FOOTNOTES:
[442] The dimensions of the Iona are 250 feet in length and 25 feet breadth of beam. She is propelled by a pair of oscillating engines, with a combined nominal power of 180 horses. Her draught of water, when fully laden, does not exceed 6 feet, and her speed under favourable circumstances is from 20 to 21 statute miles per hour. She is the fastest vessel in Great Britain, or perhaps in the world, one or two of the steamers of the United States excepted.
[443] [Vol. ii. pp. 536-7]. The Q. E. D. was 120 feet long, and 27 feet wide. She registered 272 tons.
Her dimensions and crew.
The King Coal, which was contracted for in the latter end of the year 1870, cost complete for sea 15,000l. She carries 900 tons coal cargo, with bunker space for 100 tons more, and has extra water-ballast for making a passage when she has no cargo on board; against strong winds her speed is 8½ knots an hour when loaded, and from 9½ to 10 knots when light in fine weather; her power, 90 horse nominal. She has an excellent saloon cabin on deck for the captain, with four berths and accommodation for the chief mate and steward at the entrance; her crew consists of 17 persons all told. The master and crew find themselves in provisions; their respective duties and pay are as follows:—
| Master | £17 | 0 | 0 | per month, | with | 2s. | 6d. | per day | subsistence money. |
| 1st Mate | 7 | 10 | 0 | ” | ” | 2 | 0 | ” | ” |
| 2nd Mate | 6 | 10 | 0 | ” | ” | 1 | 6 | ” | ” |
| Chief Engineer | 12 | 7 | 6 | ” | ” | 2 | 6 | ” | ” |
| 2nd Engineer | 8 | 15 | 0 | ” | ” | 2 | 0 | ” | ” |
| Steward | 5 | 10 | 0 | ” | ” | 1 | 6 | ” | ” |
| 5 Able Seamen | 6 | 15 | 0 | ” | in full each man. | ||||
| 4 Stokers | 6 | 15 | 0 | ” | ” | ||||
| 1 Boy | 3 | 0 | 0 | ” | ” | ||||
| 1 Carpenter | 8 | 5 | 0 | ” | ” | ||||
The voyage from Newcastle to London and back usually occupies from six to eight days. Hoisting sails, lifting anchor, and other heavy work is done by steam winches. The crew are accommodated in a roomy and well ventilated forecastle level with the main deck, the seamen occupying one side of it, the stokers the other, with a bulkhead between them. The engineers have cabins on deck in the bridge-house, the wheel-house stands on the platform which spans the deck in midships, and is so arranged that, while the helmsman can see everything ahead, he is protected from the inclemency of the weather.
[445] See [ante, vol. ii. p. 536].
[446] These celebrated smacks were from 160 to 200 tons register. In the early part of this century (before the close of the great war) they sailed in company for protection. On one occasion they were attacked by a French privateer, heavily armed, to which they gave action, and, after a severe encounter, beat her off in gallant style; the senior captain, Nesbitt, acting as “Commodore” of the little fleet. Each of these smacks had accommodation for about twenty first-class passengers. The passage between Leith and London, a distance of 500 miles, usually occupied from three to five days, but has been made in fifty hours, although it was not, unfrequently, protracted from eight to twenty days. The first-class fare, including a table “groaning with food,” but exclusive of wine, spirits, or beer, was only two guineas each person; a rate which must have left little profit on long passages.
[447] After the cessation of the sailing packets, and before the opening of the Holyhead Railway, the Dublin Mail was for some years carried viâ Liverpool by the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company.
[448] These celebrated ships are built of iron. The length between the perpendiculars is 334 feet; the beam is 35 feet, and depth 21 feet. There is a centre keel plate, 3 feet deep and ⅝ inch thick, with two bars, 9 inches deep by ⅝ inch thick, on each side at the bottom forming also the keelson; the plate, with the two garboard strakes, ⅞ inch thick each, are secured together with iron bolts riveted and countersunk. On the top of the centre keel plate, two angle-iron bars are riveted, 5 inches by 4 inches by ½ inch, and to these angle irons, and to the angle irons on the top of the floorings throughout the entire length of the vessel, as far as the fine ends will allow, is riveted a strong plate, 4 feet wide amidships, and 2 feet 6 inches wide at the ends. There are, also, two very strong box keelsons, secured on the floorings at each side of the keel, and another in each bilge. The engine bed-plates, paddle and spring beams, and all other beams for the main and lower decks, are of iron. Timber has been used only for the decks and cabin fittings. There are nine principal iron water-tight bulkheads, which not only provide for the safety of the ship in case of accident, but add greatly to her strength in a seaway. The bulwarks are of iron plates, in continuation of the sides of the vessel to the rail, and without any break for gangways, such not being required for landing either at Holyhead or at Kingstown. To give additional strength in the centre of the vessel, where the weight of the engines, wheels, and boilers has to be carried, the insides of the paddle-boxes are also formed of iron plates, continued from the sides and bulwarks of the vessel, with a strong bow girder, formed of an iron plate 15 inches broad and ¾ inch thick, so as to provide ample means of resistance to the severe shocks which these long vessels must encounter in rough seas, when driven at their high rate of speed. The gunwale is formed of angle-iron bars, 4 inches by 4 inches, riveted to the sheer strake and to a plate which is riveted on the top of the beams. At a distance of about 15 inches from this, an inner angle bar is riveted, against which the wooden waterway is fitted, so as to leave the outer part, between this and the gunwale, to form a drain to take the water off the deck, and to discharge it through the scuppers. This arrangement, which was introduced by the late Mr. John Laird, has been found very convenient in freeing the decks quickly from water. These iron gunwale plates are 5 feet wide by ¾ inch thick amidships, tapering gradually to about 2 feet 6 inches by ½ inch at the ends, with a system of diagonal tie plating from side to side, securely bolted or riveted to the deck beams. Between the paddle-boxes an upper deck, about 50 feet in length, has been placed.
[449] Each of these vessels cost somewhere about 80,000l., complete in all respects for sea.
[450] See [Appendix No. 26, p. 644].
[451] The dimensions of the Victoria are as follows: length 200 feet, breadth 24 feet, and depth 12½ feet; she is 566 tons gross or builders’ measurement; her engines are 220 horse-power nominal, and her draught of water 6½ feet.
[452] See evidence, Mr. Samuel Jack Mason, before the Committee of Lords on the International Communication Bill, 1872, pp. 49, 50, and 51.
[453] The trains will come in from the South Eastern Railway and the London, Chatham, and Dover systems by independent lines to a central station. They will then be run on a hydraulic hoist, eight to nine carriages at a time, and this hoist will be lowered until the rails on it are exactly level with those on the steamer; a flap is then let down completing the communication between the rails on the hoist and the rails on the steamer, and the carriages are immediately hauled on to the steamer.
When the steamer enters the dock to receive the trains, she is run between rollers, fixed two on each side of the dock and allowing the least possible movement of the paddle-boxes sideways. Movements lore and aft of the steamer are prevented by buffers (similar to ordinary locomotive buffers) fixed at her end, which butt against recesses at the end of the dock, and also by blocks fastened to the dock wall which receives her end a little further aft, ordinary mooring apparatus keeping the ship tight up against the buffers.
In rough weather there may be a slight vertical movement when the head of the ship is next the hoist, but the flap which is let down, as before described, will be sufficient to accommodate this slight difference of level, which will be little more than is met with in passing over a turntable as in many railway stations.
| No. of Question. | ||
| 49. | Length | 450 feet to 470. |
| Beam | 95′ 0′′ over paddle-boxes. | |
| 123. | Beam | 57′ 0′′ not including paddle-boxes. |
| 156. | Depth | 14 feet in hold from floor to ceiling. |
| 153. | Depth | 34½ feet inner skin to hurricane deck. |
| 50. | Draught | 12 to 13 feet. |
| 513. | Freeboard | 21′ 0′′ to hurricane deck; 8′ 6′′ main deck. |
| 51. | Power | Two independent pairs of engines, one to each paddle, collectively of 1600 to 1800 nominal horse-power, 12,000 indicated horse-power. |
| 167. | Speed | Twenty knots or 23 miles. |
| 130.} | Capacity for passengers | Seventeen carriages, containing 336 passengers; or 2000 passengers, neglecting carriages. |
| 274.} | ||
| 278.} | ||
| 132. | Cargo | 22 trucks, say 180 tons goods. |
| 68. | Cost of boats | £500,000 for three. |
| £ | ||
| 60. | Estimate for construction of harbour at Andrecelles, coast of France | 700,000 |
| 63. | Estimate for extension of Dover Harbour, &c. | 1,000,000 |
| £1,700,000 | ||
| Cost of three steamers | 500,000 (?) | |
| £2,200,000 |
[455] Such vessels are well-known to Indian navigators; and, while carrying between 100 and 200 tons, ride steadily on a heavy swell that causes a large steamer to roll its ports under water. They are extraordinary looking craft, and are frequently to be found, not merely in the vicinity of Ceylon, but about the islands of the Pacific, and along the coasts of Northern India, as well as on the shores of Java and Sumatra, though nowhere else. The Indian boat, however, so far as I can judge, most resembling the steamer which Captain Dicey has built, is the jangá (not the catamaran),—a double platform canoe of the Cochin China backwater. The pontoons at Chatham are of a similar construction. To form the jangár, a floor of boards is laid across two boats, with bamboo railings 10 to 12 feet broad and 16 feet long; in these boats, native regiments, cattle, &c., are ferried across rivers. I may add, that the catamarans proper are constructed of three logs lashed firmly together, the centre one being the largest. They are usually from 20 to 25 feet in length, and from 2½ to 3½ feet only in width.
[456] On Saturday May 8th, 1875, the Bessemer underwent what may be called her first trial—that is, she crossed from Dover to Calais and back again. It would appear from the narratives in the different journals that she had nothing to contend with, on this occasion, in the way of weather or sea, and that, starting at 11.17 A.M. and reaching Calais Harbour at 12.45, her speed was about the same as that of the ordinary boats. Her greatest novelty, the saloon, was, however, not tried on this occasion. On this point Mr. Bessemer remarked, at a dinner given to him in Calais on the same day:—“I never dared to hope that, at first, this ship would be completely successful, so much depends on skill, and you must remember that there are no means whereby absolute automatic action can be given to the saloon, because there is no absolute point of stability. Within the ship we are like Archimedes who wanted a fulcrum for the lever that was to move the world; what we want is to place our fulcrum in an absolutely quiet spot.... In port the machinery will move with a degree of steadiness that is all that can be desired, the very reverse of this will take place at sea when the vessel itself moves and the cabin is required to be quiet: and, just as we require more practice to move the cabin in still water, so we require more practice to keep the cabin still in the moving ship.”
[457] See Harper’s Weekly Illustrated Newspaper, New York, October 28th, 1858, where drawings are given. I visited the cigar ship which was built at Milwall, London, in 1864, when she was ready for launching, and inspected her carefully.
[458] Though lightning from the heavens has never yet been usefully employed, and is not likely to be so, the electricity generated in galvanic batteries and used for telegraphy is precisely the same as lightning.
[459] Among other advantages the projectors offer an almost absolute safety of boilers from explosion, as they are made of 3-inch wrought-iron tubes ⅜ inch thick; the boilers when put together are proved to 2500 lbs. hydraulic pressure on the square inch, are worked from 300 lbs. to 500 lbs. per square inch as desired, and their bursting pressure is 20,000 lbs. per square inch.
[460] Messrs. Perkins and Son base their calculations for speed on the fact that the vessel they propose will have 30 horse-power to a foot of midship section, the best Atlantic steamers having only from 4 to 5 horse-power to each foot of midship section.
I have submitted these particulars to a gentleman of great scientific and practical knowledge of marine propulsion, who remarks: “This large steamer is, I fear, a wild idea, until the form of the present steam-ship is very much improved. It will require a great deal more power than what Mr. Perkins proposes to drive such a vessel 30 knots an hour; and marine engines must be very much improved to get anything like this power in a ship, and to maintain it for 100 hours on a consumption of 500 tons of coal.” But as everybody admits that we have not yet reached perfection, it is solely with the object of furthering improvement, that I furnish my readers with the plans and proposals of Mr. Perkins.
[461] It will be remembered that the earliest application of the steam-engine was for the purpose of pumping water; hence, when applied to turn machinery, the great lever of the pumping engine was retained. The same thing took place on the application of the steam-engine to navigation; and, even now, the beam or lever engine is in common use both here and in America.
[462] A practical engineer, with whom I had recently some conversation on this subject, informed me that when, many years ago, he was superintendent of one of the oldest Steam Navigation Companies, it was scarcely possible to maintain a pressure sufficient to keep the air out of the boilers, and the hissing noise it made, when rushing into the boiler through the reverse valve, was a not unfrequent tell-tale of the slackened efforts of the over-worked fireman.
[463] To convert a quantity of water at 32 degrees into 10 lbs. of steam, requires 1 cwt. of coal; but to convert it further into steam at 40 lbs. pressure, would only require 1·012 cwt., and to raise it into even 90 lbs. not more than 1·024 cwt. of coal would be required.
[464] The following illustration is from a photograph furnished by Messrs. T. Richardson and Son of West Hartlepool. It is exactly the same in principle as those supplied by Messrs. J. and G. Thompson of Glasgow, to the Bothnia and Scythia, belonging to the Cunard Company, which I have already described, and represents the usual construction of modern marine engines of the best class.
[465] See details in the Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects, 1874.
[466] It may be stated, generally, that 1 lb. of coal can, under the most favourable circumstances, be made to evaporate from 12 to 16 lbs. of boiling water, the evaporation of each pound being equivalent to 745,800 foot-pounds of mechanical work. At this rate 1 lb. of coal ought to give out from nine to twelve million foot-pounds of work, while, in reality, no steam-engine does so much as two million foot-pounds for a pound of coal, so great is the loss from the want of proper means of utilizing the whole work produced by the combustion of the coal.—Vide Text-Books of Science, p. 174; by C. W. Merrifield, F.R.S.
[467] See ante, [vol. iv. p. 150].
[468] In the [Appendix No. 27, p. 645], will be found the number of iron steam-vessels built and first registered in the United Kingdom in each year from 1861 to 1874; and the amount of British tonnage, steam and sailing, from 1850 to 1873, as compared with the United States, France, Holland, and Norway.