The American ironclad turret-ship Monitor has given her name to a whole class of vessels built within recent years for the English navy; but in many respects our vessels are superior to their American prototype. All these ships—which are characterised by low free-boards and absence of masts and sails—fight their guns from turrets. They are sometimes known as "coast-defence ships," from the circumstance that they were constructed mainly for home service.

Of these "English monitors," four—the Cyclops, Gorgon, Hecate, and Hydra—are built on identically similar principles. In appearance they may be best compared to a raft with a battery on top of it, from which fortress or battery rise various funnels and a flag-staff. The deck is but three feet and a half above the level of the sea. While the ships are in port the deck is roofed in with an awning and railed round; but both awning and railing are removed when the vessels put to sea.

The battery or fortress is in the centre of the ship, and fills up about one-third of her length and three-fourths of her breadth. The surrounding deck is flush, its surface being broken only by the skylights, which are three in number. The skylights allow but a scant and dim light to penetrate to the officers' and seamen's quarters below; but even this is wanting in time of action, when a shot-proof shield takes the place of the glass windows.

The deck of the dass of war-ships we are describing is composed of twin-layers of iron plating half an inch each in thickness, supported on iron beams, and of two layers of solid teak lining four inches thick. The sides of the ships are protected by iron plating of eight-inch thickness amidships, which is an inch more of iron than the armour possessed by the majority of our masted sea-going ironclads, many of which are twice or thrice the size of the Cyclops and her sister-ships. It will thus be seen that these turret-ships are practically stronger in defensive equipment than any other class of ironclad cruisers.

The battery of these vessels is surrounded by a breastwork six feet in height, plated with nine-inch armour. Entrance is gained to the turrets themselves from inside this breastwork. In the centre of the turret there are two cylinders, the one fitting over the other in a manner which keeps the whole steady even in rough weather. Small steam-engines placed inside the breastwork serve to turn the turrets, which, however, can also be worked by manual labour should necessity demand it.

The ports present a striking contrast to those in the old wooden ships, by reason of their greatly diminished size. They just admit of the muzzle of the gun peeping through, and no more, being oval in shape, and about three feet in diameter lengthways. There can be little doubt that these small ports are an advantage, since they must afford greater protection to the gunners during action. When it is desired to alter the direction of the guns, the change is not effected by moving them in the ports, but by revolving the turret itself. Should it ever happen in action that the free movement of the turret should become impeded from some cause, then the only means of changing the direction of the guns would be to turn the whole ship.

The turrets are armed with two twenty-five ton guns, carrying four hundred pound shot. The deck being flush, as has been mentioned, the guns can be fired straight ahead and astern, and command all sides. Less than one minute is needed to revolve the whole turret. This class of ships is believed to be able to keep up a constant steady fire whether in chase or in retreat.

Abaft the funnel in these ships there is an upright oval tube rising some seventeen feet above the level of the main deck, plated with iron. The upper plate is pierced with several small horizontal slits, from which the tube has received the name of the "conning-house," for through these openings the captain can "con" or note whatever is going on outside, without himself being exposed to danger. This circular box just allows the captain to turn himself about in; and here must he stand in time of action, directing and governing the whole conduct of his ship by mechanical telegraphs.

Of the many curious and remarkable features in these ships, one of the most remarkable is the extensive use made of machinery for every purpose. Engines revolve the turrets, raise the ashes from the engine-rooms, turn the capstans, work the rudders;—engines do everything.

Three monitors similar to those just described were built for the defence of several of our colonies. The colony of Victoria, we believe, purchased their ironclad, the Cerberus, from the home Government; at any rate, the people maintain her at their own cost. Before the Cerberus could make the voyage out to Melbourne, her sides had to be built up with thin iron plating for nearly her whole length. In the same way the Cyclops and her companion-ships might be made fit to face any sea or weather.

It may occur to the reader to ask, Why not have sea-going masted vessels at once? To which it may be answered, first, that the masted ships must inevitably draw more water than those of which the Cyclops and Hecate are types. Turret-ships like the Monarch, or broadside-ships like the Hercules and Sultan, draw about twenty-five feet of water; the smaller ships only sixteen, while at the same time they are more heavily armoured. Thus the latter, if close pressed by an enemy's sea-going ironclads—the only class from which they have much to fear— could take shelter up a river out of their reach. In action near the land these monitors, moreover, could be handled with greater ease.

Secondly, from their much smaller size, the coast-defence ships are built at a much less cost—an important consideration in days when a first-class ironclad costs about as much as a small fleet of bygone days. The vessels we have been describing are of rather more than two thousand tons burden, as compared with the five thousand tons of the larger sea-going ships; and, speaking roughly, the expense of construction is proportionate to the tonnage.

The Glatton turret-ship has several characteristics in which it differs from the above class of monitors. It has but a single turret, and its guns throw six hundred pound shot, carrying three miles and a half. Her water-draught is about six feet more than that of the Cyclops and Hecate, and her armour-plates three inches thicker. Though she carries fewer guns, the Glatton is a much more powerful vessel than the other monitors. (Note: The above description of English monitors is adapted and abridged from an article in Chambers's Journal.)

We shall now briefly describe the Devastation, one of the largest and most powerful of all our ironclads. The Devastation in her after-part rises but four feet and a half above the water; but to meet bad weather she is furnished with an armour-plated half-raised forecastle, so that forward she is nine feet out of the water. The free-board amidships is still higher, being at this point level with the platform on which the two turrets are placed. In the centre of the ship rises a circular iron erection, on the top of which is the hurricane-deck. Through this structure runs a passage, in which are situated the entrances to the hatchways and to the hurricane-deck overhead.

From the hurricane-deck rise the ship's two funnels; and here also are the captain's fighting box, already alluded to in describing the coast-defence ships, the fire-proof shield for protecting the steering gear, and the boats. In a gale the hurricane-deck is the only safe place in ships of this kind—the only place where one would not get speedily washed overboard. As for the below part of the ship, it is there almost impossible to breathe, even when air has been pumped in from above, which is the only means of ventilating this portion of the vessel.

The Devastation carries two guns in each of her turrets, placed side by side, each weighing thirty-five tons. The turrets, directly the guns have been fired, can be wheeled rapidly round, thus turning the exposed parts away from the enemy.

Ships such as the Devastation, the Thunderer, and the Fury do not, at first sight, strike one as particularly well adapted for rough weather, to put it in the mildest phrase. Nevertheless, the Devastation has been fairly well tested in this way, having encountered some pretty rough weather, and, it is affirmed, behaved satisfactorily. The great danger about all ships of this class is that they may not rise to the seas, but that the waves, breaking over them, may press them down and founder them. The Thunderer has been known to have her forecastle, which is somewhat lower than that of the Devastation, completely submerged, and this, too, when no very high sea was running. These ships are designed, not for home service and coast defence merely, but for general action in mid-ocean.

To attempt to describe even a single specimen of each type of modern war-ships would to a certainty weary the reader, for to any but an expert there would inevitably be a sense of repetition in the perusal of such a narrative. But in order to place before our readers something like an approximate idea, at any rate, of the present state of our navy, we shall examine briefly one other first-class ironclad, the Inflexible, which may be regarded as a leading example of ironclad ships, and, at the time of writing, as one of the highest achievements of modern naval architecture.

The Inflexible is the vast size of 11,400 tons burden, her horse-power being 8000. The length is 320 feet, her armour-plating from 16 to 24 inches thick, with an inner lining of wood from 17 to 25 inches in thickness. She is divided into 135 compartments, and her engines are placed at such a distance from each other that should one be disabled from any cause the other would still be in working order.

The chief characteristic of the Inflexible is the position of the turrets. The majority of ships of this description have their turrets in the middle line, from which it results that only one half of their guns can be directed on an enemy, whether ahead or astern. The Inflexible has her turrets on each side—the fore-turret on the port-side, the after-turret on the starboard. She can thus use the whole of her guns against an enemy at the same time, whether it be ahead or astern.

It will be seen that the thickness of the armour-plating with which the Inflexible is protected is enormous; and yet this thickness of iron has been pierced. The question, then, that immediately suggests itself is, Can a vessel be constructed to carry much heavier armour-plating than this? A recent writer in the Times declares not. "So far as the exigencies of the navy are concerned," he says, "the limit of weight seems to have already been reached, for the simple reason that the buoyancy of our ironclads cannot with safety be further diminished by the burden of heavier armour and armaments."

The following very graphic description of the interior of a turret-ship was written by an eye-witness of the scene described. It is an extract from a narrative supplied to the author of "The Sea: its Stirring Story of Adventure and Peril," from which we take it. The vessel described was the Miantonoma, an American ironclad turret-ship.

"You ascend again through a trap-door, and find yourself in a circular room, some twelve feet in diameter, padded from top to bottom like the interior of a carriage. By your side is a huge mass of iron. You are inside the turret. A glimmering lamp sheds its feeble light on the moving forms around you, and from below comes the faint whispering of the men, until the trap is shut and you are again in utter silence.

"'Prepare!' The gunner's mate stands on your toes, and tells you to lean forward and thrust your tongue out of your mouth. You hear the creaking of machinery. It is a moment of intense suspense. Gradually a glimmer of light—an inch—a flood! The shield passes from the opening; the gun runs out. A flash, a roar—a mad reeling of the senses, and crimson clouds flitting before your eyes—a horrible pain in your ears, a sense of oppression on your chest, and the knowledge that you are not on your feet—a whispering of voices blending with the concert in your ears—a darkness before your eyes—and you feel yourself plump up against the padding, whither you have been thrown by the violence of the concussion.

"Before you have recovered sufficiently to note the effects I have endeavoured to describe, the shield is again in its place and the gun ready for reloading. They tell you that the best part of the sound has escaped through the port-hole, otherwise there would be no standing it, and our gunner's mate whispers in your ears, 'It's all werry well, but they bu'sts out bleeding from the chest and ears after the fourth discharge, and has to be taken below.' You have had enough of it too, and are glad that they don't ask you to witness another shot fired."

It must be stated that since the Miantonoma was built a new and improved principle of turret-firing has been introduced. Electricity is now employed in discharging the guns, and there is thus no necessity for anyone being in the turret, which is of course a great advantage.

At the close of the civil war, America possessed a fine fleet of monitors, of which scarcely any now remain. For the time they seemed all but impregnable to shot and shell; but they were built by contract, of unseasoned wood, and in the course of ten or twelve years yielded to natural decay. But the Brooklyn and the Ohio, both fine examples of naval architecture, still survive to maintain, in so far as two ships can, America's maritime prestige.

A chapter treating of ironclads would, we think, be incomplete without allusion made to the loss of the Captain, whose terrible fate in 1870 has caused a mournful interest to be attached to that vessel.

The Captain was 320 feet in length and 53 feet broad. Her armour-plating reached to five feet below the water-line. Opposite the turrets her plating was eight inches in thickness and seven inches in other parts. The ship was furnished with two screws, placed side by side. The screws were available for steering, and thus the vessel could be governed without the rudder. The Captain was fully rigged, and could carry a large spread of canvas.

The special characteristic of the ship was her revolving turrets. Each turret was 27 feet in diameter on the outside and 22 feet 6 inches on the inside. The walls of the turrets were therefore 2 feet 3 inches thick; and one half of this thickness was composed of iron. The turrets were revolved by separate engines, but they could also be turned, if occasion required, by hand-labour. Two Armstrong twenty-five ton guns, throwing six hundred pound shot, were placed in each turret. The ship was built after designs by Captain Coles—the architect also of the Monarch.

On her first sea-voyage the Captain showed, apparently, such excellent sea-going qualities that her architect and the contractors, the Messrs. Laird, were quite satisfied as to her safety in mid-ocean. In the autumn of 1870 she accompanied the fleet on a cruise; and on the 6th of September, shortly after midnight, foundered off Cape Finisterre. The whole crew were lost, with the exception of nineteen men, and among those who perished was Captain Coles himself, Captain Burgoyne, the commander of the ship, and a son of the then First Lord of the Admiralty—Mr Childers. It is unnecessary to recall to the memory of the adult among my readers the deep feeling of pity and gloom spread by this awful disaster throughout Great Britain.

The night on which the Captain foundered was no doubt a somewhat rough one, with squalls and a heavy sea on; but it was not merely the force of the storm which overwhelmed the vessel.

Mr James May, a surviving gunner of the ill-fated ship, gave a sufficiently clear account of the foundering of the vessel. Soon after midnight he was awakened from sleep by a noise and a feeling that the ship was uneasy. Rising, and taking with him a lamp, he proceeded to the after-turret to see if the guns were all right. Everything was secure enough there; but he had hardly finished his examination when he felt the vessel heel steadily over, a heavy sea struck her on the weather-port, the water rushed into the turret, and May presently found himself in the water.

He swam to the pinnace, which he perceived floating bottom upwards, and there he was presently joined by Captain Burgoyne and several others of the crew. Then he beheld the vessel turn over and go down, stern first; the whole catastrophe being over in a few minutes. The launch was drifting a few yards off, and May called out to his comrades, "Jump, men! it is our last chance." May with three others succeeded in reaching the boat, in which fifteen of the remainder of the crew also found a refuge. It is uncertain whether poor Captain Burgoyne remained in the pinnace or failed to reach the launch.

The nineteen survivors, after a hard row of twelve hours, without food or drink, landed at Cape Finisterre, where they were hospitably received and cared for by the people. A court-martial was held in due course to investigate the cause of the disaster. Into the details of the evidence it is impossible here to enter, but it was sufficiently proved that there were grave faults in the Captain's construction,—faults which, as is unfortunately too often the case, were not discovered by such calculations as were made before the ship started on what may be said to have been her first, as it was her last, cruise. It had, however, been noticed by some that the vessel was about a foot and a half deeper in the water than she should have been—that her free-board, in a word, instead of being eight feet above the water, as was designed, was only six feet six inches; and it needs but a very slight knowledge of marine matters to understand how this difference would materially prejudice the stability of such a vessel as the Captain.

If it has been the reader's chance, as it has been ours, to visit anyone of our great naval arsenals—especially Portsmouth or Plymouth—he cannot have failed of being struck with the gallant and splendid appearance presented by many of our ships of war; but he must likewise have been affected with feelings the reverse of admiration by more than one type of modern ironclads. No one who admires a real ship, be it of wood or of iron—a stately frigate in full sail before a favouring wind—can at the same time admire a monitor. Many persons, in truth, will refuse to regard a turret-ship as a ship at all. It overturns our every notion of what a ship should look like. A low, black, mastless, raft-like, cruel-looking machine, without the faintest pretension to form or comeliness, a turret-ship is simply a fighting-engine, a floating battery—an ingenious and formidable instrument of death and destruction, no doubt, but nothing more. Yet these are among the leading war-ships of the present, and, as far as can at present be seen, of the immediate future; and on these we must depend for the protection of our shores should they ever be threatened.

And yet, great as is the annual cost of our navy, and great as is the amount of ingenuity spent in the construction of new and novel ships of war—each designed to be more impregnable and more formidable than its predecessor—our navy is at this moment in somewhat of an unsettled and transitory state. Changes in the construction of ironclads are every year taking place, and considerable difference of opinion exists among our highest naval authorities upon important points in marine architecture. Ships of war have now to contend with such formidable enemies in the shape of guns, torpedoes, and other engines of terribly destructive power, that it is difficult to say at present which will eventually triumph. One of the old wooden ships placed beside a modern ironclad is as a child's toy battery compared with Gibraltar; and yet it can hardly be said that the nation has the same feeling of confidence and security in our present ships which it reposed in the vessels which Nelson so often led to victory; for it must be long ere the fate of the Captain and the Vanguard is entirely forgotten.

Of this, however, we may, we think, at least rest assured, that, however dubious we may be in regard to some of the novelties and presumed improvements that are being from time to time introduced in naval architecture, England is well abreast of the age in maritime matters; if her ships be not absolutely perfect, and proof against every form of danger, they are at least equal to those of any other nation. We need a strong, a very strong navy; and as a fact our naval resources are nearly equal to the combined naval strength of Europe.

A somewhat different condition of things will need to come about from that which at present exists among the nations of the world ere England can afford to decrease her naval armaments; and until the Great Powers of the world agree to settle their disputes by some other means than by "wager of battle," and are resolved to "war no more," probably the best and only way for her is to keep herself as strongly and perfectly armed as possible. It is this that has probably helped, at any rate, to secure so long and uninterrupted peace for our shores; and to try a different and opposite course would, to say the least, be a risk. It is upon her navy, as all the world knows, that England depends for defence and security. To be weak in our navy would be to be weak throughout all our armour. Our navy is at present, we would fain hope, a peace-weapon in our hands—a shield, not a sword; and while it is such, the stronger and more flawless it is, the better for us, and perhaps for the world at large. This may strike the reader as a somewhat vain-glorious, "spread-eagle" way of putting the case; but if he look at the matter fairly and impartially, we think he will admit that there is some truth in our statement.

Before closing this chapter, a word or two must be said descriptive of that fell foe to ships of war, the torpedo, though space demands that our reference should be brief. Almost all modern ships of war are constructed with false bottoms, designed especially to protect them against torpedoes. There are many different forms of torpedoes, employed in a variety of ways. A torpedo may be described as a submarine exploding apparatus. It may contain from thirty to as much as five hundred pounds of gunpowder; and the explosion is effected either by means of electricity, or by a spring and a detonating substance when the engine comes in contact with a ship. Some kinds of torpedoes rest on the bottom of the sea, while others are anchored and float suspended in the water. If a vessel strikes against one of these terrible engines, she is either at once blown to splinters, or a rent is made in her bottom which causes her rapidly to sink.

One type of torpedoes resembles somewhat a fish, and is impelled rapidly through the water by a screw and other machinery. Torpedoes are so constructed as to be able to rise and strike a vessel just at the right moment. When not filled with gunpowder or gun-cotton, dynamite and other explosive substances are used instead for charging these submarine war-engines.

Various methods have been devised to secure ships from torpedoes. Nets are sometimes extended in front of the ship, which catch the torpedoes before they can come in contact with the vessel's bottom. This safeguard was adopted, in many instances with success, by the Federal war-ships when entering Confederate harbours. But a great deal may be done to secure a ship against these terrible engines of destruction by precaution simply, as was proved in the Crimean War, when the Russian torpedoes did little or no damage to our ships, by reason of the unceasing watchfulness maintained on board.

During the late war between Russia and Turkey one of the most daring exploits of the campaign was an attack by a Russian squadron of torpedo-boats on the Turkish monitor Hifse Rahman. The flotilla comprised four ships, the Czarevich, the Xenia, the Czarevna, and the Djirid. The two first named began the attack, the Czarevna and the Djirid holding themselves in reserve until their assistance should be wanted.

The launches were equipped with strong iron awnings which shielded their crews from the enemy's fire. Each boat was armed with two torpedoes, fastened to the end of long spars projected over the bulwarks and working on pivots. The torpedoes could be detached from the spars when occasion demanded; while long chains were secured to the missiles, by which they were attached to the enemy's vessel, as well as to the wire of a galvanic battery fastened round the waist of the commander of the launch. This battery was the means by which the torpedo was exploded.

The flotilla left the Roumanian side of the Danube on the 25th of June 1877 at about midnight, and in something less than an hour the Hifse Rahman loomed in sight, a shadowy mass on the dark waters. The approach of the torpedo-boats was almost noiseless, and the croaking of the frogs was said to have further favoured the Russians by drowning the sound of the engines, so that those on board the monitor were not aware of their enemy's propinquity until the launches were almost alongside.

The sentry at once challenged, when Lieutenant Doubarsoff, the commander of the Czarevich, answered "Friends." But his speech betrayed him; the alarm was spread; and the Hifse Rahman opened a sharp fire upon the launches. But Lieutenant Doubarsoff succeeded in attaching his torpedo-chain to a rope hanging at the monitor's bows, and then rapidly backed his little vessel and fired the torpedo. A tremendous explosion; a column of water shot up into the air, and the launch was nearly swamped! A breach had, however, been made in the Hifse Rahman's bulwarks.

The other monitors were now thoroughly alive to their danger, and the Russian launches had to sustain a deadly cannonade, upon which Lieutenant Doubarsoff ordered Lieutenant Schestakoff to bring up his launch, the Xenia, and apply a second torpedo, which the latter was able to do, attaching the missile amidships of the Turkish vessel. The fate of the Hifse Rahman was now sealed, and in a few minutes she sank.

The Russian launches succeeded in getting clear of their enemy again without losing a single man, and thus ended the first torpedo expedition ever made against an enemy's ironclads, but which may, as a writer describing the event says, "end in completely revolutionising our present system of monster iron walls." The Grand Cross of Saint George was awarded to Lieutenants Doubarsoff and Schestakoff for this intrepid and successful exploit.

Space is not left us to do more than revert for a moment to what is perhaps the deadliest weapon of offensive naval warfare yet devised,— rams. Some experts maintain that nothing can match the power of the ram of a modern ironclad skilfully handled; and a well-known naval authority has declared that the use of the guns in a naval action should be merely preliminary to that of the ram—in other words, that all effort should be concentrated upon making an opportunity of using the ram.

We close this chapter by recalling the reader's attention to a feature in modern war-ships already alluded to, and which indeed the whole course of our remarks upon this subject points to—the almost universal use of machinery in modern naval tactics. Most assuredly in modern sea-warfare it may be said, in the Laureate's words—used by him, of course, with a very different sense—that "the individual dwindles," so that the prediction, which some of our readers may remember was once made by a First Lord of the Admiralty, seems not unlikely one day to become sober fact—that the time will come when we shall no longer require sailors, because all that our warships will need will be stokers and artillerymen. Whether this is a consummation to be desired we are not careful here to pronounce.



CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

ORIGINS OF STEAMSHIPS—OCEAN-STEAMERS, ETCETERA.

As we have been led, in writing about ships of the navy, to refer to steam, we turn aside at this point to treat of that tremendous motive-power.

One night, in the year 1807, a terrible sight was witnessed by the inhabitants of the banks of the river Hudson in America.

Men love what is marvellous, and they will go a long distance out of their way to see that which is terrific and horrible; but on the night in question there was no need to go far. The farmers had only to look out of their windows, and the sailors of the shipping had only to lift their heads above the bulwarks, to behold a sight that appalled the stoutest hearted, and caused the very hair on the craniums of the timid to stand on end.

The object that created so much consternation was—a "monster of the deep!" At some parts of the river, men could not tell what it was like, for the night was dark when it passed, but a dark, shadowy idea they obtained by the light of the fire which the creature vomited from its jaws; and they formed a tremendous conception of its size and power from the speed at which it travelled, the splashing which it made, and the hideous groans with which it burdened the night-air.

This "fiery monster of the deep" was the first river-steamer, the Clermont!

Before going further into the details of this the first of a class of ships which have, within the last fifty years, almost completely changed the whole system of navigation, let us take a cursory glance at the first attempts made to propel ships by means of steam.

The subject has occupied mankind much longer than many people suppose. So long ago as the year 1543, a naval captain of Spain applied an engine to a ship of about two hundred tons, and succeeded in moving it at the rate of about two miles an hour. The nature of his engine the captain kept secret; but it was noted that part of it consisted of a caldron of boiling water.

This we are told by Thomas Gonzales, the director of the Royal Archives of Simancas; but his veracity is now called in question,—at any rate, nothing further was afterwards heard of the discovery.

The first authentic record we have of steam navigation occurs in a work written by the Marquis of Worcester in 1665, in which allusion is made to the application of engines to boats and ships, which would "draw them up rivers against the stream, and, if need be, pass London Bridge against the current, at low-water."

Many attempts, more or less successful, were made by ingenious men from time to time. Papin of France in 1690 constructed a steamboat, the success of which may be gathered from the fact that it was ultimately broken up by enraged and jealous watermen! Jonathan Hulls in 1736, and M. Genevois in 1759, were each successful, to a certain extent, in constructing working models, but nothing definite resulted from their labours. Yet we would not be understood to undervalue the achievements of such men. On the contrary, it is by the successive discoveries of such inquiring and philosophical men that grand results are at last attained. The magnificent structures that crowd the ocean were not the creations of one era, or the product of one stupendous mind. They are the result of the labours of thousands of men whose names have never been known to fame.

The men who, working upon the materials supplied by preceding generations, brought the propulsion of boats by steam nearest to perfection, just before the commencement of navigation, were Mr Miller of Dumfries, Mr Taylor, his friend, and tutor in his family, and Mr Symington. All of these were, in a very important degree, instrumental in ushering in the great event. Symington, in 1788, fitted an engine to a large boat, in which he attained the speed of seven miles an hour.

The man to whom the credit belongs of introducing steam navigation is undoubtedly Mr Fulton of America. This gentleman, who was contemporary with those just mentioned, visited France and England, in the former of which countries he endeavoured, unsuccessfully, to carry out his projects, while in the latter he met with Symington, and obtained much valuable information from him.

We have no sympathy whatever with those who seem to rake in to the credit of their own country every discovery and invention they possibly or plausibly can. We did much towards the commencement of steam navigation, but we did not begin it. We pushed considerably in advance of other nations in the invention of apparatus by which boats might be propelled by steam; we constructed models, tried it on a small scale, and found the thing to answer admirably: but we rested there. Meanwhile, an enterprising American came and saw our achievements, ordered an engine in England, carried it across the Atlantic, and commenced the era of steam navigation, on the river Hudson, by building and launching:

THE FIRST STEAMER.

Robert Fulton, in conjunction with Chancellor Livingston of America, planned, built, and launched a boat in the spring of 1807, which they named the Clermont. It was propelled by steam, and averaged the rate of five miles an hour on its first voyage from New York to Albany, a distance of nearly one hundred and fifty miles.

All discoveries and novelties, great and small, are treated with ridicule at first by the mass of mankind, so it is not a matter of wonder that the crowds which flocked to the wharf to see the Clermont start on her first trip were somewhat satirical and jocose in their remarks. But when the steam was turned on, and they heard the first of that series of snorts that was destined ere long to shake the trembling air of land and sea, and saw the great, uncouth paddle-wheels revolve powerfully in the water and churn it into foam, a shout, tinged doubtless with prophetic fervour, greeted the triumphant engineer as his little steamboat darted from the shore.

Colden, in his Life of Fulton, speaks thus of the Clermont's first voyage:—

"She excited the astonishment of the inhabitants of the shores of the Hudson, many of whom had not heard even of an engine, much less of a steamboat. There were many descriptions of the effects of her first appearance upon the people of the banks of the river.

"Some of these were ridiculous, but some of them were of such a character as nothing but an object of real grandeur could have excited. She was described by some, who had indistinctly seen her passing in the night, as a monster moving on the waters, defying the winds and tide and breathing flames and smoke! She had the most terrific appearance from other vessels which were navigating the river when she was making her passage. The first steamboat (as others yet do) used dry pine wood for fuel, which sends forth a column of ignited vapour many feet above the flue, and, whenever the fire is stirred, a galaxy of sparks fly off, which, in the night, have a very brilliant and beautiful appearance.

"This uncommon light first attracted the attention of the crews of other vessels. Notwithstanding the wind and tide, which were adverse to its approach, they saw with astonishment that it was rapidly coming towards them; and when it came so near that the noise of the machinery and paddles was heard, the crews—if what was said in the newspapers of the time be true—in some instances shrank beneath their decks from the terrific sight, and left their vessels to go on shore; whilst others prostrated themselves, and besought Providence to protect them from the approaches of the horrible monster which was marching on the tide, and lighting its path by the fires that it vomited!" The Clermont became a regular passenger boat on the Hudson; and the progress of steam navigation continued to advance, until nearly all the navigable rivers of the world, and the great ocean itself, were covered with these clanking ships of commerce, which have added more to the comfort, the wealth, and the power of man—the power of doing good as well as evil— than the feeble human mind can conceive.

THE COMET.

It was not until five years after the Americans set us the example that we launched our first passenger steamboat, the Comet, a vessel of about twenty-five tons, with engines of three horse-power. This little vessel was started by Henry Bell, of Helensburgh, on the Clyde. It began its career in 1812, and plied regularly for two years.

Like her predecessor the Clermont, she was regarded with no small degree of scepticism, and with a large amount of surprise by the thousands who saw her set forth. Nevertheless, she soon proved her value, became a successful speculation to her owners, and was ere long followed by many other vessels of a similar kind.

THE "ARGYLE", AFTERWARDS NAMED "THE THAMES."

In 1813 the Argyle was launched. This vessel was the first European steamer that pushed out into the more dangerous navigation of the open sea-coast. She was purchased by a company in London. On her passage up, she was as nearly as possible wrecked on a lee-shore, but, by her steam-power, was enabled to go straight against the wind, at the rate of three and a half knots an hour, and so escaped.

One of the passengers has left us an interesting account of this interesting voyage, from which we cull one or two paragraphs:

"The weather had now become so stormy and bad that our captain determined to put in to the port of Wexford, his great object being to navigate the vessel safely to London, rather than, by using great despatch, to expose her to unnecessary risk. We put to sea again at two o'clock p.m., on May 30th, and steered for Saint David's Head, the most westerly point of Wales. During our passage across Saint George's Channel, one of the blades of the starboard paddle-wheel became out of order; the engine was stopped, and the blade cut away. Some hours afterwards, a similar accident happened to the other wheel, which was remedied in the same manner.

"About two-o'clock in the afternoon, twelve hours after leaving Wexford, we reached the pass of Ramsay. We remained there for three hours, to oil the engine, and to give the stoker, who had not quitted his post an instant since leaving Wexford, a little rest. In a short time several boats were seen coming to our assistance, the idea prevailing here, as at Wexford, that our vessel was on fire. We landed on the island of Ramsay, a most desolate spot, containing only one habitation; we, however, procured some bread, butter, milk, cheese, and ale, with which we returned to the vessel, and commenced steaming through the straits, and across Saint Bride's Bay.

"The weather had now become unfavourable, and the sea ran alarmingly high in the bay. On the south side of Saint Bride's Bay, between Skomar Island and the mainland, is a nasty passage called Jack Sound. Our pilot warned us of the danger of attempting this passage, excepting at high-water and with a favourable wind, as there were several formidable whirlpools, which would seize the vessel and carry her on the rocks. Captain Dodd, however, who knew the power of his engine, insisted on going through the sound, in order to save five hours and another night at sea. The pilot repeated his remonstrances, at the same time trembling for fear; but we passed through all the whirlpools with the greatest ease. Nothing, however, can be conceived more frightful than the aspect of some of the rocks, and especially of those called the Bishop and his Clerks. Had we been in a sailing vessel, our position would have been most perilous; but our steam was all-powerful, and brought us safely to Milford Haven.

"We put to sea again late on the evening of the 31st, and on Friday morning we were in the middle of the Bristol Channel, with no land visible; but towards evening we discovered the high coast that terminates England in the west. As the weather, however, again assumed a gloomy aspect, our new pilot judged that it would be imprudent that night to double Land's End, so we shaped our course towards Saint Ives.

"On approaching the shore, we perceived a crowd of small vessels making towards us with all possible rapidity, by means of oars and sails. Here, as elsewhere, the alarm was taken, on seeing a vessel, judged to be on fire, steering towards the town, and all the disposable craft immediately put to sea. All the rocks commanding Saint Ives were covered with spectators; and when we entered the harbour, the aspect of our vessel appeared to occasion as much surprise amongst the inhabitants as the ships of Captain Cook must have produced on his first appearance amongst the islanders of the South Seas.

"Another night passed, a night of storm and danger, but the little Thames (the vessel had been renamed by the new company who purchased her) behaved nobly, and next day reached Plymouth. Here," continues the narrative, "the harbour-master, who had never seen a steam-vessel before, was as much struck with astonishment, when he boarded the Thames, as a child is on getting possession of a new plaything. He steered the vessel, and we passed round several ships of war in the sound. The sailors ran in crowds to the sides of their vessels as we passed them, and, mounting the rigging, gave vent to their observations in a most amusing manner.

"We left Plymouth at noon on the following day, and steamed without interruption to Portsmouth, where we arrived on Friday, June 9th, having accomplished one hundred and fifty miles in twenty-three hours. At Portsmouth astonishment and admiration were, if possible, more strongly evinced than elsewhere. Tens of thousands of spectators were assembled to gaze on the Thames; and the number of vessels that crowded around us was so great, that it became necessary to request the admiral to give us a guard to preserve some degree of order.

"We entered the harbour in the most brilliant style, steaming in, with the assistance of wind and tide, at the rate of from twelve to fourteen miles an hour. A court-martial was at the time sitting on board the Gladiator frigate; but the novelty of our steamboat presented an irresistible attraction, and the whole court came off to us, excepting the president, who was obliged by etiquette to retain his seat until the court was regularly adjourned. On Saturday, June 10th, the port-admiral sent his band and a guard of marines at an early hour on board; and soon afterwards he followed, accompanied by three admirals, eighteen post-captains, and a large number of ladies. The morning was spent in steaming amongst the fleet, and running over to the Isle of Wight. From Portsmouth we proceeded to Margate, which we reached on Sunday morning. Here we remained until the following day, when we embarked for our final trip, at half-past eight in the morning; and about six in the evening arrived at Limehouse, where we moored."

We have entered thus at considerable length into this voyage, because, besides being the first steam sea-voyage, it serves to exhibit very distinctly how great and how rapid has been the progress of steam-navigation within the last fifty years. In reading such an account as this, in these days of "ocean mail-steamers" and "Great Easterns," we can scarcely believe that in it reference is made, not to the middle ages, but to the year 1813.

OCEAN-STEAMERS.

After that momentous era when steam was first successfully applied to useful purposes, human progress and improvement in all departments of science and art seemed to have been hooked on to it, and to have thenceforth rushed roaring at its tail, with truly "railroad speed," towards perfection!

Scarce had the first model steamboat splashed with its ungainly "blades" the waters of a pond, than river traffic by means of steamboats began. And no sooner had this been proved to be a decided success, than daring schemes were laid to rush over the ocean itself on wheels. Men were not long about it, after the first start was made. Their intellectual steam was up, and the whirl of inventive effort racked the brains of engineers as the wheels of their steamboats tortured the waters of the deep.

And here again the name of Fulton comes into notice. Early in 1814 he conceived the idea of constructing a steam-vessel of war, which should carry a strong battery with furnaces for red-hot shot. Congress authorised the building of such a ship, and before the end of the same year it was launched. Fulton died the following year, but the fame of that enterprising engineer will never die.

The new vessel received the rather quaint title of Fulton the First. She consisted of two boats joined together. Those who were appointed by Congress to examine her and report, gave the following account of this curious man-of-war:

"She is a structure resting on two boats and keels, separated from end to end by a channel fifteen feet wide and sixty-six feet long. One boat contains the caldrons of copper to prepare her steam; the cylinder of iron, its piston, lever, and wheels, occupy part of the other. The water-wheel revolves in the space between them. The main or gun-deck supports the armament, and is protected by a parapet four feet ten inches thick, of solid timber, pierced by embrasures. Through thirty port-holes as many thirty-two pounders are intended to fire red-hot shot, which can be heated with great safety and convenience. Her upper or spar-deck, upon which several thousand men might parade, is encompassed by a bulwark, which affords safe quarters. She is rigged with two stout masts, each of which supports a large lateen yard and sails. She has two bowsprits and jibs, and four rudders—one at each extremity of each boat; so that she can be steered with either end foremost. Her machinery is calculated for the addition of an engine which will discharge an immense column of water, which it is intended to throw upon the decks and through the port-holes of the enemy, and thereby deluge her armament and ammunition.

"If, in addition to all this, we suppose her to be furnished, according to Mr Fulton's intention, with hundred-pound columbiads, two suspended from each bow, so as to discharge a ball of that size into an enemy's ship ten or twelve feet below her water-line, it must be allowed that she has the appearance, at least, of being the most formidable engine for warfare that human ingenuity has contrived."

She certainly was; and even at the present time the Fulton the First would cut no insignificant figure if placed alongside our gunboats, floating-batteries, and steam-frigates.

It is not easy to get intelligent men to believe in things that savour of the marvellous; yet there seems to be a point past which, if once a man be got, he will go on to believe almost anything, no matter how absurd. In those days few people in Europe would credit the truth of this ship's proportions; but when, in the course of time and from indubitable testimony, they were compelled to believe, they flew to the opposite extreme of incredulity and believed anything, as the following curiously comical paragraph will show. It is said to have appeared in a Scotch treatise on steamships, and is intended for a "full, true, and particular account" of this monstrous American man-of-war steamer. After giving her dimensions three times larger than they were in reality, the author continues:—"The thickness of her sides is thirteen feet of alternate oak plank and cork wood. She carries forty-four guns, four of which are hundred pounders; quarter-deck and forecastle guns, forty-four pounders: and further, to annoy an enemy attempting to board, can discharge one hundred gallons of boiling water in a minute; and, by mechanism, brandishes three hundred cutlasses with the utmost regularity over her gunwales; works also an equal number of heavy iron spikes of great length, darting them from the sides with prodigious force, and withdrawing them every quarter of a minute!" This vessel, although probably intended for an ocean-steamer, was never used as such. But not long after, a vessel propelled by steam ventured to cross the Atlantic, and thus became the parent of commercial steam navigation. This vessel was:

THE "SAVANNAH" STEAMER.

Unfortunately, little information as to this, the first ocean-steamer, has been chronicled.

She was launched at New York on the 22nd of August 1818, and in the following year made her first voyage to Savannah, from which she sailed for Liverpool soon after, and crossed the Atlantic in twenty-five days— during eighteen of which she used her engines.

The Savannah was about 350 tons burden, and was on this occasion commanded by Captain Moses Rodgers. She was fitted with machinery for taking in her wheels in stormy weather, which was found to work admirably; and she is mentioned as having been seen on the ocean going at the rate of nine or ten knots.

From Liverpool this steamer went to Saint Petersburg, and afterwards returned to Savannah in safety.

This was the insertion of the wedge. Our own country did not follow the lead until 1838, when the good people of New York were thrown into a state of excitement by the arrival of two steamers, the Sirius and the Great Western, from England. So long a time had elapsed since the voyage of the Savannah that men had well-nigh forgotten it, and were disposed to regard these vessels as the first ocean-steamers. Indeed, some narrow-minded and ungenerous writers have asserted that they were the first—totally ignoring the prior claim of the Savannah.

From that period ocean-steamers began to run frequently across the Atlantic. They now do so regularly, as well as to nearly all other parts of the world.

OCEAN MAIL-STEAMERS.

The improvements which have taken place during recent years in ocean-going steamships have been great and rapid. The speed attained by some of these magnificent vessels is little short of marvellous. Many persons still living can recollect the time when the voyage to Australia in a sailing vessel lasted six months. What is now the state of matters? By more than one line of steamships the traveller may reach Sydney or Melbourne within forty days. A recent voyage of the Orient, one of the latest and finest additions to ocean steamships, merits more than a passing notice. The Lusitania, which belongs to the same line, steamed from England to Australia in less than forty days, and the feat was regarded as a great one. But the Lusitania has been far outmatched by her sister-ship the Orient, which has actually accomplished the same voyage in thirty-five days, fifteen hours, and forty-six minutes. From Plymouth to the Cape of Good Hope took the Orient only seventeen days twenty-one hours. This is the fastest speed on record. Whether it is the maximum rate possible to ocean steamships, or whether it is destined to be surpassed by a still higher degree of speed, remains to be seen. Many persons are of opinion that the increased facilities of speed which are now within reach of travellers on long voyages will gradually lead to the total disuse of sailing ships for passenger traffic. It may be so, but there are still not a few who would prefer a sailing to a steam ship for a long sea voyage, notwithstanding its so greatly inferior rate of speed. But nowadays everything must be sacrificed to time. "Time flies," is at present the motto of most instant and potent power with the world; but the day is perhaps not far off when the fiat, "Thus far, and no farther," must be pronounced not only on the speed of steamships, but on the breathless rush and hurry of the age in general.

THE CZAR'S YACHT "LIVADIA."

Undoubtedly one of the most remarkable craft afloat is the Russian Czar's steam-yacht the Livadia. To a Scotch shipbuilding firm belongs the credit of having constructed this unique and splendid vessel, and it is certainly a feather in the cap of Messrs. Elder and Company, the well-known Glasgow shipbuilders, from whose yard the Livadia was launched in July 1880.

One would imagine that the highest point of comfort and luxuriousness has been reached in the accommodation offered by the Livadia; but this is far from being the only or even the chief respect in which the vessel is remarkable. She is notable from a purely nautical point of view— being the outcome of principles that may be said almost to revolutionise all pre-existing ideas of shipbuilding, though something like the same principle may be found in the circular ironclads of Admiral Popoff.

Hitherto the plan which naval architects have followed, where the desideratum was exceptional speed, was to give the vessel in course of construction length in combination with as fine lines and as perfect proportion as possible. But in the case of an imperial pleasure-boat, like the Livadia, it was an object to obtain an ampler and more drawing-room like accommodation than is compatible with length, narrowness of beam, and fine lines; and the constructors of the Czar's new yacht have succeeded in securing not only this internal spaciousness and comfort, but also a satisfactory degree of speed.

It was to the united exertions of Admiral Popoff of the Russian navy, and Dr Tideman of the royal dockyard, Amsterdam, that the design of the Livadia was due. It is not easy in words to convey a distinct impression of this curiously-shaped craft, but our description will, we hope, give the reader a pretty correct idea of the vessel.

The constructors of the Livadia, it is believed, chose a turbot as their model for the hull; and in thus taking a flat fish as a suggestion for their vessel, the builders, as a recent writer on the subject points out, followed no extravagant, though certainly a novel, fancy. In broad terms the Livadia may be described as a wide and shallow oval in shape, half submerged, while over this turbot-shaped raft a superstructure is erected, somewhat similar in appearance to an ordinary vessel, and comprising large, lofty, and sumptuous saloons and other apartments.

The Livadia is 260 feet long, 150 feet broad, and 50 feet deep. She is 11,609 tons burden, and her displacement 4000. The two leading merits of the Livadia, due to its peculiar construction, are—first, that its frame can support a superstructure of almost palatial proportions such as would founder any other vessel; and second, that its great breadth of beam keeps the ship as steady as a ship can possibly be, while, at the same time, its lower lines secure a very good degree of speed.

The Livadia possesses powerful propelling engines. There are three sets of these, each with three cylinders, the diameter being sixty inches for the high pressure, and seventy-eight inches for the low, with a stroke of three feet three inches. As much strength and lightness as possible have been secured for the propellers by constructing them of manganese iron; while steel has been largely employed for the engines and boilers, which are, for their weight, the most powerful possessed by any vessel. The estimated horse-power is 10,500, and the ship, under favourable conditions, can make fifteen knots an hour.

The double water-tight bottom of the Livadia is three feet six inches deep at the centre, and two feet nine inches at each end. In this turbot-like lower part is the machinery, and it is the receptacle also for coals and stores of all kinds. The twofold bottom of the ship comprises forty compartments, and the whole is sufficiently strong, it is believed, to withstand the heaviest weather to which the yacht is likely to be exposed, as well as the strain of her powerful machinery.

The entire length of the upper part of the ship, in which are the imperial apartments, and the quarters of the officers and crew, is 260 feet, and the breadth 110 feet. The crew all told numbers 260. The private apartments of the Czar himself are forward on the main-deck, well away from the heat of the engines and the smell of the machinery. A visitor to the ship is chiefly struck, perhaps, by the height to which the decks rise above the hull, the uppermost compartment of all being fitted out as a reception saloon, in the centre of which a little fountain rises out of a bed of flowers. This portion of the vessel is forty feet above the level of the sea. The apartment is luxuriously appointed in the fashion of the reign of Louis XVI. The drawing-room is furnished in a style of equal sumptuousness, in the Crimean Tartar style; but the rest of the imperial apartments are in a simpler order of decoration. Behind the funnels there is another deck-house, containing the captain's quarters and rooms for the Grand Duke Constantine. It will thus be seen that the Livadia is literally a floating palace, equipped and decorated with that almost Eastern love of sumptuous display which characterises the Russians as a people.

All the three screws with which the Livadia is furnished are wholly submerged in the water—another novelty in the construction of the vessel. One or even two of these screws might suffer serious injury and the ship still remain manageable.

It is not wonderful that the launch of a craft, at once so splendid and so curious, should have caused much interest and excitement in the neighbourhood in which it took place. A distinguished company witnessed the ceremony, while the crowd which lined the banks of the river Clyde numbered 10,000. A short service was conducted by three priests of the Greek Church, and the bows of the vessel were then sprinkled with holy water. After the conclusion of this ceremony, the yacht received her name from the Duchess of Hamilton, and was then launched. The launch was a complete success, the Livadia taking the water in gallant style, though the task was one of more than ordinary difficulty from the circumstance of the great breadth of the ship's keel-less bottom, which much increased the friction to be overcome. At the luncheon which concluded the day's proceedings, Mr Pearce, the chairman, who represented the firm of Elder and Company, stated that the principle adopted in the building of the Livadia would probably be more useful in the case of ships of war than of merchant vessels, but that builders of the latter might also derive valuable hints from the construction of the new ship. Whether this will prove to be the case time has yet to show.

A most interesting discovery of a Norse war-ship has recently been made at Sandefjord in Norway. The vessel, there can be no doubt, is one of the kind in which those formidable buccaneers, the Norsemen, used to harry the coasts of Great Britain and France ten hundred years ago. It was found buried in the ground, and seems to have been the sepulchre of some great Viking chieftain, who had probably many a time sailed forth in it to the terror and detriment of some less warlike and powerful neighbour.

The ship is unusually large, and very completely equipped. Its length is about seventy-five feet; and sails, rigging, a number of shields and other instruments of battle, were found on board.



CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

THE "GREAT EASTERN."

The Great Eastern steamship deserves to be regarded as the eighth wonder of the world, beyond all question. She is at present by far the largest vessel in the world, and is the most magnificent creation of naval architecture that was ever launched upon the sea.

The substance of the following account of this interesting ship has been gathered principally from the Times and the Illustrated London News for 1859, the year in which the Great Eastern was launched, and from a pamphlet which was sold on board, by permission of the proprietors.

The Great Eastern was intended for the Indian and Australian route by the Cape of Good Hope. The result of large experience in steam navigation has proved that the size of the ship, (when steam is used), ought to be in proportion to the length of the voyage. Mr Brunel, the talented engineer to whose genius and perseverance this monster ship owes her existence, acting on this principle, calculated that the voyage to Australia and back being 22,500 miles—a vessel of 22,500 tons burden, (or a ton burden for every mile to be steamed), would require to be built, capable of carrying fuel for the entire voyage, it being impossible, without incurring enormous expense, to procure coal for such a vessel at intermediate ports.

The Eastern Steam Navigation Company undertook the herculean work. The total cost of construction was estimated at 804,522 pounds. Mr Brunel prepared the designs. A spot of ground was chosen on the banks of the Thames, in the building-yard of the company at Millwall, and the building was commenced, on the lines laid down by Mr Scott Russell, on the 1st of May 1854.

Every minute detail of the arrangements and building of this wonder of the world is fraught with interest. The mere preparing of the ground to receive her enormous weight was calculated to fill the minds of men with astonishment. Her supports and scaffoldings, and the machinery by which she was ultimately launched, taxed the skill of her engineers even more than her construction. A very town of workshops, foundries, and forges sprang into being round her hull; and as this rose, foot by foot, in all its gigantic proportions, the surrounding edifices dwindled down into insignificance, and the busy population of artificers clustered upon her like ants upon a prostrate monarch of the forest-trees.

The hull of the Great Eastern is built entirely of iron, and is 680 feet in length, 83 feet in breadth, and 60 feet in height from keel to deck. It is divided transversely into ten separate compartments of 60 feet each, rendered perfectly water-tight by bulk-heads, having no openings whatever lower than the second deck; whilst two longitudinal walls of iron, 36 feet apart, traverse 350 feet of the length of the ship.

The mind will be better able to realise the magnitude of these dimensions if we add that the Great Eastern is six times the size of the Duke of Wellington line-of-battle ship, that her length is more than three times the height of the Monument, while her breadth is equal to the width of Pall Mall, and a promenade round the deck affords a walk of more than a quarter of a mile.

There is no keel properly so called, but in its place a flat keel-plate of iron, about two feet wide and one inch thick, which runs the entire length from stem to stern. This is the base upon which all the rest is reared, plates and girders alike. The iron plates which form her planking are three-quarters of an inch thick. Up to the water-mark the hull is constructed with an inner and outer skin, two feet ten inches apart, both skins being made of three-quarter inch plates, except at the bottom, where the plates are an inch thick; and between these, at intervals of six feet, run horizontal webs of iron plates, which bind the two skins together, and thus it may be said that the lower part of the hull is two feet ten inches thick.

This mode of construction adds materially to the safety of the vessel; for, in the event of a collision at sea, the outer skin might be pierced while the inner might remain intact. This space may also at any time be filled with water, and thus ballast, to the amount of 2500 tons, be obtained.

Some idea of the magnitude and weight of the vessel may be formed from the fact that each iron plate weighs about the third of a ton, and is fastened with a hundred iron rivets. About thirty thousand of these plates were used in her construction, and three million rivets. The fastening of these rivets was one among the many curious operations performed in course of building. The riveting men were arranged in gangs, each gang consisting of two riveters, one holder-up, and three boys. Two boys were stationed at the fire or portable forge, and one with the holder-up. This boy's duty was to receive the red-hot rivet with his pincers from the boy at the forge, and insert it in the hole destined for its reception, the point protruding about an inch. The holder-up immediately placed his heavy hammer against the head of the rivet, and held it firmly there, while the two riveters assailed it in front with alternate blows, until the countersunk part of the hole was filled up, after which the protruding head was cut off smooth with the plate, the whole operation scarce occupying a minute. In riveting the double part of the ship the holder-up and his boy were necessarily in the interior part of the tubes, and passed the whole day in the narrow space between, (of two feet ten inches wide), in comparative darkness, having only the glimmer afforded by a single dip candle, and being immediately under the deafening blows of the riveters.

The deck of the Great Eastern is double, or cellular, after the plan of the Britannia Tubular Bridge. The upper deck runs flush and clear from stem to stern, and he who takes four turns up and down it from stem to stern walks upwards of a mile. The strength of this deck is so enormous that if the ship were taken up by its two extremities, with all its cargo, passengers, coals, and provisions on board, it would sustain the whole. The deck has been covered with teak planking, and has been planed and scrubbed to man-of-war whiteness. Not even a stray rope's end breaks the wonderful effect produced by its immense expanse. Her fleet of small boats, which are about the size of sailing cutters, hang at the davits, ten on each side. There are six masts and five funnels. The three centre square-rigged masts are of iron. They were made by Mr Finch of Chepstow, and are the finest specimens of masts of the kind that were ever manufactured. Each is made of hollow wrought iron in eight-feet lengths, strengthened inside by diaphragms of the same material. Between the joints, as they were bolted together, was placed a pad of vulcanised india-rubber, which gives a spring and buoyancy to the whole spar greater than wood, while at the same time it retains all the strength of the iron. The other masts are made of wood, and the canvas that can be spread is no less than 6500 square yards. On deck are four small steam winches or engines, each of which works a pair of cranes on both sides of the vessel; and with these five thousand tons of coals can be hoisted into the vessel in twenty-four hours.

The engines and boilers are of immense power and magnitude. There are both screw and paddle engines, the former being capable of working up to 6500 horse-power, the latter to 5000. There are ten boilers and one hundred and twelve furnaces. The paddle engines, which were made by Messrs. Scott Russell and Company, stand nearly 40 feet high. Each cylinder weighs about 28 tons, and each paddle-wheel is 58 feet in diameter, or considerably larger than the ring in Astley's Circus. The screw engines were manufactured by Messrs. Watt and Company of Birmingham. They consist of four cylinders of 84 inches diameter and 4 feet stroke. The screw propeller is 24 feet in diameter and 37 feet pitch; and the engine-shaft is 160 feet long, or 12 feet longer than the height of the Duke of York's Column. The paddles and screw, when working together at their highest pitch, exert a force equal to 11,500 horsepower, which is sufficient to drive all the cotton-mills in Manchester! The consumption of coal to produce this force is estimated at about 250 tons per day.

Besides these engines there are also several auxiliary engines for pumping water into the boilers, etcetera.

The passenger accommodation in the Great Eastern is very extensive— namely, 800 first-class, from 2000 to 4000 second-class, and about 1200 third-class passengers; or if troops alone were taken, it could accommodate 10,000 men.

The saloons are fitted up in the most elaborate and costly manner. The chief saloon is magnificently furnished. It is said that the mirrors, gilding, carpeting, and silk curtains for this apartment alone cost 3000 pounds. In the berths, of course, no attempt is made at costly decoration of this kind, though the fittings are good and sufficiently luxurious. The berths are arranged in three classes: those for parties of six or eight, and these are large rooms; those for parties of four; and the rest in the usual style of double cabins. All are very roomy, as cabins go—very lofty, well lit, and those on the outer sides exceedingly well ventilated. On the lower deck the berths are even larger, loftier, and more commodious than those on the upper. Both the berths and saloons here are in fact almost unnecessarily high, having very nearly fifteen feet in the clear. The kitchens, pantries, and sculleries are all on the same extensive scale, and fitted with all the large culinary requisites of first-class hotels. The ice-house holds upwards of 100 tons of ice; and the lofty wine-vaults—for such in fact they are—contain wine enough to form a good freight for an Oporto trader.

Miscellanea.—In addition to the boats of the Great Eastern (twenty in number), she carries two small screw-steamers, each 100 feet long, 16 feet broad, 120 tons burden, and 40 horse-power, suspended aft of the paddle-boxes.

As the captain's voice could not be heard half-way to the bow, even with the aid of the ancient speaking-trumpet, that instrument is supplanted by semaphore signals by day, and coloured lamps by night; the electric telegraph is also used in connection with the engine-rooms. There are ten anchors, four of them being Trotman's patent, weighing seven tons each. The cables are each 400 fathoms long, and their united weight is 100 tons. The tonnage of the Great Eastern is 18,500 tons register, and 22,500 tons builders' measurement. The crew at first consisted of thirteen officers, seventeen engineers, a sailing-master, and a purser, four hundred men, and two or three surgeons, all under the command of the late Captain W. Harrison, (formerly of the Cunard line).

The launch of this leviathan was a most formidable undertaking, and was accomplished by means of powerful hydraulic rams, which propelled the vessel down the launching "ways." The ship rested on two gigantic cradles, and was forced sideways down the inclined plane, until she floated on the river. By a complication of ingenious contrivances the great ship was regulated in her descent so as to proceed slowly and regularly down the ways. Several unsuccessful attempts were made to launch her, and several of the hydraulic rams broke down ere she floated on the bosom of Old Father Thames; and the cost of this operation alone is said to have been nearly 100,000 pounds.

The trial of the engines, both screw and paddle, took place for the first time on the 8th of August 1859, when the completion of the vessel was celebrated by a banquet on board. The first movement of the gigantic cranks and cylinders of the paddle engines was made precisely at half-past one, when the great masses slowly rose and fell as noiselessly as the engines of a Greenwich boat, but exerting in their revolutions what seemed to be an almost irresistible power. There was no noise, no vibration, nor the slightest sign of heating. The tremendous frame of ironwork sprang at once into life and motion, with as much ease as if every rod and crank had been worked for the last ten years.

The trial trip of the Great Eastern was an event that excited intense interest all over the kingdom. For the first time, she cast off her moorings on Wednesday morning, (the 7th September), and reached the Nore on Thursday, where she anchored for the night before proceeding to sea. On Friday morning, at ten minutes past nine, she started on her first salt-water voyage. A conviction of the extreme steadiness of the vessel must speedily have seized everyone on board. There was no perceptible motion of any kind. The giant ship was speedily surrounded by yachts, tugs, fishing-smacks, and, indeed, by a representative of almost every kind of vessel which is prevalent at the Nore. These accompanied her as far on her way as their limited sailing powers would permit. Although there were sharp squalls and a chopping sea nearly all through the trip, not the slightest inconvenience was felt by any of the visitors, not even among the fairer portion of the passengers. The morning, which was rather fine at starting, suddenly became clouded, and the shifting squalls increased in violence. Though the squally state of the weather damped the pleasure of all on board, yet it afforded an opportunity of trying the properties of the ship, now under paddle as well as screw; and it was the wish of Mr Scott Russell and all on board to meet a good gale of wind. At a moderate computation, the distance from the deck to the water could not be much less than forty feet, while the vessel is nearly seven hundred feet long. This area would, of course, present an enormous surface to the force of the wind, and formed the subject of considerable discussion as to the effect it would have on her sea-going qualities. The ship was as stiff and steady as though she still remained on her cradles in the Isle of Dogs, and her course was as calm and true as though she were on a lake without a capful of wind.

It is said that at one portion of the voyage she steamed nineteen miles an hour.

The explosion.—All went well till the ship had passed Folkestone. About half-past five o'clock, while the majority of the passengers were on deck, and a few gentlemen only remained in the dining saloon, a tremendous explosion occurred, and in an instant showers of broken glass, and fragments of wood and iron, came crashing through the skylight. Those in the cabin rushed on deck. The ship was still pressing onward; at either end all was still and deserted, while in the centre all was smoke, fire, vapour, and confusion. The great funnel, of eight tons weight, had been shot up as if from a mortar, and fell on the deck broken in two pieces. The whole centre of the ship seemed to be only one vast chasm, and from it were belching up steam, dust, and something that looked like incipient conflagration. Captain Harrison acted nobly on this terrible occasion. He had been standing on the bridge overhead, looking into the binnacle, and the moment he heard the report, and whilst the destructive shower was still falling fast, he jumped upon the deck, and ordered an immediate descent to the ladies' saloon, in the firm conviction that they were all there as on the previous evening. But many of the men were panic-stricken, and had already shrunk away from the explosion. A foolish passenger had raised a cry of "The boats," and, assisted by some of the sailors, was madly attempting to let them down. In one moment all would have been lost; for the rush to the boats would have been general, and hundreds been drowned, whilst the noble ship would have been left to certain destruction. But the voice of the captain was heard like a trumpet, calling out, "Men, to your duty; officers, to your posts; give me a rope, and let six men follow me!" The effect of this short address was electric. In an instant he had slid down the rope into the saloon, followed by his brave boatswain Hawkins, and six volunteers were not long wanted for the forlorn hope. One after another he dashed open the gilded panels; but the splendid apartment had, strange to say, only two inhabitants,—his little daughter Edith, and her pet dog. It was the reward of his gallantry that his own child should be thus the one to be so providentially saved. But even then he did not for a moment lose his self-command. Snatching up the child, and with one glance seeing that she was unharmed, he exclaimed, "Pass her along to the deck; there are more rooms to be searched." In this way did he move about rapidly, but coolly, and did not again return to the deck until he had satisfied himself that not a single woman was in the burning, steaming, suffocating chamber. His intimate friend, Mr Trotman, who had followed him down almost immediately, found the poor lap-dog moaning under a heap of ruins, and was the means of restoring it to its little mistress.

The magnificent saloon was a mass of torn and shattered furniture, mirrors, and ornaments. Had the passengers adjourned to this apartment after dinner, instead of to the deck, the consequences would have been awful.

An eye-witness describes the scene of devastation as follows:—

"The mirrors which formed the covering of the funnel which had been the cause of so much mischief were literally smashed to atoms, and large fragments of the broken glass were hurled upon deck, a long distance aft of the paddle-wheels. The ornamental bronzed columns which supported the gilt cornices and elaborate ornamentation, were either struck down or bent into the most fantastic shapes; the flooring, consisting of three-inch planks, was upheaved in several places; the gangways leading to the sleeping-cabins at the sides were shot away; the handrails were gone, and the elegant carpet was concealed beneath a chaos of fragments of finery. The books on the shelves of the library remained unmoved; the piano was thrown on one side; and the floor presented huge upheaved and rent chasms, through which might be seen the still greater ruin in the lower cabin. Below the saloon, or drawing-room, is the saloon of the lower deck, which was, of course, traversed by the same funnel as the one above it. On each side of these spacious saloons were small staircases leading to blocks of sleeping-cabins, scarcely one of which would have been without its two or more occupants a few hours later in the evening. They were now blown down like a house of cards. The furniture which they contained formed heaps of dislocated chairs, and wash-stands, and basins; the doors were off their hinges, the partitions were forced outward, the staircases leading to them had to be sought in the splinters and broken wood which lay in heaps in the lower saloon."

The unhappy men who were working in the stoke-holes and tending the furnaces were the sufferers by this catastrophe. Believing that one of the boilers had exploded, fears were entertained that the whole body of stokers and engineers attending the paddle engines were killed. Mr Trotman went down the air-shaft communicating with the other boilers. Seeing by the light of the furnaces a number of men moving about, he inquired if they were all right, and the response sent up from these lowest depths of the ship was, "All right at present, but we don't know how long." They were told to keep quiet, and stay where they were; that they could be of no service on deck, and all would be well in a few minutes. The gallant fellows remained by their fiery furnaces with resolute good-will. In the case of the firemen tending the other set of boilers a very different scene was taking place. Ropes were thrown down, and, one by one, wounded, bleeding, and staggering men were drawn up, their black, begrimed faces forming a ghastly contrast with scalded portions of their limbs and bodies. The men were taken aft to the hospital, and to the cabins, where mattresses and blankets were laid for them.

Two or three of these poor fellows walked up to the deck almost, if not quite, unassisted. Their aspect told its own tale, and none who had ever seen blown-up men before could fail to know at a glance that some had only two or three hours to live. Where not grimed by the smoke or ashes, the peculiar bright, soft whiteness of the face, hands, or breast, told at once that the skin, though unbroken, had in fact been boiled by the steam. One man walked along, and seemed quite unconscious that the flesh of his thighs, (most probably by the ashes from the furnace), was burnt in deep holes. To some one who came to his assistance he said quietly, "I am all right. There are others worse than me; go and look after them." This poor man was the first to die. It was seen at once that but little hope existed for many, if not the majority, of the sufferers, who were twelve in number. Most of them seemed very restless, and almost, if not quite, delirious; but a few of those whose injuries were likely to be more immediately fatal remained quiet, half unconscious, or at most only asking to be covered up, as if they felt the cold. For these latter all knew that nothing whatever could be done, as, in fact, they were then dying.

The explosion had occurred in the double casing round the bottom of one of the funnels. We have not space to describe this minutely, and by the general reader the description, were it given, would scarce be understood; but it is well to remark that the piece of machinery which caused the deplorable accident had been previously condemned in strong terms by competent judges, and there is no doubt that the hot-water casing round the funnel ought never to have been there.

After the catastrophe, the Great Eastern kept on her course as though nothing had happened, although the force of the explosion was sufficient to have sent any other ship to the bottom. The damage was estimated at 5000 pounds. She arrived at Portland on the 10th, and remained there for some time undergoing repairs. Afterwards she continued her trial trip to Holyhead, where she arrived on the 10th of October. The results of the trial, excepting, of course, the accident, were most satisfactory. Her speed under disadvantageous circumstances had been good, and her engines had worked admirably. Against a gale of head wind she went as steadily as if in harbour, but with the wind a-beam she rolled considerably. Altogether there was good reason to hope that the Great Eastern would fulfil the sanguine expectations of her warmest admirers.

The following account of the continuation of her trial trip from Portland to Holyhead, as gathered from the Times, is exceedingly interesting:—When steam was up, and all ready for starting from Portland, the crew were sent forward to heave up the anchor. Eighty men sufficed to drag the Great Eastern up to and over her moorings. Bringing the anchor out of the ground, however, was not so easily managed; and it was not till all the musical resources known to sailors on such occasions were nearly exhausted that the tenacious gripe of Trotman's patent was released, when a slow drift with the tide showed that the great ship was again set free. In another minute, without shouting, confusion, or hurry of any kind, and with less noise than is made by a 100-ton coaster, a slight vibration through the ship, with a thin line of foam astern, showed that the screw engines were at work and the vessel once more under way. With such ease, with such perfect quietness and good order was everything accomplished, that the occasional cheering from the yachts and steamers was almost the first token given to those on board that the trial trip had commenced. At a quarter to four the "way" on the vessel was rapid; her head went round like turning a pleasure-boat; and so little sign was given of the ship being under steam, that it seemed rather as if the breakwater had got adrift and was slowly floating past, than that the monster vessel was really cleaving the blue waves with a force which, as yet, we have seen no wind or sea to resist or check. Directly the anchor was fished, Captain Harrison passed the word to steam ahead with both engines easily, and the wheels began their revolutions, slowly at first, but nevertheless making a track of foam upon the water such as they never made on the first start from Deptford to the Nore. The accession of speed from working the paddles was at first but slight; not from any want of power, however, but simply from the fact that both engines were ordered to work slowly, and though propelling the great ship at something like eleven knots, were really scarcely driving at indicated half-speed.

Quitting Portland, it was necessary to make rather a round turn on leaving the breakwater, as right ahead on the starboard bow was a small light-ship, looking like the skeleton of a vessel, and marking the presence of a dangerous shoal, known by the most appropriate and significant name of "The Shambles." Inside this lay a long and turbid ridge of angry water, where the Race of Portland ran, and where a deep rolling swell, like the Bay of Biscay on a reduced scale, kept tumbling and breaking into spray like drifts of snow against the high, gaunt cliffs. It, however, required no actual watching of the low green mounds of water, which seemed butting against the coast, to convince all on board that the Great Eastern was at sea. To the infinite relief and comfort of all the passengers, the vessel began to yield to reason, and to behave as much like another ship as she could consistently with her size. It would be too much to say she rolled at this time; for when the Great Eastern rolls, if ever she does roll, travellers may depend upon her accomplishing something in that peculiar style of ocean navigation quite in proportion to her bulk; but one thing is certain— that she went from side to side sufficiently to show that she was susceptible of the motion of the water, and that if ever she steams across a beam sea, she is likely to move to it with a will, though slowly and easily.

Continuing for a considerable time under little more than half steam, the Great Eastern averaged more than thirteen knots, (fifteen miles), an hour. The best guide to the rapidity of the ship's progress was the way in which she passed fast-sailing schooners and overhauled the steamers. At this time nearly all the swell had ceased, and the monster ship was rushing over what to her were the mimic waves, and leaving less wake upon the waters than is caused in the Thames by a Gravesend boat. The only peculiarity about her progress was the three distinct lines of frothy water which the screw and paddles made, and which, stretching out in the clear moonlight like a broad highway, seemed as if the Great Eastern had fulfilled her purpose, and really bridged the sea.

For a considerable part of the way the paddles were working easily at from nine to ten, and the screw at from thirty-two to thirty-four revolutions per minute. It will give most readers a better idea of the tremendous nature of the size and speed of the engines which worked so easily, when it is said that, at ten revolutions, the paddle-wheels dashed through the water at something like 1600 feet per minute, and the screw revolved at 2500. When accomplishing this, the consumption of fuel was at the rate of 250 tons a day for both engines, the indicated power being above 5000 horses—about 2000 horses for the paddles, and a little over 3500 for the screw. In order to secure her going at full speed, however, under such circumstances, the great ship should have been down by the stern at least eighteen inches more than she really was, for not less than a foot of the screw-blades was out of the water, and the slip or loss of power was of course very great. Off the coast of Cornwall, the swell caused her to roll very considerably, as long as she was a-beam of the long swell.

Soon after this a small brig was seen right under the starboard bow. As usual with these small coasters, she was showing no light and keeping no look-out, and but for the anxious vigilance exercised on board the big ship, the brig would have been under the waves in two minutes more. Her escape was narrow enough, and nothing short of the instant stoppage of the engines and actually reversing the screw saved her from swift destruction. She drifted from under the starboard paddle within twenty yards—quite close enough to enable Captain Harrison to speak to her master, and to express a very strong opinion on his style of navigation and conduct generally.