small bat- 

 teries may be named the plan of Mr. E. A. 

 Stevens, of " elevating and lowering, by hy- 

 draulic machinery, the turn table on which the 

 gun carriage is fixed, so that the gun can be 

 fired above deck, and loaded and protected, 

 except at the moment of firing, below a shot- 

 proof structure ; and especially Mr. Stevens' 

 arrangement for loading and cooling guns 

 rapidly by simple steam machinery ;" as well as 

 the plan of "a rotating battery, designed by 

 Mr. Julius King, of New Jersey, in which two 

 or more guns are loading below deck, while 

 another in the same revolving frame, and cov- 

 ered by a shot-proof hood, may be trained, 

 elevated, and fired above deck." [Holley.] 



It is stated that Mr. E. A. Stevens has re- 

 cently, with the proviso that the Government 

 shall purchase it in case of success, proposed 

 to complete his well-known battery at his own 

 expense, and then to submit it to the severest 



VOL. II. 40 



tests known to modern navigation and gun- 

 nery, anaocg its assumed qualities being a speed 

 of 20 miles per hour, capability of turning in 

 an extremely short time on its own centre, and 

 invulnerability to shot of the most powerful 

 known ordnance. This last quality is in a 

 good degree to be derived from the submersion 

 of the hull, during action, to sach a depth that 

 the lower deck shall be considerably beneath 

 the surface of the water, the deflecting influ- 

 ence of which is held to afford the most effi- 

 cient possible protection to the hold, with the 

 engines and machinery, so enveloped. The 

 bottom of this battery is of wood, and so, free 

 from the fouling which proves, after a little 

 time, so serious a barrier to speed with vessels 

 having iron bottoms, unprotected. 



The question of the best construction of 

 hull for armored ships is, in fact, still by no 

 means settled. The comparatively thin shell 

 of a very usual style of iron ships, perforated 

 by rows of holes running in the direction of the 

 ribs, is manifestly a source of weakness in ref- 

 erence to transverse strains ; while the shell 

 may also be crushed in by collision with 

 ledges of rocks, or a blow from the flukes 

 of an anchor. To remedy these defects, it 

 has been proposed to apply a thick wood- 

 en sheathing outside the iron shell, and 

 over this copper or brass sheathing ; and, 

 again, to introduce a double bottom, as is 

 done in the Great Eastern, and in the new 

 English "shield" ships; an objection to this 

 being that the necessary allowance of space 

 enough between the two bottoms to admit of 

 the entrance of workmen, diminishes greatly 

 the available room of the hold. . 



Experience in this country appears not to 

 favor the armoring of old wooden vessels 

 for the new sort of service; but whether 

 or not the proper hull of an armored ship 

 were better constructed of wood, appears to 

 be still an open question. The wooden bot- 

 toms, with or without copper sheathing, 

 have the advantage of fouling far less thr.n 

 those of iron. The iron surface, acted on 

 by salt water, rusts rapidly and unevenly, 

 and then affords a lodgement to barnacles 

 and seaweeds to such an extent as to un- 

 fit it for gliding easily upon the water, thus 

 reducing the speed. Lord Palmerston declared 

 that the Warrior fouled so fast that she lost 

 a knot an hour in speed every six weeks she 

 was afloat ; and such vessels, if the bottoms be 

 not in some way protected from this action, 

 require frequent docking and cleaning, and are 

 not so suitable for long voyages. Copper 

 sheathing oxidizes slowly and more evenly, and 

 thus constantly dislodges the foreign bodies 

 that would become attached to its surface. 

 But against wooden hulls, on the other hand, it 

 is an objection that they work more under the 

 action of a heavy sea than does a well-con- 

 structed shell of iron; and this is by far a 

 more serious difficulty in the case of single 

 thick plates than in that of laminated armor. 



