164 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



MODERN WAR VESSELS OF THE UNITED STATES 



NAVY. 



BY W. A. DOBSON, M. S. N. A. 

 ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES C. DODGE. 



AT the close of the civil war the United States possessed a 

 navy consisting in the main of monitors, double and single 

 turreted, and a large fleet of wooden vessels of various types and 

 classes ; they were armed principally with smooth-bore guns and 

 Parrott rifles, all of which were muzzle-loading ; but the four years 

 of strife which developed the monitor, the fifteen-inch gun with 

 its mammoth powder, and the destructive capabilities of the 

 torpedo were destined to overthrow Old World ideas of battle- 

 ship requirements, to turn the thoughts of naval men abroad in 

 entirely new and novel directions, and to inaugurate a new sys- 

 tem of design and construction. Among the forms of naval 

 architecture developed by the exigencies of the war the most 

 notable is the monitor type, and therein contained was the germ 

 from which was to spring a new development of war vessels, for, 

 although the nation was so worn with the long struggle that it 

 was glad to turn the energies that had been devoted to the enter- 

 prises of war to the pursuits of peace, and found itself too 

 heavily burdened with debt to embody its naval experience in a 

 new navy, the lessons given in naval construction and war- 

 fare were eagerly seized upon by European naval architects, 

 and from the monitor of Ericsson, combined with Timby's re- 

 volving fort and its successors, was evolved the battle-ship of 

 to-day. The United States having thus laid down the broad lines 

 along which was to be developed the present fighting machine, 

 with its steel built-up rifled guns, the slow-burning smokeless 

 powder, the automobile and dirigible torpedoes, contented itself 

 for the next decade and a half with building a few vessels of 

 iron, building and repairing its wooden vessels, and converting 

 the smooth-bore guns into makeshift rifles. Abroad, the navies 

 of France and England adopted the monitor idea of protection to 

 hull and machinery by means of vertical side armor, extending 

 from a few feet below to a few feet above the load line, sur- 

 mounted by a flat armored deck, with the guns placed in re- 

 volving forts or turrets, protected by walls of heavy armor ; and 

 in order to increase the habitability and sea-going qualities, 

 light upper or false works were erected upon the armor deck, 

 in which were placed the quarters and secondary armament. 

 In order to obtain a hull structure sufficiently light and strong 

 to allow a considerable amount of displacement to be devoted 



